Re: NTLK Peanut Press - att: S Weyer!

From: Loren Finkelstein (Loren@Finkelstein.Net)
Date: Fri Mar 17 2000 - 12:07:59 EST


Although Peanut Press has said they are no longer working on a Newton Port,
they were recently bought by Netlibrary. So, being the optimist that I am,
I send a request in to Netlibrary that they consider, if not a Newton port,
some form of txt or html versions of their products, making them available
to all platforms.

The way I figure it, if they set up a secure site and you had to pay to get
to the html page with the text of the books, then anyone with a browser
could buy their books. Platform independent and they still get paid.

Probably not as secure as what they have now, but it's a start.

Anyway, perhaps if more people remind them that we are still a large
community of people with money to spend, there may be more e-books in our
future.

Loren

> From: Steve Weyer <sweyer@bellatlantic.net>
> Reply-To: newtontalk@planetnewton.com
> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:38:00 -0500
> To: newtontalk@planetnewton.com
> Subject: Re: NTLK Peanut Press - att: S Weyer!
>
>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 22:48:32 -0600
>> From: Bill Davis <newton@ecity.net>
>>
>> On 3/16/2000 8:11 AM, Mark Rollins [mailto:mark@mrollins.com] wrote:
>>
>>> I'd love nothing more than to read a Peanut Press (subset of HTML,
>>> there's a reader for Palm & WinCE) version of Stephen King's "Riding the
>>> Bullet".
>>> Has anyone heard of any progress towards this, from either PP themselves
>>> or the incomparable NewtsCape from Steve Weyer?
>>
>>
>> Peanut Press was working on a Newton version of their book reader (they
>> are all Newton fans) but I wrote them again recently about it and they
>> told me they'd discontinued work on it.
>>
>> The Peanut Press bookmaker stuff may be a subset of HTML....but the files
>> themselves almost certainly are not, at least for the books they SELL as
>> they require you to type in a code to unlock it, and i'm sure it's all
>> encrypted and such.
>>
>
>> On 3/16/2000 8:46 PM, RWall42064@aol.com [mailto:RWall42064@aol.com]
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I assume everyone is aware of this so I am probably being redundant, but
>>> converting Palm books (*.prc) to Newton books is not that difficult. There
>>> is a public domain program called Make Doc (Macintosh, not sure about
>>> Windows) that is designed to convert text files to Palm books (prc files).
>>> However, the same program also converts prc files back to text files. So,
>>> assuming there are not copy protection or copyright problems, you could get
>>> the King prc file, convert it to text and dump it into Newton Press to
>>> make a
>>> Newton book. Make Doc should be available on the Aportis web site.
>>
>> While you're correct about AportisDoc books, the Peanut Press books are
>> NOT AportisDoc books. So that solution won't work.
>>
>> I'm afraid there is NO way to do what you're after (besides, the Peanut
>> Press books ARE copy protected...the ones you pay for, anyway.)
>>
>> Incidentally, Steve Weyer also has a Newt's Cape plug-in to convert Palm
>> Doc books (AportisDoc).
>
>
> I think Bill Davis pretty much covered things,
> though I feel I should summarize since I was directly asked.
>
> AFAIK, Peanut Press still has a proprietary content format inside a Palm
> prc/.pdb file.
> (their source format may be HTML or open eBook(XML) but that's not what
> they're distributing).
> I don't think there's documentation on their distribution format;
> I had offered to work with them to create a Newton plugin, or a desktop
> book package tool.
> (and Sean Luke and other users have sent them requests for Newton support).
>
> The (free) PilotDOC plugin for Newt's Cape converts and displays a Palm
> Pilot DOC text or ImageViewer graphic file directly as a Newton book.
> There is public documentation available on DOC and ImageViewer formats.
> Peanut is not DOC format; AportisDoc (and a few other Palm readers) use
> standard DOC format; TealDoc and RichReader use DOC but add special markup
> within the content. I also provide some links to desktop conversion tools:
> http://members.bellatlantic.net/~sweyer/newton/newtscape/pilotdoc.htm
>
> Steve
> weyer@kagi.com
> NewtDevEnv, Newt's Cape, Sloup, Crypto,...
> http://members.bellatlantic.net/~sweyer/newton/index.htm
> http://www.kagi.com/weyer
>
>
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