E-Books

Hello all,
I've heard that some people are using Acer Aspire One for reading E-Books, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a new topic, so Acer Aspire One users can share they're E-Books.

I personally would like to get an E-Book about setting up a web page + Microsoft FrontPage. Can anyone help ?
Gvido

 

That would be cool. How do you read an E-book on AA1? Is there some sort of E-Book reading software? Or do you just use the PDF reader that comes with it?

 

I presently read my ebooks on my Palm TX, and I get the books from ereader.com.

I don't know what format Amazon uses for their Kindle, but my guess is that they'd have the best selection of books.

 

Try FBReader. It's available through the Add/Remove Software menu. I use it for Project Gutenberg books. It works well with plain text, html and Plucker formats. I haven't tried it with any proprietary formats.

 

no encrypted books will work with FBReader - sadly...
there are methods of decrypting some forrmats like .lit but I don't know how much I can say about that on here. Suffice to say google will help you find a way.

 

i just got mine 2 weeks ago
I just can`t use it enough
for ebooks I use adobe & microsoft reader for now
adobe I rotate to the right to read as full length as possible
ms reader I have not been able to do that but it has a pretty good large text function and it has a audio reader so you can just listen to it,but it sounds like stephen hawking reading it.
I will definately give those other programs a try
please if anybody got other ebook programs I really like to know

baen books has free scifi books for downloads if anybody interested.

 

Here is a good place to start learning about ebook formats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... ok_formats

I use a proprietary reader from YanCeyWare that has a lot of free content at:

http://www.thecoffeys.net/ebooks/defaul ... pe=Fiction

Project Gutenberg has the largest collectin of free books as far as I know.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

The MS Reader has a lot of good features, like returning to the place left off, comments and dictionaries and very adjustable typeface. A good trick with Project Gutenberg or any other .txt files is to load them into MS Word and convert the text to the Reader format - you then have a real ebook. I've been doing it for years and look forward to happy reading on the AA1. You need to install a free converter plug-in for Word, and it shows up in the File Menu:

http://www.microsoft.com/reader/develop ... s/rmr.mspx

 

Don't ever use MS Reader. Very slow.
Use iSilo in Windows. Install Wine in Linpus and run iSilo.

 

Try http://manybooks.net/ I just download the html versions and read them in the browser off line. If you Ctrl - Alt - Arrow Key you can hold the AA1 just like a book and use the touch pad or page up/down keys to read the next page. Keeps it simple ( I use the same technique with my PSP when I want something even more portable)

 

I use Mobipocket which works seamlessly. And it's free. And ditto re Guttenberg Project- it's a goldmine.

 

It's quiet easy to create your own PDF e-books from plain text files (eg, from Project Guttenburg) using OpenOffice. The resulting e-books can be read with the Aspire held like a regular book. By the way - it may seem a bit of a chore configuring the text but once you have done it you can just set up a template in OpenOffice and copy&paste the text into it every time you want to create a new book. I'd be interested to know how people find this way of reading e-books.

CREATING THE E-BOOK

(1) Acquire a plain text e-book from a free source such as the Guttenberg Project.

(2) Open your text in OpenOffice and tidy it up, removing redundant blank lines etc.

(3) Configure page size, margins, line-spacing, page numbers and fonts.

These are the settings I use and have found most comfortable but you might want to tweak them a bit. The page width and height are the only critical values.

(3a) Configure page size and margins:

Click menu options FORMAT > PAGE and enter the following settings:

Width: 160mm
Height: 290mm

Top margin: 5mm
Bottom margin: 8mm
Right margin: 2mm
Left margin: 2mm

(3b) Configure line-spacing:

Press CTRL + A to select the whole document and...

Click menu options FORMAT > PARAGRAPH and enter settings...

Spacing below paragraph = 5mm
Line spacing = Proportional, 110%

(3c) Configure font:

Click menu options FORMAT > CHARACTER and enter settings...

