Re: [NTLK] ATA support on the eMate and Questions about eBooks

From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 13:40:05 PDT


Il me semble que le 13/5/03 à 12:22 -0700, Brian Mayton nous racontait:
>Hmmm... How can I utilize the compander? I can't find an option=20
>anywhere in Newton Press to compress the data at all. Is there a=20
>different ebook generator/reader that will do this?

Normally, it is automatic. The package gets compressed when installed
on the Newton. Usually, you get a 50% compression ratio for books.

There are flags in the package that indicate if a compander is to be
used or not. I think NewtonPress sets the flags properly
automatically.

With NewtonOS 2.0, there is a new faster but less performant
compander. I never use it for my own packages because I did not
notice any speed difference and people usually want more storage
space than more speed.

I only know one flag editor, Victor's, but an hexadecimal editor can
do the job as well. If you're unsure about a package, I might dig the
documentation (it's Newton Formats PDF) and write a short tutorial
with say HexEdit on MacOS X or whatever hexadecimal editor you have
on your machine.

Nevertheless, if you use pure 7 bits ascii or 8 bits ISO-8859-1, it's
better to store strings directly in ISO-8859-1 or 7 bits ascii since
those can be easily converted to Unicode (just fill the missing bits
with 0), and the text will then be further compressed. That's what we
did for the Fortune packages, but it is not possible with the
Newton's original book format.

Paul

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