Give It A Credible Ebook Reader And You'll Sell A Ton.

[dadioflex]

Hear me out...

While they're both niche interests I'm guessing there are probably as many people reading ebooks as there are playing emulated videogames. If you check out http://www.teleread.org/blog/ you'll find a substantial community of people looking for the perfect ebook reader. If you can include an ebook reader with a long battery life, that allows annotations, has a built in dictionary, and reads a variety of ebook standards it ticks most of the boxes they're looking for. Going against you is the size of the screen but the Palm TX is another favoured ebook reader so it's not the end of the world.

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.

Anyway, just saying.

 

[Karel Jansens]

Hear me out...

While they're both niche interests I'm guessing there are probably as many people reading ebooks as there are playing emulated videogames. If you check out http://www.teleread.org/blog/ you'll find a substantial community of people looking for the perfect ebook reader. If you can include an ebook reader with a long battery life, that allows annotations, has a built in dictionary, and reads a variety of ebook standards it ticks most of the boxes they're looking for. Going against you is the size of the screen but the Palm TX is another favoured ebook reader so it's not the end of the world.

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.

Anyway, just saying.



FBreader is already ported to ARM devices (Nokia Internet Tablets). It is rather good.

 

[hal9000]

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.

This is only a matter of recompilation. And maybe not even that, considering there is a debian ARM package for it.

However, I think the future of e-book reader is in dedicated devices with passive screens. We don't know how much time Pandora's batteries will last, but it will probably not meet what you expect from an e-book reader.

 

[Clad]

Don't forget the dynamic underclocking. An ebook reader shouldn't need more than a few mhz.

I used the GP2X as an ebook reader a lot myself (while AC powered, to read in bed) and a good ebook reader apps is a must have to me.

They were not decent ebook reader on the GP2X btw. I switch from one to another from time to time but couldn't find anything that have what I want :

- Support for UTF-8 (can't read french texts on most GP2X ebook softs...)
- Small enough font (there is some ridiculous GP2X reader with non-configurable huge font and huge margins... totally useless)
- persistant bookmark
- button based page skipping (as opposed to joystick-based, where most of the time you skip more than one page at once)

It's even more ridiculous considering the small not even advertised in the soft description built in text viewer on the homebrew organiser software I use on NDS got all of this. (yes, those day I'm using my NDS for that despite the poor screen quality/definition)

 

[markiej]

The best book reading app I've ever encountered was Ice Book Reader for windows:
http://www.ice-graphics.com/ICEReader/ScreenE.html

Not that this could be ported but the features are ideal. Smooth scrolling is the key! And the way that this reader can be set to scroll at your reading speed (based on words per minute) is great. And you can use keys to adjust the scrolling up or down. So you basically hold the gp2x in your hand - or prop it up and read hands-free. Bookmarks, adjustable fonts, kerning, size, and spacing are all part of it.

With the excellent resolution on the pandora, I think this would be fabulous. Also, I think battery life shouldn't be too much of an issue, with underclocking, adjustable backlight(?), and having spare, inexpensive batteries should make this fine for long flights etc.

A good ebook reading app should be easy to create (ez for me to say!)

Thanks,
Mike

 

[zaffercharles]

On the same type of line, how about a comic reader? I would use an ebook reader, and it would also be nice to read a few comics on the bus or whatever

 

[teggun]

I doubt the Pandora will have the battery life for a proper ebook reader. Plus the screen won't be ideal, I'm not sure how great that new thing from Amazon that's only available in the US is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73M...;pf_rd_i=507846

but it looks a damn sight better than the Pandora could ever be for this sort of thing.

 

[yaustar]

On the same type of line, how about a comic reader? I would use an ebook reader, and it would also be nice to read a few comics on the bus or whatever

I was (and still am) heavily thinking about it after I saw a friend's iPhone and the built in image viewer much made it perfect for comics.

 

[zaffercharles]

Sounds great I think 800x480 would be enough for that, being able to scroll down you may see about half an A4 style page at once, you think?

EDIT: I just realised I'm kinda hijacking the thread here in a way.. sorry about that dadioflex. I wont mention it any more

 

[Kalimerou]

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.
This is only a matter of recompilation. And maybe not even that, considering there is a debian ARM package for it.Fbreader requires an X server AND a GUI toolkit : Qt, GTK or Qtopia. We already have X for GP2x thanks to Orkie and ParkyDR. But Qt and GTK are almost impossible to cross-compile, I've been trying for all day ! :angry:
It's nearly done for wxWidgets, I'll try Qtopia soon. Anyway, X+GUI+Fbreader = lots of power required ! :gp2x

On the same type of line, how about a comic reader? I would use an ebook reader, and it would also be nice to read a few comics on the bus or whatever
I was (and still am) heavily thinking about it after I saw a friend's iPhone and the built in image viewer much made it perfect for comics.That's exactly why I'm trying to build a GUI toolkit ! The built-in image viewer won't keep the zoom level when switching to the next picture. So I found some nice candidats :
QComicBook : http://linux.bydg.org/~yogin/ (Qt)
Comical : http://comical.sourceforge.net/ (wx)
Comix : http://comix.sourceforge.net/ (GTK)

 

[Parkydr]

I've now got way of compiling GTK+, I'm just trying FBReader.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Don't forget the dynamic underclocking. An ebook reader shouldn't need more than a few mhz.

