For FileBrowser?, you should be able to do:

[fileBrowser setExtensions:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"txt",@"html",@"htm", nil]];

(Albeit I never actually tested it when I wrote it)

I'll modify it so it'll show directories and recurse through them, and send it your way.

Thanks, stepwhite! Actually I've already modified your code so that it shows the directories, using a simple [fileManager directoryContentsAtPath:] method, and then checking each string in the resulting array with fileExistsAtPath:isDirectory:. Feel free to take a look at it in the trunk. (I suppose I ought to actually document my changes as well.

Thanks for looking at the project; your code has been a tremendous help.

Thanks alot for the work you have done. Having it display only html, directories and txt is a good idea, but I reverted back to the old filebrowser.m when I built .4 because I like to set up mulitiple directories such as Genre, Authors Name, Series, Book... the new filebrowser doesn't show sub directories. Of course sub directories throw off the nav bar at the top but it is still usable. Anyways, just thought I'd say that some form of orginization for ebooks would be nice in future releases. If I have time, I may work on it some.

Hi Chadesh:

You're right, one of the things I want to do is allow multiple, arbritary browsers, perhaps via a "browser stack." I'll add this to the TODO list.

Is it/will it be possible to have links in books work?

Baen publishes both free and commercial books without DRM, in multiple formats including HTML. They work with the exception of the "next" chapter link

www.baen.com

Hi Scott:

As I said in the comments to the issue you submitted, while links will probably never work, I am working on a chapter forward/back functionality. Stay tuned.

OK, long-shot here, but how about listening to a book?! I know today's voice libraries are huge, but even just listening to Tarzan with via a Macintalk-like synth voice would blow my mind!

Thanks for all the work, read 2 chapters today while waiting for my girlfriend.

Hi chess: LOL! Might I suggest LibriVox?

Still loving Books.app. Just want to make you aware that with the advent of the semi-transparent status bar (a la SummerBoard?) the Books.app Navigation Bar is showing through when auto-hide is on. -- Rob

what about reading non-drm'ed pdf, lit, and prc files? C-Lit is out for OSX (and is free, though I don't know if its "Free").

Auto-scroll would be great! Similar to the mobipocket or ereader autoscroll...

Hi Rob: yes, the transparent status bar has been submitted as a bug.

GWG: Auto-scroll may be implemented for version 2.0.

NIce fixes/functionality in 0.9.5! I've got 2 1/2 books under my belt with Books.app now and have some more observations:

Auto-scroll could be very cool – need a speed pref of course and easy pause, restart.

On colors: I only use the white text on black background mode – just very readable whether in bed or outdoors. But the app always starts up, like most apps, with "The White Screen Of Load" which can be pretty shocking in bed... any way around that? Also, setting the brightness from within the app would be nice instead of jumping to the "Settings" application. But these are small ticket items that may require big ticket effort, so...

But speaking of settings, it seems Apple has decided to put many things one would normally consider 'application preferences' into the "Settings" app. But, the Settings app seems it was intended to be more like the "System Preferences" of Mac OS X. Why would I expect to change the iPod's EQ setting there and not from within the iPod app (or iTunes on Mac OS X)? Books.app does it right then with an embedded prefs panel and an always accessible button (and probably not because you can't add entries to the "Settings" app, right?)

Anyway, great app. If after 1.0 you decide go the shareware route, I'd be happy to pony up. Though it might be hard (and strange) to collect for software unsupported by the mothership. When will Apple see the writing on the touchpad and release an SDK? Or at least an HIG doc?!

BTW, I've also released some freeware (labor of love) software for the Mac:

http://www.applepi.com/chesspuzzle/

Hi, I love books.app, I was wondering about inline HTML images, any chance that could be implemented

Thanks for excellent app

Great app!!! I was wondering if I had a link in an html page, could I link to media in the iPhone? How about linking to other html pages? If so, how do I do this?

I would love RTF support...

love the app! It saves me on the long train rides. Only one request, would it be possible to add pdf support. If you did, you would officially be my hero! If not, does anyone know of a pdf to txt converter thats free for os x?

Great App, just started using it yesterday. Is there a plan to eventually use the acceleromiter rotation like Safari does? It absolutely drives me crazy that the e-Mail app doesn't do that. Also the pinch and pull zoom in and out would be awesome, but I understand that it can take a lot.

Phew, lots of comments.

chess: I'm trying to determine how to implement a dark default screen when applicable. Stay tuned.

zmedic, j, douglas, tamtamg: with the current state of the unofficial SDK, all your requests are very difficult to implement. Of those, inline HTML is currently my top priority, then PDF, then linking, then RTF.

