pReader (an eBook Reader for Palm-DOC files)

[Quintus]

Scrolling back and forth works better now and maintains the "exact" page.

I have noticed, however, that there are still some words being lost between pages. Not every page, but maybe every 4-5 pages, a word or some odd letters will go missing. Not earth shattering or anything but thought you should know.

[Jappus]

Originally Posted by bdhu2001

Question: Do you plan to add a way to auto-scroll or is there a way to auto-scroll that I missed?

Yes, it is planned. Not exactly for the next version, since it's comparably hard to do with WebOS, but it's on the "Todo" list.

Originally Posted by Quintus

Scrolling back and forth works better now and maintains the "exact" page.

I have noticed, however, that there are still some words being lost between pages. Not every page, but maybe every 4-5 pages, a word or some odd letters will go missing. Not earth shattering or anything but thought you should know.

I'll take a look at it. Do you have a free file you could send me that exhibits that problem? That would help me immensely. I've already sent you a PM with my mail address, just in case.

Thanks!

[tamvegas]

I've noticed lately that PReader won't load my library and latest read on the first opening. It just sits there unresponsively (I've waited up to a full minute or so).
Then I exit and open up another app, close it and re-open PReader, and my library and latest read appear.
On the major plus side, I can leave PReader loaded and idling in the backgoround and it seems to take up no resources or affect battery life at all. (PalmReader just rips thru battery life no matter what).

[Quintus]

Originally Posted by Jappus

I'll take a look at it. Do you have a free file you could send me that exhibits that problem? That would help me immensely. I've already sent you a PM with my mail address, just in case.

Thanks!

I've tried to duplicate the problem with another book but can't!!! I am going to delete the book I'm presently reading and reload it into the Pre and see if the problem persists.

[Jappus]

Originally Posted by tamvegas

I've noticed lately that PReader won't load my library and latest read on the first opening. It just sits there unresponsively (I've waited up to a full minute or so). Then I exit and open up another app, close it and re-open PReader, and my library and latest read appear.

I can at least partially explain this behaviour. When the pReader is opened, it checks a cookie that tells it which file was opened last. Then, it checks if you've activated the option to auto-load the last file, and if yes, it short-circuits the loading of the library into the on-screen list and instead directly opens the reader for that file.
Now it may happen that the invocation of the reader fails. In that case, the scene loading for the reader fails and the pReader remains on the Library scene ... without having loaded the library. I've omitted that case because I assumed at that point that the reader won't fail.

That explains why your library isn't displayed. I'll add a fix in the next version which detects if the reader was correctly loaded and if not, displays your library. At the moment, selecting another (or the same) category should already re-display your library. Depends on what exactly you mean with "unresponsive", of course.

But in the end, all that is just a partial explanation, because it doesn't illuminate why the loading of your last read book fails on the first start, but suddenly works on when you return back to app. Why the library pops up is easy to explain though: Whenever you return to the application, either from another app or another scene in the pReader itself, it refreshes the library.


I'll peek and poke a bit around and see if I can reproduce, find and fix the bug.




P.S: Have you tried adding & opening a different file? Is the pReader able to auto-load that book?

[Jappus]

Good news everyone!

I've just published version v0.6.3.

What's new in this release? Well:

1. I implemented basic MobiPocket support. Images are not yet supported and links appear, but don't actually do anything. DRM support isn't implemented yet, and such files display garbage (the next version will have proper detection). Please test it extensively with free MobiPocket books.
2. Furthermore, I implemented bookmark support. You can now add an almost arbitrary number of bookmarks to each file. pReader tries to import bookmarks from the source file, if the file contains any. For example some eReader books contain anchor tags (\Q) which are stored as bookmarks. The same goes for Mobipocket files that contain <a name="xyz"> tags.
3. The page loading should be a bit faster now, especially for larger files. Please tell me if you notice any difference.

Apart from that, I fixed some minor bugs and added some UI baubles. There's also an off-chance that the crashes that were reported by Conum are fixed now. It's not highly likely, but possible.


Happy reading!

[prubin]

Better and better.

[Jappus]

Hello, everyone.


I just released version 0.6.4, which adds a feature that was desired by many of you: An optional belt bar, containing not just your current position, but also quick-links for page changes, access to bookmarks, the goto slider and the encoding selection.


Happy reading!

[bmccoy68]

Jappus,

Thanks for your work on this reader. I can now open my DRM ereader.com books and read again!!! Keep up the good work.

[prubin]

eReader books misformatted: period at end of sentence comes before last word not at end. Also stuck in landscape.

[goldyman]

Originally Posted by Jappus

Hello, everyone.


I just released version 0.6.4, which adds a feature that was desired by many of you: An optional belt bar, containing not just your current position, but also quick-links for page changes, access to bookmarks, the goto slider and the encoding selection.


Happy reading!

Jappus, you are simply awesome. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, because this belt-bar feature was certainly on my wish list, I'm wondering if you could institute a quick toggle feature for the bar -- maybe a key press, or a screen tap-and-hold or something.

