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Activities/Read Etexts (view source)
Revision as of 15:09, 7 September 2009
, 15:09, 7 September 2009→Sharing Documents
This is a bit different from the core Read activity because I actually save a copy of the received document in the Journal, whereas Read does not. If you try to resume a shared Read activity when the document is not currently being shared you will get an empty document.
This is a bit different from the core Read activity because I actually save a copy of the received document in the Journal, whereas Read does not. If you try to resume a shared Read activity when the document is not currently being shared you will get an empty document.
== The Baen Free Library ==
The [http://www.baen.com/library/ Baen Free Library] is a website from Baen Books that publishes free etexts of some of their books with the idea that this will ultimately increase sales of the printed editions. So far it seems to be working. Unfortunately, the formats they offer for downloading are not currently supported by any reading Activity for Sugar. The closest thing to a supported format is RTF (Rich Text Format) which you can load into the Write Activity. Write is a poor choice for reading etexts, unfortunately.
Version 17 of Read Etexts solves this problem by converting RTF to a plain text file automatically. So now, in addition to the great classics of literature by dead authors that Project Gutenberg gives you you can also read fairly current science fiction from Baen Books.
You can use the Browse Activity to download RTF files from the site. Be sure to choose the RTF file, not the zipped up RTF file. The zipped version ''should'' work, but the website does something to it that keeps it from getting a proper MIME type. I was able to use Browse on my XO running Sugar .82 to download RTFs. If Browse doesn't work for you an alternative is to use another computer to download the file to a thumb drive.
When you restore the file for the first time be sure to do it with Read Etexts, ''not'' Write. Write does something to the file that prevents Read Etexts from being able to convert it properly. Once you open it with Read Etexts it will be given the Read Etexts icon and will open with the correct Activity by default.
== Planned Features ==
== Planned Features ==