EBook is my answer to the growing collection of electronic text "front ends" available for fee or free. Many of these front ends are based on Hypercard, as is EBook. Where EBook differs, however, is in basic philosophy. My goal was to create a simple, self-configuring stack that would turn a plain text file into the electronic equivalent of a paperback book: no frills, compact, and easy to read. You will not find elegant page layout, provision for margin notes, or other special features. You will find:
• Bookmarks you can set on each page.
• Page turning in both directions.
• Simple text search.
• "Open where I quit!" A possibly unique feature that remembers the page you were on when you quit and returns to that page when you next startup.
For those of you travelling with PowerBooks or simply looking for a way to read the growing number of fine works becoming available as plain text files, I hope EBook provides a simple way to enjoy yourself.
EBook is implemented using Hypercard 2.1 and uses the old size card to support compact Macs. The size of the card can be easily changed and with the modification of a single field size, the EBook can be tailored to your needs. However, once loaded, resizing the card will not work, as the text is fixed on each card. Perhaps a future version will include a "reflow" option for the text, but loading an EBook is so easy, that reusing the original text file is the simplest way to build different "size" books.
Using EBook
The original EBook stack is an empty slate, ready to ingest a plain text file. Once loaded, the EBook is no longer able to load a different file, so you must keep an unused copy of EBook as your source of future books. Because of this, I am distributing the EBook as a locked file. Make a copy, and work with that.
Before you can create an EBook, you need a plain text file. EBook does no formatting other than filling the title and text cards and breaking to a new card when the "Page Break String" is detected. All formatting should be done in your favorite word processor, first. Set your font to 12pt Palatino, and your margins to something appropriate to the card size (about 6 inches from left to right for the standard EBook).
The first line of the file should be the title of the book as you wish it to appear in the EBook. The second line should be the author(s) name(s) (you don't need to use "by"). The third line can begin up to seven lines of miscellaneous comments such as historical notes that will appear at the bottom of the title card. Next, a separator line should appear that begins with a "+" character (I use "+--------------") to mark the beginning of the body text. Get your body text wrapped the way you like it, spelling checked, etc, and save the file WITH LINE BREAKS. EBook will NOT wrap long lines. In general, publicly available texts are in this basic form already, although the title card information will have to rearranged to the EBook format.
Chapter headings or other forced break points can be identified with a unique character or characters that WILL NOT APPEAR in the EBook after it is loaded (I start the heading line with a vertical bar "|" since it never appears in ordinary text).
Now that you have the source file formatted and ready to go, open a copy of the EBook stack. Replace the dummy Page Break String with the character(s) you used in your text file, if any, and then click on "Import Etext". Watch as the EBook loads itself and then tidies up, leaving you on the title page. You should now quit the stack and rename it to reflect its new contents. You might also lock the stack to avoid mistaken editting. Next reopen the stack.
Use the right arrow to get to the first body page. On each body page, you may page forward or back, click on the bookmark icon to place or remove a bookmark at this page, click on the goto bookmark icon to skip to the next bookmark, or click on the magnifying glass to search for a text string you enter. As you are reading along, if you decide to stop reading, you may quit the stack (with command-q of course!). Next time you start the stack, you will be presented with the page you were last reading! No need to remember to set a bookmark! This feature is independent of the bookmarks, and bookmarks you set will not interfere with it. When you finish a book, type command-1 to return to the first card (the title page), and the next reader will start where they should: the beginning :-)
That's it!
How Much Does All This Cost?
Nothing! EBook is freeware. However, EBook is NOT released into the public domain. I reserve all rights to the layout and script features. No third party may use EBook in whole or in part to produce a library of works for sale at any price except minimal cost to defray the expense of materials and handling. This explicitly excludes companies such as EduCorp that sell collections of free and shareware for a fee.
Although hard to imagine, I must point out that EBook comes without warranty of any kind and I assume no liability for any use it may be put to. Caveat user.
Contacting the author:
I may be reached as baim@aaec.com on the InterNet or at 72357,2315 on CompuServe. The InterNet address is more reliable at present, but given the time that software lives in various archives, I may be three employers down the road when you read this, so if the InterNet address fails, try CompuServe :-)
Before you send me feature requests or other comments, please remember the minimalist philosophy of EBook. If you want frills, you don't want EBook!
Credit Where Due Dept.
When I started to develop EBook, I struggled with wrapping and formatting text as EBook read it in (to accommodate text files without Line Breaks). In search of an answer, I came across a stack called "BookMaker" written by one "^z" of Silver Springs, MD. This stack uses the preformatted text/page break string model I adopted for EBook. In fact, the autoload script is a substantially modified version of the one from BookMaker. BookMaker is also freeware and available on the InterNet.
