Software suggestion: reading Guttenberg plaintext ebooks
Dotan Cohen
opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
Thanks.
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Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
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Glenn English
On Dec 29, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
vi :-)
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Glenn English
g...@slsware.com
Camaleón
> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
I use to print the HTML page into PDF and then open the file with Evince
(or any PDF reader). The output file usually keeps a very good format for
computer display reading, I mean, margins and text structure.
Greetings,
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Camaleón
shampavman.cg
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>
>
>> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
>> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>>
>
> vi :-)
>
>
you can try gedit ;-)
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Shampavman c.g
www.shampavman.wordpress.com
Willie
On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:36 +0530, "shampavman.cg"
<shampa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Glenn English wrote:
> > On Dec 29, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >
> >
> >> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> >> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
> >>
> >
> > vi :-)
> >
> >
> I would actually agree, but feels a little cumbersome i guess..
> you can try gedit ;-)
>
> --
> Regards,
> Shampavman c.g
I recall a decent little ebook reader in the ubuntu UNR release. It
allowed you to rotate the page 90 degrees on screen so you could hold a
netbook in your hand like a real book and have a realistic aspect ratio.
You could probably get the source from the ubuntu/canonical
repositories?
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John Hasler
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John Hasler
Mark Allums
> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>
> Thanks.
>
Calibre
Binary install
calibre has a binary installer that has been tested on a number of
distributions on both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines. To install, you
may need to make sure your system has python ≥ 2.6. Copy paste the
following command into a terminal as superuser* and press Enter:
# python -c "import urllib2;
exec urllib2.urlopen(
'http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer'
).read(); main()"
(The above should be all on a single line)
Note
o You need GLIBC 2.10 or higher to run versions greater than 0.6.29. If
you receive an error about GLIBC you can downgrade to an older version
by getting the .tar.bz2 file for your architecture (32bit or 64bit) from
sourceforge. Then delete the contents of /opt/calibre and extract the
downloaded .tar.bz2 file into /opt/calibre.
o When running the command line utilities, they will segfault after
completion. This can be ignored.
o You must have xdg-utils installed on your system before running the
installer.
Source install
Make sure your system has python ≥ 2.6
Install the various dependencies listed below
Run the following commands in a terminal:
$ wget -O- http://status.calibre-ebook.com/dist/src | tar xvz
$ cd calibre*
As superuser*:
# python setup.py install
Note that if your distribution does not have a correctly compiled
libunrar.so, ${app} will not support rar files. In order to compile
${app} successfully poppler headers must include XPdf headers. That is,
poppler must have been configured with --enable-xpdf-headers. Also, some
distributions have buggy libpng headers.
See:
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux
They claim it's been tested on Debian. I had minor difficulties, mainly
with Python 2.6.1.
Mark Allums
*Or use sudo.
Mark Allums
Try Calibre, if you can use Sid. Or manually install it, per my
previous post.
Mark Allums
Teemu Likonen
> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
One possibility is to convert the book to LaTeX. It's often as simple as
adding basic LaTeX headers and maybe \section*{} commands for chapters.
Then you can get a nice PDF book.
I just made a PDF version of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. :-)
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Memnon Anon
> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
,----[ aptitude show fbreader ]
| FBReader is an e-book reader.
|
| Main features:
|
| * supports several open e-book formats: fb2, html, chm, plucker,
| palmdoc, ztxt, tcr (psion text), rtf, oeb, openreader, non-DRM'ed
| mobipocket, plain text, epub
| * reads directly from tar, zip, gzip, bzip2 archives (you can have
| several books in one archive)
| * supports a structured view of your e-book collection
| * automatically determines encodings
| * automatically generates a table of contents
| * keeps the last open book and the last read positions for all open books
| between runs
| * automatic hyphenation (patterns for several languages are included)
`----
Dotan Cohen
>> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>
> vi :-)
>
I know that you are kidding, but Kate in VIM mode with a large Tahoma
font is great. It supports everything that I want in an ebook reader:
screens, pages, bookmarks... Thanks!
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> allowed you to rotate the page 90 degrees on screen so you could hold a
> netbook in your hand like a real book and have a realistic aspect ratio.
> You could probably get the source from the ubuntu/canonical
> repositories?
>
Do you remember the app's name?
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Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> (or any PDF reader). The output file usually keeps a very good format for
> computer display reading, I mean, margins and text structure.
>
I used Open Office to export to PDF, but then the document is too
rigid. I cannot change the font size or face, for instance. Also, the
page breaks are annoying, even in continuous mode.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> On 12/29/2009 2:24 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>
>> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
>> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>
>
> Calibre
>
>
Thanks, I just tried Calibre. It does not have an ebook reader, just
an organizer for different devices. But it will come in handy if I
ever buy that Foxit Reader. Thanks!
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
I don't know! I've never heard of it until now!
It seems to have a problem searching the folders that I configure it
here, and it cannot reach the online servers as well. I will try to
fix that and see how good it is. Thanks!
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> On 2009-12-29 22:24 (+0200), Dotan Cohen wrote:
>
>> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
>> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>
> One possibility is to convert the book to LaTeX. It's often as simple as
> adding basic LaTeX headers and maybe \section*{} commands for chapters.
