Slashdot Mirror
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?
Yes. It's called lp. Or lpr. Take your pick.
If you truly want to save your eyes, this is by far the best solution. I don't care what kind of monitor it is, or how good the fonts look. Staring at a monitor produces considerable eye strain. Staring at properly illuminated paper does not, to nearly the same degree.
But I sympathize with the desire to save paper and ink. Hopefluly someone else has a good solution along those lines...
I usually use enscript to turn it into postscript
and then use gv to peruse it. By doing this, I
create pages so that I have a sense of where I
am in the document and gv lets me easily advance
forwards and backwards using space and backspace
(seems about as intuitive as you can get).
*sigh* back to work...
Try Festival from the University of Edinburgh. It's been available for years and the team continues to make improvements to the system all the time. Source is available here. In the past, the Systems Development Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology has also experimented with using Festival for reading out documents in Indian languages, although I don't know the current status of the project.
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.
It has always struck me as odd that so many people seem to think it's a good idea to read books on their computer screen. With the eye-strain problems of current display technology, I simply can't see how anyone could even contemplate it.
Until there is a display technology available that doesn't have this problem, you're better off printing it. Rather use up a bit of paper and ink than damage your eyes.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
To skip the PG boilerplate, search for the text END*THE SMALL, capitalized and punctuated exactly so.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How do you read big text files without suffering from severe eye strain?"
Wait for the movie, silly...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Until there is a display technology available that doesn't have this [eyestrain] problem
The future is now. Here's how LCDs work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is a pretty well known & documented UI shortcoming with contemporary screens: between the fact that the typical monitor is backlit (thus, you're staring into a lightbulb the whole time -- and a flickering one at that) and the very low resolution compared to print (isn't typical resolution on the order of 72 dpi? that's worse than a cheap bubble-jet printer...), reading long texts off a CRT or LCD display isn't comfortable for most people. It's been written that this resolution issue is making computers a lot more uncomfortable for people than most folks realize, and that only with better screens (reflective instead of back-lit, and resolutions of say 1000dpi and higher) will reading electronic displays come to feel as comfortable as paper does for the average user.
I forget if I read about this in some of Jakob Nielsen's stuff, or Donald Norman, or maybe someone else, but in any case it's a matter that UI specialists are aware of. Last time I was reading about this -- a year or two ago now, maybe a little longer -- it was estimated that such technology is still a decade off, and I'm not sure how much progress has been made since then. Probably not much.
My favorite idea for dealing with this is the "electronic paper" being tested by groups like Xerox PARC and E-ink, where a sheet of this paper-like film has a matrix of particles that can, depending on the charge being applied to different parts of the matrix, arrange themselves to display arbitrary text or images. The idea is to figure out how to make a high quality version of this stuff that can be mass produced & sold for little more than traditional paper, so that a computer of the future might end up looking a lot like the books of the past, with the pages for the display and the computing components in the spine. That way you could have whole libraries in a portable format, textbooks (or Gutenberg texts :) could be downloaded & students would keep the same "book" from class to class, you could scribble notes on it for your own reference, or maybe even have it recognize what you're writing & use a stylus instead of a keyboard, etc. But aside from all the neat potential aspects of such a device, one of the explicit goals in trying to build it would be to end up with an electronic display format that is as comfortable & familiar as paper.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Not a popular recommendation on /. I know, but the microsoft reader does what you want. It remembers the last page in an ebook you read, and lets you continue reading from that point next time you read that doc.
The Romans didn't find algebra very challenging, because X was always 10
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
Carpe Diem
Mistaken or not, speech synthesis certainly would reduce eystrain. That's what the query wanted. Your solution stands alone in that it is the only one that solves the problem in such an absolute way.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
I've used a whole lot of CRT monitors over the years ranging from really cheap to really expensive. I've just bought a PowerMacG4 and the 17" Studio Display from Apple. Compared to a highend Sun 20" monitor (Sony Tube) Without a shadow of a doubt this display is the best I have ever used. It's closer to a 19" CRT in feel though. Flat panels are still too damn expensive. (Bought a Mitsubishi Projection Screen HDTV rather than a Plasma Panel)
I want a second 17" Studio Display but I'll have to wait a few months before I can swing the $699 which is $200 off what I paid for the first 17"!
Tip: Turn down the brightness on your monitor/display, especially if the room is darker. Avoid flourescent lighting as well. You get a lot of flicker from flourescent lighting. The LCD doesn't seem to have the problem with flourescent lighting.
