This application allows you to read large Text (.txt,.text), Palm Doc (.pdb), Mobipocket (.pdb,.prc,.mobi), Plucker (.pdb), HTML (.htm,.html), and FB2 files quickly and efficiently on the iPhone. This application lacks many of the advanced features of ruBooks or Books.app, but it can quickly load and display large text files that currently cause Books.app or other UI Text View/Web View based apps problems.

Note: Books.app http://code.google.com/p/iphoneebooks/ provides a formatted display of text and images with hyperlink support, fonts, colors, etc. If you are willing to break up your book into smaller chapters it may also work well for you.

Version 0.7Beta2 Changes

• Fix volume scrolling when volume is max or min. Final release will have a switch to turn this on or off. I will also consider adding a switch to swap between page and line scroll, if I can get the line scrolling working properly.
• Add partial Plucker support. Books from manybooks.net and Project Gutenberg seem to work OK. But, textReader does not have hyperlink support (I may add it in the future). As such, PDB files with multiple web pages will be displayed one after the other in whatever order they happen to be in the file. This may be good, it may be a train wreck. I'll need to hear from Plucker users as to whether or not this is of any use, and any suggestions for how I should go about improving it. This is less than ideal, but textReader can now load War and Peace from Project Gutenberg in Plucker format, which (I think) makes it the only iPhone app that can do it. Of course, that and $10 will get me a cup of burned coffee at Starbucks, and I don't like coffee. Anyway
• Download books via Safari - This isn't my work (except that I asked for it). See below for details, but this comes courtesy of Hachu, iClarified, and Spyboy - Thanks!

This is probably it for the new features for 0.7. The biggest problem right now (by far) is scrolling/paging, especially scrolling up. The finger scrolling is great, but it has added some instability and odd behavior. I'd like to get this fixed by switching to a UISlider control and manually painting the text on the view as needed. This requires a different approach to the code, and means that I have to be able to efficiently do line layout forward and backward with the same results (something that can not be done with the current layout code). As a result, it may take a while for me to get it working. Sorry for the inconvenience, and hope that it works out. Thanks!

Version 0.7Beta1 Changes

• PDB files with Chinese names can now be loaded
• Attempt to fix problem with settings getting reset
• First pass at scrolling with the volume keys

Version 0.6 Changes

• PDB Palm Doc files can contain text or HTML
• PRC Mobipocket Files (non DRM only) can contain text or HTML
• HTML files
• FB2 files
• GB2312 Encoding (Select "Simplified Chinese (EUC)")
• Swipe/Gesture Scrolling (Thanks Allen!)
• Screen Rotation Lock (Thanks Allen!)
• "Loading ..." spinner when loading files (note: The down side is that this means the load is on a second thread which means longer loads).
• HTML, FB2, and Mobipocket files will be cached as text files when opened to speed reload time. If you find that a text cache file is not created, make sure "mobile" is the owner of the directory and file you are opening (i.e. "chown mobile dir" and "chown mobile file"). Or, just put up with the slightly slower load time when you open the file.
• Added Reverse Tap option for folks who want to tap at the top to scroll down
• Minor bug fixes
• Enjoy!

Screen Captures

Using textReader:

• To hide/display the menu bar and slider, tap in the middle of the screen.
• Select Open on the menu bar to get a list of files.
• Tap on ".." or folders to navigate the directory tree
• Select "screwdriver/wrench" icon for settings page to set screen color, encoding, fonts, etc.
• Select "lock" icon to toggle automatic screen rotation changes
• Use the slider to jump to a specific part of the book.
• To scroll down a page, tap on the bottom half of the screen.
• To scroll up a page, tap on the upper half of the screen.
• Select "Slide Scroll" on settings page to enable swipes/gestures for scrolling (This is a preliminary implementation and will be much improved in a future release)
• Use "Ignore Single LF" on the settings page to improve the appearance of files that have hard returns to format them for a particular screen size. Single Cr/Lf characters will be treated as a blank, while multiple Cr/Lf characters will be treated as a new paragraph.

Please report any problems in Issues.

Installing:

• Now on Installer thanks to Big Boss!
• Open Installer, go to Productivity, and then scroll down to textReader.
• Or - download the latest version in the Downloads section.

