Book (MicroBook or "you"-Book) is an HTML / PDB / PRC / RTF / PML / RB / TXT reader that lets you read e-books the way you like them. The viewing window can be of any size, which will affect the number of pages. It remembers the last page read for each book, the last book read and a list of previously read books. Additional Annotations and Bookmarks can be added and reached easily. Annotations can be imported from / exported to external files. The history of books read can be traversed backward or forward (like in a web browser).
Book offers many Options for customization of fonts, colours and skins. The display can be set to Portrait or Landscape mode, the latter mostly practical on handheld devices.
Book offers the possibility to change its appearance using templates called Skins. A few simple ones are distributed with Book, more are available on the web site, but it is also easy to create new skins.
Book comes with a Library manager. It lets you associate Icons and Text Information with any file. A classic use would be to put the Book Cover as Icon and the Author or Version as added text. Up to 30 pieces of text can be associated with any file. Book can automatically scan and build Icons for any given Folder.
Book can also decompress on demand documents in ZIP and CHM compressed archive files. Those files are handled the same way as directories in Book's file Browser document.
Book also has a text search function and generates an automatic Table of Contents for each book that is opened. It looks for keywords like "CHAPTER", "PART" or numerals, including roman numerals. The building criteria can be customized.
Book offers different sizes of smooth fonts with contrast adjustment to allow a pleasant reading experience. JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP pictures in or out of HTML, PML, PRC, RB and RTF documents are handled (as well as embedded WMF bitmaps in RTF files). Images Zooming and Panning is available. If there is an image in the same folder as the file being read that seems relevant, it will be considered as the "Book Cover" and shown as such.
Optionally, if an image is selected, a Slide Show document of all the images in the same Folder is displayed, one per page, starting at the page of the selected image. You can move around the Slide Show the same way as you would in a normal book.
If you like reading without having to touch your computer (instead of texting while driving for example...) Book offers an Auto-Scrolling mode where new lines of text are added to the screen at a configurable interval, in fractional seconds or based on your words-per-minute reading skill.
Hyperlinks in HTML or PRC are handled as long as the destination remains local (i.e. somewhere inside the local computer/network, no network security holes here).
Book comes with a very simple dictionary (based on the Webster of 1913, every word not in "Of Mice and Men" stripped out...). Better dictionaries can easily be built or downloaded.
Book caches pagination files to the local disk to allow quick reopening of books. Book is small and requires little resources.
To open a file you must first access the Main menu. There you can either go into the Recent Files sub-menu to find the most recently viewed files or select Open... to bring up file open dialog. A Browser document to select a file is also available.
When a document is selected for the first time, you quickly see the first page and/or cover, then you see the page count increase as Book pre-paginates the book internally. You can start reading right away. You just can't reach pages beyond those already paginated (Note that on fast Computers, Pagination time is sometimes barely noticeable).
When the viewing window is resized, the same process takes place, but the document isn't available until the page that was currently read (or close to it) is reached.
The viewing area is divided into two sections: text and control. Text is where the book contents appears while control is used to move around and to show page numbering. The control part is divided into several zones. There is usually an easy 'sign' or logo to click to reach the Main menu. If the time is available in the current skin, clicking on it will open the quick-skin menu, where you can alternate between your favourite skins (i.e. if you have one for night-time reading and one for day-time reading.)
Optionally, two arrow signs are used to move Backward and Forward in the document history, two other arrow signs are used to move between Annotations and two more arrow signs are used to move between Sections in the generated Table of Contents. All these buttons are different in position and look, depending on the skin in use.
If the skin in use doesn't have the usual Windows™ border, there will be signs that are hot zones for Maximizing or Minimizing Book (Or on Pocket PCs to lower or raise the window to access the Start Menu).
The space, on either left or right of the page number, is a page move zone. Clicking once on the left will move back one page, and clicking on the right will move forward one page. A Keyboard or a Keypad can also be used to move around a book.
Another way to move around the text is by using the Text search function.
i-Books or images book are made-up of only images. These images will normaly be scanned text or illustrated literature (i.e. comic books).
