Parallax PDFs on a Nook
Bean
Posts: 8,129
I broke down and bought a Nook. Really only so I could view PDFs on it.
I downloaded the Nuts-and-volts volumes, but many of them don't have the Author and Title tags set properly, and the list of titles contains many duplicates and non-descript entries.
It would be nice if Parallax could go though all their PDFs in time and make sure these tags are properly set for the ebook reader crowd.
Bean
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Use BASIC on the Propeller with the speed of assembly language.
PropBASIC thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=867134
March 2010 Nuts and Volts article·http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/prop/col/nvp5.pdf
NEW PropBasic Blog: http://propbasic.blogspot.com
NEW Rising Tite Computer Blog: http://risingtidecomputer.blogspot.com
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There are two rules in life:
· 1) Never divulge all information
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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. [noparse][[/noparse]RUSH - Freewill]
I downloaded the Nuts-and-volts volumes, but many of them don't have the Author and Title tags set properly, and the list of titles contains many duplicates and non-descript entries.
It would be nice if Parallax could go though all their PDFs in time and make sure these tags are properly set for the ebook reader crowd.
Bean
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Use BASIC on the Propeller with the speed of assembly language.
PropBASIC thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=867134
March 2010 Nuts and Volts article·http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/prop/col/nvp5.pdf
NEW PropBasic Blog: http://propbasic.blogspot.com
NEW Rising Tite Computer Blog: http://risingtidecomputer.blogspot.com
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There are two rules in life:
· 1) Never divulge all information
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. [noparse][[/noparse]RUSH - Freewill]
Comments
I know for a fact that Sony's readers doesn't, either.
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Don't visit my new website...
The more I use the Nook, the more I like it.
I went in and manually changed the authors and titles. Took about an hour, but now I have all the NV articles at my fingertips.
I does a great job with the older PDF files. Format is perfect.
The newer PDFs with wild formating, it has some issues with. It seems to want to break lines at strange places.
The web-browser is really good. I can view these forums with no problems.
If anyone has any questions or wants me to try a PDF for them, just let me know.
Bean
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Use BASIC on the Propeller with the speed of assembly language.
PropBASIC thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=867134
March 2010 Nuts and Volts article·http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/prop/col/nvp5.pdf
NEW PropBasic Blog: http://propbasic.blogspot.com
NEW Rising Tite Computer Blog: http://risingtidecomputer.blogspot.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There are two rules in life:
· 1) Never divulge all information
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. [noparse][[/noparse]RUSH - Freewill]
I've got a Kindle. The Kindle people have a service where users send them their PDF files, and they do some kind of conversion and send back a file that the Kindle will display.
I've tried that with a few PDFs, including some Parallax PDFs, and the results have been absolutely terrible, and in about half the cases, completely unreadeable.
There might be one page with a font size of like 1, so small that the letters look like grains of sand, followed by a relatively readeable page. The Kindle can change font sizes for text documents, but that does not work for most (but not all) of the PDFs I've attempted to display.
Other than that, the Kindle is great, but it sure would be good if it could display PDFs. Just today I had some questions on erasing SD card blocks, and figured I'd reread the Sandisk SD card PDF, but no, can't use my Kindle for that!
I was going to get a kindle, but the touchscreen on the Nook sold me.
After using the Nook, I can't imaging using an ebook reader without one...
Now after your post I confident that I made the right choice.
If you are interested, post or link to one of the PDFs and I'll report back what it looks like on the nook.
Bean
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Use BASIC on the Propeller with the speed of assembly language.
PropBASIC thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=867134
March 2010 Nuts and Volts article·http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/prop/col/nvp5.pdf
NEW PropBasic Blog: http://propbasic.blogspot.com
NEW Rising Tite Computer Blog: http://risingtidecomputer.blogspot.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There are two rules in life:
· 1) Never divulge all information
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. [noparse][[/noparse]RUSH - Freewill]
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Propeller + Picaxe = Romeo & Juliet
I just sent the Sandisk SD card PDF manual that I'd been reading to kindle.com for conversion, received the converted file back (with an "azw" extension) and it's quite readeable.
It's not great, it still doesn't respond to font size change requests, but it deserves a much better report than "terrible". It's actually "pretty good".
I think I'll try sending the propeller manual next.
Apparently, Amazon went directly to Adobe for the latest reader.
Thanks, Ron
Offhand, I don't know about zoom, but you could go and read the Nook Manual online: http://images.barnesandnoble.com/pimages/nook/download/User_Guide_NOOK_v1_4.pdf
-Ron
With the Kindle, you do have Zoom and can categorize all the PDFs in folders as well. I did find an interesting thing with the Kindle... you can Zoom into the web and PDF files with no problem, and in books you can zoom the text, but I can't seem to zoom in on pictures in a book. I'm not sure if it's something I've overlooked or not, but it seems that you should be able to do it across the board.
Anyway, I hear a rumor that the Nook 2 is being announced this week, it makes me wish I would have waited (but who knew!) It's rumored to have a full Capacative and Color Touch screen. There was a leaked picture that on C|Net showing it... not bad looking. Can't wait to hear the specs this Wednesday.
