How to read ebooks on any mp4 player - with word wrap!!

[PsyBreaker]

OK, well after alot of trial and error and searching the net (I have alot of spare time on my hands at the moment) I have figured out how make ebooks nice and readable for any mp4 player...

Alot of the cheap players (like my own) seem not to support word wrap.. meaning the words are just broken up all over the place.. making a not very enjoyable reading experience..

So you have a load of ebooks you want to read? The first step is to try this tool: http://www.mympxplayer.org/here-df588.html

If it works for you, great, sadly it doesn't work for me so I had to find another solution.. read on if this is also the case for you..

Two things you need to know about this solution:
1.) the ebook files will be ~ 50mb
2.) If you have a shit player like me it will take about an hour(!?) to transfer the book to your player.. but hopefully it is quicker for you.. it only takes about 5 minutes to make the book though.. then you can do something else while you wait for it to transfer.

The first thing to do is to download the ebook to images tool, this enables you to turn any txt, pdf etc.. into a series of images that can then be read in the image viewer of your mp4 player: http://ebook-to-images.software.informer.com/

Simply install and then find the file that you want to convert into images.. then just select the font size, colour, background colour etc.. and wait a couple of minutes while it turns the whole book into image files that can be read on your player!!!

Here are the settings I have been using to make my books (my player has a 1.8" screen so if yours is a little larger you will need to experiment a little bit):

MP3 Player:
Sandisk
Sansa e200 Series (this is not my player but I have had the best results with this setting)

Screen Width: 128
Screen Height: 160
Image Type: JPG (very important)

Image Tab: Anti-Aliasing ticked.. the rest kept blank

Font Tab: Arial, Size 10, Light Green Text Colour, Black Background

Text Tab: Ignore Trailing Returns ticked

Encoding: Automatic Detection (I'm not really sure what this function is about so if anyone does and wants to let me know that would be appreciated)

Output: 50 Files in Each Folder (This is VERY IMPORTANT as your player won't be able to read the image files if you have more then 99 files in a folder with most models)

Then Just click "Convert to Images" down the bottom and the folders should appear on your desktop, labeled and in order. Now make a folder for the name of your ebook in your player and then copy across (hopefully it doesn't take so long for you!!)

Then just enjoy!!

Hope this helps.. it's not the easiest process but the results are well worth it if you really want ebooks on your player that can be read.

Peace

note: you may need to also number each folder in the folder of your book 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.. so that your player goes through the book in order... only takes a few minutes

[lolita]

Chinese do not know the concept of "word wrap" -- each word is one character.

[PsyBreaker]

Sure I can understand that - but in our culture letters aren't one word, and I want to be able to read my books that way!

Is there anyway you know to add word wrap to the text reader in:

'mp4 digital player' picture here: http://www.mympxplayer.org/image-asp631.html

Firmware:

LSC_91N165V_A2

9.1.53

with Actions chipset ATJ209X/ACU75XX/ATJ2063?

[L337]

Its point-less todo that in that way, because one -ebook will take 50mb, so its just smarter use .txt format, rather than using images >_>

[PsyBreaker]

I disagree, if you read alot of normal books (real physical books) like me, it's just impossible to read an ebook with the words all chopped up all over the place.. it's a short term solution for me anyway as I'll be getting an mp4 player that isn't a piece of shit soon.. hopefully some people will find it helpful though.

If your serious about reading a book on your player you only need one or two on there at a time anyway, as it does take quite a while to read a book.

What's wrong with a book taking 50mb? That's less space then a music CD and it will keep you occupied for longer then a CD does.

If it doesn't work for you though that's cool.. I just found it helpful and thought others might too... :P

[tayloratosu]

I've been fiddling around with the ebook reader on my mp4 player, and here's what I've discovered:

- my player displays 16 characters/line
- it ignores end-of-line characters
- it doesn't ignore extra spaces at the end of a line
- it seems to need some sort of "line reset" every 30 lines or so. Otherwise it drops a character or something.

So, I wrote a quick script (see below) in Linux that formats input text to 16 characters/line with word wrap, pads out short lines with spaces, and inserts a hard-page character (control-L) after every thirtieth line. Seems to work very nicely so far.

Sorry, this is strictly for Linux (and maybe for Cygwin under Windows). Maybe someone could write a quickie Windows program that would do the same thing? Requires awk, sed, and fold.

A couple of notes:
- Copy the text below and paste it into a text editor. I call mine format_small.sh. Save it and make it executable. (chmod u+x format_small.sh)
- This script is a pipe. Run it like this:
./format_small.sh[list=1]newfile
- the first sed line changes all tabs to single spaces. The thing between the first two slashes should be a tab character, not a space.
- the second sed line removes all leading spaces.
- the fold command reformats the lines to <= 16 char, with word wrap
- in the awk program, the SPACES variable is sixteen spaces.
- in the awk program, the CONTROL_L variable is a real control-L. In vi, you put it in by typing control-V control-L

Here's the script:
sed 's/ / /g' | \
sed 's/^ *//' | \
fold -w 16 -s | \
awk 'BEGIN {SPACES=" ";
CONTROL_L="^L";
MAXCOUNT=30;
COUNT=0;
}
{print substr($0 SPACES,1,16);
COUNT=COUNT+1;
if (COUNT == 30) {
print CONTROL_L;
COUNT=0;
}
}'

[freddyzdead]

Hmm...interesting.

I can't really see turning your txt file into pictures just to make it word wrap as being a good solution.

I don't really mind the quirky line wrapping all that much after I got sort of accustomed to it. I never really got used to it totally but got pretty good at picking up the rest of the word on the next line without missing a beat.

My new RK27.. player has more smarts and doesn't wrap in the middle of words, but when you advance a page, the new page has some of the previous page at the top, sometimes as much as half.

I'm basically okay with that, as they seem to have done a pretty good job at addressing the myriad faults in the 26 Rockchip series. Nearly every one of the previously irritating features has been fixed to varying degrees.

The only thing I don't like about the new one is that it lacks a physical power switch and it can often be in "sleep" mode rather than in "off" mode, in which case it flattens the battery very quickly. Also, the txt files were superimposed on a desktop pattern which badly affected readability. There was no option for no background at all, so I had to add a black desktop to those available, and change the text to white.

The result is that I have loaded the player up with tons of ebooks and use it all the time for reading where I used to use the Pocket PC, which is much larger and has poorer battery life.

[hermyjack]

PsyBreaker, I thought you had an interesting idea with converting the files into images. I have no better solution, so don't let anyone get you down unless they can provide a better solution, k?

I haven't tried the image idea, but I might just do it soon. I work with Linux some, so I might also try tayloratosu's idea.