Book simplifies reading i-Books by allowing it's content to be virtually cut into small pieces which will be re-arranged later a reading time.
Imagine a three-columns-and-pictures scan of a newspaper article. With Book you can quickly create zones for each column and/or each line as well as zones for each pictures. When playing it back, each page will be created by filling it with only as many 'text' lines as is possible.
To simplify the process Book offers automated mode that can split all pages automatically based on (near) empty rows of pixels.
Book uses it's annotations Import/Export... mecanism to create a file that is the template for replaying (i.e. reading) the i-Book. For more information, see also Slide-Show / i-Book Menu and Example of i-Book creation.
If a Keyboard is available, the following Key Shortcuts are defined (see also Cursor and Touch Modes):
Additionally, if inside the Browser:
Alternately, if in Auto-Scroll mode:
Several Cursor and Touch Modes are available. Cursor modes affect how the ARROW KEYS can be used to move around inside the text, to make annotations or follow links. Touch modes affect how Book reacts to a stylus or finger tap or a mouse click.
You can toggle through all Cursor modes with the TAB key (or SHIFT-TAB to cycle through backward). On Handlheld units TAB and SHIFT-TAB can be each assigned to one of the four buttons.
When over the desired item, press the Center Button (or Enter Key); a specific control overlays will appear, from which you can execute different actions.
When changing cursor mode, an Indicator appears briefly:
Touch modes can be set from the Tools menu (a tab in the main menu). Select the touch icon in the Tools menu to have a quick peek at the layout for Pages or Cursor modes. The Touch modes are:
Menus are available by clicking on specific marks on the viewing area. See the Reading a book section for more details. Note that depending on the skin used, menu marks can be different in look and position.
The Main menu is available by clicking the Book logo, on the viewing area. Depending on the overlay used, the following items could be placed in different layouts. Overlays can be selected from the Skins... page. The default menu offers three tabs:
Book keeps a history of the last 64 locations (document and page) when moving around with Hyperlinks, Annotations or Changing Documents. By selecting Back you can go back to the most recent one. By selecting Forward, if the Back button was previously used and no user interaction created new entries in the history, you can go forward in the history log.
This item lets you enter the Auto-Scrolling mode, where lines of text are added one by one to the screen at a configurable rate. All Forward / Backward zones can be used, while in Auto-Scroll mode, to increase / decrease the scrolling speed. Clicking anywhere on the screen will pause auto-scrolling and bring a menu offering the choice to Resume or Stop auto-scrolling.
This shows the cover image. This entry is shown only if a Cover is available (i.e. there must be an image file within the same folder as the current text. If there's more than one, the most appropriate one is used, i.e. containing the word "cover", "front", or having the same name as the text file.)
When the cover is displayed just click on it to access the Image Zoom/Pan menu.
Brings up the Quick Open page to select a file.
Brings up the list of most recently viewed books. Just select one and it will be reopened and reset to where you were, when it was closed last. The number of entries can be customized in the Options... General Section.
Brings up the Quick Font selection page.
When a book is divided into multiple parts (i.e. files), this allow forward and backward navigation through the ordered parts.
Exits Book.
Brings up the advanced Browser Document to select a file to open.
Brings up the Options Document that displays the current state of options and offers alternative choices for configuration.
Shows this document.
Lets you move quickly to the first or last page of a document.
This opens a number entry dialog where you can type in the page number where you want to go. Enter the page number then hit OK or Enter on the keyboard.
When a Table of Contents is available these functions let you jump to the first page of the next or previous entry in the TOC. The page number of the Previous or Next section is also displayed beside the entry in the menu, which is often the only information required.
This moves you to the automatically generated Table of Contents for the current document. See also Table of Contents Criteria for Automatic Creation and Annotations Menu for information about manually adding TOC entries.
When Annotations have been created, these functions let you jump to the first page of the next or previous entry. The page number of the Previous or Next section is also displayed beside the entry in the menu.
This opens the Annotations Summary document of all the Annotated and Bookmarked text in the current document. See the Annotations Menu for information about creating them.
These let move through all the illustrations in a text.
