Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
I've moved the blog to http://juhanagsoc.wordpress.com/ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
I've set up a blog at http://durriken.org/blog/ and a repository at http://gitorious.org/maemo-ebook-reader-gsoc-2010 so you can follow my progress. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On 21 May 2010 14:46, Juhana Jauhiainen juhana.jauhiai...@gmail.com wrote: I've set up a blog at http://durriken.org/blog/ and a repository at http://gitorious.org/maemo-ebook-reader-gsoc-2010 so you can follow my progress. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers Thank you! Will try to follow as much as possible. -- anidel ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:52 AM, Aniello Del Sorbo ani...@gmail.com wrote: It could be done as a separate project (the daemon), so not sure it should be integrated in this, actually. It doesn't even need to be a daemon. It can be an app that fetches the documents from instapaper and launches the ebook reader. -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
Will this app support Instapaper? I just discovered this site and supporting would just be awesome. I know you can store the pages in ePub format and have this reader app read them, but having direct support integrated into the app, would be awesome. Aniello ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On 6 May 2010 16:22, Aniello Del Sorbo ani...@gmail.com wrote: Will this app support Instapaper? I just discovered this site and supporting would just be awesome. I know you can store the pages in ePub format and have this reader app read them, but having direct support integrated into the app, would be awesome. I probably need to be a little bit more specific. Instapaper with Kindle supports automatic delivery of the articles in Kindle format to your wifi enabled Kindle. It seems to be a feature that Amazon gives to its customers for a fee. What I'd like is a small daemon integrated in this eBook application that automatically retrieves the ePub from Instapaper.com daily or manually from a button in the reader (from the Book list view). It could be done as a separate project (the daemon), so not sure it should be integrated in this, actually. -- anidel ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 12:15 AM, Roland Whitehead rol...@quru.com wrote: On 30 Apr 2010, at 09:46, Juhana Jauhiainen wrote: Changing font size is a very useful feature so it should be included. What comes to scrolling, I was planning to use paging instead of a continuous scrollable textview. When using a book reader with scrolling I often loose the spot I was at when I need to scroll, but of course automatic scrolling wouldn't have the same problem. Do most people prefer scrolling or paging? We have been playing around with ePub books quite a lot this week (we have to be publishing around 400 a year from now on) and so I've been trying all sorts of devices. The ones that I like are those that page. Those that scroll are good when there is no choice (like with the EPUBReader Firefox plugin that's available for Firefox on the N900 which is otherwise pretty cool) but I definitely like the paging devices. iBooks would be the best at this so far for reading but its ruined by Apple playing big brother and not letting you download .epub files from anywhere else but (you guessed) the Apple Appstore or via (you also guessed) iTunes. So please also make it really easy to work with URLs or local files and if it could be set up as a browser helper app then you could click on an .epub URL in the microB and have it open in your app. Opening local files would be useful and perhaps the library could be just a folder in MyDocs so it would be easy to copy books to it. A feature I'd like to see is a way for eBooks to open at the last page they were on when last opened. It might work if you only ever open one book but if you open many it would help if it always went to that last page that you were on in that particular book. It could be automatic or it could be manual (UI hint - some people ruin printed books by folding over the top outer corner of the page, I use a post-it note or a business card). This is something I am planning to include. An index of annotations would be good. I have printed books with lots of mini-post-it notes sticking out, each one indicating something of particular interest with one or two words written on it. Some people use those clever colour coded post-it book-marks. They are book specific as opposed to bookmarks for all eBooks. Could annotations be tagged so that you can filter annotations by the tags? Color coding annotations and bookmarks would be very useful and there definitely should be an easy way to browse them. Tags would be nice but I'm not going to promise too much. Are you going to do this in Qt and C, C++ or PyQt? I'm going to do this with C++ and Qt. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
- Original message - I don't think format support is hugely important in the end, as you can convert between formats with a program like calibre. Strongly disagree. Maybe your or I can, but it's rather terribly inconvenient and requires using another device to facilitate ebook reading on your N900. Without good format support, there's hardly any point. -- Ryan Abel Maemo Community Council member ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
