Re: Jātaka, and low eyestrain e-ink readers

Dear Piya,
As an experiment, I tried the program Calibre to convert your "M16
ceto khila" sutta discovery issue into a .mobi file. The diacritics all
came through when viewing on my kindle. So if you're not using unicode
already, then Calibre is pretty smart about substituting a working
font. It would take very little extra work on your part to make your
sutta discovery issues into a very navigable .mobi or .epub format. I
believe if you do something simple like have a unique keyword such as
"chapter" heading every section, then calibre will automatically detect
those headers and build a table of contents. And if you formatted those
chapter headers with "heading 1" on a kindle you should be able to flip
through chapters quickly with a "swipe up" or "swipe down' motion. If
one doesn't have a kindle touch, then the "left" and "right" buttons on
the 4 directional button should accomplish teh same feat without having
to pull up a table of contents page. The hyperlinks for the footnotes
however, did not survive. But I do know if you're starting with a
microsoft .doc file, export an html file, then use calibre to convert
that html file instead of how I converted from the pdf, then the
hyperlinks for your footnotes will survive. And if you are using
"heading1" formatting on any of your headers, you don't even need to use
the "chapter" keyword, then calibre will build the table of contents
automatically and the kindle will navigate with the chapter buttons/swipes.

So at least for that sutta M16, it looks like you're already using a
unicode font on most of the text since most of the diacritics survived
the conversion via calibre. To double check, I used a standard PC pdf
viewer, copying a large block of text from that pdf file, dropped it
into a plain text editor to remove all special formatting, and the pali
diacritics survived. So either some of your sutta discovery issues
already work, or amazon's free PDF conversion service can't handle
standard unicode pali. I'll try out a few more of your sutta discovery
issues over the next couple of weeks and let you know.

As far as encoding and security on PDF vs. mobi and epub, I don't
know anything about it. It sounds like you're asking about something
different than digital rights management, which commercial book
publishers put on their ebooks.

