Re: [NTLK] Newton books - Reader/converter for Mac/Win? [Overview]

From: Mircea Boari (mirceab_at_tag.starnets.ro)
Date: Sun Jun 20 2004 - 13:52:07 PDT


James, Dan and Woody --

thank you very much for your suggestions.

Several solutions were suggested:
* printing to a virtual driver
* keeping the books and the adnotations separately (since they are
conserved in the soup)
* fax the book and create PDFs out of image files
* XNewtbook which appears to have a bug (I did not try it yet)
* one (or many) 32 MB cards :):) "for books only"
* Using NewtsCape or NewtWorks
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any straightforward way to
handle the books easily for repeated use, etc.... As far as I can
see, there are some inconveniencies for each of the workaorunds
offered. Nevertheless, it's good that they exist! :) Thanks again to
all the contributors with ideas. I synthetized the original replies
bellow, with all the details, for whom may be concerned in the
future. I will post any further wisdom I may develop regarding the
issue.

Sincerely,

M

______________

[Original posting]

Hi all -- I have encountered a problem with Newton books that perhaps
other people had too.
I like underlying and adnotating books when I read them (hardprints,
eBooks, Newton Books). But I also want to preserve the adnotations
and, later, eventually re-read the stuff. Since any Newton's memory
is finite (in the low ranges of finiteness...), one shoudl delete
stuff in order to get new stuff.
Is there a means to preserve the worked-on books? I figure that the
most convenient trick would be to export the books back on a desktop
machine and to have a reader capable to open them or a converter
capable to transform them to RTF, or PDF, or whatever.
If no such capability exists, it means that the Newton "holds a
monopoly" over the books, each time you want to revisit old reading,
print segments, being obliged to dock you Newton, make room on it,
get the book back on it, etc.

Any insights as to how this could be done more effectively?

Sincerely,

MB
__________________

[Replies]

From: James Nichols <smilr_at_mac.com>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] Newton books - Reader/converter for Mac/Win?
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:10:25 -0500

My suggestion would be to set up a linux / unix / mac os X computer
with a shared 'printer' that instead of printing to an actual printer,
sends the print job to a pdf file, then using the lpr driver for your
newton and some sort of networking you can print the book (select one
of the options that says 'full book (or this page) w / marks ) to the
shared 'pdf printer'

I haven't heard of specific software to do this, but I think making
such wouldn't be impossible.

Of course, one couldn't send these BACK to the newton very easily. If I
remember correclty the marks you make on a book are kept in a soup
somewhere - if so, one might be able to use Sloup or some other soup
editor to archive these changes to a desktop machinge, but then, you
would still have to move them back to the newton to view.

***

From: "Dan" <dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] Newton books - Reader/converter for Mac/Win?
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:21:13 -0400

Ok the marks or annotations are saved in the "library" soup according to the
ISBN number. Which is why you always want to make books with a unique ISBN
number as you can't install books with same number. And books that you have
marked up if they have the same ISBN as a book you just installed, it will
appear marked as the previous was.

As for how long the annotations stay, it depends on the version of Newton
you have. If you have a 1x0 model message pad, then it only remembers the
last 10 books you installed. After that when you install number 11, the
oldest accessed book in the library soup is deleted to make room for the new
book. Now if you have a 2x00 or emate, every book is kept in the library
until you delete it via a soup editor.

You can backup the library soup via a soup editor, or print them out (as was
previously mentioned). But to keep the soup for later editing I would say
back it up if you have a 1x0. The best way to do this is to just copy the
soup and rename it the book with the annotations you wish to keep, then to
restore delete the current library soup and rename the backup as the library
soup was. Do a soft reset (reboot) and you will have your old library as it
was.

You could also Fax the book to yourself and have your computer save it as
image files. Then it would be easy to create PDF's if you wanted.

The only other method of preserving annotations might be (if you have a 2x00
or emate) to use Newtworks and Newtscape to copy the book from the book
package to a Newtworks document. However I don't know if the annotations
will copy as well. Perhaps Woody can chime in here as to weather that works
or not (I know he has copied books to Newtworks before).

As for the "Newton "holds a monopoly over the books", you can use Paul's ATA
driver and get a large ATA flash card (or even microdrive). Then you can
have a LOT of books on hand at any time. But if you have more than 10 books
on a 1x0, don't count on it holding your place as it will only hold the last
10 used books. And to be honest, I doubt if the 1x0 Newton will even allow
you to install more than 10 (unfrozen at least). But I know it will work on
a 2x00 or emate as the library soup is not limited to 10 entries.

I also should mention a great tool for the NewtonBook user called XNewtbook.
It allows you to backup the library soup, go directly to pages that have
annotations, and have more bookmarks per book. The only downside is it seem
to have a bug in the restoring of a library soup (at least it never worked
for me). But you can use a soup editor as I previously mentioned to restore
the backup it makes.

-Dan

***

Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 22:45:58 -0500
Subject: Re: [NTLK] Newton books - Reader/converter for Mac/Win?
From: Woody Smith <woody_at_bitstream.net>

I don't actually have a solution to Mircea's request, but I have
mentioned saving Newton Books as Newtworks documents. I discovered
this capability after installing Steve Weyer's NewtsCape and the
extension HTMList.

I have used this approach when a book that I wanted to read was created
with a font that was too small for me, once in Newtworks I could adjust
the font and size to one I liked. For comfortable reading you need to
keep the curser on the page you are reading or when you close the app
and reopen it will return you to where ever the curser was.

As a Newtworks document the book can be edited (read annotating) and
underlined. It can also be exported to your desktop computer through
NCU.

Newton Books that are 'Packages' on a Mac can have the text extracted
using Word 98, I don't know about Windows or other versions of Word.
In fact text can be extracted from PaperBack Packages or any other
Package that has text.
Choose Open, select a package and when asked about conversion, choose
'recover text form any file'. Be prepared to do some editing.

Woody

***

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