This opens the Illustrations Summary document of all Images in the current document.
This opens an alphanumerical entry dialog where case insensitive text can be entered. Enter what you want to search for then hit OK. The page will be updated to show the first occurrence of the searched string. The found text is shadowed with the Search Colour.
Afterward you can select Find Next or Find Previous to go to the next occurrence in the text. When a search is active, the Next / Previous Mark zones on the current skins will be displayed in Search Colour and will serve as trigger for the Find Next and Find Previous functions.
This opens an alphanumerical entry dialog where case insensitive text can be entered. Enter what you want to lookup for then hit OK. The page will be updated to show the best matching dictionary definition.
Shows Book title / version / copyright and license information.
Lets you Minimize or Maximize Book's Window. If the window is already Minimized or Maximized, the window can be Restored to its normal size by selecting the reverse function.
Brings up the quick skins/overlays selector page. If the time is available in the current skin, clicking on it will open this menu too.
The Image Zoom/Pan menu is available by selecting a new or annotated area in an image. It allows for zooming, panning and annotating the image. If an image is zoomed, a coloured border will appear (in Selection colour). It's a quick indicator that some visual information is missing.
When selecting an existing annotation, this will let you delete it.
When selecting an existing annotation, this will let you attach text to it.
This lets you create an annotation out of the selected area. These highlights can also be seen in sub-views in .UBD files (see i-Book).
This allows defining a sub-area of the image. The defined cell can be annotated, used for zooming and to create a sub-view of an image for an i-Book.
This goes to the Zoom / Pan page.
This allows you to zoom to the whole view or in and out by 66% for every step.
This lets you to pan in the appropriate direction, by 10% for every step.
The Slide-Show / Cell Edit menu is avaible by clicking the a link at the top right of every Slide-Show page. It contains helper function to create i-Books. See Example of i-Book creation for more information.
When 'All' this item denotes that the following actions will be applied to all pages instead of only the current one. Note that when a multi-page action is started, clicking anywhere on the display or hitting any key will bring up a dialog offering to Stop or Resume the action.
This item denotes the order in which any columns created will be numbered, and also be replayed.
When selected, this will scan the current page/all pages to create Strip (horizontal cells) or Columns (vertical cells) based on (near) empty rows found on the image. If any cell already exists on a page, only those will be scanned for sub-cutting. The + Columns and + Strip items force a second pass in the other direction on the created cells.
So for a Comic Book, doing Strips then Columns (or Strips + Columns) will normaly creates a good set of cell for replay. For text in column form, doing Columns then Strips (or Columns + Strips) will yield a good result.
When selected, this will destroy all cells on current page/all pages.
This is a shortcut that is the equivalent of going to the Document Summary, Exporting and then selecting the created .UBD file for replay.
Creating Annotations, Bookmarks or TOC Sections is easy; just Select a range of characters, an existing annotation or double-click on any word and a menu will open:
Copy the selected range of text to the clipboard.
Deletes the selected annotation.
Enter/view/edit text associated with the selection.
Bookmarks the selection.
Adds solid Highlight Background to the selection.
Adds the selection as a section in the Table of Contents.
Strikes through the selection.
Looks up the selected text in the active Dictionary.
Triggers a search for the selected text.
Note that if you want to select text that starts or ends on an hyperlink, you should hold the SHIFT key, which will prohibit the system from following the hyperlink.
The Browser is the navigator for your collection of e-books. It displays the list of Sub-Folders, Compressed Archives, Books and Images in the current Folder. All are displayed as hyperlinks. Directly select the desired file or Folder by clicking on the appropriate link.
For quick access, a Section List with alphabetical index can be displayed at the top of the Browser Document. You can Show or Hide any section, by clicking on the checkbox in its header.
If the Library is activated, Each Entry (except Folders) can have an associated Icon, which is a reduced version of any selected image. Each entry can also display user-defined piece of text (up to 30) like Author, Version, etc...
ZIP and CHM files can be opened through the browser. In fact, they are considered directory-like and can even be nested, i.e. CHM inside ZIP inside ZIP...
