VERY Basic FBReader Question/Newbie

[Nitesky]

when using FBReader,
I am having a problem loading books to the library. The initial set up asks you to change the value of book path option in the General tab. This part confuses me. I have books downloaded to my sd card....so what path do I set?:confused: I would like to use this as a book reader, but am stumped right off the bat. Anyone able to explain this to me?

[geneven]

You don't have to mess with that if you don't want to; just open File Manager and double click on the book file and when you are asked what application to open it with, find FBReader!

I don't understand what the issue is -- can't you put a path to the sd card, which would be /media/mmc1 or /media/mmc2 to start with?

[GeneralAntilles]

I don't understand what the issue is -- can't you put a path to the sd card, which would be /media/mmc1 or /media/mmc2 to start with?

I don't think he understood where the SD cards were located in the actual filesystem.

/media/mmc1 is the external card
/media/mmc2 is the internal card

[Nitesky]

Thanks to both of you for answering. With the information that You both gave I should be able to get a book added to the FBReader library. Well, I should, if I can just get the right format of book. Will keep trying!

[GeneralAntilles]

Thanks to both of you for answering. With the information that You both gave I should be able to get a book added to the FBReader library. Well, I should, if I can just get the right format of book. Will keep trying!

html works best for me, followed closely by rtf and txt.

[bilofsky]

html works best for me, followed closely by rtf and txt.
The ones I downloaded are in .pdb, and .zip (of HTML with jpegs). They all seem to work.

[stabu]

I just downloaded some .lit formatted eBooks, but have yet to transfer them to my n800. These are supported, correct?

[Rocketman]

.lit is a proprietary format that is used by Microsoft's Reader software. A quick check of the features page for fbreader at http://www.fbreader.org/about.php revealed no listed support for .lit. If you need to convert your (totally legal, I'm sure) .lit files you can use any of a number of utilities to do so. ConvertLIT at http://www.convertlit.com looks to be a decent one. I'm not sure whether you will be able to strip out the DRM though if the file wasn't originally licensed to your copy of Reader.

This took me about 30 seconds of searching to find out. How about you spend your 30 seconds next time?

[geneven]

.lit ebooks would be supported because of Microsoft's famous openness? Not that I know of, but they can be converted by programs available for Windows.

We here at Itt pride ourselves on being the moral policemen of all posters, pointing out why others should not post, while never considering whether it might be good for us to be discrete in our own complaints.

[Karel Jansens]

.lit ebooks would be supported because of Microsoft's famous openness? Not that I know of, but they can be converted by programs available for Windows.

Given that Microsoft's DRM implementation in *.lit was so ridiculously easy to overcome, one might indeed almost claim the format to be open.

We here at Itt pride ourselves on being the moral policemen of all posters, pointing out why others should not post, while never considering whether it might be good for us to be discrete in our own complaints.

DRM is evil and must be fought wherever possible. The morally righteous are those who crack DRM.

[stabu]

ACB Lit Converter worked very well for me.

http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

[Karel Jansens]

ACB Lit Converter worked very well for me.

http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Seconded. I'd like to add that I get better results with the *.PRB format than with the *.FB2 one.

[JeffElkins]

http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe/mobiperl/

I've been using convertlit with fairly good results to create open ebook (.oebzip) files from .lit, but I just switched over to the .mobi format. Using mobiperl I was better able to batch convert large collections of .lit files for FBReader. Mobiperl was a bit of a pain to install, but once done it works great.

It's too bad that the FBReader developers won't include .lit support, but they are concerned about the DMCA :(

[conum]

After the newest update to FBReader (today) there is no possibility to get access to the mmc's anymore. Even after re-saving the preferences (General/Book Path was and is set to /media/mmc1/Books) FBReader always opens /home/user, where many .xyz dirs are, but not my books. It's impossible to get to /media ... anymore.
Any advice?

[PinCushionQueen]

After the newest update to FBReader (today) there is no possibility to get access to the mmc's anymore. Even after re-saving the preferences (General/Book Path was and is set to /media/mmc1/Books) FBReader always opens /home/user, where many .xyz dirs are, but not my books. It's impossible to get to /media ... anymore.
Any advice?

I don't have this problem with the new version of FBreader :confused:

You weren't by chance connected to USB while you were trying to open a book in FBReader were you? That's really the only time I've ever had my MMC cards not recognized.

[wallcraf]

After the newest update to FBReader (today) there is no possibility to get access to the mmc's anymore. Even after re-saving the preferences (General/Book Path was and is set to /media/mmc1/Books) FBReader always opens /home/user, where many .xyz dirs are, but not my books. It's impossible to get to /media ... anymore. The General/Book Path is where FBReader searches for e-books in metadata-rich formats (FB2,OEB,...) that it can automatically add to its library. For most formats you have to add them manually (BOOK+ icon). This should open up in the last directory you accessed under BOOK+ (it has nothing to do with the PATH). If it opens on /home/user (then it has probably "forgotten" your last use), just goto /media/mmc1 (say). One way to do this is to click on ".." to do down to root "/" and then click some more to go up to /media and /media/mmc1. On devices with keyboards you can also type in the desired location (I'm not sure if this works on the Nokias).

[qwerty12]

http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe/mobiperl/
It's too bad that the FBReader developers won't include .lit support, but they are concerned about the DMCA :(

Not a great solution but convertlit port exists for N800 which will lit > html which FbReader is fine with.

