Does anyone have an e-ink device to test some pages for me?

[Wendy Galovich]

On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 22:15 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> An associate wants to publish a book as PDF and possibly epub.
> However, neither I nor him have an e-ink device! If anybody is willing
> to test some pages, and possibly photograph the screen and send them
> back, I would really appreciate it. I think that the book will be CC
> licensed, in any case it will be freely (as in beer) available.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- 
> Dotan Cohen

Hi Dotan,

I have a Bookeen Opus and can help with epub testing if and when the
book is put into that format.

Since I acquired that device I've also done considerable "noodling" with
the format both with Calibre and by hand (the latter has been useful in
understanding the format, and does provide greater flexibility in style
formatting and chapter navigation). If your associate wants help in
putting the ebook into epub format, please feel free to contact me.

For preliminary epub testing I have also found the epub add-on for
Firefox is useful; with that I can validate that the basic file includes
all of the necessary components and that the xml is conformed correctly,
though it doesn't fully guarantee viability for any given e-ink device.

I'm going to pass on helping test the PDF format for now because in most
examples I've seen, the text does not reflow reasonably. I'm not sure
whether this is a function of the format itself, or an inadequacy of the
available PDF readers (or both), but it makes most PDFs at best very
awkward and unpleasant to read on a device with a 5- or 6-inch screen...
and if the author has chosen to present in dual-column pages, the
resulting document is virtually unusable on a small e-ink reader.

Based on what I've seen you really need one of the bigger - and more
expensive - e-ink readers, with at least a 10-inch screen, to read PDF
documents comfortably. For this reason I would encourage your associate
to include an epub version of the book if possible, even though the
format is not as well known as PDF.

Wendy