Hey Sony: Mac support "On the cheap"

[Xenophon]

Hey Sony:

There're only two important things that a Mac user (non-Windows user, now that I remember the Linux folks) misses out on by not having Mac support from Sony:

1. Pre-pagination of .lrf files, before they are placed on the Reader.
2. Ability to purchase books from Sony without having to run Windows.

Here's a proposal for fixing both of these "on the cheap."

To fix issue #1:

• Build and release a headless application (e.g. command-line only with no GUI) that takes a .lrf file as input, does the pagination, and spits out the meta-info fragment that goes in the <I-forget-the-name> database file on the reader that stores the pre-pagination info.
• Release the application, either:
  • binary only if you're worried about IP.
  • Open-source, if you don't consider it a key part of Sony's IP. (I wouldn't expect it to be, but one never knows what the *&^%*&^% lawyers will say). Note that in the open-source case, Sony doesn't even have to do the port. The open-source community will do it for them for free!
• Either way, make the program or source-code freely downloadable.
• Document how to insert the meta-data snippet that the program produces into the appropriate file, so that the open-source guys can do it "right."
• Kovid Goyal (of Calibre) and other open-source authors would jump all over using this code to make their user's lives easier, thus providing the GUI support at no cost to Sony!

The "headless" part is what makes fixing problem #1 cheap. There would be no GUI to build. In fact, no UI at all, beyond the command line. Sony already has the pagination code written and running on two platforms (Windows, and whatever Linux it is that runs on the Reader itself), so porting a command-line-only application to Mac OS X, Windows, and a couple of popular Linux implementations would be (relatively) trivial.

Remember, designing and building a nice GUI is the expensive part. Especially when Sony has presumably designed and built the existing GUI on top of the Windows environment -- porting the GUI would be expensive, as would building an all-new one. But porting a command-line app is much much easier (and so, much cheaper too).

To fix issue #2:
Switch to using standard Web services for your (Sony's) Book store. This isn't a big deal for me personally, as I won't purchase any DRM-polluted books, but it would expand the user-base for the store. And Sony could hardly avoid improving the user-experience of the store in the process. (As an aside: Dare I hope that this is what they've done to provide the improvements discussed in yesterday's press-release?)

Note that as long as the user can register their Reader online without a Windows machine, Sony can let them down-load a .lrx file from the store.
Even better, in the binary-only solutions to issue #1, you could even let programs like Calibre manage the library and GUI for you on Macs and Linux boxes -- just let the user enter the "big-long-ID#" somewhere so that the Sony-written pagination program can use it (presumably from the command line). The pagination program wouldn't ever need to spit out plain-text of the book; it would continue to produce only the pagination information. This would provide just as much (or as little) security as you get now from the existing DRM, thus keeping publishers happy.

This binary-only approach to pagination would put Linux and Mac users on an even footing with Windows folks -- while relieving Sony of the bulk of the work of supporting non-Windows platforms.

Xenophon

[kovidgoyal]

Actually, if you switch to EPUB on the 505, you don't even need pre-pagination.

[Xenophon]

While I'm thinking about it, there's also a cheap cheap way to provide support for "convenient access to large numbers of eBooks" that many advanced users have wanted.

Give us a hook either in the .lrf format or the Epub format that lets us refer to another file on the same device. All that's needed is the ability to let the 1-10 buttons (on the 500 and 505) or a stylus push (on the 700) open that remote file just as though we were at the main menu.

That hook alone would be enough for a 3rd party--probably an open-source programmer--to write a program that scans the current contents of the Reader and writes an index document. That document could provide whatever view they like of those contents: By author, by title, by tag, by series, by collection, by phase-of-the-moon, by cost of the eBook... whatever!

Sony could look at the modalities the community builds, and build-in the best of them in future firmware. Or just let the community build it for you! Either way, everybody wins.

Xenophon

P.S. If anyone at Mobileread has good contacts at Sony, please pass these ideas on to them! It would be so easy for them to get useful leverage from the open-source community. And, they'd look like friendly good-guys instead of "big bad faceless corporation." What's not to like?

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Actually, if you switch to EPUB on the 505, you don't even need pre-pagination.

Excellent point! And see my other note about access to large numbers of books. Just one little feature, that's all we need...