Font = Verdana or Garuda (or similar Sans Serif font)
Typeface = Regular
Size = 18

(3d) Create the footer field:

Click menu options FORMAT > PAGE > FOOTER

Spacing, Height = 5mm

(3e) Insert page number in footer:

Click inside the footer field then click menu options INSERT > FIELDS > PAGE NUMBERS

(3f) Center the page number:

Click menu options FORMAT > PARAGRAPH > ALIGNMENT then click radio-button CENTER

(4) Export the document to a PDF file by clicking menu options FILE > EXPORT AS PDF.

READING THE E-BOOK

Click on the file name to open the E-book in Acrobat

Press CTRL + SHIFT + "+" to rotate the page

Press CTRL + L to view full screen.

You can no hold your Acer like a book and press ENTER for next page or RIGHT ARROW (for Next Page) and LEFT ARROW (for Previous Page). The keys are not very intuitive as you have rotated the device.

Rob Wheeler
Faversham, Kent

 

That really is very good! I have a small problem with the formatting. There are two lines then a double line shift - probably not what it is called - anyway the lines don't flow

smoothly as they should - just like my typing here!

 

Well in the end I used the default settings, adjusting font size only - works really well!

 

Personally, I start by tidying up the plain text first using a strightforward plain text editor. I use Editpad Pro but any text editor will do. Using global Find&Replace I strip out all the leading a trailing spaces from lines, take out carriage-returns in paragraphs so they wrap and remove any multiple blank lines. This way you end up with a pretty clean and simple text file which you can then import into OpenOffice. The key thing is to use the page size and margins I have suggested as that gives you the optimum text display. Size of font and line spacing is a matter of taste (and how good your eyesight is) - altho received wisdom is that line-length on web pages should be no more than 10-12 words.

I also recommend that you configure the following setting in Acrobat...

Edit > Preferences > Docuuments
and check 'Restore last view settings when reopening documents'

This will ensure that when you return to reading your ebook Acrobat will ensure it opens at the right page.

You can adjust the bightness of the display using the FN + LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys.

Rob Wheeler

 

Good advice Rob - thank you!!!
To move on a little, I would like to download current books and pay for them. This does not seem possible under Linux. Adobe seems to have this tied up - or am I wrong here. I use a Mac as my main platform - but it is a 17 inch laptop and no way a book format - and I am pretty sure that anything I download with Adobe DE - or whatever it is called - cannot be exported. I tried it with one of the free downloads - well yes I could export but there was no way <I could adjust text size.

 

I suspect then problem you have with downloading commercial e-books is due to the DRM (Digital Rights Management) system that Acrobat uses will not work on Linux. I think that data is written to the registry and of course Linux is structured differently. But I am not sure why anyone would want to *buy* books when there is so much free stuff on the net! Resizing the text will only work when you have scanned text in the Acrobat file - when it's a graphic of the text then resizing will not work. I have downloaded some free PDFs from Planet PDF (http://www.planetpdf.com/index.asp) but they are formatted for A4 with large margins they don't resize well for the Acer. The text is too small for easy reading. Full screen display in Acrobat will show the whole page including the margins. It's a pity that when you display full screen you can't select display visible which would lose the margins.

Rob Wheeler

 

Why do I want to buy books? Well some of the things I want to read are not on line of course and I usually have 3 books on the go at once - I read a lot!!!!!!! And I live abroad so on-line books are a relatively cheap way of getting what I want. The e- books.com on line reader does solve the problem of *transferring* the bought books from one computer to another - but not the rotating of the page - which can be done - but so far I have not been able to center the text very satisfactorily. And as someone said, using the mouse when the page is rotated is a bit like patting ones head and rubbing ones tum

 

Does anyone else have trouble using the CTRL ALT arrow keys? I have them set up as hot keys, and enabled, and they never work. I need to pick the option to rotate from the toolbar. OS is xp. That said, reading it turned sideways is great. Easy way to read etexts.