Since I bought a reasonably open Kobo recently, I feel the main pain point with eRaeders though is actually getting something to read on them. A dozen stores with DRM exist and the few sites without DRM naturally have limited selection.
Also reading pdfs is really not great, yet converting them seems also unreasonably hard.
So the problems seems not to be the hardware only, but the whole stack from hardware over software to content.
Still, an open eink device could be fun and can certainly be used for more than just reading books.
Calibre on its own will convert between formats and there are plugins that will strip drm. I have no idea about the legality in various parts of the world but it is a solid solution for liberating content and making it portable
Yeah, but it can't usefully convert PDFs. To make a PDF usable on an e-reader you've got to trim the margins, and chop it into pages that exactly fit the e-reader screen (in landscape, due to line length issues)--and even then some just can't be converted. And in doing this you need software that knows where to cut pages and whether to insert padding so that lines don't get cut off. And you never want to use OCR or text extraction, which suck. It's an extremely difficult process, but since panning and zooming on ereaders is unusable it's the only way I've found that works (I use the k2pdfopt software)--the alternative is just using a tablet for PDFs which is what I increasingly do.
PDFs are already an open format and the software that you are looking for would take 5 billion dollars of research money to produce. Every PDF is formatted differently.
I feel like this is more of a publisher/vendor problem than a hardware problem. The Kobo is perfectly capable hardware--moreso than the Kindle, I'd say, due to its support of EPUB. You are perfectly capable of reading DRM-free books on it if you can find them. But the vast majority of publishers sell their book wrapped in some kind of DRM, and so if the hardware manufacturer wants publishers to do business with them, they have to support DRM.
I don't think that will change unless we, as consumers, decide to reject DRM.
With that said, we failed with pretty much every other DRM format, the notable exception being iTunes audio, where Apple had enough market presence to be able to say No. Kobo doesn't, and it is extremely unlikely that Amazon would die on that hill, given that the Kindle doesn't even support open formats at the moment.
Many libraries lend books in electronic formats, you'll need a non-kindle to read them though since they don't support DRMed books.
If you read English, and to some degree other languages as well, you can find books in the same place you find pirated movies (actually in more places since the file size is small)
My need to read PDF ebooks led me to just start using an iPad Mini as a reader. The app PDF Expert does a great job of trimming margins making almost every PDF perfectly readable on that size of device. (To really read every PDF without compromise you need at least a 13” screen.)
As a bonus I can use the app KyBook 3 for ePub files and adjust margins and so on to make better use of the screen space. My Kindle Paperwhite doesn’t display any more text per page than a phone.
Obviously an iPad Mini has drawbacks compared with an ereader in terms of battery, weight, and ability to read in sunlight. The ideal device for me is probably one of those 8” Android eink devices.
Two more points—you can process PDFs for a Kindle pretty well with the k2pdfopt program. Closed-source and conmand line, but it works.
Also popsockets on the back of small tablets and readers are great.
I use koreader on my Kobo Clara HD, but it's frustratingly "open sourcey". I say that as an ardent FOSS enthusiast who runs Linux as his primary os.
What I mean by that is: bad ux, difficult to install, millions of super specific options crowding out the ones you actually want, etc.
I still use it over the default kobo software, but I really wish it was better.
Thank you! I've been using Moon+ Reader on my eink Android device. It works fine once you get into a book, but the ui to choose what to read requires a lot of scrolling.
This looks like a great alternative, I've installed it and am excited to get a chance to try it out.
Nice project. Not being a hardware person, I personally look at open source and different data formats. I try to buy books directly from publishers who provide Kindle, ePub, and PDF formats with purchases. The thought is awful of losing my Amazon account and losing access to hundreds of audible book purchases and I don’t know how many Kindle purchases. I try to spread my closed platform purchases also to Google Play Books and iBooks to spread out the risks but Amazon gets most of my business. I do like that my family gets access to my Google Play books.
