>>You
>>told us we couldn't find a quote in a large body of text, >>you tell us
>>that typeface is important when no printed book cares, >>you complain
>>that an ebook in Courier is hard to read, which is a bit >>like saying
>>that it's hard to read this book because it's upside >>down.

Right on. I loathe Courier, so I don't read my ebooks in Courier; I read them on the computer in Times New Roman, and I read them on my ebook reader in Arial, because that's the default. I could change it if I wanted to.

 

As for books to read in bed . . . well, good people, I have wonderful news for you. A version of the Rocket has been revived. FictionWise now has one available for $99 and is actively working on newer versions. Go here for more information:

 

  eBookwise

 

As for me, why would I (or anybody else) reading in bed want to read a paper book, which has only one right-side-up and doesn't care what position I'm in and how uncomfortable I am trying to read it in that position, when I have a lovely little device that will change its orientation so that if I want to hold it in my left hand or in my right hand or longwise with either side up, it agreeably makes its buttons available to whatever hand I want to use, and it will let me decide which of four positions is "up" right now? Oh yes, and it's backlit, so I don't have to keep an overhead light on. Believe me, you read this kind of book in bed for one hour and you will NEVER want to go back to tree books for reading in bed. (Back to the quotation I started with, I CAN read my book upside-down, because upside-down becomes right-side-up at the click of a button.)

 

As yet, eBookWise does not sell a program for turning your own material into.rb format, but you go to the site below and download the second program, the one that supports USB or serial port, and you can turn your Gutenberg books into .rb books. Then use your eBookWise librarian to import the .rb books and put them into your eBookWise reader.

 

Rocket eBook Site

 

In fact, I will make a rash promise that I probably will live to regret, and promise you that when you buy your eBookWise ebook reader, let me know what five PG books you want the most and I'll convert them myself, though they're probably already at Blackmask in .rb format. You can also get .rb books at

 

Phoenix-Library - A worldwide multiformat ebook library.

 

Among its other offerings, it has an excellent selection of translating dictionaries from and to several different languages. These are not searchable; instead, when you start to read a book that you know is likely to have words in different languages, you also load the different language, and then whenever you come to a word you don't know you tell your reader what language it is and to look it up, and most of the time the word will be present. I keep French-English and Spanish-English  on my reader at all times, and add other dictionaries (which I keep in my ebook library) when I need them.

 

So--you want a good look at the future of ebooks? Brothers and sisters, it's here. Of course technology will improve. It is the job of technology to improve. But every time it does, there will be a sufficient span of time for PG and its descendants to change the filing system into one that can remain readable.

 

Someone used the example of Beowulf. Uh, yeah. That's a good one. I can't possibly read it in its original language, but I can read it in my original language whenever I want it. Some people find Chaucer unreadable. I don't, but I'm glad it's available in modern English for people who can read it only that way.

 

After all, you can't understand Shakespeare unless you read him in the original Klingon.

 

Anne