Reveal Reader, the lack of new ebooks and the shutting down of the ebook server

[Jack C. Holt]

Many of you will not like to hear this, but our source for new ebooks like the latest issue of the Ensign has dried up.

Reveal was originally written to support the use of the same books as were used by Bryce Yancey's YanCEyWare Reader on Windows Mobile Phones and Pocket PCs.  We have now reached the point where Pocket PCs are (and have probably long been) dinosaur technology.  Consequently, the interest in creating eBooks for technology no one uses has dried up.

Therefore, the developers of Reveal Reader have decided to no longer develop Reveal Reader.

We recommend that for the purpose of reading LDS books, you move to LDS Gospel Library and/or Deseret Bookshelf.  For reading other classic texts there are many, many other apps like Aldiko or Nook.

Thank you again for your support and use of Reveal Reader.


Jack C. Holt

[Jack C. Holt]

Additionally, the ebook server so graciously run for us by Dave Packham all these years will soon shut down.  When this happens, you will no longer be able to use the Online eBook Download feature of Reveal. :(

[John C Jaskolka]

Thanks to you and Dave and those who supported you and those who provided the ebooks over the years.  LDS Gospel Library is a good tool; however, I count on the old YBKs for the older books that came from other sources as well.  I hope Reveal keeps working for a while on the new technology as it rolls out until LDS Gospel Library gets more older books (hoping they will.) 

You and those who kicked off the trend supporting Bryce Yancey's YanCEyWare have provided a wonderful service over the years and have certainly driven the church to pick up the service going forward.

Many are grateful for your service and wonderful product.

John C Jaskolka
Raleigh, NC

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[p0lar69]

To clarify Jack's statement.

We are not taking the app off the market so you will still be able to use the YBK's you have on your SD cards or any that you create and place there.  its just the "online download" of new ebooks is being depreciated due to lack of ebook creation.  and there will be no further development of Reveal past this point.  

Dave P

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[Jack Holt]

Thanks for the clarification Dave.

[jasoraso]

Jack et al:

Thanks for all the effort you put in through the years! Really appreciate it!

[Dave Packham]

MOTD sent to all users to have them read this forum posting for more info.

Ill get a new release up in the market soon that will disable the online download but STILL allow any sdcard eBooks to work properly.

Dave P

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[Dave Packham]

or MAYBE ill just leave it run like it is.  there are alot of eBooks that can be downloaded that are NOT NEW...

I will leave the server up for the time being  :)  ( I work at a university..  this means it could be years)

Dave P

[Jack Holt]

Perfect.  Thanks.  I wished not to impose on your hospitality.  But that allows us to avoid having to debug and test a new version.

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[Andrewski]

Gentleman,

 

What is the problem with having the ebooks stored on a dropbox account? There it could be organized by folder and I wouldn't mind compiling and indexing them for a dropbox account for the world to access.

 

Andrew

[Dave Packham]

there is no problem with storing the eBooks where they are now.  that server wont go away for now.  the issue we have is generation of NEW ybk formatted content.  the parties doing the new content generation have stopped and are no longer willing to continue.  you will still be able to use Reveal to download content that is already hosted on my server for as long as the program has life.  

Dave Packham

[Michael Totten]

is there any chance that we will be able to convert our ybks? it seems like if the technology is really outdated and going away, it wouldn't be a problem with allowing someone to create a conversion program. It would be so helpful if we could convert our ybks to a more universal ebook format. I have so many ybk files that I would have a hard time recreating

[p0lar69]

convert them to what format?   Reveal will let you use YBK's for as long as you want.  

Reveal is still a great ebook reader...  IF you have YBK's  :)

Dave P

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Michael Totten <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:

is there any chance that we will be able to convert our ybks? it seems like if the technology is really outdated and going away, it wouldn't be a problem with allowing someone to create a conversion program. It would be so helpful if we could convert our ybks to a more universal ebook format.  I have so many ybk files that I would have a hard time  recreating

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[Shon Vella]

Internally, YBK is (mostly) html, png, & gif files. I believe a utility already exists somewhere that will let you extract the individual internal files, but lacking that it would be easy enough to create one. Once you have the html files, there are lots of options. I also would be possible to create an automated conversion from ybk to something like epub - I'm not ready to volunteer yet, but I might think about it.

Shon

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[Jack Holt]

I might include the ability to import ybks into an eBook reader I'm writing.

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[Rod Barnes]

Jack, Dave, and Co.  -- Thanks for a great product.  I have enjoyed using it and am sorry to see it go.  Fortunately, Gospel Library has matured and works pretty well.  Now if they'd only add the ability to organize the books as you choose...

On Monday, November 26, 2012 3:04:21 PM UTC-8, Jack C. Holt wrote:

[Dave Packham]

Welcome. 

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[Jon Richardson]

I have created a program which converts gospellink library to epub; it works much like yanceylink; gospellink has to be running, then you start the program "publink.exe"

The conversion is not perfect.  it uses a cygwin version of zip to construct the epub, which works fine when read by calibre, but doesn't validate against epubcheck for some reason.

 The ybk's created by yanceylink were my main reason for the reveal reader, but now that the library is available to me in workable epub format I can finally let reveal go.  Much appreciation for making reaveal.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92066158/publink.zip

[Jon Richardson]

ps, my publink package includes source code, I'm happy for anyone to improve it.  I started out trying to follow good design, but pretty soon devolved into hacking: so, to anyone who looks at it, I apologize for it being less that perfect.

[Orlando Aguilar Córdova]

I love REVEAL READER.  It Works a lot better than Deseret Bookshelf.  How can I convert PDF files or Doc files to REVEAL READER format?

 

How can I link those conversions to the existing library in REVEAL LDS?

