From: mkow1234_at_aol.com
Date: Thu Apr 21 2005 - 05:53:03 PDT
April 21, 2005
I was getting mighty bored last night watching my girlfriend play her GameCube (I like old-school stuff like Sega, myself).
Anyway, I started playing around with my MP 2100, running various personal experiments and tests.
One of the things I started looking at was the book-making function within Newtscape. I remember reading that one could theoretically create small eBooks with Newtscape. "Okay", I thought, "seems simple enough."
First, I needed to write something in an editing program -- one that would allow the document to be saved as HTML so it could be imported into Newtscape for the book-making conversion process. Surprisingly, 'Works' did not have a command to save the output as HTML! Rather strange we both thought, as 'Works' seems to be the 'MS Word' of the Newton, as opposed to the 'Notepad' of 'Notes' (e.g. I'm comparing a heavy-duty editing program to a basic text file application).
Thankfully, 'Notes' allows for saving documents as HTML. Kule!
I started writing out a simple 'Read Me' file for the 'VideoPhone' application and saved the output as HTML. Then, I tried to open 'Newtscape'. Oops! Have to close 'Notes' first, open 'Newtscape', and then re-open 'Notes'. No problemo.
It took me a few minutes to stumble around and figure out how to open the 'Notes' HTML file through 'Newtscape'. Still not sure exactly how THAT works. Once I got to that point, I chose the 'Create package' option in 'Newtscape'. Took a moment or two of crunching to produce a simple eBook in my unfiled icons folder. It was labeled as 'Untitled', but I'm sure that could be remedied with a bit of foresight and practice.
My initial eBook creation had all of the text running together. Doh! I dimly recall learning very simple HTML code many years ago, but my reference book is on loan still. No problemo. Stuck in a few paragraph breaks <P> and everything came out looking much better! Nice. Now, I almost know enough to be dangerous...
What's the point? There is a point. There's ALWAYS a point (Well, most of the time, anyway).
The point is this: Folks who have Internet access on their Newtons could theoretically create Newton eBooks from HTML source code. I say theoretically, because I'm not sure how 'Newtscape' would handle scrolling web pages. Perhaps a page break or something has to be inserted every thirty lines of code or so? Not sure yet. But, this technique seems promising, from what I can see. A Newton user in Portugal, or France, or Russia, or wherever, could take a source file from the Internet (Try to obey copyright laws, but I'm not to run screaming if you decide to copy Hemingway or Steinbeck to Newton eBook format) and create an eBook, no muss, no fuss!
The coolest thing is that the entire eBook production process take place entirely on the Newton.
That's not too shabby for a computing device that many outside of our community view as archaic. Those dumb@$$e$!
So... If you're stuck on a long airplane flight, train trip, stranded in the doctor's waiting room, the DMV, or you're waiting for your wife to try on 'just one more pair of shoes', put your time to good use. Give the Newtscape / Notes eBook conversion process a try.
Matt the K.
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