Metta,
-Frank

On 12/25/2011 3:35 PM, Piya Tan wrote:
> Dear Frank,
>
> I highly encourage Piya with his Sutta Discovery series and others to
>> use standard unicode pali, so your electronic publications can be
>> effortlessly ported to various devices.
>>
>> What about security? If we use Unicode and the file is converted into
> .mobi etc, can the file be altered by others as in MS Word?
>
> With metta,
>
> Piya
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 12/19/2011 4:07 AM, stefan_karpik wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Bryan, Frank and others interested in e-readers,
>>>
>>> These posts made me think about upgrading my Kindle 3 to a Kindle
>>> Touch, but I think I would still have the same problems after an
>>> upgrade:
>>>
>>> 1. Neither reads ePub documents. This means the offerings of
>>> Theravada Tripitaka Press can't be read on Kindle.
>>>
>>> 2. PDFs often cannot be enlarged sufficiently to read them. 3. PDFs
>>> can be converted into Kindle format by Amazon quite efficiently and
>>> for free, but diacritics, even in a Unicode font like Times Roman
>>> Extended, come out as gobbledegook and tables are jumbled up. 4. PDFs
>>> of scans cannot be converted to Kindle format
>>>
>>> 5. New fonts to handle diacritics cannot be introduced.
>>>
>>> Is this true for the Kindle Touch?
>>>
>>> Does anyone have a very positive experience of reading Pali on e-ink
>>> readers?
>>>
>>> I completely agree that e-ink is much easier on the eyes than a
>>> computer/ tablet/ smartphone screen.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>> Stefan Karpik
>>>
>>> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com<mailto:Pali%40yahoogroups.com>, Bryan
>>> Levman<bryan.levman@...> wrote:
>>>> Dear Frank,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your description of the Kindle Touch; it sounds well
>>>> worth
>>> the price!
>>>> Metta, Bryan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________ From: frank fcckuan@... To:
>>>> Pali@yahoogroups.com<mailto:Pali%40yahoogroups.com> Sent:
>>>> Thursday, December 15, 2011 11:12:06 AM Subject: Re: [Pali] Re:
>>>> JÄ taka, and low eyestrain e-ink readers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Â Dear Bryan and all, I looked at those links, there are digital
>>>> versions there you can download, including Epub and mobi! Very
>>>> cool. That means you can read
>>> it
>>>> with low eyestrain on a kindle, nook, etc. You can also get free
>>>> ebook readers for your pc that will read those two formats. I got a
>>>> "kindle touch" this month for 99$. Works very well. Visudhimagga
>>>> (.mobi version) works GREAT on there. The swipe up and swipe down
>>>> on the touch screen advances up and down through chapters, and the
>>>> hyperlinks in the table of contents work. Also, I didn't register
>>>> my kindle touch with amazon, and I leave the wireless
>>> features
>>>> turned off, so I don't get bombarded with annoying advertisements.
>>>> I highly recommend everyone take a serious look at the e-readers
>>>> (using e-ink) out there now that they're below 100$, especially
>>>> kindle touch and nook touch. The e-ink works just like a printed
>>>> book. You
>>> can
>>>> read it in full sunlight, low eye-strain, unlike computer screens
>>>> that have flourescent back lights, which makes your vision go fuzzy
>>>> and get slight headaches after a few hours of staring at it. I'm
>>>> pretty sure there's people on this list who do a lot of reading,
>>>> and if hours of
>>> it
>>>> are spent reading on a computer screen, you're going to be much
>>> happier
>>>> if you can read it on an ebook reader using e-ink instead. Note
>>>> that
>>> the
>>>> color ebook readers such as the "kindle fire" are not e-ink
>>>> readers, they are flourescent or LED backlight just like other
>>>> tablet computers or pc screens, and thus would not have the
>>>> advantage of low eyestrain e-ink such as the monochrome grayscale
>>>> "kindle touch", "nook touch", etc. I also don't recommend the entry
>>>> level "kindle" for 79$ which
>>> does
>>>> NOT have a touch screen. The button and 4 way cursor is incredibly
>>>> tedious to use. Newer ebooks published, and especially dhamma
>>>> material in ebook format will take full advantage of hyperlinks and
>>>> you want to be able to just touch the hyperlink on screen and go
>>>> there, not
>>> navigate
>>>> with a four way button cursor. The 20$ savings between "kindle
>>>> touch" and entry level kindle is not worth it.
>>>>
>>>> -Frank
>>>>
>>>> On 12/15/2011 3:40 AM, Bryan Levman wrote:
>>>>> Dear Piya,
>>>>>
>>>>> You mean the English version by Burlingame, I assume? (I believe
>>>>> the Pali is all on the Digital Pali Reader).
>>>>>
>>>>> I use this link for volume 2:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>> http://books2.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhi\
>> <http://books2.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhi>
>>>
>> stlegends02burluoft
>> <
>> http://books2.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhistlegends02burluoft
>>>>> at the University of Toronto; I don't believe you can download
>>>>> it,
>>> but
>>>>> you can read it on line
>>>>>
>>>>> The link for volume 3 is:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>> http://books1.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhi\
>> <http://books1.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhi>
>>>
>> stlegends03burluoft
>> <
>> http://books1.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/oca1/15/buddhistlegends03burluoft
>>>>> Hopefully that works for you. If anyone has a PDF version of
>>>>> Burlingame, please let the group know,
>>>>>
>>>>> Metta,
>>>>>
>>>>> Bryan
>>>>>
>>>>> ________________________________ From: Piya Tan dharmafarer@...
>>>>> <mailto:dharmafarer%40gmail.com>> To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
>>>>> <mailto:Pali%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:Pali%40yahoogroups.com>
>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 11:11:00 PM Subject: Re:
>>>>> [Pali] Re: JÄ taka
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Dharma Friends,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have Dhammapadatthakatha (Dh Commentary in Pali) vol 1. Does
>>> anyone have
>>>>> the rest or know where i can download them?
>>>>>
>>>>> With metta,
>>>>>
>>>>> Piya
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 7:13 PM, Bryan Levman bryan.levman@...
>>>>> <mailto:bryan.levman%40yahoo.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> **
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear Friends,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone know if the seven Fausboll JÄ taka volumes are
>>> available on
>>>>>> line with the prose and commentary? Most of the canons that I
>>>>>> have consulted seems to only have the JÄ taka verses. Thanks
>>>>>> for
>>> your help,
>>>>>> Metta, Bryan
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> -- *hp (65) 8211 0879*
>>>>>
>>>>> *The Minding Centre* 170 Upper Bukit Timah Road #11-04 Bukit
>>>>> Timah Shopping Centre Singapore 588179
>>>>>
>>>>> Meditation courses& therapy: http://themindingcentre.org Sutta
>>>>> translation: http://dharmafarer.org
>>>>>
>>>>> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>>>>
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