> Then you can get a nice PDF book.
>
> I just made a PDF version of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. :-)
>
I can export to PDF easily enough from OOo, but PDF has several
drawbacks that I mentioned in a previous post (just a minute ago,
after you posted). Thanks for the idea, though.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> | FBReader is an e-book reader.
> |
> | Main features:
> |
> | * supports several open e-book formats: fb2, html, chm, plucker,
> | palmdoc, ztxt, tcr (psion text), rtf, oeb, openreader, non-DRM'ed
> | mobipocket, plain text, epub
> | * reads directly from tar, zip, gzip, bzip2 archives (you can have
> | several books in one archive)
> | * supports a structured view of your e-book collection
> | * automatically determines encodings
> | * automatically generates a table of contents
> | * keeps the last open book and the last read positions for all open books
> | between runs
> | * automatic hyphenation (patterns for several languages are included)
> `----
>
Thanks. The program is a bit lacking as it does not support bookmarks,
and annoying as search terms stay highlighted (I could find no way to
unhighlight them). The options menu and other aspects seem poorly
designed, as well.
I suppose that this is an adequate software, but I will look for
something better. Thanks.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Camaleón
>> I use to print the HTML page into PDF and then open the file with
>> Evince (or any PDF reader). The output file usually keeps a very good
>> format for computer display reading, I mean, margins and text
>> structure.
>>
>>
> I used Open Office to export to PDF, but then the document is too rigid.
> I cannot change the font size or face, for instance. Also, the page
> breaks are annoying, even in continuous mode.
PDF is a "presentation" file type.
Not much editing allowed on it (you need a good PDF editor to edit these
kind of files, not easily available for Linux), but it's perfect for
reading.
Any formatting has to be done *before* converting into PDF (so you can
change font size or face inside OOo).
Reading a PDF file with 2 openned pages at time within 24'' display is a
gratifying experience O:-)
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
Nick Daly
> Thanks. The program is a bit lacking as it does not support
> bookmarks, and annoying as search terms stay highlighted
I may inadvertently start a flamewar, but Emacs has wonderful
bookmarking support. ``C-x r m`` to bookmark any *line* in any
readable file (including PDFs, as of Emacs 23) and ``C-x r l`` to list
all your saved bookmarks. I use it for reading just about everything
and am currently making my way through the Dargonzine archives this
way.
Of course, it falls down pretty badly in the UI department, they're
determined to do everything their ("the Emacs") way, and that takes
some getting used to.
HTH,
Nick
Mark Allums
> 2009/12/30 Mark Allums<ma...@allums.com>:
>> On 12/29/2009 2:24 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>>
>>> What software is recommended for reading plaintext ebooks? I have been
>>> opening the documents in Firefox, but maybe there is something better?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Calibre
>>
>>
>
> Thanks, I just tried Calibre. It does not have an ebook reader, just
> an organizer for different devices. But it will come in handy if I
> ever buy that Foxit Reader. Thanks!
>
My mistake. However, it is a good library organizer, so I think it is
worth looking at. (I installed it for my Kindle.)
Mark A.
Dotan Cohen
>
> Not much editing allowed on it (you need a good PDF editor to edit these
> kind of files, not easily available for Linux), but it's perfect for
> reading.
>
I understand this. However, when reading I like to adjust the fonts
and colours based on factors such as bright or dim environment. I also
need to adjust the font size as my eyes tire. Therefore PDF does not
fit me.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
>> an organizer for different devices. But it will come in handy if I
>> ever buy that Foxit Reader. Thanks!
>>
>
> My mistake. However, it is a good library organizer, so I think it is worth
> looking at. (I installed it for my Kindle.)
>
Yes, I will be keeping it handy for when I finally acquire an eink
device. Thanks.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Dotan Cohen
> bookmarking support. ``C-x r m`` to bookmark any *line* in any
> readable file (including PDFs, as of Emacs 23) and ``C-x r l`` to list
> all your saved bookmarks. I use it for reading just about everything
> and am currently making my way through the Dargonzine archives this
> way.
>
VIM does, too, and I am at least familiar enough with it to use it as
a book reader. It's actually pretty good!
> Of course, it falls down pretty badly in the UI department, they're
> determined to do everything their ("the Emacs") way, and that takes
> some getting used to.
>
I hear Emacs has a fairly decent text editor in there, no?
--
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
Paul Cartwright
> I know that you are kidding, but Kate in VIM mode with a large Tahoma
> font is great. It supports everything that I want in an ebook reader:
> screens, pages, bookmarks... Thanks!
I don't see an option for VIM mode..
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Paul Cartwright
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Freeman
> On Wed December 30 2009, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > I know that you are kidding, but Kate in VIM mode with a large Tahoma
> > font is great. It supports everything that I want in an ebook reader:
> > screens, pages, bookmarks... Thanks!
>
> I don't see an option for VIM mode..
>
It turns up in kate-plugins.
For Gnome users, Kate and Kate-plugins drag in lots of KDE stuff, about
138MB, that don't automatically uninstall as unused files.
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Kind Regards,
Freeman