Really off topic and a little bit self serving to mention this: as an author, I stopped publishing physical books because I like to be able to easily update material and my eBooks are released under a Creative Commons license in three file formats with no DRM. I encourage my readers to share my books.
Honestly, I don't see any relevancy in the statement of this project. Using kindles and other ebook readerds for about 6 years and always asked to recommend one, I've learned that ebook readers are one of the most realiable devices ever built, so you'd better buy a used one and take it off the market than produce yourself another devices honestly no one needs at the moment. A lot of the people buying ebook readers usually end up ditching them just because their 'reading hype' didn't catch on, or their company's read and roll program (we have Bookster in Romania) is cheaper to use (as it's free) than buying and converting books all the time.
But, ebook readers are cheap and easy to use (if bought used), even kindle's amazon. Since you have a kindle e-mail address you can just use an app to convert every non-kindle-format file into a compliant one, that's it if you don't want to use Calibre via USB or WebServer. I use eBooker on my Android phone.
This is true. I still use occasionally a Kindle DX I bought in 2010. Sure the battery lasts only for a couple of days now, and it has always been slow, but it still works, and is a great reading device. It even still has free 3G internet.
Though to be honest I much prefer my 12” ipad pro with high refresh rate for reading papers.
This takes on the wrong side of the closed e-reader problem, IMHO. There are lots of top notch devices available for cheap, but they have closed software. However they generally run Linux.
Making a custom kernel/distribution for existing devices would be a better way to go. The Open Inkpot project tried this years ago, but never really got anywhere.
It's low-hanging fruit though: compared to what projects like lineageOS are doing, this is very doable.
And if this Open Book project ever gets usable hardware out, they'll still have to take on the software side.
The most annoying thing about e-reader is the size of the devices. I wish someone built a device with an A4 letter screen. This would make reading scientific papers much easier.
LIke others are pointing out here, there seems to be bigger issues in the software world of digital reading, while on the hardware front seems to be OK.
Converting pdf files to epubs is unreliable and often just produces garbage. Calibre may be open source but it seems to be controlled by just one person. pdf2html seemed to be making some nice progress but now seems to be not maintained any more.
In a perfect world we'd have completely open, maintained and well-known conversion software and reader software. There doesn't seem to be a Linux or Firefox in this category.
>Books and ebooks are really not the same thing at all.
In what sense are they not? My first thought when hearing the word "book" is of a particular template of contents and layout that could be instantiated on paper or on a digital device; I guess I'm thinking of something like an ISBN, rather than a specific physical artifact. And that's pretty much the same concept that comes to mind when I hear "ebook".
What is the difference that you're thinking of?
EDIT: in other words, I suppose that my concept of a book is based on the usual interpretation of the question "Have you read that book?"
what I'm looking for at the moment is an ereader that I can install syncthing on so I can easily add or remove books at any time from my other devices. having to plug in to another computer and manually sync with calibre or whatever is a bit of a pain.
a few people have got it running on the kobo but the install process seems a bit tricky. there's also the option of using an android based eink and then maybe sideloading the syncthing apk.
the other thing I like about this idea is that i could continue reading a book on my phone or computer if I was really stuck, or if I forgot to charge my ereader... which I do quite a lot
I think I admire the energy and dedication behind this, but I can't see getting one.
I've been involved with eBooks for over 15 years. It began when my then employer decided all IT staff members should have PDAs. A Handspring Visor Deluxe running Palm OS 3.1 appeared on my desk. I started looking for stuff that would assist in my work as a Sysadmin.
An early discovery was Plucker - a desktop program and Palm client. Plucker was designed to spider websites, and convert what it grabbed into something that could be viewed on the Palm device. A good deal of the documentation for stuff I dealt with was in HTML, and Plucker desktop could convert locally stored HTML files to versions viewable on the PDA. I could carry a documentation library in my pocket.
It was a hop, skip, and jump to realizing I could read other things as well, and a good bit of Project Gutenberg and other things issued under licenses that permitted it joined the party. (I still have about 4K converted Plucker documents in a 7Z archive.)