[clach04]

Not a great solution but convertlit port exists for N800 which will lit > html which FbReader is fine with.

Any idea where to get it from? This is a slightly loaded question as I happen to know that http://www.spirytusick.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/clit1.8.tar.bz2 has it. I'm pretty sure I got that URL from ITT but I can't find the posting for love or money, I even used the Google search link http://www.google.com/cse?cx=005981223421171304650%3Awt9tjwf2kd4

I did come across a posting http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=98734&postcount=135 that implies there is a .deb file (which would be awesome).

I've created a Python script (with a .deb, thanks to PyPackager) that may make life slightly easier for people on the road. This is a very early release, feature (omissions) include:

No success/failure reports
No error checking


By default it assumes the convert lit exe is in the path, if it is not (e.g. you extracted the tar file mentioned above to /tmp) then you should specify the full path to the exe (the convert lit exe NEEDS execute permission, e.g. "chmod a+x /tmp/clit").

Needs PyMaemo from http://pymaemo.garage.maemo.org/ (if you have repositories set correctly the deb should pull it down too).

Point lit2zip at the .LIT file and it will create a .ZIP file in the same directory and FBReader can open it. None of my .LIT files need keys so key support is not available in the GUI.

Hope people find this useful. I will NOT be including ConvertLIT with lit2zip

[brecklundin]

I read a LOT of ebooks on my "antique" nx73v Clie... :)

Almost any question you might have about ebooks can be found on the MobileRead forums. Is it OK to post a link from here? The place is not commercial and just sort of a defacto gathering place for all things ebook.

BTW, many folks there swear by, not at, the N8x0 series...one reason it's actually back at the top of my device short list right now...also due to the great info i have gotten in a short time here today.

[qole]

Point lit2zip at the .LIT file and it will create a .ZIP file in the same directory and FBReader can open it.



This post (http://internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=143112#post143112) seems to suggest that you want to give the resulting file an ".oebzip" extension. Does plain ".zip" work as well? Or does your program give it an ".oebzip" extension?

I have been converting .LIT files to .PDF using that ABC Amber (http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html) converter thing in Windows and then reading the PDFs on evince, but I'm not really happy with the results. The formatting is kinda messy, and there are hyphens in the middle of lines and stuff. But I thought the PDFs looked better than the formats that FBReader supports.

OT: I dislike reading posts that say, "Search before posting!" That is not a helpful thing to write.

[GeneralAntilles]

OT: I dislike reading posts that say, "Search before posting!" That is not a helpful thing to write.

. . . and they dislike reading repetitive questions that have been answered many times in the past.

It's a vicious circle.

Mildly interesting attempt to keep on-topic: Converted the lastest Tor PDF release (Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn) to HTML 3.2 with Acrobat Professional and it worked perfectly. Just had to downsize and invert the images (chapter and section dividers) with Photoshop.

[clach04]

This post (http://internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=143112#post143112) seems to suggest that you want to give the resulting file an ".oebzip" extension. Does plain ".zip" work as well? Or does your program give it an ".oebzip" extension?


I've not experimented with ".oebzip" extension as .zip's work for me (you have to select the opf file when opening the book, maybe this isn't required with .oebzip?) and you can easily open them in a regular zip tool on the desktop with a "normal" zip extension (my main reason for using .zip rather than .oebzip). If I get feedback that suggests it is worth changing the behavior I could change this (or if you want to try it, edit line 148 in /usr/bin/lit2oebzip.py).

Someone has now created a deb for clit (and put it in a repository along with my little GUI wrapper) which should make installation slightly easier; see http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=143509&postcount=13 for more information.

My main reason for staying with html/oeb is that conversion is pretty much click and go, using PDF is an interesting idea though.

Let me know if you find anything that needs changing for lit2oebzip.py.

[brecklundin]

After the newest update to FBReader (today) there is no possibility to get access to the mmc's anymore. Even after re-saving the preferences (General/Book Path was and is set to /media/mmc1/Books) FBReader always opens /home/user, where many .xyz dirs are, but not my books. It's impossible to get to /media ... anymore.
Any advice?

After i installed FBReader I too had a problem with it not even seeing the memory cards. I looked at the Fbreader site and found there was/is and issue with finding the cards. I did an uninstall and made sure I installed the latest version from the official site. All is fine now. You will have to make sure you change the settings to point to where you will store your ebooks. If you are messy with your file system you can just point to the memory card's root directory and check the box to search sub-directories for books. Of course this will greatly slow down Fbreader when you are rebuilding the library.

I have to say after a long time fighting eReader and actually liking Mobireader...I find Fbreader just the best of the breed in terms of configuration control.

Most all the books I read as in some form of .mobi format. So, they display nicely and include graphics as well.

In case you do not know you can look to a newish site called http://FeedBooks.org to get tons of well formatted free public domain classics and even some newer works if the author was generous. There is even a catalog tagged as a "Kindle Catalog" that you can d/l with a list of all their current content with direct download links.

And don't forget Baen's free library too. (I highly recommend the 1632 & 1633 "Ring of Fire Saga" series) Even Tor Books has now begun offering a free monthly or bi-weekly download. They even recently hinted there might be something in the works with Baen for a very new Web 2.0 site with them teamed up to offer a very nice catalog of novels.

Hope you are able to get Fbreader running, it's really a well done app.

[Duncan]

FeedBooks.org just gives me a directory listing with errors, icon and stats subdirectories. Did you mean http://feedbooks.com?
And where on the Tor site do I find downloads?