Hacking Ebook reader?

[DJBurkey]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if there were any possible projects for making an ebook reader for the DS, in the style of the vertical holding that Brain Age has for when you're reading aloud (which also uses touch screen to change page). I think this would be a great use for the DS, and it would be great if it could read pdf files too, although some of them can be quite huge in size. I did a little search on this but couldn't find anything other than a horizontal .txt reader for the DS - here.

Anyway, just a thought

 

[5kuzgib]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if there were any possible projects for making an ebook reader for the DS, in the style of the vertical holding that Brain Age has for when you're reading aloud (which also uses touch screen to change page). I think this would be a great use for the DS, and it would be great if it could read pdf files too, although some of them can be quite huge in size. I did a little search on this but couldn't find anything other than a horizontal .txt reader for the DS - here.

Anyway, just a thoughtÂ

I'd like to see this too. The brainage-esque vertical thing would be good for plain text, but for a pdf reader something more akin to the opera web browser might be better (i.e. the complete page on the touch screen and a zoomed view on the top screen).

 

[HeinzHarald]

I know someone said they would try to work in a vertical "book mode" in their text viewer/editor. Can't remember which application it was though. Might've been DSOrganize.

I doubt we'll get to see a pdf viewer. Not even Opera includes it. It's not the file size that's the issue as much as it's the memory and processing power needed to display whatever is contained in that file, no matter how small it is. I've got an old Palm Vx, and reading .pdf files on that one isn't any fun at all, even if they are all text. But I suppose it would be possible to create a pdf viewer, I just doubt it's usefulness.

 

[yuwing]

There are programs out there that can convert PDF into TXT or u can just copy and paste into a txt file. and read it from there.

 

[DJBurkey]

There are programs out there that can convert PDF into TXT or u can just copy and paste into a txt file. and read it from there.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Forget the PDF part for now, I just like the idea of holding the DS in vertical mode like a book

SO basically if that text viewer worked sideways it would be perfect

 

[HeinzHarald]

There are programs out there that can convert PDF into TXT or u can just copy and paste into a txt file. and read it from there.

Problem is you lose a lot of the formatting, but it is a decent enough alternative, as long as they aren't copy protected (let's not talk about copy protection circumvention). When reading on my Palm I actually do this a lot just so I wont have to deal with that sluggish Acrobat Reader for Palm.