Ebooks - Text to HTML Converter

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:07 pm

The Archos 605 was obviously never intended to be used an EBook reader. Nevertheless I have been trying to do just that, with some success. I have been taking public domain books from Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg and other similar sites and converting them to HTML which can be read on the Archos browser.

To make the books readable I have been adjusting the text size, relinking the chapters and saving them as HTML. The only problem is that the process has been labor intensive.

Today I came across a standalone utility that converts ebooks in text format to ebooks in HTML. It is Text to HTML 2.5. It is shareware. Free to try. $17 to buy.

It is fast and designed specifically for converting ebooks. It looks for the book chapters and breaks them up into HTML files all linked backed to a Table of Contents. Really slick.

fischju · Post by **fischju** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:11 am

But.....CutePDF allows you to print directly from notepad into a .pdf in 2 steps: download and made pdf. And it works perfectly.

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:22 am

fischju wrote:But.....CutePDF allows you to print directly from notepad into a .pdf in 2 steps: download and made pdf. And it works perfectly.

Have you actually tried using the pdf reader? The Archos PDF reader is so slow I fall asleep between page turns. It just doesn't work as a ebook reader.

Dragonstar · Post by **Dragonstar** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:24 am

The Archos pdf reader is... well... CRAP, for reading ebooks with many pages and chapters. It is too slow, never remembers where you left off. (aka bookmarking). Did I mention it is slow!

That is why converting to a pdf is useless.

fischju · Post by **fischju** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:37 am

I've read a couple of full books with it, a plain .txt converted takes maybe 5 seconds to turn a page, and has a fast way to go to a specific page.....and did I mention that you don't have to pay $30?

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 1:10 am

fischju wrote:I've read a couple of full books with it, a plain .txt converted takes maybe 5 seconds to turn a page, and has a fast way to go to a specific page.....and did I mention that you don't have to pay $30?

So to read an average book you wait a half an hour for the pages to turn? And that is OK with you? HTML is so much faster and I have much greater control on font size.

Your time is obviously worth less than mine. Of course, I always planned to buy the browser so the marginal cost is zero anyway.

fischju · Post by **fischju** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 2:16 am

Here is an oh so helpful tip: TURN THE PAGE 5 SECONDS BEFORE YOU ARE DONE READING IT.

By the time you are done, next page is up. 0 lost time. Also it is much easier to make, and you save 4 hours of labor for $30.

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 2:26 am

fischju wrote:By the time you are done, next page is up. 0 lost time. Also it is much easier to make, and you save 4 hours of labor for $30.

LOL. Well if you want to put up with that nonsense, that is your issue.

And I guess you didn't read my post. I would have bought the browser anyway so its additional cost to me when reading an ebook is exactly zero.

fischju · Post by **fischju** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 2:31 am

Well, I read this post:

To make the books readable I have been adjusting the text size, relinking the chapters and saving them as HTML. The only problem is that the process has been labor intensive.

Today I came across a standalone utility that converts ebooks in text format to ebooks in HTML. It is Text to HTML 2.5. It is shareware. Free to try. $17 to buy.

Hmm.........

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 2:36 am

The purpose of my post was to provide a link to a conversion that was not labor intensive. I guess you missed that.

The unregistered version of the software is free and there is no time limit on how long you use it.

papaclio · Post by **papaclio** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 5:40 pm

Rick

Is this the program I would need to work on my MAC ?

http://www.download3k.com/System-Utilit ... 2tags.html

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 8:46 pm

I don't know. Not the one I used but it looks interesting. Why not give it a try and report back.

secretsubscriber · Post by **secretsubscriber** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:33 pm

Sorry I'm not adding anything to the original topic of the post. But in terms of the PDF reader, i've converted text to PDF, setting the page size to 6x4, i believe and while the initial load takes a bit of time the resize improves page turn speed. Its maybe about a 1-1.5 seconds.
I used doPdf to print the text from word, where i play with font size.

RickSp · Post by **RickSp** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:09 am

You are right. PDFs of scanned books are horribly slow, but if the PDF file is just simple text, the page size stays relatively small and the page turn becomes manageable. Not great but not bad.

pwright8 · Post by **pwright8** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:32 pm

Merlin Software do a prog called ebook to images.. you can make 800x480 pixel images in any font you desire..

Works well because the image viewer on the archos is fast..

Asimio · Post by **Asimio** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:28 pm

pwright8 wrote:Merlin Software do a prog called ebook to images.. you can make 800x480 pixel images in any font you desire..

Works well because the image viewer on the archos is fast..

Cool, thanks. You can even listen to music while reading!

It's text only though, plus if there's stuff like the name of the book on the bottom and top of the pages it looks a bit messy because when i tried it each image wasn't the page seen on Acrobat reader.