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

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

Hello,

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
> A canonical set of test files is a good idea.  we don't have one atm,
> but bundles and large collections are indicated below:
>

Ok, this would do for the time being.

> 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

Hmm - this calls for another thread, but do you think bookmarks should
be shareable with others ?

> : 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)

I took a look and this seems to be a fairly straightforward set of
images. Do you think it will be OK if we use a simple file format to
make a collection of these images (maybe page1.jpg, page2.jpg...  a
zip) and call it something like book1.icdl or something like that. If
we do so, I believe I can patch the Read backend to handle such a
format easily.

> : plain text, or a pdf of plain text, or simple markdown (gutenberg
> files are good examples)

Ok - this is doable.

> : 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)

Is there any kind of pagination that we want in here, or do we want a
single, long  scrolling document ?

> : carefully formatted pdfs, with images and equations (see the current
> wikibooks.xol bundle, or
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pdf_files)

We handle this already in Read (image heavy in PDF is a pain though -
and I plan on restricting the zoom factor in read to 200% to counter
this.. I know, ugly hack :-)

> : djvu books ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Djvu_files )
>

We are supposed to handle this Read as well. I'll investigate how well
we do this.

Thanks,
Sayamindu


-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]