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Microsoft Reader
"ClearType" technology improves the on-screen reading experience.
The History
In his CES keynote address in Jan., 2000, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates demonstrated for the first time a new applications that now ships with every Pocket PC: Microsoft Reader with ClearType display technology. On Aug. 8th, 2000, Microsoft made a similar application for desktop Windows users available for free. Reader version 2.0, with a revised user interface and numerous enhancements (including a text-to-speech option and "Owner Exclusive Premium" copy-protection system improvements) was posted at http://www.microsoft.com/reader/ in Oct. 2001.
The Competition
Sure, some people are going to prefer paper. But the software offers some compelling advantages. You can search for words, look up meanings in a dictionary, draw on the pages or add annotations at any time, instantly change the font size, set bookmarks and more. The current version of Microsoft Reader supports text, images, and audio. The company says additional media formats, such as streaming video, will be supported in future versions. Microsoft says it is working with Labyrinten and isSound to enable text-to-audio synchronization of eBooks created for Microsoft Reader.
One of the key features missing from Microsoft Reader that is found in some competing products, such as the Glassbook Reader (now owned by Adobe), is the ability to rotate the screen 90 degrees. With this feature, users of notebook computers can turn the laptop and it feels just like reading a book. A page at Barnes and Noble has a side-by-side comparison of three of the leading eBook technologies. (Oddly, Adobe's PDF format, arguably the first such format to gain mass acceptance, isn't even listed.)
The Technology
Amazing as it may sound, the Microsoft Reader software performs Subpixel Font Rendering, allowing a color LCD screen to display three times the resolution than that which is normally possible. ClearType makes text on an LCD display look much better than that on a standard CRT monitor. It sounds like a load of marketing hype, but it really does work. (Reader also works on standard Cathode Ray Tube displays, but without the ClearType display enhancement, the effect is essentially just your basic anti-aliasing.)
We did, however, find that ClearType text displays better on some types of LCD panels better than others. On one Thin Film Transistor-based display (based on screen technology from Casio) we tried, the display was practically unreadable when the screen was angled slightly away from the viewer. Strangely, non "ClearType" text looked fine at the same angle. The software provides the ability to customize the display for optimum viewing on your display, which helps to minimize any problems.
It does not, however, embed fonts or scale pages the way Adobe's PDF portable document format does. This makes Reader documents a lot smaller than PDF files, but it also means that they aren't capable of the same degree of fancy formatting and, thus, aren't as cross-platform friendly. In essence, Reader files resemble compressed-and-optionally-encrypted HTML files. At the authoring stage (described below), you can insert graphics (the PocketPC version is compatible only with JPEGs, but the desktop version supports additional formats), line spacing commands, text size and font tags. However, if the specified font isn't available on the target system, you'll get an unwanted substitution.
The Books
There are already a number of "eBooks" available in Microsoft Reader format. At this writing, Pocket PC owners can freely download the entire texts of over 100 FREE eBooks, including popular titles such as Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, The Time Machine and a wide variety of nonfiction works, including the Encarta Dictionary, Plato's Republic and Machiavelli's controversial exploration of power and rule, The Prince... plus classics from Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Jules Verne, Emily Bronte, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many, many others from Barnes and Noble and other providers.
The University of Virginia eText Center is another useful source, offering hundreds of publicly available eBook titles from the University of Virginia's eText Center, including classic British and American fiction, children's stories, American history (including the Civil War), African-American and Native-American material, and much more.
Would-be authors can create their own eBook content, too, using a variety of free conversion tools. Predictably, Microsoft has developed a Word 2000 Microsoft Reader Add-in. With it, you can create eBooks from Microsoft Word files at the click of a button. The Read in Microsoft Reader add-in for Microsoft Word enables you to convert any Word document into a Microsoft Reader format eBook in just a few simple steps. We used it to create a children's story in eBook format, with custom fonts and "dingbat" characters in a matter of minutes. Download The Enchanted Princess (140K, 29 pages) and check out the results for yourself. We'll upload samples of other items as soon as we've used our proprietary techniques to process some more original material.
Although the Microsoft Word add-in produces eBook documents covered with Microsoft advertising (i.e., MS Word logos), we also managed to successfully create eBooks with fancy "leather" binding, custom fonts and other snazzy graphics.
Here's how:
I used the free ReaderWorks utility, but after defining the fonts and text layout and invoking the conversion process, paused (by not clicking "next" when prompted) and looked in its TEMP directory and replaced the GIF and JPEG files it creates with those of my own design, then customized the other graphical attributes via manual editing and/or replacement of the files in my photo-editing program. You will be looking for files with names like this:
- cov00001.htm
The files you want to change are those that end in JPG, such as
- COV0001.JPG
- COV0002.JPG
- COV0003.JPG
and so on.
- COV0001.JPG is normally the RW (Readerworks) logo
- COV0002.JPG is the cover
- COV0003.JPG is the binder
etc.
The numbers increment by three (e.g., the next book would have 0004, 0005, 0006 etc.) each time you create an ebook.
The free Readerworks software is available at http://www.overdrive.com/readerworks/software/
If this is too much trouble, a US$119 tool from ReaderWorks allows complete customization of graphics.
See The Magician's Garden (168K, requires MS Reader - 7,098K) for an example of the enhanced results. Quark (developer of the popular QuarkXPress publishing program) has also announced its intent to offer a free MS Reader Export QuarkXTensions module from the Quark Web site. Well, free is a relative term in this case. The tool, says the company, requires both QuarkXPress (US $849) and the US$199 avenueQuark XML conversion module.
There are already a number of commercial titles, available for prices generally comparable to those of regular paper books. To use these titles, you must "register" the Reader software -- a simple one-time operation. It's primary function is to limit your ability to distribute downloaded eBooks to other users. As you might have guessed, downloaded commercial books will play only on your eBook installation (and may not play at all on Pocket PCs), at least until the hackers figure out how it works.
From time to time, publishers make titles available for free as a special promotion. For example, commercial titles available as of Aug. 10th for no-cost download to Pocket PC owners included Michael Crichton's Timeline and no less than 15 Star Trek books. (These items are, to the best of our knowledge, available only to those with an Outlook 2000 "certificate of authenticity" serial number from a Pocket PC package.) We'll post links to other notable, time-limited offerings here as they arise. Check back often!
Product: Reader 1.
For: Windows 95 & 98, NT 4.0 & 2000, Windows Me
Price: Free
Download: setup.exe - 7,098 Kb
For More Info: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/
For Further Reading
- The Standard: "Read 'em and Weep, Microsoft" -- a copy-protection snafu prevents Pocket PCs from reading e-books from Microsoft's publishing partners.
- CIO Insight: In an article entitled Racing Against Time, professor Lawrence Lessig examines the copyright laws and how they can be applied to e-books and other electronic forms of rights management. In today's world, the author doesn't receive a royalty every time someone reads a book from the library. Will they in the future? [ Dec. 12, 2002]
Reader In Action
Want to see Reader in action? Bill Hill, a Researcher in the Microsoft eBook group, talks about the vision behind Microsoft Reader and demonstrates the product in a digital video clip (100K Windows Media file) on Microsoft's site. There's also a page demonstrating ClearType.
For more content, see:
- http://ebooks.barnesandnoble.com/
- http://www.microsoft.com/reader/read/
- Slate - News of the day in politics, entertainment, business, culture, and more.
- Audible.com - Download popular books in audio format to listen to on the road. For more information about listening to Audible content with Microsoft Reader, click here.
For more background information on Microsoft Reader for the PC, see Associated Press and IDG News Service.
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