[NTLK] Newton Book or Newton Paperback, which is better

From: Eric Lease Morgan (eric_morgan_at_infomotions.com)
Date: Mon Apr 19 2004 - 11:44:20 PDT

 From a user's point of view, which has a better interface for reading
texts on a Newton? Newton Book or Newton Paperback?

I administrate a collection of American and English literature as well
as Western philosophy called the Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts.
The Catalogue includes about 600 items, and it seems to be rather
popular getting more than 4,000 hits/day not counting robots, images,
reloads, etc. Everything is free. No advertizing. Just content. See:

   http://infomotions.com/alex/

I am in the process of revamping the Catalogue. In its new incarnation
it will include a full-text index as opposed to just author/title
indexing. I will also provide additional formats for viewing and
downloading such as plain text files, XHTML, TEI/XML, PDF, Palm DOC,
Palm Reader, and Rocket eBook. You can see what I've done so far with a
bit of sample data here. Remember, draft:

   http://infomotions.com/alex2/

I also want to provide formats for reading the texts on a Newton. There
seem to be two formats to choose from, Newton Book and Newton
Paperback. In times past, before I had a hardware failure, I provided
access to Newton Paperbacks. Since then two things have happened.
First, I now actually own a Newton (just purchased last week, a Newton
MP2000) so I can actually see what things look like. Second, things
like Newton Book Maker and Newton Press are now freely available so I
can now create books in Newton Book format.

So, from a user's point of view which format is better? After quickie
experimentation it seems that Newton Books provide the means for
greater formatting, navigation, and the addition of graphics. Newton
Paperbacks do not. On the other hand, Newton Paperbacks fill the screen
of my MP200 with the bigger screen, but the Newton Books seem to be
confined to a small reading window.

If I were to create one flavor of ebook format to read on a Newton,
then what flavor would you pick? Newton Book or Newton Paperback? 

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
http://www.infomotions.com
-- 
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