[OLPC library] Fwd: Open-source, cross-platform ePub reader

[Samuel Klein]

A canonical set of test files is a good idea.  we don't have one atm,
but bundles and large collections are indicated below:

It seems to me we want a single reader to support reading/bookmarking
books and texts from a collection, regardless of format.  Common
formats include
: a pdf of images, or a series of images  (see the icdl books
currently in the icdl.xol library bundle; currently they are a set of
images in a directory with a javascript viewer)
: plain text, or a pdf of plain text, or simple markdown (gutenberg
files are good examples)
: html, or formatted text (gutenberg files and other current library
bundles are examples - we don't need to launch an entire browser to
show a set of simple html)
: carefully formatted pdfs, with images and equations (see the current
wikibooks.xol bundle, or
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pdf_files)
: djvu books ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Djvu_files )

SJ

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta
<sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
> SJ,
> Could you give me a set of sample files which I can poke, chew, tear
> apart and figure out how to best support ? Also, what would be an
> image reader ? I am open to bug reports on the Image Viewer activity
> ;-).
> -sdg-
>
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
>> We need a real text/book/image reader on the XO, one that can read a
>> variety of formats including html, and that can work with archives of
>> compressed works (like wikibrowse).  Has anyone worked with calibre?
>> Its interface would need a bit of simplification...
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org>
>> Date: Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 12:10 PM
>> Subject: Re: Open-source, cross-platform ePub reader
>> To: Liza <liza31337 at gmail.com>, kovid at kovidgoyal.net, Thomas Breuel
>> <tmbdev at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> Thank you, Liza!  Great to hear from you; glad you're enjoying the new
>> build.  The software updater cheers me a lot, it just needs sound and
>> color...
>>
>> Kovid, I'd like to hear more about Calibre.  Would you be interested
>> in working on an interface for the XO?  I also copy Thomas Breuel, who
>> is thinking about the ideal readers for scanned documents that don't
>> have perfect text versions.  Please note that one of our constraints
>> is size, and we'd like to be able to store texts in compressed formats
>> when not reading them.
>>
>> You might want to talk also with Joshua Gay, who has been helping olpc
>> with book issues for the past year and is heading to ck12.org in a
>> week to start building their author community...
>>
>> Regards,
>> SJ
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Liza <liza31337 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi SJ!  I hope the new release and G1G1 prep have been going well.  I
>>> got my XO back to life and I love the latest release -- it's a huge
>>> improvement.
>>>
>>> I've been corresponding with Kovid Goyal, the developer of Calibre
>>> (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/).  His desktop software is a kind of
>>> Swiss Army Knife of ebook conversion tools, and he's just added a
>>> WebKit-based ebook viewer.  I did a quick test with a CSS and
>>> image-heavy ePub and the rendering looked good.
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>
>
>
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>