I was wondering how the ebook system worked in general. From the looking around I have done, the format ".lit" seem to be pretty popular. From the format selection from FBreader, this one doesn't show.

So, do most people covert the ebooks to one of the listed formats for reading on the 770?

If there is a spot around the web that I should be reading to better understand how this works, can someone please point me there so I don't waste other people's time with this.

Thanks much.

Ufortunately none of the commercial formats, Microsoft's .lit or eReaders .pdb, are supported. Personally I could care less about .lit (the evil empire) but I have a large investment in eReader which means I can't switch to the 770 permanently.

This isn't the fault of FBReaders author, though I wonder if he's considered a .pdb capable version, but the people at eReader who seem to have a real downer on Linux.

There is a great application for the Fiction Books (FB2) creation - Fiction Book Designer.
It converts a bunch of formats to FB2 (html, doc, rtf, pdf, lit, pdb, ...).

You can download it from:
http://www.the-ebook.org/e107/download.php?view.19
(don’t panic, the page is in Russian - just download and install it, it’s free for non-comercial use, then press “Help” -› “Self Teaching”, choose the topic of your interest and follow the screen instructions.)

You can download a lot of books in FB2 format (direct from your 770) at:
http://www.fictionbook.ru/
For English ones click on english alphabet and choose the author.

Enjoy

Is there any way to make it view CBZ files?

Microsoft Reader .lit format is a compiled (and slightly extended) version of the Open eBook publication standard, aka the OEB format.

There are many tools for converting Word, html, plain text and even FictionBook2 files into .lit format, btw. However, Microsoft Reader is the only application that can read that file format and of course that runs only on some Microsoft OSes.

The good news is that FBReader is on the verge of being able to read books in the OEB format. A tool called convertlit or c lit that can decompile .lit files back into their html source and OEB package file (with an opf extension) can be found readily on the web and used on non-DRMed .lit files, of which there are tens of thousands available. (Convertlit appears to work on DRMed files as well so you can take e-books you purchased and decompile them on the way to converting them to a format you can read on another OS. That action, however, may not fall within a strict interpretation of the DMCA so it's not something I'd advise doing with any titles that you had not personally purchased or that you pass on to anyone else.)

FBReader is at version 0.7.3d right now and OEB is promised for 0.7.4 or 0.7.5. So very soon you'll have access to those .lit files.

Also there are some 5,000 public domain titles (from Project Gutenberg) in OEB format at GlobalMentor that you will be able to read directly.

What format is that? It's new to me.

I'd suggest visiting the FBReader forum at Google Groups and requesting it. If it's like so many other formats and pretty much based on html, FBReader's developer seems likely to be able to and likely to be willing to make it available too.

Nothing for CBR/CBZ so far. (These are basically compressed RAR or ZIP files that contain a series of images, usually used for saving scans of comic books and graphic novels.) I've thought about working on porting something or possibly writing something from scratch in Python, but for various reasons I've come to the opinion that this is a task best left until after the 2006 OS ships.

here here this program http://linux.bydg.org/~yogin/ would do the job but i wouldn't know where to begin at porting it

Thanks everyone for the replies. The info is greatly appreciated.

For windows there is software called Amber ABC lit converter. This is what I have used to convert files for my 770. I don't know if it will handle protected files.
http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

For this you need a LICENSE (iow you bought it) and a program unfortunately named 'clit'.
http://public.www.planetmirror.com/p...lit/clit15.zip (I think)

But Amber may also do this... I dunno.

cAPS

I have used the Plucker format for the past 3 years and it has worked fine for me. I do not purchase Ebooks, but I have made several from the Gutenberg site.

You can install a plucker reader, and the FBReader can read this format as well. Both work fairly well. If you need some more information let me know.