While I still have a working PDA, the next step was a 7" Android tablet. A variety of eBook viewers for Android existed. My choice was the open source FBReader for Android. I had previously used a version of FBReader written in C under Windows and Linux. FBReader for Android was a Java port, but worked pretty much the same was. The win for FBReader was multiple format support. I prefer ePub, but FBReader can display Mobi, FB2, and a few other things native, and display PDFs, DjVu files, and CBR/CBZ files using plugins. Effectively, I didn't have to care what format a book was in. On the old PDA, I could read a variety of formats too, but each had a dedicated viewer app, and I had to remember which book was in which format displayed by what program. FBReader on Android was a breath of fresh air.
I do not use eInk devices. I understand the advantages - they are battery friendly, and viewable out of doors. But too much of the content I read requires color support. A color LCD screen is a requirement.
I also need a device that can do other things besides display eBooks. There are limits to what I want to carry around when traveling. I already take a laptop and a cell phone. A device that displays eBooks, but can do other things in a pinch like check email, Look Stuff Up, or display MS Office files is a major plus. (I do not use a phone for that. The stuff I tend to view needs a larger screen size than a practical phone can have.)
And while I prefer open source, I am not wedded to it. I will cheerfully pay for closed source software if there isn't an open source offering that does whatever I require, or there is, but the closed source version is simply better. (And a major part of "better" is UX. Open source software tends to have less than optimal user interfaces. The folks who wrote the programs wrote good code for performing the function, but are not UX designers.) I feel the same about open source hardware.
This is a worthy effort, and I wish it all success, but I think it appeals to a rather small niche market. Amazon, Kobo, and the like are not exactly threatened.
______
Dennis
33 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 66.3 ms ] threadSince I bought a reasonably open Kobo recently, I feel the main pain point with eRaeders though is actually getting something to read on them. A dozen stores with DRM exist and the few sites without DRM naturally have limited selection. Also reading pdfs is really not great, yet converting them seems also unreasonably hard. So the problems seems not to be the hardware only, but the whole stack from hardware over software to content.
Still, an open eink device could be fun and can certainly be used for more than just reading books.
Pretty sure Calibre gives you the ability to convert to open formats.
I don't think that will change unless we, as consumers, decide to reject DRM.
With that said, we failed with pretty much every other DRM format, the notable exception being iTunes audio, where Apple had enough market presence to be able to say No. Kobo doesn't, and it is extremely unlikely that Amazon would die on that hill, given that the Kindle doesn't even support open formats at the moment.
If you read English, and to some degree other languages as well, you can find books in the same place you find pirated movies (actually in more places since the file size is small)
As a bonus I can use the app KyBook 3 for ePub files and adjust margins and so on to make better use of the screen space. My Kindle Paperwhite doesn’t display any more text per page than a phone.
Obviously an iPad Mini has drawbacks compared with an ereader in terms of battery, weight, and ability to read in sunlight. The ideal device for me is probably one of those 8” Android eink devices.
Two more points—you can process PDFs for a Kindle pretty well with the k2pdfopt program. Closed-source and conmand line, but it works.
Also popsockets on the back of small tablets and readers are great.
At the moment, KOReader[1] runs on Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, and many other e-readers – and is completely open-source.
[1] http://koreader.rocks/
I still use it over the default kobo software, but I really wish it was better.
This looks like a great alternative, I've installed it and am excited to get a chance to try it out.
Really off topic and a little bit self serving to mention this: as an author, I stopped publishing physical books because I like to be able to easily update material and my eBooks are released under a Creative Commons license in three file formats with no DRM. I encourage my readers to share my books.
But, ebook readers are cheap and easy to use (if bought used), even kindle's amazon. Since you have a kindle e-mail address you can just use an app to convert every non-kindle-format file into a compliant one, that's it if you don't want to use Calibre via USB or WebServer. I use eBooker on my Android phone.