[Orlando Aguilar Córdova]

.

.

Reveal is still a great eBook Reader, I agree with that. Anyways, whenever you have the time and accomplish the task to create an application able to convert ybk files to epub, I would like to get it. That way I will use one only reader instead of two. 

[Lorea Anderson]

Hello, Br. Holt

I'm coming very late to the party, and stumbled on this Google group and I'm hoping you might be able to give me some direction.  REALLY tired of trying to fix this problem on my own!

I own Gospelink 2001.  I really just want to be able to view the gospel topic books - I have the church's Gospel Library app for Android for scriptures and conference talks and magazines and I'm good with that, but I want my study books back!   You mention in this email that you are/were working on a epub reader....did anything ever come of that?  If I can ever find an active link to the .ybk files for Gospelink (do you have one of those too?  lol) then I could get them on epub and I would back them up until they would be safe for the Millenium and never worry about this again!

Hoping this reaches you  :)
Sis.  Lorea Anderson
Alberta, Canada

[samuel backus]

Jon,

Your download link is no longer available.  Is it possible for you to post another download link?  Thanks!

[Jon Richardson]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ariahyfuu43ng1k/publink.zip?dl=0

[samuel backus]

I must confess this Publink is amazing!  I downloaded the package, double clicked Publink.exe, pressed the button to select all books, and let the computer run all night.  The next morning, all of the books had been converted to EPUB.  Although Publink was great, it took me more than a week to convert all the books to YBK format and there were some books that would not convert.  With Publink, all the books were converted without problem.  If you own GospeLink 2001 I recommend you find a Windows XP machine, install it, and run Publink to recover your books to a format that you can use.

I have tried some of the EPUB files on my Sony reader and it opened them without problem.

 Thank you Jon!

[Jon Richardson]

I'm very glad someone found it useful.  (Of course, I found it useful for myself also)

[Bill]

I, too, found it very useful!  I converted all of the books in GospeLink 2001 with no problems.  Thanks for putting this together, Jon!  I have loaded a couple of the files on the Nook app for windows and they load fine.  Two questions: I ended up with just over 1,500 files (I think it was 1515, but I don't remember exactly and I have now added others to the same folder so I can't check again.)  Is that all of the books that were in GospeLink 2001?  And what do others recommend for a good ebook reader for Windows 10? 

Bill Meaders

[slgb...@gmail.com]

CONVERTING GOSPELINK 2001 BOOKS TO EPUB FORMAT FOR READING ON EREADERS OR MODERN COMPUTERS:

Little late, but I have found that publink also works with a virtual machine of windows XP.  I thought that since I no longer had my XP machine, I could no longer use the software. Using Windows 7 with XP compatibility did not work.  But I saw a video on youtube that someone got GospeLink to work in a virtual machine, so I decided to use it for a talk.  Nice!

Steps I used to get GospeLink 2001 to work and get the epubs for the books are as follows:

1.  I downloaded a Windows XP 32 bit with Service Pack 3 install CD iso file. (Although I have a physical copy of Windows XP, it is easy to download Windows XP with service pack 3 and not have to look for all the windows updates)

2.  I used Oracle VM VirtualBox, and used the downloaded version of Windows XP 32 bit iso as the boot CD.  It installed Windows XP no problem!   

3.  I set up a shared folder.  This is useful for transferring files to/from Windows to your computer. 

4.  I installed GospeLink 2001 from the CDs using passthrough to my physical CDs.  If you have made iso files from your install CDs, you may be able to mount them, but my iso files did not work.  Maybe I used the wrong software to make iso files...

At this point, GospeLink is installed and you can use it for your gospel studies, writing talks, etc.  If you want to export the GospeLink library to epubs so you can read the books without the software, follow the next steps.

5.  I downloaded the .net installation file from Microsoft and copied to the shared folder. 

6.  I downloaded publink from Jon's link above, and copied to the shared folder.  I unzipped it.

7.  I installed the .net file from within Windows XP.

8. I copied the unzipped publink folder to my Windows XP desktop, and while GospeLink was running I doubleclicked the publink file in the publink folder.

9.  I clicked the "select all" checkbox and then clicked the "convert" button.

10. I waited for the publink software to do its thing.  It took it a few hours, and then all of the epub books were in the publink folder on my desktop.

11.  I copied the publink folder back to the shared folder, and then had all the epubs available on my computer.  From there I could download to my kobo ereader.  :-)

If you do not have a copy of GospeLink 2001, sometimes copies show up on ebay.  For the maybe $30 you spend for a piece of obsolete software, and maybe an hour of time to set up a virtual machine with windows XP, you end up with 1500 or so gospel books to read.

I was able to set up LDSLibrary 2009 on the same virtual machine, using steps 1~4 except with the LDSLibrary CD, and both GospeLink and LDSLibrary worked.  Both programs are great for gospel research but there is no equivalent to publink for the LDSLibrary as far as I have found.

Bill:

You asked about a good ebook reader for Windows 10.  I would have to recommend Calibre, which you could use for sorting your books.  It is basically an ebook database, with extra ebook tools such as converter to convert ebooks to different formats, and it has a good ebook reader built in.  It can also transfer books to a kobo or nook ereader, or can transfer to a kindle.  You can use Calibre's built in functions to download the book information from Amazon if Amazon sells a particular book, and can download and update covers.

Jon,

Thanks again for being willing to share your code.  I think it is funny that I am on Linux, using VirtualBox to emulate Windows, running Publink which uses Cygwin which I believe is emulating Linux.  If I was savvy with programming, I would write code to convert all GL books to HTML format, then copy to real Linux and convert to epub there.  But the programming language I know is FORTRAN, and your code is a long way from that, lol.

-Sam