September 7, 2011 at 17:34A few points about electronic reading
Last summer, completely unexpectedly, the idea came to me to purchase an e-book based on E-Ink. Fortunately, at that time a good friend was in the states, Amazon and Barnes & Nobles reduced the prices for their offspring, and there was no problem getting help. Everything merged into a fleeting decision to purchase something from the mentioned manufacturers. Paradoxically, my gaze settled on Nook, not on the Kindle. I had some kind of hostility to the giant, and the second color display seemed an interesting solution. Of course, I will not review the device, because there are already so many of them. And in my message I’ll try to reflect all the thoughts and ideas that have been formed during this short period of using Nook and monitoring issues in general. I tried to break the entire text into separate abstracts with small comments.
I bought my reader exactly for reading art. Any attempts to read something professional did not end in anything. For many reasons: due to the lack of such literature in the required format, due to the inconvenient navigation of devices based on E-Ink, a small screen. A lot of things can be included here. For the artist, no problems arise, just the text is easily formatted and there are no problems with its display.
A person should try to read at least one e-book on a book reader. Only after this can a more or less reasonable attitude be formed towards reading from the device’s screen. To such a conclusion came for a reason. Showing and demonstrating Nook’s capabilities to people far from using any progressive electronic devices and speaking negatively about any reading from the screen, I was pleasantly surprised by their positive assessment of their use. First of all, I mean the older, conservative generation. Well, I did not expect a graceful assessment. Plus, after about six months, the closest circle also wanted similar devices, and the first purchases were already outlined.
A completely understandable and obvious phenomenon. The reader is almost always with you, there are a lot of books themselves - I finished one, started another, the list of "reading ahead" is formed, and so on. I think everyone can add a lot of points here, I will not spread. To here - on the road an irreplaceable thing, both in the distant and not so.
This statement was influenced by the book of the famous Italian scientist Umberto Eco “Do not hope to get rid of books”, where all questions related to books in general are extremely popular and detailed. From the concept to the history of books. And indeed, the chances that the greatest product of Gutenberg's creation will disappear are extremely small.
Many argue that the rejection of the transition to electronic books with such a feature of a paper book as smell. Quite reasonably, I myself recall with pleasure this "smell of antiquity." As an alternative, for fun and for the sake of commerce, a spray with the smell of a book has already been invented . Here, I immediately remember the love of motorists to old cars, the motor of which “pleasantly” rumbles and other features of the time. Lovers have always been, but the average majority buys a newer one.
Often, large and terribly interesting articles come across on the Internet. Such that they should be postponed for further reading. Transferring them to the reader is easy. Using some translation service of a web page, for example, in pdf. I am using joliprint. There are many similar converters. This suits me, removes all unnecessary. It takes only the content part, but formatting on the reader is not ideal. If anyone knows a similar converter in epub, write;) Here is an example of pdf conversion of the last post from the “e-books” blog. (due to the insertion of code in the text, the example was not the most successful). My nook lacks, of course, amazona services with sending books by mail, I dream ...
I don’t know how the others do, but on my Nook-e when opening a pdf nickname collected from pictures, no scaling is provided. The document opens page by page as in pdf, there is no scrolling. The result is one page per screen, the text is small, unreadable. I thought that the scanned books were closed for me, but at one point I accidentally entered the K2PDFOPT program , which optimizes such pdf files for a 6-inch screen. It turns out quite tolerably. Unless conversion is quick. Thanks to the author. Now we need to think about how to organize this with djvu.
This issue is being actively discussed at different levels, various open letters are being written to the president, there is a serious struggle for allowing digitization to libraries without a contract with the author, etc. The eternal theme. With regards to e-books. It's no secret that the legal market for the sale of electronic books in Russia is extremely small. Especially compared to the number of devices sold. My personal opinion is that you need to support this segment and use legal distribution channels. So we respect the work of others and contribute to the formation of the market. I developed a scheme for myself: I’m looking for where to buy, I don’t find it, and I go to convenient pirated services. Yes, yes, comfortable wrote for good reason. Many commercial service developers have a lot to learn from free projects. And the content part of them suffers. My statistics - out of ten books is good, if one is available for sale, and foreigners in general can not be sought. Maybe the problem will be solved over time, and there will be an assortment, and a convenient acquisition channel. Yes, I am also against drm in all its manifestations.
ps. I hope thoughts are unbroken and will prove to be partly useful.
Update from goodsprite :
I use the service for converting web pages to epub dotepub.com /
You can use their extension for chrome :
Or copy the script to the bookmark address:
After conversion, it offers a book for download.