Spaceboyx96: Rotation is in the back of my mind, and is probably possible, but it's currently low priority.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

Congratulations Zach and Chris on getting to 1.0 - yowza!

my $.02 on rotation: don't need it – ever seen a book (e.g. novel) in landscape? You'll probably forget what line your on when your eyes wrap around.

I would definitely recommend rotation. I've been reading ebooks on a palm t3, nokia 770 and now (thanks to Books) on my iPhone. Always used landscape and it's been more comfortable. Also is there a way to code the use of the volume up/down hard buttons for page up/down? Just a thought that way you could read one handed. Keep up the good work!

Great work! I hacked my iPhone simply to install your app.

Cheers!

pdf support soon?

PDF support would be amazing as most of the books I have on my mac are in that format. You would be my hero!

Can I ask you to look into FB2 file format? It is very common for book readers. For example: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/pocketpc/FictionBook_description.html Thank you.

I second (or third) RTF support. I guess it should be pretty easy compared to some of the other requests... :)

The one area where rotation support would be helpful is for PDF's, depending on whether you plan to implement re-pagination. If PDF's are displayed 'as is', then in landscape view you might get away without having to zoom in and scroll left to right.

Thanks for this wonderful app.

Just about the first thing I thought of when the iPhone first came out was a good book reader (which you've done!) with one particular feature. I thought it would be incredibly cool if the 'next page' and 'previous page' could be linked to the accelerometer so that rolling the iphone to the left or to the right would 'turn' the page.

I realize this is a 100% superfluous feature and I'm not at all holding my breath but I thought I'd throw the idea out there. Thanks for a great app!

Thanks for the software. Any chance for pdb (palm book foramt non drm) support? Also, set up a pay pal account for donations, I'm in!!

mjposner@mjposner.com

Thanks for the reader. I'd like to echo the desire for auto-scrolling and landscape mode.

small thing on scrolling – with "hide nav" and "hide toolbar" on, when I tap near the bottom of the page to page down, about 70% of the time I get it, about 20% of the time I've tapped too high and make the nav and toolbar panes visible and the the other 10% I've tapped too low (off the screen) and obviously nothing happens. In in general "hidden controls", while usually convenient, have their pitfalls. Would you consider some visible indication of the 'hot areas' for tap-scrolling? Could be a 5-10% opaque white box overlay. And could be user-preference-able. This would solve the problem, but not sure how distracting it would be on top of the text. Tricky. Thanks again for the great app. Rob.

Would be nice if it would tilt the book, when you turn it over. Like when viewing pictures. PDF support would be nice also =)

I like your app,but would make afew suggestions. Load by parts. If the ebook is really big, load only the first x lines and when the user reaches 75% load the next x lines etc. And a jump to page/text function. Then it would be awesome! Keep up the good work!

What about adding the feature of switching to Next Page by tapping on the left area of the screen. This could be useful - I guess people often wants to go next page rather than open-hide the top-bottom panels.

BTW, I'd prefer than the whole screen area (at least top 90% ) will get me to next page, about show/hide controls - it may be bound to double-tap

yury--are you talking about scrolling down a page? It's already implemented. Tap the bottom of the screen to scroll down and the top to scroll up (with the toolbars hidden).

Fangrahh--It sounds so simple, but it's actually terribly difficult to do. :) Believe me, if I knew how to manage that I would do it already, but there are many weird things about Apple's TextView? implementation. My guess is that it was never designed to hold large amounts of text. The good news is that I'm trying to transition to the WebView? engine which drives MobileSafari?, and which loads HTML without blocking the process. However, that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms, so I can't promise anything yet.

does anyone know a pdf to .txt converter that I can use....i have a bunch of books only in pdf format?

what about support for PDB files? Specifically those that are giving me errors about the magic of ToGoToGo? and iSiloX? Support the medical community!

Corcoranm: see PalmFormats. We'd love to support them, but a lot of these formats are completely undocumented.

MohamoudAli?- If you are a Mac user, you can use the great freeware reader program Tofu (http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/) to open PDF files. You can then select all the text and copy it, and paste it into TextEdit? (or whatever program you want.)

Zach- if you are looking to strip and re-paginate PDF files in iphoneebooks, the author of that program might be able to help. The text is rendered better than some other methods I've seen.

Does it support .LIT extensions yet ? (for Microsoft Reader e-books)

Just installed on my iPod Touch-- works great! One thing that would make it easier to use is to enlarge the "tap to scroll" space on the screen. Mobipocket and eReader give you the option to split the screen in half so the entire right side goes forward a page and the entire left side goes back. You can also change it to top/bottom instead of left/right.

