document reader for iphone planned?

benzhen

进士
i remember this being discussed but i couldn't find it so i'll ask again.
is there a document reader planned for the iphone release? thanks!!!!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yes, one is planned, though it most likely won't accept plaintext files (at least not initially). It should also be possible to read text from the clipboard, I believe (now that iPhone OS 3.0 is getting a clipboard), and we've got one other slightly-innovative way of getting text into the reader that isn't implemented yet but should hopefully be ready by the time of the first release.
 

benzhen

进士
it seems like a lot of readers can take plain text files on the iphone. of course it involves transfer over wifi only, is that the roadblock?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
No, just a combination of trying to save time (lots of pressure to get this out ASAP) and the fact that I'm really not happy with our text file reading code on Palm/WM - absent a sudden flash of insight on how to fix it it's easiest just to put it off until we fix it on everything in (hopefully) 2.1.
 

benzhen

进士
just to let you know. the book reader bookz has character look up using free stardict dictionaries, its pretty nicely implemented.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Not bad, but I think our system's a lot slicker, at least for Chinese. (also has the advantage of not relying on the often-illegal StarDict dictionaries)

Actually did have a flash of insight yesterday on the text reader front, though it'll only help on iPhone (at least for now) - we'll see if it results in something usable in the initial release.
 

radioman

状元
I have been waiting for Pleco on the iPhone now for some time. I use the Palm T5 and have tried to supplement with other programs on the iPhone, for flashcards, etc. Getting a reader sounded great. I looked/bought Bookz Pro. It was an interesting exercise, with my following thoughts:

The good:

1) Small browser included, so you can get to external content.
2) Pinching algorithm - great idea, and I have seen this implemented in flashcard programs like iFlash very well, be it Hanzi or English.
2) Night time background/character setting.
3) Use of "zones" to tap, I still like this idea, for ebooks and for flashcards (other flashcard programs are also using this allowing content to extend all over the viewable area but still allowing tapping. If you are using sentences, etc., with a lot of content, I find this to be useful.


The Bad:

1) Getting information into the unit is annoying. Well, at least in China. I cannot get to the Gutenberg site for media so figure it has been blocked.
2) loading dictionaries was also a challenge. Some worked, some did not, and the steps to do it were excruciating.
3) They have a browser which I thought was cool, but they do not let you save a webpage and strip it down as text (best as I can tell). So, in the reader there is a sea of various binary/tags/xml that. Unfortunate as having the browser would be a great way to get content.
4) You need to swipe characters to bring up a definition. Swiping Hanzi on an iPhone appears impossible due to too small an area.
5) The pinching algorithm seems not to work if you have a file with Hanzi in it . I found outward pinching actually shrunk the text in many cases.

In general, if you want to read books in English and get help through English==>Chinese translation, the swiping of English words can be done. But, unless I am missing something, reading Chinese with Bookz current offering while looking to resize characters and invoke Chinese==>English dictionary calls is not practical.

Back to the Palm T5 for me.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting - we're not supporting "zones" yet, but we do have a good solution to the problem of character selection at least.
 

radioman

状元
EDIT: Referencing below, to clarify, they DO let you save a web page you browse to, but the program does not put it it some useful form, which baffles me. If you browse to a link that is actually an embedded .txt file, you can download that I guess and the program will deal with it.

radioman said:
3) They have a browser which I thought was cool, but they do not let you save a webpage and strip it down as text (best as I can tell). So, in the reader there is a sea of various binary/tags/xml that. Unfortunate as having the browser would be a great way to get content.
 
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