Bill
Coding is one thing, but I don't like reading books and manuals for long periods of time in front of a computer. I find it fatiguing, the fonts tend to be more amenable to paper than screen, and the physical aspects of reading at a computer. So a portable reader of some sort is likely in my future.
Netbooks and Laptops are better, but frankly still not that great a reading experience.
iPad's seems like expensive netbooks, except someone forgot the keyboard and USB ports.
Android based readers like the Cruz Reader and Nook are showing up. Android is open, but the reviews make them sound a little rough around the edges still. The Nook runs an old version of Android which means you can't run the Kindle app on it for example, and Android apps can't access the e paper screen. The Cruz Reader has separate issues related to Google not granting them access to the Android market.
The Kindle seems like the most polished device at the moment. But they are closed and can't read the DRM-ed ePub format used for library books!
So I am a confused consumer.
But I'm curious what Kindle and Nook owners think about the e-paper technology. Is it easier on the eyes than a computer screen?
Sure, it can't reflow a .PDF, but it does web browsing(horribly, really, but enough to log into this forum if I'm desperate. doesn't allow downloading .PDFs, though... )
you an access the Amazon Kindle store directly, there's even options for downloading free previews.
Unlike the Sonys, it shows up as a normal USB drive, so no proprietary SW to move files to it.
The screen is good to read on, even in sunlight...
(Yeah, as if that's normally a problem for us who rarely go outside the workshop... )
Battery is 'almost forever', or about 3weeks with the Wi-Fi activated.
The only thing they really need to fix is the 'grouping' functions as you can't have groups within groups.
fortunately, they DO use the filenames for presentation, but they also display 'author information' which isn't always correct.
turning pages is much quicker than the Sonys I've used.
(PRS-500 and PRS-600)
Not certain why WJSteele couldn't zoom into the pictures.
Bill
It reads epub, pdf and other formats (in theory also word/excel, but haven't tested it yet).
epub is the natural file format, and works pretty well.
pdf is not so good, and up to now I have not been able to find a good converter.
With pdf you can only zoom the central part of the page and not pan. It is possible to rotate the view, improving a little bit things, but 2 columns format (scientific articles, nuts and volts, and so on..) is a problem. In this case landscape layout is too messy to be used, and maybe portrait is too small...
On the other hand thee-paper screen is very easy on the eyes, much better than any other solution I tested.
Massimo
Infintetly!!! Not only is it easier... it looks just like paper... and is quite easy to read outside. (In fact, it's easier to read outside in the direct sun than it is in your house.) Your typical computer screen simply can not do an eInk page justice... the image quality of words and pictures on a Kindle is astounding... when you turn off the Kindle, it displays a random images... and the level of details in them blow anything away you can get with an iPad or LCD. It looks just like hand drawn pencil drawings.
The only downside... it's not backlit and needs an external light... just like a book.
Bill
The also had the Pandigital Novela and the Cruz reader which are low end Android tablets. They were OK, but having used a resistive touch screens previously, I didn't want to deal with that on a larger device.
Overall the Kindle 3 was just a bit more clear, lighter, and cheaper than the Nook. So I decided to purchase a Kindle. However, it was out of stock so I ordered one from Amazon.
There are work arounds for the Kindle's lack of EPub support, so I can deal with that.
I am rationalizing this purchase because I buy a lot of tech books which aren't available in the library. Given the number I purchase, and the cost differential between the paper and electronic editions, I will make up the purchase price in a year or so.
Certified refurb by B&N, FWIW
The Nook is pretty nice too. Android based and eminently hackable. Rooting it is as simple as changing a single setting in a single file. If someone gets the Kindle app working on it, the Nook would be the Swiss Army Knife of e-readers.
Oh... be careful here... the Nook's 3G is only for purchasing books... you can't browse the web with it like you can on the Kindle. The Nook only allows you to browse the web with WiFi.
Bill
documentation as well as real books, I'm a happy camper. No monthly fee; all my
papers in TeX/PDF form work great and look great; battery life in the months.
One thing: *some* PDFs are quite slow. For instance, the Martin Gardner
Scientific American book collection, for some reason, can take up to a minute to
open. But all my TeX-based PDFs are fast.
And it's very light, very small, but still a beautiful screen.
Main thing though is the price; at $139 (with no fees!) if it is stolen or breaks,
it's not the end of the world.
No need to convert or even email the PDFs; just load them up over USB.
The UI is a bit clunky but you get used to it fast enough.
I might buy one (or two) just to hack around with. But I still love my Kindle 3G and amazingly enough use it every day.
I also saw an article where the eInk maker for both the Kindle and the Nook has finally come out with a color eInk display... so hopefully Amazon will upgrade to it in their next rev. (It still has the same battery consumption... or should I say lack there of!)
Bill
and yeah, I too, saw an article(on The Register) about colour eInk.
Me want...
Me really want...
I wonder if eInk is difficult to hook up to a Propeller?
(Just ordered a Spinneret, and well... if Amazon can synch a Kindle, why shouldn't we be able to synch the 'PropSilk' device? )