[Zoom]

So I just discovered this wonderful online treasure trove of free classic books called Project Gutenberg. (I actually heard about it a long time ago, but just now checked it out.)

Unfortunately, all the books I've seen so far as just .txt files. However, there appears to be a standard header in there, so I'm hoping that this is actually a baseline eBook format that can be interpreted and read by an eBook reader.

I've done some searches, but can't seem to find a free eBook reader for the Mac. Acrobat Reader 6.0 will read eBooks, but it looks like it only handles the copyrighted books. I downloaded one of the .txt files and couldn't find any way to read this with Acrobat. (And God was this tool a pain in the butt to use.)

I wish Apple's Preview would handle this. I'm going to submit a request for this.

Anyway, what are my options? Even something that would convert it to HTML would be nice, with a table of contents and hyperlinks. Can someone out there enlighten me?

[-Q-]

Would this work?

eBook Reader

[Wickedkitten]

Originally posted by Zoom:
So I just discovered this wonderful online treasure trove of free classic books called Project Gutenberg. (I actually heard about it a long time ago, but just now checked it out.)

Unfortunately, all the books I've seen so far as just .txt files. However, there appears to be a standard header in there, so I'm hoping that this is actually a baseline eBook format that can be interpreted and read by an eBook reader.

I've done some searches, but can't seem to find a free eBook reader for the Mac. Acrobat Reader 6.0 will read eBooks, but it looks like it only handles the copyrighted books. I downloaded one of the .txt files and couldn't find any way to read this with Acrobat. (And God was this tool a pain in the butt to use.)

I wish Apple's Preview would handle this. I'm going to submit a request for this.

Anyway, what are my options? Even something that would convert it to HTML would be nice, with a table of contents and hyperlinks. Can someone out there enlighten me?

It would take a bit of work to get it converted from Text to HTML with a TOC and hyperlinks because you would have to do that bit manually, however, you can download html versions, or open the txt file and then save it as pdf and read it with acrobat reader

[Zoom]

Originally posted by -Q-:
Would this work?

eBook Reader

I did see that one, but the reviews talked a lot about crashes. And it also seemed to be a Palm eBook reader for your desktop, meaning I'd have to first convert all the files to pdb format (which you can do with an app called "pordible"). Too many steps to be convenient, but maybe it will work as a last resort.

[Zoom]

Originally posted by Wickedkitten:
It would take a bit of work to get it converted from Text to HTML with a TOC and hyperlinks because you would have to do that bit manually, however, you can download html versions, or open the txt file and then save it as pdf and read it with acrobat reader

I need to look at the format again, but I'll bet you could easily do it with a Perl script (or CGI). That's why surprised it doesn't already exist. So maybe I can infer from that that it's not really that easy. I'll have to check into it.

[f1000]

1. Open the .txt file in TextEdit.

2. Format: Make Rich Text.

3. Make any other formatting adjustments as necessary.

4. File: Print...: Save As PDF...

5. Open in Adobe Reader 6.0 (or Acrobat, if you have it).

6. I�m sure you could use AppleScript to automate this.

[Millennium]

Project Gutenberg's policy is to deliver its books only in plain ASCII format. There is no "eBook" format for these. There is a style guide, but it is too ambiguous to create a general "eBook reader" that would work for all texts.

[f1000]

Save the following AppleScript as an Application:

on open filelist
tell application "TextEdit"
activate
open filelist
print filelist
quit
end tell
end open

I'm hoping that someone knows of a way to get AppleScript to "Save As PDF..." after the print command.

[monkeybrain]

If you want to read long text files on screen I find the program Tofu to be excellent.

It lets you read the text in columns and you scroll horizontally, making it much easier to read.

[f1000]

MacNN's news page posted this interesting solution:

http://www.beedocuments.com/freeSoftware.html

[nica]

Couldn't you just print from Safari and then save as PDF? Then read in Acrobat or in Preview.

[f1000]

Originally posted by nica:
Couldn't you just print from Safari and then save as PDF? Then read in Acrobat or in Preview.

Yes you could, but TextEdit (or Word) allows you to reformat the document before conversion.