Book People Archive

Re: (BP) Working through the maze of PDA formats for etexts...

Your answer is Microsoft's e-Book .lit format (to my mind). It certainly
satisfies all your requirements as far as I can see.

You can get a program to convert from html, or better, from xhtml, from
ReaderWorks. The simple version, which I think is free, does the job
perfectly well. There is another version that you have to pay for, that adds
a few frills, that you wouldn't even see with a pda.

Most pdas will need the filenames to be in lower-case, or they will ignore
them.

The synchroniser will do the conversion from big screen size to small screen
size.

I think there is still a free program to convert to Rocket e-book format. I
certainly used it about 18 months ago when I did some work on Marryat's
books for a third party, but there are some quirks in using it that you need
to be aware of. I sent my outputs to the third party, and once we had got
past working round the quirks all was well. I never saw them on a Rocket
Reader, but I see they are still available in, of all extraordinary places,
a website devoted (or almost) to visits by aliens from outer space.

On the other hand there is a Fonix iSpeak voice that will read a book aloud
from within the pda. It requires the text to be quite stripped down, no
markup at all. It has two very simple nuisances. (1) It will not allow
markup for improved pausation, and (2) it will not allow markup for
pronunciation, such as the main Fonix iSpeak is so good at. But, if you are
already familiar with the book, it is passing fair.

All the best, Nick Hodson, London, England, United Kingdom.