TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Hooray! I can read .epub—the new IDPF e-book standard—on my XO machine from One Laptop per Child

By David Rothman

Ah! Freedom from PDF tyranny! FBReader is now running on my XO machine and displaying 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, via an .epub file from Feedbooks.

Firsthand, I’ve confirmed my optimism. We finally have a bridge between the One Laptop Per Child project and the e-book standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum, the leading trade association for e-books. This is great news for the library world in the States and elsewhere. With the right software, the XO could be a much better library machine than the Kindle, which costs more, comes with a harsh terms of service agreement, and isn’t as durable. FBReader has flaws but is a start for both .epub and OLPC. A new version, 0.8.10, is just out, though I don’t know if it’s in a form suitable for FBReader,

Own an XO? You don’t have to be a geek to follow in my footsteps—just patient and adventurous. The original instructions from Bennett Todd did work out this time around on my OLPC laptop, and I”ll try to show you just what I did. With FBReader on the XO, you’ll be able to:

• Use .epub and other formats not previously available on the XO. See the FBReader site for a format list. The XO’s bundled software will be able to display .txt and HTML and Plucker (PDF seems the main show right now), but if you’re like me, you’ll find them to be much more fun to read with FBReader. No, FBReder can’t read PDF. But XO owners can just leave the existing software in place.
• Enjoy the page breaks in the right places, something that’s often devilishly hard with PDF, a rigid, tyrannical format when used onscreen even though it’s great for printed documents.
• Choose different fonts and screen color combos. I’m using Kacst Book in size 9, bolded, which will help when using the screen’s E Ink-style capabilities—there’ll be more contrast between text and background. How it annoys me that except for the Cybook, none of the usual E Ink machines have easy ways to bold text! Am I forgetting about one that does?
• Do other customization such as adjusting your left, right, top and bottom margins.
• Choose the buttons on the XO you want to use for page-changing and other purposes.
• Even use a mouse to page ahead or back by full pages. Right now that wrinkle isn’t working, but I suspect it’s just because I’ve been doing a few bizarre things. Functioned fine up to now.

I’ll update this post and share a few more how-to details this weekend, and, yes, I’ll run a photo of FBReader displaying the .epub file. The current picture—no, it doesn’t show a book!—is just a placeholder.

In e-book heaven

Meanwhile despite rough spots in FBReader—no bookmarking yet, alas, and I need to convince FBReader to preserve customization settings from sessions to session—I’m in e-book heaven. I can enjoy both the XO’s awesome screen technology and much greater customization capabilities than the E Ink machines offer.

Of course, the XO doesn’t use E Ink, a proprietary technology from a company with that name. But it can reflect light just like E Ink and can be used in the dark and in color

Compared to E Ink, in fact, I actually prefer the XO display, which, by the way, is also cheaper to manufacture. In fairness to E Ink, it may be easier on batteries. But what’s cool about the XO display is that it combines the glow of the LCD with the use of ambient light. The two miraculously seem to build on each other, making for a most pleasant reading experience.

Back to the how-tos—with more to come

I’ll throw in three more tips:

• Be sure to use the XO’s terminal mode by way of an Activity, something I didn’t do last time.
• Remember to type out FBReader with the FBR capitalized. Linux is case-sensitive.
• You might want to invest in a cheapie USB memory key to pick up files from your PC and also avoid some of the directory hassles of the XO.

Yes, I intend to break things down step by step. I’m still hoping for an FBReader Wiki or other helpful documentation for the less than fully technical; and you can bet that XO instructions will be included.

My conclusions: The XO and FBReader are worthy of each other—now let’s get the programmers on the case

Instead of a formal XO review, I may just focus on spontaneous items like this. Not sure. For now, as an e-book guy, I’ll say I’m damned glad I got the XO.

The hardware goodies are there. What the e-book community needs to do now is lobby the OLPC-oriented programmers to make FBReader a standard app for people who hate PDF, which just could be most of the universe once they’ve seen FBR in action.

The library community should join in. Without the right e-reading software, the XO will not fly as a library machine. PDFs won’t cut it.

Right up front, please

I want FBReader to be right up front within the XO’s Sugar interface, rather than anyone having to mess with the terminal mode (which, however, should be no big deal for the typical TeleBlog reader).

Also, programmers should simplify FBReader for the millions of kids we hope will be using the XO. First, however, the OLPC  community should get the existing app going and integrate it rightly with the OLPC’s browser, just as the PDF-capable reader is. When you download an .epub file via your XO, you should immediately see prompts asking if you want to read, save or do both to the book.

I’m also open to other .epub choices for the XO besides FBReader. But first  let the XO world enjoy FBReader’s customization capabilities, which, by the way, could be still better. Where’s the ability to customize spacing between paragraphs? But that’s a detail. The big point is, we know in the here and now that FBReader works on the XO and is a much more enjoyable reading experience than the existing software for e-books.

Am I the first?

Meanwhile I wonder if I’m the first person in the cosmos to use the XO to display  a book in the .epub format? Go ahead. Brag if you’ve beaten me! Bennett was the first guy—at least to my knowledge—to confirm that FBReader would run on the XO. I’m simply the possible pioneer in getting the XO to display .epub. No big deal if that’s true. I just used existing solutions.