Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 25 of 33 28 March 2010 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
I bought a book a while back which was in a DRM (copyrighted) format, epub. I wanted to change it to PDF or something open but it was IMPOSSIBLE to do it. It was encrypted in such a way that none of the ripping software worked. After a few hours working on it I gave up in disgust and decided not to read that particular book. The reason I wanted to rip it was so I could change the layout to suit parallel reading (for a parallel text in Russian.) |
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PDF is no more better than ePub in that respect. Both have a basic open specification, but both allow optional DRM.
PDF was designed as a format for sending documents to printing companies. It encodes a lot of layout data precisely and specifically, including the size of paper to use and often the full data for drawing the font. It is difficult and slow to process, and makes very large files.
ePub was designed as a format for e-readers. It makes no assumptions about screen size or available fonts, and it encodes just enough information that any reader software can display it clearly and allows the user to choose how to view it (font type, font size etc) without screwing up the display.
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rebrafi Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5337 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, Esperanto, French, English Studies: Italian
| Message 26 of 33 29 April 2010 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
I would like to have one, but they (stiil) aren't so popular in Brazil, so prices are very high.
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rafal Diglot Groupie Poland besmart.pl Joined 6862 days ago 83 posts - 85 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 27 of 33 29 April 2010 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
I bought a book a while back which was in a DRM (copyrighted) format, epub. I wanted to change it to PDF or something open but it was IMPOSSIBLE to do it. It was encrypted in such a way that none of the ripping software worked. After a few hours working on it I gave up in disgust and decided not to read that particular book. The reason I wanted to rip it was so I could change the layout to suit parallel reading (for a parallel text in Russian.)
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You can unDRM EPUBs and PDFs for some time now. See MobileRead forums for some help. (Removing the DRM may or may not be legal in your country.)
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Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6350 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German
| Message 28 of 33 08 May 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged |
I recently bought an iPad here in Hong Kong and so far I think it gives me a far better
value than a normal ebook reader with E-ink. Most e-book readers only have 4GB so you
have to be careful when you have a large quantity of material. I do not have to worry
with my 64GB: even though I have a lot of applications, books and audio on my device I
still have 30GB left. Having colors, being able to underline/bookmark/annotate and
being
able to read PDF in addition to ePub is also a great advantage. Since I can listen to
audio while listening, it makes it even more efficient. I use an app that lets me save
vocabulary while surfing the web or reading books and the app can convert that
vocabulary
into flashcards. In my mind all of these features more than justify the extra $300 the
device costs.
As for the battery life: mine lasts around 12 hours of continuous use. Since I charge
it every night, I never ran out of batteries.
Edited by Asiafeverr on 08 May 2010 at 1:40pm
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5677 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 29 of 33 08 May 2010 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
Asiafeverr wrote:
I recently bought an iPad here in Hong Kong and so far I think it gives me a far better
value than a normal ebook reader with E-ink. |
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I have to agree with you that the iPad is a fantastic device. For consumers of media content (movies, audio, websites, etc) it is a breakthrough.
Your comparison with eInk, though, is a bit of a different matter. Because the iPad has a back-lit display it causes (at least for me) two problems:
- It strains my eyes after a while, whereas with paper books and eInk devices I can read for hours.
- It doesn't work very well outside, since the sun makes the display hard to read. eInk works outside just as well as real paper.
Edited by Splog on 08 May 2010 at 6:03pm
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pingvin10 Groupie Hungary Joined 6286 days ago 68 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Hungarian* Studies: English, German, Spanish, Turkish
| Message 30 of 33 31 October 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged |
Bump.
I'd like to buy an ebook-reader exclusively for my parallel texts (Excel tables, pdfs).
I'm looking for a relatively cheap device with excellent battery life and e-Ink.
Kindle is sympathetic but I'm not sure whether it can handle parallel texts without
scrolling horizontally or the aforementioned formats without much fuss.
Should I buy one with 6", 9.7" or should I neglect Kindle totally and look for other
options?
Any suggetions are welcome,
Thanks.
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5855 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 31 of 33 04 November 2012 at 7:59am | IP Logged |
I don't have an e-reader yet but I wanted to ask whether it is possible to enlarge the font size displayed on the screen because I don't feel so comfortable with reading tiny letters.
Fasulye
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5270 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 32 of 33 04 November 2012 at 12:11pm | IP Logged |
Fasulye wrote:
I don't have an e-reader yet but I wanted to ask whether it is possible to enlarge the font size displayed on the screen because I don't feel so comfortable with reading tiny letters. Fasulye |
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Yes, it is quite easy to increase the font size. It is also possible to read in "landscape" as well as "portrait" mode. E-ink technology is very good at what it does. Where it falls down is when people want a dedicated e-reader to do things for which it is not designed. That's when you need to have a tablet.
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