Programs for Reading Text Files?

dotpl asks: "Recently I acquired a number of books in text format from Project Gutenberg and archived them for later reading. When I came to read, I realised how hard it is to read text files on the computer screen, so I thought about developing a 'reader' that you can read text files with, selecting the fonts and colors you like, and which has a bookmarking feature - a la Vim - so you know where you were reading before. Then I realised that a software of the sort must already exist. How do you read big text files without suffering from severe eye strain?" While a browser may go a long way to providing the necessary functionality, most browsers bookmarking facilities are sorely lacking for this type of work, since they don't mark the position in the page, just the page, itself. Has anything like this been written?

Comments

EText Reader

[alphaseven]

You could try EText Reader, for linux or windows. Allows you to read zipped etexts as well as retrieve online Project Gutenberg texts. You can also select the font and bookmark stuff.

Search for SMALL

[yerricde]

To skip the PG boilerplate, search for the text END*THE SMALL, capitalized and punctuated exactly so.

Use Weasel Reader

[KDan]

If you have a palm, it's much much easier to just use Weasel Reader (formerly gutenpalm). It's actually designed for reading books, keeping bookmarks, etc - and even extracts the chapter headers for you when you create the pdb file from the txt file.

Also the palm screen is less straining than these bright old monitors, a lot less.

Daniel

PDA

[texchanchan]

1. Open Gutenberg file in UltraEdit (shareware)

2. Run this macro
InsertMode
ColumnModeOff
HexOff
UnixReOf f
Find "^p^p"
Replace All "QQQQ"
Find "^p"
Replace All " "
Find "QQQQ"
Replace All "^p "

3. Save file.

4. Run MakeDocW (free) on the file.

5. Hotsync to the Palm/Visor.

6. Read and bookmark in CSpotRun (free but you can send a donation). Annotate in something else.

The only thing that'll cost you is the PDA itself and I bet a used 2-meg one isn't that much.

GutenMark

[Rabin Vincent]

GutenMark is a GPL'd program to format Project Gutenberg files into LaTeX. From here on, this can be converted into PS or PDF (sample), which can be easily read in a viewer with a large font size. This program also removes the PG banner, seperates text into chapters and italizes the appropriate words. And the page numbers give you free bookmarking.

Re:hate to day it but M$ has a good solution

[ianezz]

With GNU Emacs you can set named bookmarks referring to a specific position in specific files (i.e. with M-x bookmark-set).

Then, in a different session, jumping to a bookmark (M-x bookmark-jump) automatically opens that file again and positions the text where you set the bookmark (even if the text changed in the meantime: Emacs bookmarks keep some context lines with them).

OTOH, the thing I really miss is a nice program from the Amiga days called "muchmore", which provided a sort of full-screen equivalent of the well known "less", but with smooth scrolling, autoscrolling, and both scrolling speed and direction could be changed by simply moving the mouse pointer towards or away from the screen borders. IIRC, it too had bookmarks on texts.

Re:eye strain

[spuke4000]

Rather use up a bit of paper and ink than damage your eyes.

I had the same concern (I sit in front of a computer 8 hours a day at work) so I asked an optometrist this week. Her answer: looking at a computer screen causes 'short term' eye strain, but no long term damage. Basically, get a good night's sleep and your fine.