You can also add the current Folder to a list of (up to 6) favourite Folders. They are listed at the beginning of the Folder section. Use the tag, to add the Folder to the favourites and the link, to remove one from the list.
Options affecting the Browser and Library look and behaviour, can be found at the bottom of the last page.
When in the Browser, the Next / Previous Mark zones lets you move to the next / previous missing icons in the current directory.
These options are available only in advanced mode.
Lets you select a different font size for the Browser, than the one for normal reading (Set in the Options Document).
This forces the browser to show All Files, or Known Books and Images files.
When active, Book automatically opens the first text found when a compressed folder is selected.
When active, these options add an extra line below each file to show its current size and last modification date.
If long file names mapping isn't required, (i.e. no files on CD-ROM are accessed) this option should be disabled to speed-up Book's file access. See Map / Unmap below.
This function lets you reduce file names to 64 characters, so that book collections can be easily burned onto CD-ROMs. File names larger than 64 characters, are reduced to 56 characters plus a hash number. A uBook.map file is created in the selected base folder (all sub-folders are done at the same time). The function to undo the mapping is available. The mapped name is invisible to Book, which will still show the original name (as long as the uBook.map file isn't moved or destroyed). Note that uBook.map can also be renamed uBook.bat and executed to restore files to their original name.
Note that if two map files are in the path, only the closest one to a file will be checked.
These options are available only in advanced mode.
Depending on the state of activation of the Current Folder, Options from the following set will be available:
If Hidden, the Browser doesn't associate or show any Icons or Text alongside entries. Once Shown, a Folder must be Prepared for Icons and Text to be visible. Once prepared, Icons are shown to the left of a File and defined Text Fields are shown under it.
Prepare, enables the Library for the current folder. All files will be "scanned" and the most appropriate Icon will be digitized and associated with it. A uBook.ubi file is created in the first writable directory found in the current path (i.e. if inside a ZIP or CHM file, the uBook.ubi file will be created in the folder where the ZIP or CHM file is located). Once Prepared, Icons and Text can be edited. Before preparing, it is suggested that you check the other available options, in order to set your preferences.
Update lets you re-scan the current folder, to find Icons for newly added files. Re-Digitize will recreate the Icons. It is useful, if you have changed the original Image file or the Size or Quality of Icons (see below). Clear, lets you disable the Library for the current Folder. Note that clearing will delete all Text Fields associated with Files in this folder.
When Editing, available entries will be shown below the file name at the right of the Icon.
For Icons, they are Link and Image. Link is the file that will be opened if the user clicks on the Icon and Image is the source Image from which the Icon was digitized. When the Folder is first prepared, Link will be automatically filled based on the New Icons Link to File or Image option below.
For Info, the fields are text associated with the file and (if different) the Info fields defined (see below) are shown with hyperlinks, allowing their value to be edited.
You can always select the , to remove or disable a field.
If Sub-Folder Icons are shown, under each Folder there will be one or more rows of Icons, one for each file in the Folder. These Icons are Shown in the Size, currently selected for the current Folder.
The "Save" link will let you save a text list of all the icons missing. The file is saved in the parent directory to the current one, with the name directory-missing-icons.txt.
The Previous / Next Mark... can be used to move through missing icons and/or sub-folders not "prepared". The latter will have a "Prepare" link shown, instead of a list of Icons.
Here you can select the Digitizing or Display size of Icons, as well as the Digitizing Quality (low quality equals small memory use, and vice-versa) of Icons. Once an Icon has been digitized, if the Size here is changed, at display time the Icon will be stretched or shrunk, according with the new Size. Re-Digitizing (see above) can be used to apply the new Size and recreate the Icon, so that no additional stretching or shrinking is required (dynamic stretching or shrinking is slower and can diminish the output quality).
Based on these settings, when a folder is Prepared, new Icons will be linked with the Image used or the File it is associated with.
This lets you set a template of Editable Text Fields that can be associated with a File.
The Options Document displays the current state of options, and offers alternative choices for configuration. Select Back in the menu, to return to the previously viewed document.
Most of these options are available only in advanced mode.
