Great post. Thanks for sharing. I am a Linux user as well. No windows. Hence, this seems to be a great limitation for products like the rocketreader. Hope they comeup with alternative solutions in the future. Vijay --- On Sat 05/14, Chuck MATTSEN < mattsen@arvig.net > wrote: From: Chuck MATTSEN [mailto: mattsen@arvig.net] To: rvijay07@myway.com, gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 05:33:11 -0500 Subject: Re: HandHeld & E-Books On Sat, 14 May 2005 05:38:48 -0400 (EDT)<br>"rvijay07" <rvijay07@myway.com> typed:<br><br>> Thanks for the helpful response. What kind of a power supply does the<br>> RocketBook reader use and how long does it last ? Also for how long<br>> one has to be a member of the 2 books per month deal to get the<br>> rocket reader ?<br>> <br>> Here is another related question. Are these two books a month<br>> actially E-books ? Can one resell E-Books under copyright on ebay<br>> etc., like regular books ?<br><br>It's a rechargeable battery system w/adapter included; roughly 8 hours<br>of reading per charge.<br><br>The deal I took advantage of was through Filament, which is one of the<br>many faces of Fictionwise/eBookwise and a few other incarnations.<br>There may be better bargains out there with respect to getting the<br>RocketBook reader on its own, but I knew that a number of titles I<br>wanted were available through the Filament deal anyway, so I went with<br>it. It's a 12-month commitment for the 2-books-per-month scheme.<br>Works for me -- YMMV. It's www.filamentbooks.com for the 12-month<br>deal, or www.ebookwise.com has the reader for $129 with a $30 credit<br>toward books (which may be a better deal for some folks). Anyway, I'm<br>not specifically recommending either; just mentioning two places I know<br>of ... I'm sure there are others.<br><br>Of course, the two books are e-books, though your selection may be<br>somewhat limited in comparison to the broader library of e-books<br>available. Beyond the two I get per month, the vast majority of what<br>I've been reading and collecting have either been PG editions or what<br>the Baen sci-fi library makes available, though I've scoured a number<br>of the other sites for titles here and there.<br><br>As someone mentioned (Greg?), the software to do some of the<br>conversions from other formats to the RocketBook format is for Windows,<br>which pains me no end, since I'd rather reside in GNU/Linux all the<br>time, but I do still have a dual-boot setup so that works for me for<br>now.<br><br>The transferability of any of the e-Books depends upon their licensing,<br>of course ... I don't profess to be up on the legalities of resale in<br>any venue.<br><br>-- <br>Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA<br>MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm<br>Mandriva Linux release 2006.0 (Cooker) for i586<br>kernel 2.6.11-8mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519<br> <br>Random Thought/Quote For This Message:<br> Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. <br> -- Martin Fraquhar Tupper<br> _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
Can the conversion software be made to run under WINE? Geoff
On Sat, 14 May 2005 08:29:12 -0400 Geoff Horton <geoff.horton@gmail.com> typed:
Can the conversion software be made to run under WINE?
Haven't tried it myself (frankly, I've not had much luck with running Windows apps under Wine). -- Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm Mandriva Linux release 2006.0 (Cooker) for i586 kernel 2.6.11-8mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519 Random Thought/Quote For This Message: Some people think they are worth a lot of money just because they have it. - -Fannie Hurst, writer [1889-1968]
Can the conversion software be made to run under WINE?
Take a look at Plucker[1] for reading offline ebooks. We've been using it since 1998 for the same thing (as well as web content, HOWTO documents, technical manuals, converted pdf files, rss feeds and more). Our userbase spans hundreds of thousands of users in all corners of the globe (yes, literally). The content conversion tools run under Linux, OSX, Windows and other platforms and can be found in Python, C++, Java, and Perl flavors. The various handheld-side readers run on PalmOS, PocketPC and on Linux-based PDAs. There are commandline and GUI conversion programs to convert the content to Plucker format which run under all of the OS' mentioned, as well as an "email-only" interface called "Pler" that can convert the content for those who lack the platform necessary to convert the content. The viewer itself (the component on the handheld device) is currently translated to 16 different languages (ca, cs, da, de, en, es, fo, fr, it, ja, no, pl, ru, th, tr, zh_CN) to support many non-English users. Plucker is also the only format out there (out of the 17 different handheld reader formats currently available) that is 100% openly documented[2] that supports rich formatting found in web content (images, tags, tables, stylesheets, colors, etc.). The other free formats support compression and text, and maybe images, but nothing close to what we support. We also support anti-alias fonts for easier reading on tired eyes, which you can see some samples of here: http://code.plkr.org/aa/ Its also Free Software, covered by the GNU GPL, which means you can rebrand it and sell it if you wish (obviously in compliance with the license, of course). There are dozens of commercial companies who are using Plucker (viewer, format and distiller components, or a combination of all three) in their core product suites now, including schools, healthcare and educational institutions. Take a look at some custom works converted to Plucker format: http://www.plkr.org/samples http://code.plkr.org/ [1] http://www.plkr.org [2] http://cvs.plkr.org/index.cgi/*checkout*/docs/DBFormat.html David A. Desrosiers desrod@gnu-designs.com http://gnu-designs.com
participants (4)
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Chuck MATTSEN -
David A. Desrosiers -
Geoff Horton -
rvijay07