Re: [NTLK] Newton Books

While it is true that the screen size and font cannot be changed
within the Newton book reader itself, the text can be extracted and
the newton book recreated to meet your needs.

Early on in my use of the Newton, my greatest frustration was not
being able to read some books because the font was too small for my
aging eyes to see comfortably. This lead to making books for myself
using Project Gutenberg text or text files of books posted on peoples
personal sites. Both of these sources required a great deal of
editing due to OCR errors, missing spaces and extra returns but I had
books with large bold font that I could read.
I also found that MS Word on the Mac can extract the text from a
Newton Book Package and with just a little clean up a new Newton Book
can be created with Newton Press. Much easier than scratch.

A second frustration was a quirky error that occurs in the newton
book reader where some lines are truncated with a series of ......s
and the text seems to be lost, it is actually there you just cannot
see it.
With Newtscape and HTMList installed I found that I could save a
specified page range to Newtonworks and read the book in the word
processor with any font I had installed. This was certainly quicker
than making a new Newton book and solved both of my frustrations.

But an even better approach is to save the page range, including all,
to works as html. Then in Works change the isdn#, keeps the original
book safe from the next step. Until you have some experience don't
change anything else.
In Newtscape preferences 'appearance' set your preferred font, size
etc. for text and headings and select or specify book size such as
280 x 302 for 1x0 newts or 298 x 388 for the 2x00 or even a little
bigger to eliminate the frame.
Now in Newtscape tap file and choose open Newtworks, select your book
and it will open in Newtscape with your preferred font (even those
not offered in Newton Press) I like Casual. Now save as package and
you will have a new Newton book. If the table of contents was setup
in the original it will remain in this new copy though additional
items may be included such as all headings and items set as bold in
the html code.
Until you get used to how long it takes stick to smaller books, and
freeze ups in works due to insufficient heap can corrupt a storage
device so use a card with nothing valuable on it, make sure no notes,
names or dates are there by using the appropriate applications. With
everything frozen that you don't need I think the upper end is about
500 newton pages.

Images can be saved to Newtonworks but be careful as your chances of
crashing is enhanced, and it can and will corrupt the memory device.

Have fun with your newton as a book reader and maker.

Woody

On Dec 5, 2007, at 8:47 AM, Dan wrote:

> If you mean why is the book window smaller than the screen, it is
> because that Newton Books are designed/created with a certain screen
> size in mind. And this can't be altered after they are created,
> and the
> reason why Paperback is popular as it can always use the full
> screen no
> matter the Newton or the orientation.
>
> As for bookmaking you might consider reading the tutorial I wrote that
> is on UNNA in the windows section. Though the tips apply to both mac
> and windows bookmaking. The program for parsing the text is windows
> though, and the reason that the tutorial ended up there.
>
> -Dan
>
>
> On 12/5/2007 7:25 AM, Greg Hankins wrote:
>> Thanks, Dan. I thought as much, given the earlier post, but wanted to
>> confirm.
>> The bookmarking feature seems very desirable, as does the table of
>> contents. I have two genuine Newton Books at this point, and the only
>> thing I find problematic is the lack of any white space between the
>> frame and the text.
>>
>> I should go play with bookmaking myself to understand why that's the
>> case.
>>
>> Thank for the confirmation and the links.
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> Greg
>

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Received on Wed Dec 5 19:20:26 2007