For quick access, a Table of Contents is displayed at the top of the Options Document. You can Show or Hide any section, by clicking on the checkbox in its header.
This toggles lets you use Book in easy (most options have good defaults) or advanced mode, where lots can be configured more to your liking.
This shows the options available for Book's fonts.
Lets you select between Smooth and Sharp fonts. Smooth fonts appear rounder and more blended while Sharp fonts, the normal Windows™ fonts, gives a better contrast with the background. Note that if a Sharp font cannot be located, a smooth replacement font will be used instead.
Lets you select between the Grey, RGB and RGB-X engines. If RGB or RGB-X (recommended) is selected, a few more options will appear.
Based on your display, you should set the orientation of the RGB matrix. Most CRTs are Left / Right. Most LCDs are Left / Right too, except some iPaq Pocket PCs which are Up / Down. If you use a rotation on the display, you will need to relatively update the RGB orientation. In the case of RGB-X, only Left or Right is available, and on some iPaq, will require Landscape reading, so that Left / Right is done on the Up / Down RGB matrix.
Characters outline can be improved on some display, by tweaking these values. They defined how each RGB sub-pixel is combined with its neighbours, to create the final RGB value. 3, 2 and 1 being the default. On Some LCDs, 5, 2 and 1 work well too.
For Smooth fonts only, this lets you apply a contrast factor. Depending on your colour choices, this can help the visual definition of fonts. The only way to find out is to try...
Lets you select the default font for text rendering. By clicking on the or links, new fonts available on the local machine can be digitized to or removed from Book's list of fonts.
Lets you select the default reading font size. For the current selection, three more options are available:
Lets you select the Height of the font in pixels. In the case of Sharp and RGB-X, if the source font isn't available on the current platform, (which is the case on Pocket PCs for the basic distribution fonts, Times, Arial and Courier) a smooth replacement font will be used and a warning will be visible below these Options.
Lets you increase or decrease (with the little arrows) the extra bolding applied to characters of this size.
Lets you increase or decrease (with the little arrows) the extra spacing between characters of this size.
The Sample lines give a preview of what the text looks like with the current options.
The Indent size, the space at the left of the first character of a Paragraph, can be set here. Either in fixed Pixel number or relative to the page width. Changing one will affect the other.
The Interline size, the extra space between rows of characters, can be set here; either in fixed Pixel number or relative to the current line height. The defaults are 4 pixels or 1/5 of the current line. Changing one will enable it, and reset the other method to its default.
This shows the options available for Book's viewing area.
This lets you change the orientation of the display. It is mainly useful for Handheld devices and the RGB-X mode.
Lets you Blank the remaining space around Book's window for a less distracting reading.
Lets you select between Book (Skin) or Windows™ menus. Book menus are adapted to the display orientation while Windows™ are not.
This lets you hide Annotations on the page. If Shown, a list of all Annotations Type is given so that each type can be turned on or off independently. See Annotations Menu for more information about Annotations.
This shows the options available for Book's colour customization.
This opens the standard Windows™ colour selection dialog (or a simple manual entry RGB dialog on Palm-Sized PCs) where you can select a colour for the desired item. Background and Text are the main page colours. Link is for HTML / PRC Hyperlinks. Separator applies to the shaded colour shown under section header in the Options, Browser and Help documents. Highlight and Selection applies to Annotations. Search applies to the result of the Text search function.
Restores all colours to what the current skin's manufacturer thought were enjoyable colours.
Let's you select images contrast in a scale from 0 to 32.
Let's you select images Gamme Correction (form of brightness) in a scale from 0.3 to 3.0.
Let's you select the level of Yellow Correction to apply to images, from 0 (none) to 3.
When Enabled, if an image is selected, a Slide Show document of all the images in the same Folder is displayed, one per page, starting at the page of the selected image. You can move around the Slide Show the same way as a paper book. When Disabled, only the selected image is shown, and no movement, except "close", is available.
Let's you apply a maximum zoom to Slide-Show and .UBD images. The zoom will be based on the source image / cell width and height and the available drawing area on the page.
