Ebook Reading And Distribution

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Revision as of 14:08, 19 January 2010 by Andi G (talk | contribs) (→‎On The User Side: -> added annotations as an ideal feature, which would propel xo's e-reader capabilities to the forefront of e-readers)
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Overview

The overall premise of this effort is to produce a streamlined, unified system to enable XO users to access and view electronic books.

The Idea

It goes without saying that reading is a crucial tool for a child's development; the OLPC program provides the means to provide the world's poorest children with an infinite supply of books; I came up with this idea after realizing that there exists no easy way for a XO user to accomplish this.

The Need

While there are several projects related to the concept of file distribution and document reading in the works, the methods and goals between them don't totally line up eye-to-eye, and as a result there are several considerable obstacles standing in the way of the XO offering competent and feature-rich e-book accessibility.

Goals

The endgame here is to create a multi-lateral solution which utilizes features from numerous existing projects and software to not only allow easy access to and viewing of e-books on the user end, but to provide an infrastructure for the uploading, cataloguing and hosting of e-books for the purpose of creating clear channels of communication between online e-book sources (including XS servers and online archives) and XO users. This can best be accomplished with participation from the authors of the Activities and software which ideally will be used in this project, in a collaborative effort with myself and other students enrolled in RIT's OLPC course. Ideally, this project will provide a use for our XS server as part of the ebook hosting solution.

In the long-term, I hope that the solution we end up with becomes part of the default set of Activities included on every XO.

Contact

Mike DeVine - Project Lead


Desired Features

On The User Side

  • An easy-to-use reader Activity which allows a user to navigate the e-books on his/her XO, open and read them. This Activity should ideally contain features similar to those found in dedicated e-reader OSes: bookmarking, annotations, chapter selection, different view options, and especially "Tablet Mode" compatibility for user input.
  • An Activity which enables the user to go online, access a central repository of e-books, browse and search using metadata tags for refining results, and download desired files to his/her XO.

On The Hosting Side

  • Service should include as much metadata as possible for tagging purposes
  • Multiple file formats are available; which one would work best for our applications?

Distribution

  • An easy-to-use interface that allows XO users to browse, access and download e-book files, and other parties to upload to a central location

Collaborating Activities, Software & Hardware

Activities: E-Book Accessibility & Viewing

  • Several existing document reader Activities contain various combinations of the desired features outlined above:
    • The default Read Activity, developed by Sayamindu Dasgupta, is compatible with most e-book file formats, has support for Tablet Mode. What it lacks is a user interface which allows younger users to easily browse through their collection of e-books on their XO. It also lacks a book retrieval mechanism; its sole purpose is the viewing of documents.
    • Get Internet Archive Books
    • Read Etexts is an Activity which started as a generic text file reader for Project Guttenberg files and has grown to include a built-in catalog of tens of thousands of Project Guttenberg's books.
  • On the book retrieval side, could also possibly use RIT student Justin Lewis' File Share Activity?

Software: File Hosting & Distribution

Hardware: File Storage & Hosting

  • The XS server at RIT would ideally serve as part of the e-book hosting solution

Progress

Milestones

What To Get From Where?

At this point, my main process has been to figure out which components in existing projects can be best utilized. On the user end, there's a lot of functionality overlap between Activities, as well as a lot of gaps in each Activity's feature-set. The hosting and distribution side are much less saturated with projects, though what options do exist seem to already be capable of being utilized for our purposes. Sweet. So the toughest questions that need to be asked concern the user-end:

  • What's the best way to integrate the desired features from each of these Activities? Attempt to splice some code or start from scratch?
  • If we're not starting from scratch, which Activitie(s) will be the ones chosen to receive the code "updates"? In other words, which Activity is farthest along already and is most malleable in terms of adding features?

Notes

  • (1/15/2010) Filled in most of the Wiki page; started some Discussion topics to hopefully gather more ideas. (Mike DeVine)
  • (1/14/2010) As of now, still collecting feedback and gauging interest in the project. (Mike DeVine)
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