I used the GP2X as an ebook reader a lot myself (while AC powered, to read in bed) and a good ebook reader apps is a must have to me.

They were not decent ebook reader on the GP2X btw. I switch from one to another from time to time but couldn't find anything that have what I want :

- Support for UTF-8 (can't read french texts on most GP2X ebook softs...)
- Small enough font (there is some ridiculous GP2X reader with non-configurable huge font and huge margins... totally useless)
- persistant bookmark
- button based page skipping (as opposed to joystick-based, where most of the time you skip more than one page at once)

It's even more ridiculous considering the small not even advertised in the soft description built in text viewer on the homebrew organiser software I use on NDS got all of this. (yes, those day I'm using my NDS for that despite the poor screen quality/definition)

Don't forget that only GP2X Vtex had word-wrap.

 

[b._.o._.b]

Indeed a E-book reader would be very nice. On a Pocket PC with a smaller screen I used to read books with Microsoft Reader and that worked pretty good. I also liked the possibilities to click on a word and use a dictionary that was separately installed on the PPC.

 

[Blah]

Well the future of e-book readers is in passive screen ("electronic paper") devices like the Amazon Kindle which has very good battery life. But the Pandora with its high res screen could make a good e-book reader, too. Kind of reminds me of the OLPC whose main purpose is as an ebook reader. However if the OLPC project was more like the Kindle, (without the ridiculous markup and EVDO service of course) they could probably afford to sell them for $50 each to the African governments.

But the Pandora would make a far better comic book reader than the Kindle, which probably can barely legibly display those low quality black and white strips from the newspaper.

 

[chris_r]

If this was properly developed this would make a great addition. I always plan to read ebooks on whatever gadget i buy, but then because of the sub-par reader it puts me off.
Dynamic frequency scaling would be great on this as the max frequency wouldn't even need to be that high. The only time the cpu would need to be at it's max frequency would be while scrolling, otherwise is can just clock down while sitting waiting for input. This could make the battery last quite a while.

 

[Karel Jansens]

Well the future of e-book readers is in passive screen ("electronic paper") devices like the Amazon Kindle which has very good battery life. But the Pandora with its high res screen could make a good e-book reader, too. Kind of reminds me of the OLPC whose main purpose is as an ebook reader. However if the OLPC project was more like the Kindle, (without the ridiculous markup and EVDO service of course) they could probably afford to sell them for $50 each to the African governments.

But the Pandora would make a far better comic book reader than the Kindle, which probably can barely legibly display those low quality black and white strips from the newspaper.



The Nokia N800 is an AMAZING ebook reader. Sure, the battery life is only six hours, but the only time I read that long in one stretch was long ago, in my teens, when I stumbled across Lord Of the Rings. Besides, the N800 can be charged from certain "emergency" AA(A) chargers, which effectively make it go forever.

It would be nice if the Pandora were to have the same capability. If it takes a charging current between 4 and 6 volts and isn't too fussy about how the juice flows in, this would be an appreciated feature. I use an old AA charger that was meant for my Archos PMA430: It takes 4 AAs (regular or rechargeable) and has a "standard" Nokia tip (the old style, fat one). I can't completely charge the N800's LiIon from NiMh batteries, but it'll go up to at least 80%.

 

[Yrx]

I could be crazy, but I like books. Like, real books. I like the weight in your hand, and the turning of a page, and teh guarantee that no software problems are ever going to screw up printed word. So this obviously won't make much of an impact on me.

 

[Karel Jansens]

I could be crazy, but I like books. Like, real books. I like the weight in your hand, and the turning of a page, and teh guarantee that no software problems are ever going to screw up printed word. So this obviously won't make much of an impact on me.

I once was like you, Grasshopper. B) But then I discovered that, more than real books, I like lots of books. I can now carry practically my entire library (and what weeks of joy it was to scan them all in!) of mind-numbing escapism with me and it is good.

 

[prairiefire]

ebooks haven't done it for me...although i haven't given them much time. I just see something wrong with staring at a screen all day and then coming home (well, ignore the fact that i'd look at a screen to play games or browse the web ) and having to read a book on a screen. It's kind of nice to have some tea, and read an actual book...

i also heard that if you stare at a screen for too long, your eyes will go square!

 

[atomicthumbs]

I could be crazy, but I like books. Like, real books. I like the weight in your hand, and the turning of a page, and teh guarantee that no software problems are ever going to screw up printed word. So this obviously won't make much of an impact on me.

I once was like you, Grasshopper. B) But then I discovered that, more than real books, I like lots of books. I can now carry practically my entire library (and what weeks of joy it was to scan them all in!) of mind-numbing escapism with me and it is good.


You scan your books? I just download them in plain text from search results on isohunt.