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diff --git a/noncore/apps/opie-reader/README b/noncore/apps/opie-reader/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d091010 --- a/dev/null +++ b/noncore/apps/opie-reader/README @@ -0,0 +1,162 @@ +What is QT Reader? +================== + +QT Reader is an e-text reading program which understands several +varieties of PalmDoc format (types 1,2 and 4), zTxt, plain text and +gzipped text. + +In addition it supports its own very highly compressed format which is +based on ppm (regarded by many as the best available compression +technique) with modifications by Fabrice Bellard for speed and memory +efficiency and by myself to support random access on smaller +devices. I call this modified format ppms (for ppm, segmented). + +The ppms program which is used to produce ppms files from plain text +is available from http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net where there is +also a comparison of file sizes produced by several compression +methods. This is summarised below: + +Compression method Size in bytes Memory required to decompress +Plain text 573714 N/A +Makedoc (PalmDoc format) 329543 2k +ppms (default) 184187 350k +ppms (best) 151733 800k +bzip2 -1 180175 340k +bzip2 -9 154280 2.2M + +The default settings used here were chosen to suit the Agenda VR3. I +would expect the Zaurus to be able to use settings which give 170kb +file size and 500k memory without any problem. The format encodes the +settings used so the user may choose whatever suits them. I choose +based on the amount of memory required and on whether or not pageup +performance is acceptable. + +General Use +=========== + +Start it up and then choose "File/Open" from the menu. Select a +palmdoc, plain text, gzipped text or ppms file from the file selector +and use the cursor keys to page up/down (up/down keys) and to make the +text size comfortable (left/right keys) and thats it for most +uses. See below for more advanced use. + +What the Menu Options Do +======================== + +File +==== + +File operations live in this menu. + +Open Brings up the file selector to allow you to choose a + new file to read. +Info Displays info about the currently open file. Needs + reformatting. +Start Block Marks the text at the top of the currently displayed + page ready for copying. +Copy Block Copies all text from the mark to the bottom of the + currently displayed page to the clipboard. +Scroll Starts/stops autoscroll. The speed can be adjusted + using the up/down keys while autoscroll is on (page + up and down are still functional and can be activated + by using the up and down arrows on the task bar). +Jump Jumps to a specific offset in the file. If you note + down the current location from the File/Info display + you can then jump to the same position again using + this function (or you could bokmark it 8^)). +Page/Line scroll When this is On pressing the arrows (keys or + icons on the task bar) moves you a page at a time. + When this is off, pressing the arrows moves you a + line at a time. +Set Overlap Sets the number of lines of overlap between pages + when scrolling by page. +Set Dictionary When you tap on the screen the word under the + pointer is copied to the clipboard ready for pasting + into (e.g.) a dictionary program. Using this function + allows the word to be sent to compatible dictionary + programs direct. The format is exename/messagename + where exename is the name of the executable for the + dictionary program and messagename is the name of the + message it is expecting. You can get some idea of how + it works by using some debug functionality which I + deliberately left in QTReader. Set this to + uqtreader/info. + To deactivate it again, set it to /. +Find Brings up the search requester where you can enter a + regular expression to search (again) for. + +Format +====== + +Used to alter the way the text is reformatted before display. + +Strip CR Removes those pesky DOS crs from the file. +Strip HTML Uses a very simple minded filter to remove html mark-up. +Dehyphen Removes hyphens from e-texts which have been formatted to + fit on different sized displays by hyphenating words + which no longer appear at the end of the line. +Unindent Removes leading spaces from the beginning of paragraphs. +Re-paragraph Removes/adds line breaks as necessary to make the text + look nice on the display. +Double Space Adds an extra space between paragraphs. +Indent+ Increases the number of extra leading spaces inserted + before paragraphs. +Indent- Decreases the number of extra leading spaces inserted + before paragraphs. +Bold Sets the font to bold (if its supported by the currently + selected font). + +For e-texts from fictionwise I don't need any of these enabled. For +Project Gutenberg e-texts I enable Strip CR, Re-paragraph and either 3 lots +of indent+ and/or double space. + +Zoom Menu option not implemented but pops up an info box + telling you that left/right cursor keys will zoom + out/in. +Ideogram/Char grouping When selected, treats each character as a word + and enforces uniform character spacing - suitable for + many eastern character sets. When not selected, looks for + spaces in the text to identify words - suitable for most + western texts. (I'm not a language expert so forgive my, + probably inaccurate, generalisations). +Set Width Sets the character spacing as a percentage of the text + height to be used when in ideogram mode. Start at 100 and + experiment to find what you like best. +Encoding Allows you to choose from a variety of codings. Ascii is + actually unprocessed text so its precise behaviour may + depend on the machines locale setting. Palm and code page + 1252 are very similar and are useful if you have an etext + aimed at Palms or Windows machines which use an extended + character set - though you will need to use a unicode + enabled font to show all the characters. The U... fonts + are different varieties of unicode encodings. If you + don't know what that means you probably don't need them + (they allow texts to access the full range of characters + required for non US English languages). +Set Font Allows you to choose which font the text is displayed + in. Helvetica or smoothtimes are probably best for ascii type + texts, unifont or cyberbit (if you have installed them) + are best for extended character sets (other unicode fonts + may also be available but these are all I've found, so far). +Marks +===== + +Mark Saves the current position as a bookmark +Goto Allows selection of a bookmark to jump to. +Delete Deletes an unwanted bookmark from the current text. +Autogen Displays a box for entering a regular + expression which will be used to determine which + paragraphs (not lines) will be marked to allow jumping to + directly using the Goto option. The format options + described above are applied before the regular expression + matching is done. + This operation is performed in the background allowing + you to continue paging up/down the e-text. +Clear Deletes all in-memory bookmarks from the current document. +Save Saves the "in-memory" bookmarks to disk. +Tidy Deletes bookmark file for a document. The operations + above work on an in-memory copy of the bookmarks. This + option makes that copy more permanent (you will also be + prompted to save the bookmarks when closing a text if the + in-memory copy is different to the saved copy). + |