Utility to format ebook txt to proper width?

brokencase · #1 (**permalink**) 10th Mar 2007, 4:19 pm

Before I go and write one, does anyone know of a utility that will reformat a txt file to nicely fit the screen width of the mp4 player? I think its about 26 chars wide.

lattesurf · #2 (**permalink**) 10th Mar 2007, 5:05 pm

brokencase , none that i know of. It would be great if you could write up a software for doing so.

brokencase · #3 (**permalink**) 10th Mar 2007, 9:58 pm

I found one here:

http://www.woundedmoon.org

Seems to work pretty good.

Additional tips:

In Windows, set up a generic text only printer connected to FILE. You can then print to ascii from most windows apps.

Plenty of free books in ascii format available from project gutenberg.

brokencase · #4 (**permalink**) 10th Mar 2007, 10:31 pm

One more thing. When you run the above utility set the max chars per line to 24 and left margin to zero.

chiclete · #5 (**permalink**) 10th Mar 2007, 10:47 pm

Thanks for sharing this, brokencase.
I don't have a plan to insert a book on my MP4 but I'll download this utility!

speedypear · #6 (**permalink**) 11th Mar 2007, 12:34 am

Thanks a bunch! I have downloaded and will be testing it shortly :-P

...Hurrah! I just tried it on Grimm's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg (thanks brokencase for the tip!) and this little app works wonderfully. Oh and for the 1st generation nano clones, set maximum characters in a line to 14. No hyphenated words at all, YES!

gaboon · #7 (**permalink**) 11th Mar 2007, 6:19 am

brokencase...thx for posting

brokencase · #8 (**permalink**) 11th Mar 2007, 11:48 am

Sorry, forgot the different screen sizes. I must use 24 chars wide on my sunplus based, 2.5 inch display. Other displays sizes will need a different char width.

I notice that my display will show up to 26 characters, but the wordwrap algorithim in the player kicks in at 25 characters, thats why I set it to 24 now.

Chiclete - Would you believe the e-book function was a deciding factor in my buying this player?!

Now, It would be nice if I could find a way to alter the foreground and background colors of the ebook display.

michiganjfrog · #9 (**permalink**) 11th Mar 2007, 1:19 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by brokencase";p=&quot

Sorry, forgot the different screen sizes. I must use 24 chars wide on my sunplus based, 2.5 inch display. Other displays sizes will need a different char width.

I notice that my display will show up to 26 characters, but the wordwrap algorithim in the player kicks in at 25 characters, thats why I set it to 24 now.

Chiclete - Would you believe the e-book function was a deciding factor in my buying this player?!

Now, It would be nice if I could find a way to alter the foreground and background colors of the ebook display.

Thanks mucho, this is the program we all needed. (I asked about something like this quite a while back, but never found a solution). It's 26 characters max for the Glacier's 2.0" screen. Do you know if there's a way to set the parameters you need in one of its text files, instead of having to repeatedly enter them? It does seem to have a setting file in the TEMP directory called "preferences", but I don't see any info about how to change it.

brokencase · #10 (**permalink**) 11th Mar 2007, 4:49 pm

mfrog, The first time you use the program it will ask for the settings you want to use. It will save these settings. The next time you use it just hit 9 and it will use the previous settings.

If you go to the original web site there are instructions on how to set it up to use the "send to"
feature of Explorer. Once configured this way, you can select multiple files in explorer to convert all at once. You need only select "9" once before it starts the batch conversion.