Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your ePub Is fine

andreklein.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 322 posts

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#291

Post by jolmg »

yoavm wrote: post #227
hardwaresofton wrote: post #54

BTW for those who are looking for a device, the PineNote exists: https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/ More expensive and less out-of-the-box software, but straight to the point on device ownership/what kind of software you can run, fewer strings attached. [EDIT] Great experience blogs on the PineNote https://shom.dev/posts/20250308_pinenote-day-one/ https://shom.dev/posts/20250406_a-pinenote-only-5-day-weeken...

One can also just run Linux on most Kobos. I wrote and am using this every day: https://github.com/bjesus/air

What's the battery life like on Kobos running linux? Is it on the order of weeks, days, or hours?

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#292

Post by monknomo »

kalleboo wrote: post #167
echelon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium. JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawing some stuff, maybe writing a simple function, then building a static file that can be embedded anywhere and even downloaded. You have to spend so much time setting up any flash alternative, and the "standards" are worse. I hate Steve Jobs for killing Flash and…

What I never understand is why we never got a Flash-level authoring tool that exported to modern JavaScript/Canvas. Ruffle shows it can be done. Adobe could have retuned Animate to do it, but instead let it languish as a niche animation tool for some animation studios to use before trying to kill it.

this seems like a huge gap in the market

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#293

Post by jolmg »

timeinput wrote: post #277
ndiddy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the PineNote yourself? It $400 and says that it's "aimed at Linux developers with an extensive knowledge of embedded systems and/or experience with mobile Linux." The community provided firmware they link for it hasn't been updated in over a year. The Kobos don't limit what you can do with them either, you can sideload alternative e-reader software like KOReader that improves on the built-in reader fun…

I have a pine note. It lives up to that description. It's "fine", but I like to use it as an e ink laptop (well terminal with occasional other uses) with a bluetooth keyboard. I don't know that I would even want to start on using it as an ebook reader. It's bulky / heavy, and just doesn't match my kobo. I imagine asking it to do DRM ebooks would just be a non-starter. I tried to turn a kobo into an eink terminal, and…

Curious, what kind of battery life have you been able to get from the pinenote?

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#294

Post by yoavm »

jolmg wrote: post #291
yoavm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can also just run Linux on most Kobos. I wrote and am using this every day: https://github.com/bjesus/air

What's the battery life like on Kobos running linux? Is it on the order of weeks, days, or hours?

For my daily reading before sleep usage, it is around 2 weeks.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#295

Post by yoavm »

Anonyneko wrote: post #250
yoavm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can also just run Linux on most Kobos. I wrote and am using this every day: https://github.com/bjesus/air

Amazing! Do you know if anyone tried to run this on a Sage? After getting that Kobo I realized that my hyper specific reading needs require a web browser with extension support (in particular support for Yomitan or similar dictionaries; the built-in dictionary functions on e-readers are awful for most non-English languages even with custom dictionaries, and KOReader isn't any better in that regard)

Not that I know of, and it isn't listed as a supported device on the pmOS wiki: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:Kobo

I can run Firefox on my Kobo Clara HD, but it's not a pleasant experience. It is very, very, very slow.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#296

Post by giantrobot »

KPGv2 wrote: post #269
SG- wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was about as unique as seeing corn in my poop sometimes.

I suppose there's no accounting for taste, but from happy tree friends to xiaoxiao3's flash fights, indie animators made some pretty awesome stuff back then. My university experience included a lot of checking for new, cool flash animations back around 2002. Homestar Runner was another pretty big one. edit: Space Ghost Coast to Coast was Flash. Harvey Birdman must've been, too.

Flash as an animation tool vs Flash as a web development tool are two very different discussions. There's overlap and they're related but still separate.

Flash was very interesting as an animation tool because it was at its core a vector drawing animation tool. All the scripting components were icing on the cake allowing automation of things that's incredibly tedious in traditional animation.

The fast vector animations made Flash very useful for web distribution. That's all well and good. But as it became the go-to for interactive websites the structure of Flash was antithetical to the web. Deep links became meaningless and content became locked behind Flash. Adobe was also a terrible steward of Flash and only put effort into Flash for Windows. Every other platform was an also-ran for them and the Flash experience was terrible.

The security of Flash was a bad joke on top of it all.

As an animation tool and delivery vector for interactive content beyond the abilities of browsers of the era it was useful. As the front end of the web it was an awful mess.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#297

Post by Self-Perfection »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #143
protocolture wrote: post #127

I once read an ebook that was formatted by a guy who had only ever done magazines and it was a huge mess. 2 columns of text per page. No auto scaling. The best ebook format I have ever experienced is .txt and just let the software figure out where the text needs to go.

The best format was fb2

Why "was"? I still read books in fb2.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#298

Post by icantevenhold »

maratc wrote: post #238
RetroTechie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted from here: https://informatecdigital.com/en/Send-to-Kindle%3A-all-ways-... "This service is free and works with both Kindle devices such as with the Kindle appIt also automatically converts many files to Amazon's internal format (such as AZW3 or KFX), as long as you respect its supported file types and size limits." Read: requires internet connectivity to put documents on your Kindle. Depends on Amazons 'bless…

All of that is technically correct, however my non-Amazon readers (Sony, Nook, ...) reached the end of their useful life when their batteries died or their screens broke. All of them were "unsupported" at that stage (3-4 years after announcement), so not much to do about it. With that, I have a very old Kindle (7 years or so) that is still working -- with "Amazon's blessing" of course. Any reader will turn into a bri…

Fwiw the pocketbook has the same kind of feature.

The question is I guess if you trust pocketbook or Amazon more. I tend towards the former since that is their main business and not one of 1000 things they do.

My last Pocketbook lasted for 12+ years until something heavy fell on the screen one day. But I hear that kindles are similarly robust until amzn decides to brick them.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#299

Post by RankingMember »

ndiddy wrote: post #286
pell wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash had many issues for sure, first and foremost security. But I can’t help but feel sad of what was lost since then. The Flash era produced some really unique experiences on the web.

It was always fun when you were trying to find a contractor or something and got greeted with https://web.archive.org/web/20101028145116/http://industrial... .

Lol, damn, I do not miss those days. I'm also reminded of those awful LowerMyBills.com flash ads. Sadly, they're still around, just using whatever tech is at hand to make the worst ads possible, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/98a1yp/l...

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#300

Post by maratc »

icantevenhold wrote: post #298
maratc wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is technically correct, however my non-Amazon readers (Sony, Nook, ...) reached the end of their useful life when their batteries died or their screens broke. All of them were "unsupported" at that stage (3-4 years after announcement), so not much to do about it. With that, I have a very old Kindle (7 years or so) that is still working -- with "Amazon's blessing" of course. Any reader will turn into a bri…

Fwiw the pocketbook has the same kind of feature. The question is I guess if you trust pocketbook or Amazon more. I tend towards the former since that is their main business and not one of 1000 things they do. My last Pocketbook lasted for 12+ years until something heavy fell on the screen one day. But I hear that kindles are similarly robust until amzn decides to brick them.

I can count on Amazon being there in 10 years from today. I can't count on pocketbook.
Post reply on HN