New User - Ebook Capabilities?

[coldsun1187]

Hello,

I've been looking for a device with the right form factor and capabilities I would be interested in. First and foremost, I'm looking for a portable gaming system. After that, I'm looking to be able to read ebooks on it as well, since I do a ton of reading. I usually read HTML, RTF, or EPUB format books. From what I've seen, most of these open source hand-held gaming systems only have TXT ebook readers that don't even remember your page when you open the ebook reader itself.

What I can't understand is that this seems like such an easy capability to add to these systems, even if it is just adding HTML and saving your current place in the book. Does The Wiz allow custom ebook readers to be loaded (for example, FBReader or UBook)? I like the form factor of The Wiz, but if I have to I guess I could get a Pandora, although its really more than I need. Games and reading is all I need from it. Any help would be greatly appreciated - or if someone knows of another device that might fit the bill?

 

[sam fisher]

It's probably fairly difficult to write a HTML rendering engine...

 

[Parkydr]

It's probably fairly difficult to write a HTML rendering engine...

:huh: It's called a web browser

 

[sam fisher]

Exactly. To integrate such an engine inside an e-book reader would be creating a browser essentially. But yeah, use a text based browser?

 

[coldsun1187]

Exactly. To integrate such an engine inside an e-book reader would be creating a browser essentially. But yeah, use a text based browser?

As long as it saves what page I'm on when I'm not using it, thats all I need.

 

[klikklak]

I'm quite interested in this as well. FBreader has been ported to maemo, so I really don't see any reason why it couldn't work on the wiz. Then again, I haven't taken a look at it and it's dependencies. But still, I'm fairly confident someone will get it working. There were some readers for gp2x, but they were garbage (ok, I tried the one that played music while reading, and that had problems with fontset as it was korean and also with pagination, or you know, that thing when the end of the lines are cut).

 

[Parkydr]

The maemo version uses GTK, I managed to build a version for the GP2X using QEMU, it works but the settings dialogs etc are too big for the screen.

 

[klikklak]

Ah, you're right. I didn't think through that comment. So we'd need a SDL based reader? .. it might take awhile. Or open2x on the wiz? I think waiting for open2x will be faster.

 

[migo]

You don't want to do heavy reading on anything with less than 300DPI resolution. It's a strain to read at 72-150DPI which most screens sit at, which is why a lot of people print out readings.

 

[DurTahar]

I'd have to agree with that, if it's something you have to save your place in chances are it's too long to be reading on the Wiz. I feel like the Wiz would be better suited to reading things like class notes, short stories, and maybe picking up part of a book you're reading a hard copy of but didn't want to carry around that day (in which case your place in the book would be changing so often that this probably wouldn't help much).

I mean you're more than welcome to try reading long documents on this but it's hard enough reading long documents on a computer screen, much less something this small. You say you do "a ton of reading", so I'd suggest buying an ebook reader separately. You'll be doing your eyes a favor.

 

[dadioflex]

I read LOADS on a Palm TX, no idea what the DPI of the screen is though. Can't see that it matters really. I could happily read on a Palm Z22 which has a far coarser screen but scrolling was jerky and overall the screen quality of the Z22 isn't as good. It's more a question of contrast and brightness. You don't want to be looking at a bright screen and you want a high contrast between text and background. SO you use a black background and a light, but not white, text colour. Why not white text? Too bright. Even at the lowest brightness setting the Palm TX still has great contrast with light gray text on a black background without any glare. You can even read in the dark. Useless in direct sunlight though.

The dedicated ebook readers are okay but I find dark gray text on a light gray background (typical of the Sony Reader or the Kindle) to be a nightmare and almost impossible to read in anything but a bright light.

I've been able to read off those cheap MP3 players with 1.8" screens that can display text, but formatting is usually a disaster so I couldn't tell you how hard it is to use them for a long time.

With the Wiz, I'd be prepared to try black text on a white background. The screens pretty small and those OLED screens are somewhat different to TFT. White text on black gives great contrast but I don't know how much glare you'd get off the Wiz screen with all that WHITE.

I use FB reader on my PC, but I don't attempt to read fullscreen, I set it so it's in a window that takes up a qtr to a third of the screen and key page flips to the scroll wheel on my handheld trackball. I still use dark gray text on black though.

Regardless, some people will never accept reading off anything but a book.

 

[hardyx]

Are you talking about a ebook reader like this?

Is for GP2X, but I want to port to more consoles that supports the SDL library.

P.S. I put a post in GP2X betatesting zone some month ago, but now is not there.
What is happening with the forum and the links?