I need to read eBooks!

T

Tarambana

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Well, I think I am stuck with a serious problem: I switched recently to the Mac, and I am perfectly happy with the change :), but I am used to reading ebooks withh MS eBook Reader, and it isn't available for the Mac. Fine, I thought, I'll just go for a less proprietary format, and use Adobe eBook Reader, but I then found out that it only works on Mac OS 9. Then, I thought about Adobe Reader 6, which I expected would fit; but it didn't: I find it a bit too clunky, and bloated. I mean, I don't want to have all the acrobat features to read eBooks.

So, I am quite lost, right now. I would therefore appreciate any help as to what are the options in the Mac side. I would even be fine with a PDF viewer application or so, that could let me highlight text, and that be not as bloated as Adobe's. Also, it would be nice to know what other programs there are.

Thanks a lot.


P.S.: I am not sure is this post belongs to this forum, but if not, please, move it as needed.
 
Thank You. Palm Reader is just good. But it doesn't suit me perfectly: I cannot highlight text, (I don't know, maybe the pro version lets me do so), and I have to buy also the eBook creation program. That is why I prefer working with the PDF format: I can create PDFs from Word.

¿Do you know of any PDF Viewer (aparte from Acrobat), that lets you highlight text?

If I can't find anything else, I guess I will just buy the Palm Software
 
Oh, sorry, I didn't know you wanted to read PDFs, I thought you wanted to read eBooks :)
I'm sorry, I don't know.
 
Indeed, I wanted to read eBooks, but as Adobe eBook Reader (at least on M$ Window$), could be used to read PDFs as eBooks, I thought, there would be something similar on Mac. The fact is that I used MS eBook Reader to study, as I created the eBooks from MS Word, and prepared my degree from that base.

Anyway, I have used a bit more the Palm application and it is very good, I have looked on their website, and I would need would be the pro version, and the Studio to create eBooks.

Yet, is anyone knows of a PDF Viewer that can also highlight text, I would eternally grateful ;-). If not, doesn't matter, guess i'll get Palm's.
 
Originally posted by Tarambana
...anyone knows of a PDF Viewer that can also highlight text...
Click to expand...
Of course, Adobe's free Acrobat Reader for OS X is a PDF viewer that can highlight text. But I gather you want something that reads eBooks too?
 
Uh...doesn't Adobe Reader (at least 6.0) do this? Freely available. I believe that eBooks are a PDF technology so I would be amazed that Adobe Reader (formerly Adobe Acrobat Reader) would not suit your needs.
 
Wow, I just got connected this morning and saw all this answers... The Mac Community Rocks!!

Lets see: I have tried Adobe Reader 6 (free), I had to update my Mac OS X to 10.2.4, in order to be able to use the eBooks feature, because, as far as I know, you can't highlight text. Anyway, though I like it for casual PDF Viewing, it has just got too many features for me. I think the interface could had been simplified (I, for example, can't find any use to the "how to" window). Yet, that is just my opinion. So, I were trying to find some other application that could help me to read eBooks (highlighting text, annotating, placing bookmarks, though the essential is only text highlighting), without being so complicated. After wandering around the net for quite a long time, I bet my best option is to go for Palm eBook Reader Pro, and Palm eBook Studio, even though they use a file format which is less of a standard (pdb). But, well, they have got a lot of books in their site ;-)

To make things clear, I have just got my Law degree and I am preparing to opt for a job that demands me to study even more!!! That is where the eBooks come in handy: I have found out that studying with my computer is better that ding it on a piece of paper (at least for me), as I can do more things with text, and I do still use paper to check things. So, as all that I must study is on word files, (about 420 files, of around 25 pages per file: abide 10500 pages to memorize), I just converted it to the MS eBook Reader formt (lit), to study those subjects (I highlight the most important areas, doing a comprenhensive reading, then put bookmarks to main points, and finally memorize). Then I found that I couldn't use it on Mac OS X, so I thought that I would pass on to pdfs which are so easily created on Mac OS X, but I find Adobe Reader 6 to be too bloated (though powerful) for what I wanted to do with it.


So, don't worry, people, as I think that Palm suits me (almost) perfectly (hope it isn't too difficult to create the files). And let me say, that I am sure I wouldn't had been able to find so many positive answers should I had sticked to M$.
 
You might want to consider getting a good pda such as the Tungsten T (or wait for the upcoming T2 if it does indeed have a transflective screen). It'll give you what you want, syncs nicely with a Mac (love that bluetooth) and you can take your e-books/notes in an even-more portable manner than a laptop.

http://discussion.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=84

I'm not in the legal profession so I don't know how good this forum thread is, but the other palm forums at brighthand are very good (very similar in tone and manner as this one). Maybe you can glean a few ideas from there as well.
 
Wow, thanks a lot :-D

I had already thought of buying a portable device, most probably once I had got the job. But, you see, I was convinced by a friend of mine to buy a Pocket PC, and now I am glad I didn't do it. I were used to the old Palm handhelds, and didn't know they had gone all that through. The Tungsten is impressing! And if only half of what people say about the T2 is also true... Man, they rock!

So, I guess I should rather buy a Palm, and, that way, I would have all my documents, in the same file format, both on my desktop, and on the handheld.

Oh!, and I didn't know that there were forums like that about Laws. As anyone who has read my posts will have noticed, I am not a native english speaker, but spanish, and though there are many sites with resources, there are very few forums on that very particular subject (Palms, and Laws). So, once again, thanks.
 
I like to read PDF eBooks on Adobe Reader 6 on my iBook ... I just rotate the page view 90 degrees to the left, then switch to full screen mode. Then, I just hold the iBook sideways as if it were literally a book ... it feels just about right.

Of course, it doesn't let you highlight text, though (as far as I can tell).
 
.pdb stands for Palm Database, and it's the standard file format for Palm data and documents. .prc is for applications (though I don't know what it stands for). You can create .pdb's on a Palm using a program like Zdoc, but I don't know about creating them on the computer.

Even if Acrobat Reader has a few extra features, what's wrong with that? You have some other stuff in there, but at least you can do what you need to do. And hey, you never know, one of those bells or whistles might come in handy some day.
 
1.) You've revived a 5-year-old thread! Why?
2.) The question never was about .lit or .html files but PDFs, which in the early days of OS X was a bigger problem, because natively, OS X (and Preview.app) could only read PDF 1.2 files cleanly, so anything newer was a no-go or you needed Adobe's Reader, which really, really was a drag. (It's still a drag nowadays, but multiply it's walking-through-mud like feeling by 10 and you've got an idea...)
3.) You've revived a *very* old thread.
 
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