eBook fanfic

[Hemdian]

I'm writing a Traveller novel/fanfic (albeit very slowly) and the first two chapters can be found here.

But, in addition to getting any feedback on the story itself, I was wondering how many people have eBook readers and if so what kinds? And of those different readers how many can take PDFs (directly or after some conversion process)? In other words, are LBB-sized PDFs of any interest?

 

[Merxiless]

I don't have an ebook reader, i guess i'm used to .pdf acrobat, etc.

 

[Hemdian]

I don't have an ebook reader, i guess i'm used to .pdf acrobat, etc.

I suspected that would be so in the majority of cases, but I don't know if anybody uses an eBook reader. Since I recently bought an eBook reader I've rediscovered sequential reading (as opposed to scanning for key points) and reading for pleasure.

 

[deniable]

I use my palm for reading ebooks. It can be a little clunky and needs charging too often, but it's great for one handed reading on the train.

Fbreader came with the eee PC, so I may give that a go for bedtime reading. They have some documentation on supported formats including, IIRC, their thoughts on the various formats.

One point about PDF, if you need layout with graphics and you need it to look the same everywhere, use PDF. If you need simple free-flowing text that can handle different page / screen sizes, run away from it at best possible speed. Baen used to have some discussion of why they don't do PDF, but I can't find it any more.

 

[Peter Schutze]

read your 2 chapters and hope you keep going

had some specific suggestions last week while rading mainly about characterisation so far but lost the forum and have forgotten the specifics now

 

[Hemdian]

read your 2 chapters and hope you keep going

had some specific suggestions last week while rading mainly about characterisation so far but lost the forum and have forgotten the specifics now

Thanks. If you remember what you were going to suggest drop me a line.

 

[Hemdian]

I use my palm for reading ebooks. It can be a little clunky and needs charging too often, but it's great for one handed reading on the train.

I'm getting quite good at holding the Sony reader one-handed on the (underground) train each morning. But I will research what's needed to convert to Palm format. (No promises.)

One point about PDF, if you need layout with graphics and you need it to look the same everywhere, use PDF. If you need simple free-flowing text that can handle different page / screen sizes, run away from it at best possible speed. Baen used to have some discussion of why they don't do PDF, but I can't find it any more.

But one advantage of PDF is that many people wont have an eBook reader at all but will have a PDF reader installed on their PC.

 

[fredofmars]

<snip> But one advantage of PDF is that many people wont have an eBook reader at all but will have a PDF reader installed on their PC.

Every OS I'm aware of has the capability to read plain text (straight ASCII characters). That makes it the lowest common denominator. Most in the last decade can read Rich Text Format, which gives you some formatting along with the text. PDF readers are common but not universal.

 

[aramis]

Several from the late 1970's did not.

Early Atari computers used AtaSCII, which was a variant; Sinclair's built in OS also was not ASCII capable. Almost all of them used the first 64 identically to TTY, over 64 was dicey until about 1979 or so... within a couple years, using the 3rd 32 for lower case was standard due to federal law.

MacOS prior to 10 did not have the inherent ability to read text files, either, but shipped with an application that could (albeit mangling over cr/lf issues): text edit. It wasn't installed as part of the OS, but was on every OS install disk, until 6.0.2... after which it was installed automatically.

In fact, several other 1980's graphical OS's lacked inherent access to text files, too: GEOS, ProDOS-16, and at least one version of GEM.

At present, all the mainstream commercial OS's are actually running a window environment over a (usually hidden) command-line environment (including WinVista and MacOS X). Except PalmOS.

PalmOS can import ascii through PalmDesktop.

 

[deniable]

I'm getting quite good at holding the Sony reader one-handed on the (underground) train each morning. But I will research what's needed to convert to Palm format. (No promises.)

There is no single Palm format. I usually just convert from a text file or Word document. I use mobipocket because Baen supplies them, otherwise I'd use their RTFs through Documents to Go.

The Palm has a PDF reader, but as I said page sizes make it not worth the effort. You either have too small text or you're scrolling back and forth. (Or you have a PDF that is too big for a PC screen.)

But one advantage of PDF is that many people wont have an eBook reader at all but will have a PDF reader installed on their PC.

And most people also have the ability to read a text file or HTML. Have a look at Project Gutenberg. You won't need an ebook or pdf reader for most of it.