Skins
Here you'll also find the list of available Skins. Just select a skin and it will become the active skin for Book. Note that once a skin is selected, some skin specific options will be shown underneath, if it has any.
See the Spaced.usk skin for details on how to create your own skins. Skin files (*.usk) can be edited using notepad or wordpad.
Here you'll also find the list of available Dictionaries. Just select a dictionary and it will become active, i.e. the destination of any Lookup query. You can also access the Table of Contents of the dictionary (if any) by selecting the (Content) link beside it.
When in Single mode, any invocation of Book will replace the previous one. In Multiple mode, a second (or subsequent) window will be opened.
These options allow you to associate a Book function with one of the Hardware Button on a portable unit.
To limit the amount of disk space used, Book keeps information for a limited amount of books. This limit can be set by the user. Note that when setting up your Library, it's possible that you will open many files, which might mean that Annotations and Options for some older file might be destroyed.
Lets you select between 1 and 16 to be the number of entries to keep in the Recent Files sub-menu.
When Enabled, if a cover exists, it will be displayed every time a book is opened.
When enabled, if the mouse button or stylus is held longer on the page move zones, the full window becomes a sliding pad where you can move quickly in the book by moving the cursor or stylus left and right far or near from the starting point, to increase or decrease the moving speed and direction.
When enabled, the text selection is done in between clicking the mouse button and releasing it. The selection is then limited to the current page. When disabled, the selection is done with two mouse clicks, one to select the first character and another, anywhere in the book, to select the end character.
If a clock is visible on the current skin, it will display hours based on the 24h European format of the 12h American format.
This Option lets you chose between two delay methods between auto-scrolled lines: Fixed or Words-per-Minute. In Fixed mode you can enter the delay in decimal seconds, while in Words-per-Minute you can enter your reading speed.
These Options affect the look of the currently viewed document. Once a good set of options are defined, they can be Saved as Default, which means that newly opened books will use these options. Alternatively, the current book options can be reset to the saved one by Loading Defaults. The same process can be used for specific File Types, by selecting the second set of Load / Save functions (i.e. Save as HTML Defaults / Load HTML Defaults).
Depending on the type of document, Options are:
It is possible that some PRC, HTML or other file is really formatted as a Plain Text or HTML file. Forcing the use of the Plain Text or HTML parser should make them more readable.
By selecting one of these items, the HTML, PML, PRC or RTF parser will ignore any font name, absolute size or colour it finds in the text. It allows the use of your own choices, all through the text.
Some RTF files have formatting commands that make text look less like a book. By ignoring those commands, the text might end up having better margins and justification.
Some TXT or PDB documents are already well formatted for reading. This option allows the turn-off of Book "intelligent" paragraph detection algorithm.
Some TXT or PML documents need to reset styles at the end of paragraphs and others don't.
Some MS-DOS formatted text use a different characters set, which causes accented characters to show wrongly. Turn this option on or off if that is the case.
Some TXT documents use *, _ and / as escape characters to toggle Bold and Italic text on or off. Turn this option on, to recognize and show these styles.
Some RTF or TXT files, especially when they come out of an OCR program, often have no defined paragraph but are merely a series of lines. By turning this option on, about 60 to 70% of those lines will be combined into paragraphs, improving the reading enjoyment with Book. Note that the first few pages, which are often title pages and table of contents, might look worse but the rest of the text should be better. The only way to find out is to try...
Some HTML files do not have spaces between italic and normal text, which makes them harder to read. By enabling this option, an extra space will be inserted whenever the style changes from/to italic.
Some Documents, like Plays, read better if there is an extra space between paragraphs. You can use this option to force that extra space.
Some Documents, have faults in them which cause the text to show up all centered. If this is the case, turn on this option.
If you don't like justified paragraphs, you can disable them with this option. By using Left Aligned Paragraphs your eyes travel less. On the other hand, Justified Paragraphs look better. It's a matter of preferences.