It's probably the way I hold it, but I feel like a bit of a contortionist trying to get my thumb down to the very bottom of the screen. Half the time I miss and show the hidden toolbars...

Thanks for all your hard work so far.

I really would like to see a seach feature. Making searches in the text is more than useful for a lot of texts. In particular the iphone lacks the possibility of searching text among text notes (as offered by palm pdas), and this feature on the iphoneebooks would likely replace that shortcoming by making a text file searcheable.

thanks for the great app. Is HTML linking close

I think the application is good! But i would like to suggest 1) Support Chinese Character, 2) Landscape when rotate the iphone.

Can you add a feature to show an actually image of the Book Cover instead of just the title text? Maybe have the option of just displying the covers or a small cover and the name of the book. Thanks!

GWG: I'll be extending the tap areas a bit.

josh: no, it isn't.

george: Chinese characters already work if you use UTF-8 encoding. I don't know about other encodings, but there are many available via the Preferences dialog.

rudi: That feature already exists! You need a cover.jpg (or png or gif) inside the book's folder.

Books is a great program, I use it every day.

Two feature request: - If possible, add a "bold" preference for the text font. - When open a book go directly to the last viewed chapter instead of the chapter list, or at least select it in the chapter list; I switch frequently between several books and I have to find the correct chapter every time in a long list (I have to split the books in a lot of chapters because the big HTMLs problem), perhaps a preference.

Best regards

Guillermo

Hi Chris!!! I loved your app! Combined with the wondeful scrolling of iTouch its a great little thing to read our books in.

One small thing though... Could you add Greek language support in the books main menu?

Hello roosterspice, the program is great!

It would be very usefull to have a possibility turn on "Landscape mode". If it's too complicated to use an accelerometer, maybe just add that feature to the preferences?

Best regards, Cyric

My wish list: - Faster book loading on start-up - Justify text - Dictionary support Anyway, great work!!! BR, Guillermo

I love reading ebooks on my iPhone, but I was wondering about support for the wikipedia .epodia file? I'd love a real life HHGTTG.

Hi! Great app!! I would also enjoy a rotation feature. It is simply more convenient to hold the phone sideways while reading. I would enjoy a no-scrolling mode, a view option in which the entire document is divided up in parts that span one page exactly (the size would be a function of the chosen font size). This mode would be navigated like the photo album, by flicking left and right.

Hi! Your app is great, but how about fb2 (or even better fb2.zip) support? And is it possible to bind page up/page down to volume up/down side buttons?

The app has been a joy to use. I have noticed that if the content of a <pre> tag is wider than that of the screen, horizontal scrolling will ensue. Is this something you are considering fixing? Alternatively, is the a way of changing the behaviour of the pre tag using CSS? I have tried several approaches, but neither of them work.

x2 on the Search-- it is a very cool, important function/feature. I will donate greatly if there is a Search feature.

Oh and much thanks for your efforts to date! My apologies for not thanking you first.

Hey rooster,

I updated my iPod Touch to 1.1.2, and performance of Books.app (and the whole system) has increased. So a great app has gotten even better with no work on your part. ;-)

Is there any update on RTF inclusion? It would seem very easy to implement compared to some of the other feature requests. Since TextEdit? stores in RTF by default, it would be nice to have RTF compatibility. Thanks!!

Great job! This is exactly why I bought the NOkia 770, and now the iPhone. Will be donating shortly.

Also to add my $0.02, landscape mode is a definite plus, since it is easier to read books across without having to "break" the line of reading... if that makes any sense?

Thanx again!

Regarding footnotes, I don't think there's a standard for it, but might this work?

Have all footnotes in a separate HTML-page with anchors for each footnote and then link the superscript footnote number to that file and anchor? It would work in a normal browser so there's hope. ;)

You could also have footnotes at the bottom of each page if there was an easy way to go back to where you came from, but I think the first method is the preferred one...

Hope this is at least somewhat helpful ;)

/Martin.

Can you implement the ability to follow HTML links in the document? I have single file HTML docs that have a separate file for the table of contents. I would like to be able to follow the HTML links used in the TOC to jump directly to the beginning of a chapter.

Is it possible to add landscape mode? And .fb2 compatability (http://www.fictionbook.org)

thanks so much for starting this project. Its the app i use most often on my iPhone (even more than making calls). I'm interested in doing some iPhone development, or maybe even adding code this this project. A list of references, tools etc would be a big help.

would love to see some other file formats supported (i'm happy to put my own efforts into getting this done)

cheers and keep up the good work mate

glenn tinylion development

ok, after all the stuff about the Kindle's note taking, how about a feature where, for instance, a double tap selects the sentence and puts it into a note and brings up the keypad.

