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Open e-book reader? Sure, that's a really really great thing, that we (the society) need. The problem with this is, that an ebook needs to perform a minimal se
by ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Open e-book reader? Sure, that's a really really great thing, that we (the society) need.
The problem with this is, that an ebook needs to perform a minimal set of software functions (basically parsing a book saved in some standard format, displaying it on screen, and navigating pages), and this is not hard to do... but the hard part is hardware itself... it needs to have a large, high(-ish) resolution screen, it has to be light, preferably waterproof, have some kind of back/front light, some cases available for it, very long-lasting battery, etc. Readers like the new kindles have perfected this, while still keeping users closed to amazons store, and having them do workarounds for imorting new books (calibre,...).
Instead of focusing on bare pcbs with micro switches, i'd rather focus on user-friendly hardware. You can already get friendlier kits for cheap [0].
Otherwise a great product idea
[0] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-kit-960x540-4-7-eink-display-235-ppi?variant=37595977908396 https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoI don’t think it’s a hardware problem at all. Spend two years solving all those issues you just listed (or better yet just pay a talented industrial design graduate to do it for you), then tell me how to get a DRM’ed copy of any of this week’s top ten NYT bestsellers on the silly thing.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoDRM is a legal problem, not a technical one. I'm pretty sure amazon won't allow open source developers to work with their drm-ed kindle books, neither will eg. "adobe digital editions" (or whatever that drm crap for libraries is called).
- SSLy 5y agoAmazon-distributed ebooks can be stripped from DRM with utilities floating around. (And so do ADE-wrapped PDFs but I can't recall any provider using that thing anymore)
- NoGravitas 5y agoThe major lending-library services like OverDrive use ADE-wrapped epubs.
- someperson 5y agoThe open-source Calibre eBook management software has a plugin called DeDRM [1] which provides the ability to decrypt any Amazon eBook. [1] https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools
- criddell 5y agoThe DeDRM tool support for KFX is still a bit unstable. It breaks pretty frequently as Amazon tweaks that format.
- II2II 5y agoDRM is going to be more of a problem for some people than others. It depends upon both the author and the publisher of the books they want to read. There are many DRM free books available from legal sources.
- bluGill 5y agoIf you demand exactly that book then you lost to DRM. However there are enough other books that if you only need something like that book there are enough other choices without DRM that didn't get popular but are otherwise just as good.
- amoresolidtime 5y agoPiracy?
- criddell 5y ago> displaying it on screen [...] and this is not hard to do It might not be difficult to display text on screen, but it's pretty hard to do it well if you care about typography, hyphenation, supporting non-standard layouts, and all the other things that print books do so well. The words open source and excellent typography don't go together often enough.
- swayvil 5y agoStick a thumbdrive in it. Or a micro sd. Load an EPUB from that. Is this a common functionality?