If you are on Mac OS X make sure you've set the Anti-Alias mode for the display you have. ie. Flat Panel or CRT.
Note: Samsung makes most of the Apple displays so look for their products for a PC clone. Really good displays.
Increase font size and experiment with black on white or white on black or white on blue, etc. I use gViM like this; change the color scheme now and then to give my eyes a break.
Printing a large book like one of the Mark Twain books would use a hell of a lot of paper. Reading 8x11 or 8x14 paper is not the same as a book either. Running something off like that at Kinko's would be expensive. You might as well go to the local library and borrow the book for real. Or buy your own copy.
Project Gutenberg has a utility for exactly this purpose called QREAD. It's available here.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
You know, I've long found that using light text on a black background relieves much eyestrain - so much less radiation hitting your eyeball, plus a nice high contrast. If you run at really high resolution (and up your font size), the letters are really well-formed, too.
Using a sans serif font also helps readability on computer screens (the opposite of readability on paper - apparently this is accredited to the low dpi on computer screens).
Try changing settings to suit your own preferences, and don't _ever_ just blindly accept any program's default settings - especially for how things are displayed - everybody's pattern recognition psychology is unique in one way or another. Change fonts and font sizes, change screen resolution, vary the contrast (light on dark, dark on light), etc. Make sure you're using proper lighting in the room you have your computer in. These things all make a big difference, and each can vary a fair amount for each individual.
Have a day.
I've always thought that plain text "books" should be more then "plain text". More like HTML or that damned XML everyone keeps talking about.
While the original would be formatted to display on screen with all the bells and whistles it could also be "downsampled" to lower quality for other devices like a PDA or something.
But I'm just babbleing...
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Indeed. The trick is just getting things tweaked to suit your tastes.
For a number of packages and tips that should help you do what you want to do, check out the Display category of the Emacs wiki. There you'll find all the stuff you need to set up more scrolling options, nice fonts, display preferences, even moving the mouse out of the way.
I'll also second the comment made elsewhere here that using a light-on-dark colour theme feels easier on the eyes to me (I like blue-sea).
1. Open Gutenberg file in UltraEdit (shareware)
f f
2. Run this macro
InsertMode
ColumnModeOff
HexOff
UnixReO
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.
The layout is attractive and natural, with ample margins, and no scrollbars or other such interruptions. The menus are all brought up by clicking on unobtrusive text at the top of the screen.
MS Reader also allows plugins which can be activated on selecting a word, changing pages, etc. The three I've seen are a dictionary, a translation utility and a verbal reader.
MS Reader uses .LIT files, which are pretty much just bundled and compressed HTML. It would be nice to see a similar open source book format.
With style sheets you're able to define exactly how the document should look, and display it across different platforms and browsers.
I use this concept, along with small scripts I've written myself (you know Perl, right? :) to read Sci-Fi / Fantasty titles I've downloaded from Direct Connect on my Zaurus PDA.
Highly recommended, since you can easily adjust the screen brightness on your preferred display device and turn off the regular reading lamp that's otherwise certain to annoy your spouse.
sig sig sputnik
There are a number of options out there for this, and it make take care of the text rendering on the screen, and you can print from them as well. You can even read pdfs on some handhelds as well (I can on my zaurus).
I would recommend this route if you know some programming and you should be able to piece something together.
I thought like Homer, "Everybody is stupid except for me." but i'm drunk so i'm a little violent now.
and i'm using windows... sigh. i have to install cygwin on my home pc... a simple bash prompt would calm me down so much... :-)
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
I use a program called palm reader for my Palm. It keeps bookmarks, and it's portable. Many are talking about the issues with PC monitors, but I think a huge ergonomic issue is that you can't "curl up with it" like you can with a book or a magazine.
Spiritual Leader of Green Bay Net
Personally, I use Emacs. I set the font to something san-serif, big, and very readable, use view-mode (for ease of scrolling), and use bookmarks. I also make the Emacs full-screen; even the title bar goes off the screen.
I do this on my laptop, and this helps.
But usually, I prefer to use paper.
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.
I realize that's sort of a flamebaity thing to say in this audience, but there's just no comparison between the quality of text on a Mac or Windows and on Linux.
I use Linux for work and for fun, but I always set it up so that most of my interaction with it is via a terminal program running on Windows. Many of my coworkers use Macs to access their Linux (and other Unix) machines, and I'll have to admit that the text on their Macs looks a little better than on my Windows machines.
None of us can put up with the ugliness of text in current Linux GUIs, which looks like the Mac of almost 20 years ago.