Though to be honest I much prefer my 12” ipad pro with high refresh rate for reading papers.
Making a custom kernel/distribution for existing devices would be a better way to go. The Open Inkpot project tried this years ago, but never really got anywhere.
It's low-hanging fruit though: compared to what projects like lineageOS are doing, this is very doable.
And if this Open Book project ever gets usable hardware out, they'll still have to take on the software side.
https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/onyx-boox-max3-review
Quite pricey though.
Converting pdf files to epubs is unreliable and often just produces garbage. Calibre may be open source but it seems to be controlled by just one person. pdf2html seemed to be making some nice progress but now seems to be not maintained any more.
In a perfect world we'd have completely open, maintained and well-known conversion software and reader software. There doesn't seem to be a Linux or Firefox in this category.
In what sense are they not? My first thought when hearing the word "book" is of a particular template of contents and layout that could be instantiated on paper or on a digital device; I guess I'm thinking of something like an ISBN, rather than a specific physical artifact. And that's pretty much the same concept that comes to mind when I hear "ebook".
What is the difference that you're thinking of?
EDIT: in other words, I suppose that my concept of a book is based on the usual interpretation of the question "Have you read that book?"
a few people have got it running on the kobo but the install process seems a bit tricky. there's also the option of using an android based eink and then maybe sideloading the syncthing apk.
the other thing I like about this idea is that i could continue reading a book on my phone or computer if I was really stuck, or if I forgot to charge my ereader... which I do quite a lot
I've been involved with eBooks for over 15 years. It began when my then employer decided all IT staff members should have PDAs. A Handspring Visor Deluxe running Palm OS 3.1 appeared on my desk. I started looking for stuff that would assist in my work as a Sysadmin.
An early discovery was Plucker - a desktop program and Palm client. Plucker was designed to spider websites, and convert what it grabbed into something that could be viewed on the Palm device. A good deal of the documentation for stuff I dealt with was in HTML, and Plucker desktop could convert locally stored HTML files to versions viewable on the PDA. I could carry a documentation library in my pocket.
It was a hop, skip, and jump to realizing I could read other things as well, and a good bit of Project Gutenberg and other things issued under licenses that permitted it joined the party. (I still have about 4K converted Plucker documents in a 7Z archive.)
While I still have a working PDA, the next step was a 7" Android tablet. A variety of eBook viewers for Android existed. My choice was the open source FBReader for Android. I had previously used a version of FBReader written in C under Windows and Linux. FBReader for Android was a Java port, but worked pretty much the same was. The win for FBReader was multiple format support. I prefer ePub, but FBReader can display Mobi, FB2, and a few other things native, and display PDFs, DjVu files, and CBR/CBZ files using plugins. Effectively, I didn't have to care what format a book was in. On the old PDA, I could read a variety of formats too, but each had a dedicated viewer app, and I had to remember which book was in which format displayed by what program. FBReader on Android was a breath of fresh air.
I do not use eInk devices. I understand the advantages - they are battery friendly, and viewable out of doors. But too much of the content I read requires color support. A color LCD screen is a requirement.
I also need a device that can do other things besides display eBooks. There are limits to what I want to carry around when traveling. I already take a laptop and a cell phone. A device that displays eBooks, but can do other things in a pinch like check email, Look Stuff Up, or display MS Office files is a major plus. (I do not use a phone for that. The stuff I tend to view needs a larger screen size than a practical phone can have.)
And while I prefer open source, I am not wedded to it. I will cheerfully pay for closed source software if there isn't an open source offering that does whatever I require, or there is, but the closed source version is simply better. (And a major part of "better" is UX. Open source software tends to have less than optimal user interfaces. The folks who wrote the programs wrote good code for performing the function, but are not UX designers.) I feel the same about open source hardware.
This is a worthy effort, and I wish it all success, but I think it appeals to a rather small niche market. Amazon, Kobo, and the like are not exactly threatened. ______ Dennis