Anyway, I use Books pretty much daily, I use it to read the news but I've read a couple of books and been quite happy with it.

bobt

Pretty please, implement fb2 reader!

Excellent work on this app, just a couple of feature requests to keep you busy ;)

- Widescreen mode - Mobipocket, Repligo, iSilo Support - It takes ages to open large HTML documents (I tried a 1.8mb file) any suggestions on how to improve this? is there a mac app that will optimise / split up the chapters?

Books Repository

Allow Installer.app like book repositories, with install and uninstall for individual books.

Reasons: Not many people know how to install other books than the few present Installer.app packages. Scp and ssh is not easy for everyone. Also, would create a library-like system and there would be a distribution channel for reading material. Book reading clubs could be created around this feature.

Move the EBooks folder to the /private/var (/dev/disk0s2) partition.

The free space on the system partition is quite limited and a book can be around 500K-1Mb, so with a few books there would be little space left. On the other hand, on the music partition there is enough space to publish a 5000 volume library!

Implement page numbers.

You could arbitrarily set the size of a page to 2000 or 3000 characters and give us an estimate on the current page number and the size of the book. This is more intuitive than sliders, percentages and megabytes and would also motivate the readers : "Today I red 100 pages". How would "Today I red 300Kb!" sound by comparison?

Display .lit files.

I hope it can be done. Not sure if it's legal though.

Hi. Are there any plans to implement page scolling using volume up/down button? Some one has asked about that before. I'm just interested to know if that's possible and if it's gonne be implemented sooner or later or not. P.S. Thanks for the great apps :)

really need it for medical usage, please add support for PDB file(especially powered by isilo)! thanks alot

Very nice program! Much preferred to Safari for reading books!!

Only thing I miss is landscape reading mode - please consider this another vote for that feature!

I'm dying for a bookmarking and search function.

Hell, I'd be happy if it could just handle HTML style bookmarking so you could easily move to a specific chapter.

Search for pretty much the same reasons. If you're reading a book it's pretty damn hard to find out where you were last.

Otherwise, brilliant work! Keep it up! And this is the apple software community, no reason your ebook software won't be THE eBook software. Good eBook software doesn't have to have a lot of fancy features, it just has to let you read easily.

I'd love for there to be a highlight or bookmarking feature for footnotes or just making places to come back to for reference.

great stuff! can you add a function to edit text files?

Thanks roosterspice! I wish I could help you, but I'm not a programmer. Still, I have some suggestions/requests: - optional landscape orientation (independant from orientation sensors! so I can read in bed, while on my side) - crisper antialiasing, if at all possible... - faster performace with whole books; if a palm V can do it, why couldn't an iPhone?

Accelerometer (tilt) scrolling. So we don't have to hold the iPhone with both hands when reading.

Can we also use the volume keys for scrolling? It might be more convenient to use.

Is there a way to change the text color, I'm a big fan of green or amber on a black background. I find it even easier to read than the white/black or black/white options.

+1 to seafoam. Must be the option to change the text/backround color. As well as .fb2 compatibility.

Browsing Media/EBooks folder like MobileMusicPlayer?.app (music) In portret mode all is ok (v1.4) Autodetect landscape mode and preview the content of current folder as a CoverFlow? (cover.jpg from subfolders).

+Autodetect landview/landscape in picture viever like MobileSlideShow?.app

How about plucker support?

2 small requests:

-pdf support -epub support (the new standard ebook format) -bring back the ability to browse/switch folders

Yes, what about plucker support (cf Gutemberg project)

Are you planning on switching the code over to follow Apple's iPhone SDK, to distribute it over the itunes App Store eventually?

Will you add formating of text + hypernation? Look the only reference you should consider developing this app is HaaliReader? - the best book reader for Pocket PC.

The only thing HR miss is library function - book browser with "sort by" (by author, year, genre) function & small preview of first 3 lines of text + tags like "read", "reading" & sample icons reflecting this status (open book for "reading" status, book on the shelf for "read" status). BTW this status can be set automatically - if you open a book for more then 10 minutes more then 1 time book has status "reading" in the library.

So to bring your application on the most top 1) - make same functionality as HR has 2) make book browser with tag support & sort function.

I read that you aren't planning to display DRM books, but I was wondering -- There are a lot of free e-books distributed in a mobipocket format. Do you have any plans for books.app to be able to read books in a mobi format that aren't copy-protected?

Please implement FB2 format support

I love the app and will definitely donate when the search function is added. Any ideas on when that might happen?

A nice feature to implement would be the possibility to add open source dictionaries (e.g. freedict). That should allow the user to click on a word and choose the corresponding dictionary in order to get the definition. Microsoft reader already does this but is unfortunately unavailable for iPhone.