I expect Linux to catch up in the next five years or so (I sure hope so, because I'm using it more and more), but it's pretty hard to look at currently. I don't want to have to keep relying on some other OS to provide a tolerable window into my own Linux box.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
If you have something like gv (or ghostview) that'll read postscript documents, a2ps does a wonderful job of pagenating and formatting text of all kinds ready for printing to a Postscript printer or viewer. However, that doesn't solve your bookmarking problems. It should relieve some of the eye-strain, though.
Stick Men
Also, it comes with programs to convert .txt files, so you can also use ps2ascii and read postscript or even PDFs.
Someone already mentioned Emacs, but...
It'd be trivial to bind a command to a key that allows the bookmarking of a file (ie, saving of a line number to .#filename or some such), and another jump-to-bookmark function as well. Heck, if you were feeling particularly l33t, you could extend normal text mode to do it for you (ebook-find-file automatically jumping to bookmarked line). As for fonts, it's quite simple to either change the fonts in XEmacs or (as I prefer) simply up the font size on your terminal emulator.
The nice part about emacs is that you can also write a quick script to remove useless text, like the license stuff at the beginning, since most of it is standard cut-and-paste. Not that you'd want to distribute such an edited copy, but for your own personal use. Plus, it's not like you have to go download emacs from some site...
- Cloud
http://kickme.to/ebookfaq/
look at the e-book readers section. You will find something you like on that page.
"How do you read big text files without suffering from severe eye strain?"
Well, you asked... I have a number of scripts--they're written in Apple's MPW, but think "shell script" and "egrep" and you'll get the idea--that are specifically tuned to Project Gutenberg's format. Massages line breaks, provides true open and close quotes, and so forth.
They output the particular restricted subset of HTML that's acceptable as input to RocketLibrarian. Then I use RocketLibrarian to download them into my Rocket eBook, which really has very good characteristics. The size is right (midway BETWEEN PDA and laptop) and the screen is very readable.
Unfortunately... the Rocket eBook was acquired by a bunch of business geniuses at Gemstar who proceded to morph it into the REB1100, which is essentially identical to the Rocket EXCEPT that you can ONLY use it to read purchased (and expensive!) content. No "personal content" allowed any more.
It's a pathetic mess and if I get started I'll rant for hours...
But the bottom line is that I've NEVER been able to read comfortably from a fixed CRT sitting at a desk. And I've NEVER been able to read comfortably on cramped 160x160 pixel Palm.
But reading from the Rocket, which I purchased mainly for the specific purpose of reading PG texts, I read pleasurably and comfortably for hours.
It's a darned shame that the eBook industry has seemingly killed itself through greed and digital restrictions management.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Really nice soft... http://tomreader.pisem.net/tom_setup.zip
Like other people suggested, I use a Palm. I've been using iSilo since it's been out; this is great for all kinds of stuff, including gutenbooks. I do a little work on 'em before hand to actually convert them to HTML (I don't understand why Gutenberg doesn't do this, but ... whatever).
I used to use a Palm Vx (160x160 4-bit grayscale), but have since moved on a 320x320 Sony Clie. When you get into a beat on the reading, turn on the autoscroll, and you don't even have to touch the PDA. The new Clie-with-a-keyboard's have 320x480 displays, and it sounds like from the description at iSilo that they support that mode. It's really a nice, inexpensive, well-supported program.
Be careful in looking at PDAs for displays that smear or bleed display contents when scrolling. For some reason, a lot of b&w Palms do this, and the color ones don't (at least the Sony Clie's don't seem to). I'd go nuts if I had to put up with a crappy display while reading. Bonus for reading off a PDA, if you can stand it, is that you don't need a light source. In fact, I have read my kids gutenbooks at night, and we turn off all the lights: my book becomes the light source.
I was also briefly thinking about getting a Rocketbook. I think this would probably be another good way to go if the screen is nice and big, doesn't have tracers when scrolling, and I can put anything I want on it.
DOS had a utility (not included with it, of course) called "LIST" which let you change colors and bookmark (IIRC). It didn't let you change fonts, but I have read lots of manuals with the program. It was basically "less" on steroids.
Buerg Software, home of LIST.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
I personally prefer Tom's eTextReader myself, have read some fairly large texts on it (Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, for example). you can set background colours, it actually renders the pages like a book (double columns).. YMMV, but I read a lot of texts off the screen and I havent found anything better.. This assumes that you're using Win32, of course.
For a Palm OS device, Weasel Reader rocks..