EEE-books!

[dvandom]

Just to see if it'd do anything, I loaded a .prc of a Baen e-book (Mobibook format) onto a thumbdrive, plugged it in, and tried opening it. And it worked. The EEE's book reader just grabbed it and opened it with no fuss. It won't keep my place while it's on the jumpdrive, though, and I can't seem to get it to add to the library. Still, it's a start. And I will note that the reader will rotate the screen so you can hold it like a regular book.

Edit: Weird, copying files just uses "select icon, hit copy, move to desired directory, hit paste". And aha, adding the book to the library ran into a snag because the window ran off the bottom of the screen and the "okay" button was invisible.

Comments

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

These are just plain text, but this is my favorite e-book site on the net:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

They specialize in out-of-copyright works, and have been a huge help when hunting for stuff that's been out of print for years.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

If "ebook" doesn't show on the "internet" tab (a known issue; one of the software updates removed it, for some reason! There's a fix at the eeeuser site) then you can run FBReader from the command line. The third icon (a single book followed by a + sign) lets you add to the library.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

The library-add icon was straightforward enough, it's just that the "okay" was below the bottom of the screen initially, but positioned so it looked like a complete window with no buttons. :/ And I can always run FBR by using file manager to go to the book I want to read.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

The bottom right of the screen, on the toolbar, should be a "right triangle". if you click on that then the toolbar will disappear and give you an extra line of main display.

Some of the programs do have difficulties at 640pixel height.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yep, already discovered the triangle. But the main problem was the window didn't LOOK cut off, so it took a while before I thought to move it.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I checked eeeuser.com (which I've been visiting for months now, BTW), and the only "fix" I could find was "type FBReader on the command line".

[sweh.livejournal.com]

#8 in this thread: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=2180

The problem is that the new simpleui.rc expects the shortcut asus-eeepc-ebook.desktop to be available. No shortcut, no icon.

There is a FBReader.desktop file in /usr/share/applications - so a quick fix is to create a symbolic link to it. Open up a terminal and type:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/applications/FBReader.desktop /usr/share/applications/asus-eeepc-ebook.desktop
(all on one line)

Alternatively, you can edit simpleui.rc to use FBReader.desktop...

Restart X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and the icon comes back.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Thanks, got it!