Softwares to do the Conversions:
Main Personal Content Conversion/Publishing Softwares:
Kudos for Gemstar on releasing a personal content publisher! It is a content conversion station that opens .html, .rtf, and .doc files and saves them into .imp . The learning curve for this is a little steeper than Softbook Personal Publisher (below), but after you learned it, it's much easier and faster, especially for larger documents.
Tip: Read the User Guide! ( Help | View User Guide ) It's very helpful.
Tip2: Be sure to select File | Preferences:
Project Settings Tab, Color VGA (for .imp output)
Edition Defaults Tab, unclick Encrypt!
Before the Gemstar released their eBook Publisher, this was the savior for creating personal contents. It enables your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to export (convert) .txt, .rtf, .doc, .ppt, and htmls into .imp . Now with the Gemstar eBook Publisher, the main use for this is to convert .txt and .ppt files.
Tip: If your input files is not formatted nicely such as ones converted from pdfs, you can try auto-formatting it by selecting Format | AutoFormat (click Options to have more control over the formatting).
Tip2: Be sure to open up the Settings Diaglog and select Save eBook "As Softbook Edition" and UNclick "Encrypt Softbook Edition"
Tip3: Quick start: click the new project icon (the first one) to create a new project.
To convert .doc & .rtf, select File | import.
To convert .htm & others, select Project | Add files
Keeps your ebooks organized and can load them via the Ethernet port on your ebook from your PC.
Use this if you do not have a CompactFlash Reader or don't plan to buy one. This software lets you connect your REB1200 directly into your computer's Ethernet port. However, I still can't get it to talk to my REB1200, you may have better luck..
Tip: Be sure to see Kat & Gordon's tutorial page if you want to use it.
Turns .imp files into .RES by just typing: unimp filename.imp on the command (DOS) prompt (for win9x, you need to put "longer-than-8-character-filenames-in-quotes"). You do not need this if you have firmware 3.3 .
Softwares to do PDF to text/HTML conversions:
I have researched and tested many of the cheap (free to under $40) pdf to text softwares. Below are my findings.
Fastest: just copy and paste (or "Save As Text" in version 6.x):
Price: $0 (Adobe Acrobat Reader)
How:
In version 5.x, just do "Edit | Select All", then copy, paste in MS-Word to export.
In version 6.x, just do "File | Save As | Text", then open it MS-Word to export.
Good: Simple, fast, and cost nothing
Bad: You lose some of the formatting in the pdf. Every end-of-line is replaced by hard-returns, and no images can be paste into MS-Word unless you manually crop and copy them over.
(* if only MS-Word can read it or Gemstar eBook Publisher can convert it correctly)
Price: $39.95, 100 free trial runs
How: Just select the pdf(s) you want to convert and hit the convert button.
Good: Retains format nicely. The only convertion software that does math symbols nicely. Also has batch conversion.
Bad: Could not get MS-Word to open any of the htmls it converted. Gemstar eBook Publisher can read its html outputs, but the converted .imp is just a blank page. Anyone know a fix for this? If not, we should start emailing verpdf about it! (maybe it will work if we can disable framed html outputs?)
(yes, it's very confusing when everyone name thier software the same, especially when both are v1.3!! Let's refer this in Yahoo Groups as "pdf2htmlGui" & the other one as "verypdf2html", shall we?)
Price: free!
Install: follow the instructions in the download page to download the 3 softwares.
PDFtoHTML: click it, then click "windows binary" download, then click highlighted zip file.
GhostScript: click it, then click "ghostscript" download, then select gs800w32.exe .
Then click the Gui download.
Install them in order.
The Gui SW will ask where PDFtoHTML is located at, point to it & it'll be set.
How: Just select the pdf(s) you want to convert and the destination & click convert.
Tip: I think selecting "no frames" (from "More Options") works better.
Tip2: Checkout Glenn's page for more info on how to use this.
Good: Retains format nicely. Pretty fast (a 600pgs+ pdf was converted in minutes).
Bad: Does not do math symbols. No batch conversion. Requires 3 SW installations.
Others:
Don't know, haven't tried this out yet, but posts from yahoo group says it's pretty good.
Free, email them links to the pdf or the pdf itself and they will email you back a text or html output file, but results are pretty much same as just copy and paste. Best solution for if you have slow connection and don't want to download the large pdf file onto your computer.
A big disappointment for a software that costs $250-$450. Since many pdfs out there are still in TEX, LATEX, etc. format, one would have thought that such an expensive product from Adobe itself can convert them; of course I was wrong. Anyone try out the new version 6.0?
$38 while output is worst than just copy and paste
What a piece of crap! Trail version can't save output. The preview of the output had hundreds of blank lines between every paragraph
Output is an html of images. What it does is it scans your pdf into images and produces an html that points to these images. The bad thing about this is that since most pdf's are full page size, when you convert it into ebook on REB1200, the image gets shrank down so much that nothing is readable.
Notes:
Note that all of the above are assuming that your pdf are the nicely texted-PDF's (with nice and sharp text, not the ones that looks like it's scanned). The ones that looks like it's scanned are encoded with some sort of LATEX or other text formats and can not be converted into text or htmls easily. And of course, the ones that are really just scanned images can only be converted into text with OCR programs, but that's a whole different ballgame and I will not go into that.
Softwares to do HTML merge:
Many times in order to view ebooks easier in web browsers, sites divide the ebooks into seperate chapters or sections. In order to not end up with dozens of of these chapters in the REB1200 as individual ebooks, we need to merge these seperate htmls together.
SoftSnow Merger does a nice job doing this, and it's free! However, I could not get my XP machine to install, only my Win98 machine can install it. Anyone tried installing it on XP?
Actually, there are too many of these softwares out there. You can do more research on them by googling "html merge" or "html merger" or "spider" or other terms you know.
Other Conversion Softwares (for other formats):
Converts from .lit to .imp .
Checkout Glenn's page for more info on how to use this.
Recent posts in yahoo REB1200 group seem to indicate most .lit's can be converted like a charm, but some .lit's are giving problems..
Converts .pdb and .prc files into .txt , by typing:
"prc2txt filename.imp" on the command (DOS) prompt. (for win9x, you need to put "longer-than-8-character-filenames-in-quotes").
Note: This program gave an error message on both my win98 & XP, but you can just ignore the error message.
Converts .rb files into .imp
Converts .chm into .html, Checkout eTextWizard's help page for more info on how to use this.
Turn your REB 1200 into a digital Photo Album with hyperlinked index prints! Converts jpegs (.jpg) directly into .RES folder or .imp! Super fast execution (less than 1 sec per 2-4megapixal image on a 1Ghz PC, and extremely easy to use. Check it out!
Other softwares to check out:
This concludes our venture into different conversion softwares. In the
next section, we will learn more about the firmware inside the REB1200.