Adding eBooks

The default directory for textReader is /var/mobile/Media/textReader, but it remembers where the last opened file was so you can navigate to any directory you want. (The directory will be created when you run textReader) I recommend installing OpenSSH on your iPhone and using WinSCP for Windows to install files. Mac users can use Dropcopy, which should work even better. Or, you can always just use scp from a Unix command line ...

Download eBooks via Safari

If you install the Safari Download Plugin from http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1136 you can click on Palm Doc .pdb and Mobipocket .prc files and download them directly to your iPhone. They will be downloaded to /var/root/Downloads, so you can navigate to that directory or make a symbolic link to it in /var/mobile/Media/textReader. I recommend the books from http://manybooks.net and http://www.baen.com as a starting point.

Download via URL

You can also use the download page to download a file.

• Tap in the middle of the screen and select Open
• Select Download File via URL
• Enter a URL to download from
• ex: URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15772/15772-8.txt
• Enter a name for the Download:
• ex: Save As: The Prince - Machiavelli
• Select Download File Now - file will be placed in /var/mobile/Media/textReader
• See http://manybooks.net/site_news/2008/05/03/new-iphone-app-textreader/ for a way to use Download with Manybooks.net

Palm Doc .pdb and .prc Support

textReader can open most Palm Doc and Mobipocket unencrypted non-DRM files (i.e. generally purchased files are protected in some way and can not be read). It will display them as plain text - no links, contents, pictures, etc. Formats like Plucker, Isilo, eReader, and/or Tome Raider will not work. Some of these formats are proprietary or DRM'd which means I won't be able to open them. If you want support for one of the other formats, let me know the details and i'll see what I can do.

PDB/PRC File Redux

Some folks are having problems opening .pdb files. PDB/PRC files are kind of like AVI files - a container than can hold things in various formats. If you have a PDB/PRC file and it isn't in Palm Doc or Mobipocket format, there probably isn't much I can do. Formats like eReader and iSilo are not public, so I can't read them. If you buy an encrypted PDB/PRC file, I probably can't read it either ... sorry, but it isn't my fault - blame the company you bought the book from (although they probably didn't have much choice either). Note that some companies like www.baen.com sell unencrypted Mobipocket books that should work fine. Let me take this moment to suggest that you use a good old plain text file. It's fast, portable, easy, future-proof, and as long as the encoding is supported it will simply work and everyone will be happier!

File Encodings

File Encoding changes take effect after the file is opened. If the encoding is not correct you'll get an error and the previous file will remain open.

Future enhancements:

• Improve load speed
• Add support for all HTML character entities - currently only a few are supported
• Add support for other formats (request formats in Issues)
• Text and Background colors
• Support zip files (i.e. treat like a directory)
• Proper gesture/swipe scrolling
• Automatic encoding support
• Bookmarks - if interested, add suggestions in the Issues section
• Add text search
• Option to toggle "status" bar when reading text
• Improve formatting - possiby retain simple things like bold, underline, and italic
• Improve download - allow textReader to get a list of files for you to select from
• Justified text alignment
• Rewrite text drawing routines (also fix scroll up positioning)
• The icon isn't very good. Let me know if you have a better icon to use.
• Suggest enhancements in the Issues section

Contact

You can email comments, requests, questions, etc. to iphonetextreader at gmail.com. I'll try to get back to you when I can, but I'm a bit busy at work right now. Thanks!

Special Thanks! to the following

• The iPhone Dev Team for toolchain and more!
• James Yopp for the UIOrientingApplication example
• Paul J. Lucas for txt2pdbdoc code
• http://iphonedevdoc.com/index.php - random hints and examples
• mxweas - UITransitionView example
• thebends.org - textDrawing example
• Books.app - written by Zachary Brewster-Geisz (and others)
• http://garcya.us/ - for application icons
• Allen Li for help with rotation lock and swipe/gestures
• Travis Wang, Pericles Pericleous and Jay Sun for alpha testing
• Big Boss for handling Installer issues and hosting
• Hachu, Spyboy, and iClarified - Safari Download PDB/PRC support
• Anyone who sent a Thank You letting me know they like it!