I don't think format support is hugely important in the end, as you can convert between formats with a program like calibre. Strongly disagree. Maybe your or I can, but it's rather terribly inconvenient and requires using another device to facilitate ebook reading on your N900. Without good format support, there's hardly any point. You have a point. However, support for several formats is something that can be accumulated later on, when the rest of the program is in shape. GSoC is a very finite time period. As long as we can add backends that output epub-like data (table of contents, sections as html), we should be in the clear. -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
Personnally most of the time, specially when reading technicals books with programming line code ;) I think both is usefull, depends of book's type, and personnal preferences ... -- Benoît HERVIER, Khertan Software -- http://khertan.net/ Le jeudi 29 avril 2010 à 15:23 -0700, Aniello Del Sorbo a écrit : I agree with all Ryan said. Just went through the proposal. Just a concern: I think the application should be designed mainly in landscape mode, 'cause you've got longer lines. Ryan, how often do you read e-book in portrait mode on the tablets? Aniello ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
2010/4/30 Benoît HERVIER kher...@khertan.net: Personnally most of the time, specially when reading technicals books with programming line code ;) I think both is usefull, depends of book's type, and personnal preferences ... Looks like I'm the only one reading books in landscape mode ! :) Aniello Le jeudi 29 avril 2010 à 15:23 -0700, Aniello Del Sorbo a écrit : I agree with all Ryan said. Just went through the proposal. Just a concern: I think the application should be designed mainly in landscape mode, 'cause you've got longer lines. Ryan, how often do you read e-book in portrait mode on the tablets? Aniello ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers -- anidel ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo ani...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/4/30 Benoît HERVIER kher...@khertan.net: Personnally most of the time, specially when reading technicals books with programming line code ;) I think both is usefull, depends of book's type, and personnal preferences ... Looks like I'm the only one reading books in landscape mode ! :) I read exclusively on my N900 and only in landscape mode if you are looking for votes. Frank ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On 30 April 2010 12:07, Frank Banul frank.ba...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo ani...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/4/30 Benoît HERVIER kher...@khertan.net: Personnally most of the time, specially when reading technicals books with programming line code ;) I think both is usefull, depends of book's type, and personnal preferences ... Looks like I'm the only one reading books in landscape mode ! :) I read exclusively on my N900 and only in landscape mode if you are looking for votes. Frank Thanks, no need for votes. The app will be designed, looks like, with both orientations in mind. Can't wait to put my hands on it :) -- anidel ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
Twas brillig at 12:14:53 30.04.2010 UTC-07 when ani...@gmail.com did gyre and gimble: ADS Thanks, no need for votes. The app will be designed, looks like, ADS with both orientations in mind. Can't wait to put my hands on it ADS :) I should warn you that high-quality book reader for formats more complex thansimple pictures (those include .djvu and .pdf) is a really hard task: you'll have to deal with typographics, breaking lines, hyphenations, optimal paragraphs formatting, bidirectional text etc. You should at least have a look at both FBReader and CoolReader's renderers which have accumulated the experience of formatting freely-reflowable files (.epub, .fb2, subset of .html, .txt, .rtf etc etc) in various languages. Browser engines might be also a good learning excersise, given lot of formats being just a subset of XHTML in containers nowadays. Especially this applies to .epub, as it is not only subset of XHTML, but also a subset of CSS. OpenInkpot founder hat off -- http://fossarchy.blogspot.com/ pgpFzTqVggABZ.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:51 PM, Mikhail Gusarov dotted...@dottedmag.net wrote: etc) in various languages. Browser engines might be also a good learning excersise, given lot of formats being just a subset of XHTML in containers nowadays. Especially this applies to .epub, as it is not only subset of XHTML, but also a subset of CSS. I think the recommended approach here is to just use a browser engine ;-). It should be enough for 95% of the users. Perhaps even QTextBrowser could be up to the job... -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
portrait mode (full page view) versus landscape mode (part page view) Both view options are important. ! (by small devices like n900) For orientation i need the full page view (portrait mode) but to read the text i prefer landscape mode. If i like to show some text on a N770 or N810 i don't try this in the full page view any more :-)) ... because the text is then to small. But to find the text in a eBook without seeing the whole page and no Bookmark is a very hard and unconfined undertaken. When i read a normal book i don't care much about the page number. After i have read a book and try to find something i already read, i remember if it was in the beginning, the middle or at the end, which chapter (titel) and very importend !! the structure of the page !!. Changing the font-size would be a nice feature but it is just good for simple text ebooks. There is also much to say about bookmarks but i have already written to much :-)) saludos peter romero Am 30.04.2010 um 23:08 schrieb Ville M. Vainio: On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:51 PM, Mikhail Gusarov dotted...