[craftsman]

Originally Posted by prubin

eReader books misformatted: period at end of sentence comes before last word not at end. Also stuck in landscape.

Yes, same issues here.

[bdhu2001]

Originally Posted by Jappus

Hello, everyone.


I just released version 0.6.4, which adds a feature that was desired by many of you: An optional belt bar, containing not just your current position, but also quick-links for page changes, access to bookmarks, the goto slider and the encoding selection.


Happy reading!

Love the new changes, but I haven't been able to read my MobiPocket books. Is it only for non-protected books. pReadear didn't ask for my credentials like it does for e-reader books.

[JerryG]

I'm seeing the period at the beginning of the last line(s). I thought this was my ebooks only.

Regards,
-JerryG

PS - really like the belt bar, and other new additions - "I just love what you've done with the place!"

[rlanza1054]

OK, where do I donate?

I just downloaded this app and I can't believe it really works on the eReader books with the DRM. I ended up having to redownload them from eReader because I forgot what credit card I used to purchase them, but after that I entered my info and it imported the book and it looks pretty good.

I did find some things that looked a little funny. I don't know if I should report that stuff or not?

I would also like to know about the 'Catagory' option that I see that does not appear to work right now.

I wanted to use that to create catagories such as where I purchased the books from, such as a catagory for eReader Books, Mobipocket Books, or Library Books.

If it is working and I don't know how to use, please let me know how to use it.

Also, will there ever be support for eReader's Dictionaries.

I had purchased about 3 dictionaries from eReader and when you want to use one on eReader it would open a separate window and let you type in the word you want to look up. I think it would also look up a word that you have selected, but I don't remember exactly how that worked without running it on my old Treo.

I had tried one Palm Pre eReader about a month ago and I'm not sure if it was this particular eReader or not but it did not support DRM files. Now that this does, you have my support and have me as a customer for sure!

Thank you!

Rob

[Shadowcat]

Originally Posted by Jonathan I Ezor

Question: given that eReader's DRM uses the purchaser's *credit card* number as the decoding key, can you clarify how and where the eReader DRM decoding is done in pReader, and what happens to that key after it's used? Thanks. {Jonathan}

Ok, I'm late jumping onto the bandwagon of this thread, and Jappus gave a very nice answer to this question, but for anyone who's still concerned, I thought I would just mention: For the credentials that you enter, you only have to enter the last 8 digits of your credit card number. (And your name, of course.) I've tried this with a number of my protected books and it works just fine. So if you're worried about using your full credit card number, try this instead.

[Jappus]

Originally Posted by prubin

eReader books misformatted: period at end of sentence comes before last word not at end. Also stuck in landscape.

The landscape mode bug is fixed now. It'll be in the next version. In its wake, I also fixed the problem that the initially displayed page upon opening the book was sometimes rendered too long. It only occured if you selected a fixed screen rotation mode and enabled the belt bar. In any case, that bug's gone now too.

As for the misformatting: Retrobits had already notified me of a similar problem a week or so ago. It seems to apply to more than just periods and can also hit the so called "smart quotes" and certain other forms of punctuation marks. As soon as he gets back from his vacation, we can fully examine and hopefully fix that issue.

[Jappus]

Originally Posted by goldyman

Jappus, you are simply awesome. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, because this belt-bar feature was certainly on my wish list, I'm wondering if you could institute a quick toggle feature for the bar -- maybe a key press, or a screen tap-and-hold or something.

Done. In the next version, you'll be able to tap-and-hold to let the belt bar appear or vanish.

[Jappus]

Originally Posted by bdhu2001

Love the new changes, but I haven't been able to read my MobiPocket books. Is it only for non-protected books. pReadear didn't ask for my credentials like it does for e-reader books.

Yes, for now it only works for unprotected MobiPocket books. Retrobits has already looked into what it'll take to implement DRM support. At the moment, it seems that on top of the encryption, we'll have to add yet another decompression algorithm (Huffman + CDict), which is slightly different from regular LZ77 PalmDOC compression.

On the bright side, since the Pre/Pixi are not standalone eBook readers, MobiPocket explicitly allows implementing the DRM side of their format. So support for it will come, but it'll take some time.

[bdhu2001]

Originally Posted by Jappus

Yes, for now it only works for unprotected MobiPocket books. Retrobits has already looked into what it'll take to implement DRM support. At the moment, it seems that on top of the encryption, we'll have to add yet another decompression algorithm (Huffman + CDict), which is slightly different from regular LZ77 PalmDOC compression.

On the bright side, since the Pre/Pixi are not standalone eBook readers, MobiPocket explicitly allows implementing the DRM side of their format. So support for it will come, but it'll take some time.

Thank you for your quick response. I don't see a donate button on the thread. Do we just wait until you have it available in the catalog. I am unbelievably happy with what you have so far and would like to show my appreciation.