I suppose the 3DS has already lived its best years (including as far as Homebrew dev is concerned), so I don't have high hopes in posting here, plus I must apologize since this must have been asked like a hundred times before I do, but hell, I thought it wouldn't hurt to give it a go anyway, just in case...
Because I love my N3DSXL, I'm making full use of it, and I only have 1, one, ONE regret about it: that I can't use it as an eBook reader!
Sure, there are a few homebrew options to read ePub books... I believe I've tried them all (including the old NDS one): they won't accept 90% of my ePub collection (I have collected several thousands of them), nor any attempt by me to reformat them to a more regular ePub type... All except one (ie. "3DS eBook Reader"), which accepts some. Yet it can only realistically be used to read very short stories, and forget reading a novel with it: first it is very VERY slow to actually display pages, and second, there is NO option to jump to a certain page (unless I missed sth), which means (you guessed it) that unless you are prepared to read a full regular 300+ pages novel in one go, you have to patiently slide back to the last page you read EVERY single time you come back to your eBook!
And to top it all, not a single one of these readers support Sleep mode, which is unconvenient to say the very least. So no, I don't believe there's any /serious/ eReader available on the 3DS, and it's a DAMN shame, considering all the great stuff that's been developed and is available in the Homebrew community, to think that there prolly won't ever be a proper one.
Also of course, a proper one would mean (in addition to what I mentioned above, ie. at least "Jump to page #" + Sleep mode support features) not just ePub but the support of basic regular PDF format. Is the 3DS not powerful enough to handle PDF?
Like I said, that's the only issue I have with everything the 3DS community has offered: no PDF support. I'd have assumed it to be an absolute given that it would be coded and appear at some point. Guess the gaming community as a whole is not so much into reading books, eh?
I don't want to sound ungrateful here. I'm well enjoying many many HB utils/tools and I'm real glad and thankful to the cool and generous people who developed them. I'm not a coder myself, I didn't directly contribute to the community and I have absolutely no right _demanding_ anything obviously. So I just don't...
I'm only very surprised (and disappointed, yes) that a PDF reader was never considered and materialised eventually, coz... Really, wouldn't have this been the perfect (gaming) platform to use one?
It feels like a missed opportunity to me and with all the amazing things I can do with my handheld, thanks to all the amazing people and especially the coders giving away all their time and efforts for the community and SHARING (and very little thanks to greedy Nintendo I must say -- not a great deal of respect for them, and that's ok since they tend not to show much respect for their customers either), I regret deeply not being able to carry and enjoy dozens/hundreds of books along with the dozens/hundreds of games I have access to on this great platform!
That was my two cents, and as I said, I don't believe there's still much hope for such a proper eBook reader to be developed at this point in the life of the 3DS... But it can't hurt to ask, and if someone with the skills and passion reads this and feels compelled to fix and fill such a "glaring shortfall" in the homebrew world, well that's a miracle I'd be more than happy to witness.
Because I love my N3DSXL, I'm making full use of it, and I only have 1, one, ONE regret about it: that I can't use it as an eBook reader!
Sure, there are a few homebrew options to read ePub books... I believe I've tried them all (including the old NDS one): they won't accept 90% of my ePub collection (I have collected several thousands of them), nor any attempt by me to reformat them to a more regular ePub type... All except one (ie. "3DS eBook Reader"), which accepts some. Yet it can only realistically be used to read very short stories, and forget reading a novel with it: first it is very VERY slow to actually display pages, and second, there is NO option to jump to a certain page (unless I missed sth), which means (you guessed it) that unless you are prepared to read a full regular 300+ pages novel in one go, you have to patiently slide back to the last page you read EVERY single time you come back to your eBook!
And to top it all, not a single one of these readers support Sleep mode, which is unconvenient to say the very least. So no, I don't believe there's any /serious/ eReader available on the 3DS, and it's a DAMN shame, considering all the great stuff that's been developed and is available in the Homebrew community, to think that there prolly won't ever be a proper one.
Also of course, a proper one would mean (in addition to what I mentioned above, ie. at least "Jump to page #" + Sleep mode support features) not just ePub but the support of basic regular PDF format. Is the 3DS not powerful enough to handle PDF?
Like I said, that's the only issue I have with everything the 3DS community has offered: no PDF support. I'd have assumed it to be an absolute given that it would be coded and appear at some point. Guess the gaming community as a whole is not so much into reading books, eh?
I don't want to sound ungrateful here. I'm well enjoying many many HB utils/tools and I'm real glad and thankful to the cool and generous people who developed them. I'm not a coder myself, I didn't directly contribute to the community and I have absolutely no right _demanding_ anything obviously. So I just don't...
I'm only very surprised (and disappointed, yes) that a PDF reader was never considered and materialised eventually, coz... Really, wouldn't have this been the perfect (gaming) platform to use one?
It feels like a missed opportunity to me and with all the amazing things I can do with my handheld, thanks to all the amazing people and especially the coders giving away all their time and efforts for the community and SHARING (and very little thanks to greedy Nintendo I must say -- not a great deal of respect for them, and that's ok since they tend not to show much respect for their customers either), I regret deeply not being able to carry and enjoy dozens/hundreds of books along with the dozens/hundreds of games I have access to on this great platform!
That was my two cents, and as I said, I don't believe there's still much hope for such a proper eBook reader to be developed at this point in the life of the 3DS... But it can't hurt to ask, and if someone with the skills and passion reads this and feels compelled to fix and fill such a "glaring shortfall" in the homebrew world, well that's a miracle I'd be more than happy to witness.
Last edited by Angar,