This section allows the customization of criteria used to generate a book Table of Contents. There are Seven default criteria and a way to add more. Criteria are made of three parameters. A state ON or OFF , a matching mode (Starting with, Ending with, Containing or Is) and the matching text. The Seven default criteria are slightly different. While the first three can be used to match numerals, (numerical, roman or textual) the last four can be used to match any Bold, Italic, Bold-Italic or Underlined text.
New criteria can be added by clicking on the link and they can afterward be removed by clicking on the link on their right.
The Summary Document has four sub-sections: Table of Contents, Table of Illustrations, Annotations and Export/Import....
The Table of Contents is first built automatically, based on user-defined Criteria. The created table can be increased by manually selecting text and annotating it as Section. Alternately, from the Table of Contents, items can be removed by selecting the link on their right.
Each item in the Table is a link to the listed Section in the main document.
The Table of Illustrations list all images in the main document. For each Illustration it will list annotations made to it, with the possibility to delete any of them by selecting the link on their right.
Each item in the Table is a link to the listed Image in the main document.
The Annotation section has the same presentation as the Table of Contents, but also offers a filter to enable or disable the listing of annotations by type. There are two ways to export this list; either by copying the content of the PGN/uBook_books.ini file ,(which contains annotations for every book) or by selecting the whole section (from the A in Annotations to the - in the last underlighted line) and Copying it to the clipboard, then pasting it in your favourite editor.
The Import/Export section let's you select the sections of the Summary Document you want to export to, import from, or sync with an external file.
The external file is created by finding the first writeable directory in the document path, and adding a .UBD extension to the file name.
Once created, the .UBD file can then be replayed as a document itself. It will show exported annotations and cell images. Playing a .UBD file is not the same as importing it back. See i-Book section for more details.
Here's an example on how to quickly create/read an i-Book. Let's start with a directory or zip file containing all scanned images out of a comic book YOU OWN. First, make sure the slide-show mode is enabled. Then using the Browser open the directory and select the first image of your set. A slide-show of all images, one per page, should appear. On each page at the top right corner there's a a symbol. This is the link to the i-Books quick creation menu. Open it. Make sure that the All Pages option is checked (). For a Manga you might want to checked the Right to Left option.
Now click the Auto Strips+C menu item and watch the progress indicator. At any time you can stop the process by clicking anywhere on the screen or any key on the keyboard.
Once it is finished, you can either select Export+Play, or go to Table of Illustrations and quickly verify if any pages show an unusual number of cells (high or low) before heading for the Export section at the end. If any page needs to be redone or manually adjusted, just click on the image link.
There, either manualy edit cells or De-select the All Pages option and do a Delete All. Then either use the Auto Strip option, Auto Column option or manualy create cells. Afterward head back to the Table of Illustrations. There you can export to the UBD file then click on the UBD file to start 'replay'.
Note that comic books where the old rules of having white (or black) spaces between cells isn't respected anymore will not auto-generate cells very well. See the next section on how to customized the .UBD files to add to your reading enjoyment.
The .UBD file format contains tags to recreate or replay all forms of annotations that can be done in Book. It allows basic HTML tags for any extra cosmetic text formatting.
Once created, a .UBD file can be replayed in Book to view these annotations, an in the case of i-Books all the individual cells that were created (as long as the source image is still accessible).
UBD files can be manually edited to add features, like links and master views, etc... Here's a run down of the extra tags unique to UBD files (more to come):
Here's an example on how I have set-up my own e-Books Library. First using Windows™, I have created the following folder and file hierarchy:
By painstakingly searching on the internet, I found JPG images of cover for these books, which I have then added in the zip files. Then I went in each Author folder and 'Prepared' it (as a shortcut, I use 's' on the keyboard). Note that if an image has some keywords like 'cover' or 'front' in its name, it will be selected before any other image file. Once this was done, I went back to the category folder, i.e. Crime, and selected the Show Sub-Folders Icons option. Since my Collection is slightly bigger than what is shown here, I then changed the Icon Size in the Crime folder to be 32 by 48 instead of 64 by 96, the default. No need to re-digitize, because the Icons are not Hosted in the Crime Folder, but in the Author Sub-Folder. Now I can see my whole Crime collection at once (well, at least on a few pages). Next, I am going to go back, and for each book (using Edit Info) I will add Version Information (1.0, 1.1 etc...) based on the Guttenberg catalogue.
