Software bounty for One Ultimate Reader software?

[bizzybody]

If you've never heard of software bounties, here's a quick summary.

You, a software user, want a program that does something you haven't been able to find any software to do. You don't know the first thing about writing a program, or perhaps you know the *first* thing but not the second, third, fourth...

Perhaps if you offered up some money, someone might take the bait and write the program of your dream. Other people, who also are looking for that same type of non-existent program, see your bounty and add more money to the pot.

Eventually someone with the know-how writes the program and receives the money for their work. Conditions agreed upon in advance must be met before the author(s) get the money. If the project can be broken down into steps, then the money can be paid out for each goal reached.

Any type of licensing can be used with bounty written software. Depends on what the bounty poster(s) wants or works out with the author(s).

For The Ultimate Reader Software bounty, I'd want it to be freeware, open source, GPL.

It's easy to find sites that host software bounty projects. Go forth and Google, or Yahoo, or Ask...

One Ultimate e-book Reader Software...

1. Must allow user to store books anywhere AND open them without requiring they be added to a "library". (Examine how TealDoc 5.56 handles files. It's simple. It's easy. It just effing works.)

1a. Optionally all books in a single library folder, for people who actually like being forced to do things that way. Imagine your Public Library had only one massively long shelf, and to find a book you had to walk along the whole shelf every time. That's how annoying MobiPocket and Plucker's file handling is.

2. Screen rotation support, both 'soft' and hardware rotation. Software rotation should be able to go clockwise and counter-clockwise. On devices with accelerometer or other 'no button' automatic rotation it should have a setting to lock the rotation.

3. Works with any supported resolution, in portrait or landscape, on all devices it will run on.

4. Auto-scroll through list of files when the button is held down. (In the Mobi library it's One. Click. At. A. Time. NOT fun with 200+ books.)

5. Can open as many of the available book formats as possible, without requiring conversion. ePub, Plucker, Mobi and TealDoc would be a good start.

6. Runs on many different platforms, but must include Palm and Windows Mobile/CE/Pocket PC. Supporting iPhone/Pad, Symbian, Blackberry, Web OS, Android, Java would of course be very useful. What else is there for portables that aren't dedicated book readers?

7. The ability to make 'on the fly' edits in as many formats as possible. Newer versions of TealDoc include an on-Palm editor, but it closes the book and opens it in the editor, at the beginning. To make an edit the user has to hunt for the text that needs editing, then save the book and re-open it in the reader, which IIRC, then opens the book at the beginning because the editor wiped the temporary bookmark. (That's another superior feature of TealDoc. When you copy a book to another Palm, the location you're at in the book is *in* the book. Just the thing when you want someone else to see exactly where you are in a book. It's like those permanently attached ribbon bookmarks fancy bibles have.)
Editing should be done right there, on the spot. If the edit can't be saved to the file on the reading device, save it to an annotation file for use on a desktop computer so the e-book file can be edited there or the source corrected and re-converted.

8. With so many formats already, there's no need to create a new OUR format. (Heh, I didn't realize it would be "our format" until I just typed that.)

With One Ultimate Reader, it'd put an end to most of the issues of converting from one format to another. It would be The Answer to the question "What software runs on my <insert device here> and opens <insert format here>?" "Why that's easy! One Ultimate Reader."

How much of a bounty would have to be offered? I've no idea! But it wouldn't take a large amount of money per person if many people each put up a little.

There was a former British Royal Navy aircraft carrier up for sale some years back. The company that'd bought it from Brazil was asking $4,500,000. Who has $4,500,000 just laying about to buy an aircraft carrier? Not many, but 4500 people each with $1,000 to spend... Who wouldn't want a 1/4500th share of a cool boat like that? Just imagine the epic parties the flight deck and hangar deck could support...

A software bounty for One Ultimate Reader should be significantly more affordable.

[tamole]

One Ultimate Reader?

No one has taken you up on your idea. And it is such a good one. I've been looking for an ePub reader for Android that just supports autoscroll. The best eReader app out there is Palm eReader. Their Android version works pretty well, but the bookstore has a lousy book selection. I've tried conversions to .pdb, but the beta app doesn't even display their own Palm Studio ebook conversions properly. Do we have to learn development to get this idyllic app? Sigh. If anyone ever takes you up on this challenge, I'm in.

[bizzybody]

There's already plenty of one or two trick ponies (apps that open one or two different formats) on various platforms, which are open source freeware.

Such existing software would be a good place to get the information on how to open many different formats of eBooks.

What's needed is a unified, multi-platform program that combines all those into one application. There's quite a lot of open source programs that run on Windows, OS X (often PPC and x86) and Linux.

That usually provides enough information in the code for people who know other operating systems to port it.

The skills are out there to write OUR, what needs to be ginned up is the interest to do the project.