PDF reader, for reading Ebooks

Shuey Wrote:Bump again. I don't think we're asking for a lot here and we're not asking for anything that is unreasonable. I've heard of plenty of people reading comic books from xbmc, so why not ebooks in pdf format? Magazines are also considered "media", so why are there people that want to make a big deal about it and say "it's not media!" when it certainly is?

I also think E-books and documents is media. "E-books/Documents" in XBMC would be useful to me. And maybe with support for other formats than PDF (txt, rtf, doc, html, nfo, ...). But PDF is the most important/useful one.

To get things going: MuPDF

It is GPLv3 it is available for: Windows, Linux, MacOSX even OpenBSD...

I think this would be a perfect start for anyone willing to integrate this into XBMC. It is quite clear that people would love to see this happen and with the resolutions of the average TV having gone up from 500 something by nothing to 720 or even 1080 by a lot more the readability should no longer be a reason not to do this.

I might have a go at this my self though if I get this working we are looking at at least another few months before I have enough time to really understand the code and work this thing in without breaking stuff.

rcoops Wrote:To get things going: MuPDF

Cool, thanks for the info/link. And I agree, this looks like it'd be a good choice.

I recently discovered that someone made a Comic Reader plugin, so now I'm even more surprised that we don't have a PDF Reader plugin of some kind.

Hopefully this will become a reality someday soon

I seen this program on source forge it is open source pdf reader and create library. Someone may know what to do with it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/clown/

I ditto this!

I have mass amounts of PDF's I use in my woodworking workshop. (I also use the instructable DVD's/Vids and more) That said, Instructables have the ability to give you a PDF, so why not make it part of the xbmc-player? Surely (as mentioned before) it is a media, just like all other medias? It could be a BIG addin as a media-library!

Just my 10c
cyber7

Do you have any idea how bad for your eyes this would be?

Although I don't pretend to read books in my TV, I've started a epub collection and it would be great if XBMC could add a menu entry for books (calibre or itunes style)

In iTunes you can browse your book covers, get information from the metadata in the book although you cannot read the book.
I'd like that option in XBMC so if I want to know whether I have a book or not I could check directly without having to go back to my PC, login in, starting a program ... etc

Of course absolutely stunning would be to select one (or many) books and get XBMC to send them to a e-reader (since most of them have Wi-Fi today)

Imagine browsing your book collection in your TV and lending a friend an ebook just with a couple of clicks

PS: Books are media too!

GJones Wrote:Do you have any idea how bad for your eyes this would be?

Actually, not bad at all. Have you tried it before you piped in

1) Load an e-magazine in Foxit Viewer (Adobe Acrobat's resolution is the shits compared to Foxit for some reason, and Foxit is 7mb vs Acrobat's 221mb installed size!)

2) Set it to display "Single Page" (1-up)

3) Set the display scale to "Fit Width"

4) hit F11 to go fullscreen (not really necessary, but it cleans up the interface by getting rid of useless toolbars and scrollbars)

5) use PGUP and PGDN to scroll up and down in pages to read the columns, and to switch pages

6) Look at that on your 50" HDTV - it is *perfectly* readable from 10' away, looks awesome, and is totally functional!

6 years ago when this request was first made, I could see there being limited value, but today, emagazines are definitely the way to go, and are also definitely considered "media".

I wholeheartedly second the request to add this functionality (including cataloging of the magazines into a similar library with cover-art browsing)!

Cheers
The REAL Joe

therealjoeblow Wrote:Actually, not bad at all. Have you tried it before you piped in

1) Load an e-magazine in Foxit Viewer (Adobe Acrobat's resolution is the shits compared to Foxit for some reason, and Foxit is 7mb vs Acrobat's 221mb installed size!)

2) Set it to display "Single Page" (1-up)

3) Set the display scale to "Fit Width"

4) hit F11 to go fullscreen (not really necessary, but it cleans up the interface by getting rid of useless toolbars and scrollbars)

5) use PGUP and PGDN to scroll up and down in pages to read the columns, and to switch pages

6) Look at that on your 50" HDTV - it is *perfectly* readable from 10' away, looks awesome, and is totally functional!

6 years ago when this request was first made, I could see there being limited value, but today, emagazines are definitely the way to go, and are also definitely considered "media".

I wholeheartedly second the request to add this functionality (including cataloging of the magazines into a similar library with cover-art browsing)!

Cheers
The REAL Joe

Any eye doctor will tell you not to read many pages from a screen across the room. Just because you can see it does not mean it's good for you. The question is not whether people read digital media (two ereaders in my house) but whether the TV is the best place to accomplish this.

I don't believe that for one minute...

My eye doctor tells me to read *several* pages of text from right across the room *every* time I go to see her!

Cheers
The REAL Joe