Here's some answers to commonly asked questions :
Your copy of Book is not licensed or the license file wasn't installed properly.
The explanation is probably:
The link is an external URL (i.e. on the Internet, as opposed to the local machine or network) and that is not allowed / handled by Book. The link refers to a file or destination that cannot be located by Book. The link destination is on the current page.
Why does it crash on this one text ?
It is possible that some text uses some form of HTML, PML or RTF unknown to Book and in some cases, make it crash. Also in HTML files some tables are not handled correctly in Book; if that is case they should be turned off (Advanced Options, Parser). If it happens, it would be appreciated if you could send us a bug report with a link or a zipped copy of the file (ensuring first that no copyright is violated by the distribution of such file). Please e-mail report to: info@gowerpoint.com
The PGN directory contains pagination files for each opened text. The PF1 directory contains Book font files. The uBook_books.ini file keeps tracks of bookmarks, options and current page for all your books. On the Windows™ version of Book, if the PF2 files are deleted they will be regenerated at the beginning of the next run. On Pocket PC or Handheld PC they SHOULD not be deleted. Windows™ PF2 files can be copied to Pocket PC or Handheld PC versions.
You are probably viewing an HTML, PML or RTF file that has one or many of these settings forced. To override this, go to the Options document and select Ignore on the items you want overridden.
Go to the www.GowerPoint.com web site. There you will find a list of legal sources.
Book supports only "non-secure/non-encrypted" files.
It also doesn't support the iSilo PDB format.
All the available instructions are in SKINS/Spaced.usk which is a readable text file. Note that basic programmation skills help, but are not required.
Go to the www.GowerPoint.com web site in the Download section and download the sample RAR and BMP dll package. A C compiler is required.
A dictionary is a zip file (with no sub-directories) containing:
a 000.html which is a table of contents (accessible from Options... Dictionary (Content)) a series of XXX-YYY.html files (XXX can be changed to more or less characters) The YYY is exclusive, while the XXX is inclusive, so the YYY of a file is the XXX of the next one (ex. Agu-Any.html, Any-Aud.html). Then each definition in the file must be enclosed by a <DF> ... </DF> pair of tags. That's all. You can examine the "Webster 1913 - Small.zip" file for more details. Note that '-' are removed from lookup word and definition word for match-up (only.) Note also that last file must have something like "ZZZ" as YYY, so that the YYY is exclusive. How does Book search? First the first (composite) word is extracted from the selection. Then based on the first 3 characters (or else, depending on the active dictionary) the appropriate file is selected (i.e. if word is Ajar, the Agu-Any.html file is selected). Then the file is quickly scanned to find the word or the closest match (i.e. the best left sub-string match possible, or a word just before where the word would be in the dictionary). The file is then opened as a document, the appropriate page is selected and the definition selected is highlighted (using the "Find..." highlighting.) Why multi-files instead of a big one? For pagination sake. Paginating a 4 meg file takes too long.
There seems to be inconsistency between unicode and non-unicode version of PPCs and HPCs. Open uBook.ini file and locate:
CLIPBOARD_UNICODE=n
Where if n is 0, change it to 1 or vice-versa.
The RGB-X settings are probably not set according to your display orientation.
Everything was (almost) fine until RAR 3.0. Although an awesome compression scheme, it is HEAVY on memory for extraction (a meg at least!) plus because of some new filtering, the byte at a time easily done with the ZIP module couldn't be reproduced with RAR, meaning the need to decompress whole files before accessing them. Not efficient for portable unit with not that much speed and memory. In comparison, the Zip module takes less than 64k memory and can go on for megs and megs without ever needing more memory. The uBook SDK on the web site has the source code for the RAR 2.6 and below.
Book supports Latin-1, Western character sets. Unicode isn't supported in this release. There are, however, a few font sets that will allow the mapping of extra characters within the Latin-1 range. Links for such Cyrilic (Russian) and Polish fonts is available on the web site.