I checked on the hub, everything is fine, I also pulled out the content part. True in the epub program, the Cyrillic fonts, of course, does not embed. Therefore, there were questions on my unrouted nuka.
E-Ink is suitable only for fiction.
I bought my reader exactly for reading art. Any attempts to read something professional did not end in anything. For many reasons: due to the lack of such literature in the required format, due to the inconvenient navigation of devices based on E-Ink, a small screen. A lot of things can be included here. For the artist, no problems arise, just the text is easily formatted and there are no problems with its display.
The opinion of reading from a book reader can only be a posteriori
A person should try to read at least one e-book on a book reader. Only after this can a more or less reasonable attitude be formed towards reading from the device’s screen. To such a conclusion came for a reason. Showing and demonstrating Nook’s capabilities to people far from using any progressive electronic devices and speaking negatively about any reading from the screen, I was pleasantly surprised by their positive assessment of their use. First of all, I mean the older, conservative generation. Well, I did not expect a graceful assessment. Plus, after about six months, the closest circle also wanted similar devices, and the first purchases were already outlined.
You read much more
A completely understandable and obvious phenomenon. The reader is almost always with you, there are a lot of books themselves - I finished one, started another, the list of "reading ahead" is formed, and so on. I think everyone can add a lot of points here, I will not spread. To here - on the road an irreplaceable thing, both in the distant and not so.
Paper books won't die
This statement was influenced by the book of the famous Italian scientist Umberto Eco “Do not hope to get rid of books”, where all questions related to books in general are extremely popular and detailed. From the concept to the history of books. And indeed, the chances that the greatest product of Gutenberg's creation will disappear are extremely small.
The smell of books
Many argue that the rejection of the transition to electronic books with such a feature of a paper book as smell. Quite reasonably, I myself recall with pleasure this "smell of antiquity." As an alternative, for fun and for the sake of commerce, a spray with the smell of a book has already been invented . Here, I immediately remember the love of motorists to old cars, the motor of which “pleasantly” rumbles and other features of the time. Lovers have always been, but the average majority buys a newer one.
Migration of articles from the Internet
Often, large and terribly interesting articles come across on the Internet. Such that they should be postponed for further reading. Transferring them to the reader is easy. Using some translation service of a web page, for example, in pdf. I am using joliprint. There are many similar converters. This suits me, removes all unnecessary. It takes only the content part, but formatting on the reader is not ideal. If anyone knows a similar converter in epub, write;) Here is an example of pdf conversion of the last post from the “e-books” blog. (due to the insertion of code in the text, the example was not the most successful). My nook lacks, of course, amazona services with sending books by mail, I dream ...
We read pdf-documents with pictures inside on 6-inch E-Ink readers
I don’t know how the others do, but on my Nook-e when opening a pdf nickname collected from pictures, no scaling is provided. The document opens page by page as in pdf, there is no scrolling. The result is one page per screen, the text is small, unreadable. I thought that the scanned books were closed for me, but at one point I accidentally entered the K2PDFOPT program , which optimizes such pdf files for a 6-inch screen. It turns out quite tolerably. Unless conversion is quick. Thanks to the author. Now we need to think about how to organize this with djvu.
Copywriting
This issue is being actively discussed at different levels, various open letters are being written to the president, there is a serious struggle for allowing digitization to libraries without a contract with the author, etc. The eternal theme. With regards to e-books. It's no secret that the legal market for the sale of electronic books in Russia is extremely small. Especially compared to the number of devices sold. My personal opinion is that you need to support this segment and use legal distribution channels. So we respect the work of others and contribute to the formation of the market. I developed a scheme for myself: I’m looking for where to buy, I don’t find it, and I go to convenient pirated services. Yes, yes, comfortable wrote for good reason. Many commercial service developers have a lot to learn from free projects. And the content part of them suffers. My statistics - out of ten books is good, if one is available for sale, and foreigners in general can not be sought. Maybe the problem will be solved over time, and there will be an assortment, and a convenient acquisition channel. Yes, I am also against drm in all its manifestations.
ps. I hope thoughts are unbroken and will prove to be partly useful.
Update from goodsprite :
I use the service for converting web pages to epub dotepub.com /
You can use their extension for chrome :
Or copy the script to the bookmark address:
After conversion, it offers a book for download.
I checked on the hub, everything is fine, I also pulled out the content part. True in the epub program, the Cyrillic fonts, of course, does not embed. Therefore, there were questions on my unrouted nuka.