@dottedmag.net wrote: etc) in various languages. Browser engines might be also a good learning excersise, given lot of formats being just a subset of XHTML in containers nowadays. Especially this applies to .epub, as it is not only subset of XHTML, but also a subset of CSS. I think the recommended approach here is to just use a browser engine ;-). It should be enough for 95% of the users. Perhaps even QTextBrowser could be up to the job... -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers Peter Romero p_rom...@gmx.de ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On 29 April 2010 09:24, Juhana Jauhiainen juhana.jauhiai...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I've been lucky enough to get accepted to Google Summer of Code 2010 and my project is to develop an eBook reader for Maemo 5 with Qt 4.6. Coding starts May 24 and before that we have a Community Bonding period so I'm looking for ideas and feature requests. Would be nice to also get comments from people who have worked on eBook readers themselves. Anyway the purpose of this post is just to get some conversation started so I can start planning ahead. My original proposal can now be found at http://durriken.org/gsoc/. Juhana Jauhiainen Yup, I've noticed you got accepted and I really like the idea of an eBook reader for the N900. FBReader is there, but it's quite rough. Anyway... I am about to get an eBook reader next week and I've been reading about Ebook readers quite a lot lately. What seems to be important is the font. The default font has to be really nice on the N900 screen and look gorgeous and easy to read on the chosen background. Of course, one has to be able to choose, but the default one has to be the one most people will use. So please, take particular care on choosing it. Second, I don't know (I'll read the proposal later today) if you've already had a thought about this, but will you be using regular text (i.e. normal font rendering by Pango) or will you be looking at handling the fonts yourself? I know the font topic is a huge one and handling them properly from scratch is quite though, but a graphic reader with nice rendered font, will sure make the reading experience awesome and pleasant. Last, how do you plan to swipe through pages? Gestures, overlay buttons (a la PDF reader) or continuous read? -- anidel ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo ani...@gmail.com wrote: Second, I don't know (I'll read the proposal later today) if you've already had a thought about this, but will you be using regular text (i.e. normal font rendering by Pango) or will you be looking at handling the fonts yourself? To make the schedule realistic (and future maintainability reasons), I think letting Qt handle all of this is the way to go. It doesn't hurt that the app can be easily ported to other platforms either. -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Apr 29, 2010, at 12:24 PM, Juhana Jauhiainen wrote: Hello, Howdy! I've been using FBReader on Maemo since the earliest days of the 770, and I've read hundreds of books on my Maemo devices over the past 5 years. So book reading is something rather near to my heart. ;) First and foremost you need two things: good format handling and good formatting options. Implementing format handling from-scratch is going to be a herculean undertaking, so I wonder if you could've borrow FBReader's handling (as their format support is strong and fairly extensive). As that not only gives you a lot of quality format support, but also a long-term solution to format handling (assuming you don't have to deviate overly far from their code to implement it). As for formatting, having easily configurable formatting options is important to ensuring that all of your users can get their optimal experience. This is one area where devices like Kindle and iPad fall flat on their faces (setting the default margin to 1 always seemed rather insane to me). Again, this is another area where I would mostly just borrow from FBReader (options, not code ;)), but see if it can't be implemented in a more mobile-friendly manner. Having a number of useful default profiles will help here. FBReader's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, so having a native book reader would be a very welcome change! -- Ryan Abel Maemo Community Council member ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Apr 29, 2010, at 6:23 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo wrote: Ryan, how often do you read e-book in portrait mode on the tablets? 99% of the time I use it in portrait mode, except for a short stretch after Maemo 5 was first released when the volume keys wouldn't scroll. ;) The volume rocker is just to useful for paging not to use it in portrait. Also: less wasted screen space in portrait. -- Ryan Abel Maemo Community Council member ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: GSoC 2010, eBook reader. Looking for feedback and ideas.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 1:09 AM, Ryan Abel rabe...@gmail.com wrote: Implementing format handling from-scratch is going to be a herculean undertaking, so I wonder if you could've borrow FBReader's handling Okular (that happens to be a Qt program) also has format handling code, including support for epub. I don't think format support is hugely important in the end, as you can convert between formats with a program like calibre. -- Ville M. Vainio http://tinyurl.com/vainio ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
