LDS Scriptures for the Amazon Kindle

[mkmurray]

In addition to the Kindle, there's Sony's offering. There are pros and cons to each. I'm just saying there's a lot of incompatible formats out there. Developers tend to gravitate to the leaders.

On that note, at my work we have been talking about putting our client's content on the Kindle and/or Sony reader. One of the major obstacles is indeed incompatible file formats, as Amazon has it's proprietary format (AZW) and Sony is pushing a more standardized and open industry format (EPUB).

[Ethem]

On that note, at my work we have been talking about putting our client's content on the Kindle and/or Sony reader. One of the major obstacles is indeed incompatible file formats, as Amazon has it's proprietary format (AZW) and Sony is pushing a more standardized and open industry format (EPUB).

Why should that be an obstacle? You chose one, and work with that one. Are they that hard to implement? Are there no easy conversion tools between them? The merits of these readers is that they are actually “eBooks”. The screen technology they use is different from normal PCs or handhelds. They are designed to create for you electronically the same experience (as far as possible) as that of reading a normal paper book. So they shouldn’t really be compared with those other kinds of devices. In any case, I am waiting for Apple to unveil their new much rumoured tablet PC next week. Some of the rumours are that it can do the same thing, only in color! Apparently it is also going to be very expensive. We will find out next week I guess.

[TechnoBabel-p40]

Why should that be an obstacle? You chose one, and work with that one. Are they that hard to implement? Are there no easy conversion tools between them? The merits of these readers is that they are actually “eBooks”. The screen technology they use is different from normal PCs or handhelds. They are designed to create for you electronically the same experience (as far as possible) as that of reading a normal paper book. So they shouldn’t really be compared with those other kinds of devices.

It sounds as though you have it all figured out. Since you seem to have it all figured out, please keep us updated as to how you are progressing as you volunteer your time to make this project happen.

TB

[mkmurray]

It sounds as though you have it all figured out. Since you seem to have it all figured out, please keep us updated as to how you are progressing as you volunteer your time to make this project happen.

TB

Yeah, I mean I would suggest that you see if the Church is interested in sponsoring the project here on the LDSTech Wiki. You may find a few other Community members interested in joining you. I know I might look into see how I can help if the project gets more off the ground. It'd be fun to learn some of these eBook formats.

The person you probably want to email would be church employee Tom Welch (tomw): http://tech.lds.org/forum/member.php?u=1

[Ethem]

Yeah, I mean I would suggest that you see if the Church is interested in sponsoring the project here on the LDSTech Wiki. You may find a few other Community members interested in joining you. I know I might look into see how I can help if the project gets more off the ground. It'd be fun to learn some of these eBook formats.

The person you probably want to email would be church employee Tom Welch (tomw): http://tech.lds.org/forum/member.php?u=1

Okay, just for your info, I finally decided to fork out some money and buy this edition of LDS scriptures for the Kindle, to try it out on the Kindle for PC software to see how it works; and it is not all that bad. The navigation is about as good as it is likely to get on the Kindle. The Kindle is not a computer, so you can’t do sophisticated programming on it. The flip side of that is that creating content for the Kindle is a piece of cake. There are free tools available that allow you to create content for the Kindle out of any kind of text file, HTML file, .DOC file, etc. with minimum of effort. The formatting of the text is not the way I would have done it myself; but it is acceptable. For those who are interested in trying it out, I would say it is worth the money spent. And if you buy it once you don’t need to buy it twice to put it on a real Kindle. It goes into your Amazon account and you can download it again as many times as you want to put it on another device. The downloaded file goes into a folder in your Documents folder. You can save that too, and it should be possible to load it up into another Kindle by a USB connection.

Another advantage of the Kindle is that the battery on them lasts a lot longer. You can read War and Peace on it without recharging the battery—or so they say! The screen is not backlit like a PC or iPhone. It uses “e-Ink” technology which makes it behave like paper, and you can shine a light on it to read it. There is a bigger version of the Kindle 2 called the DX, which looks very impressive but more expensive to buy. Creating content for the Kindle using the tools provided is easy; but doing it for the scriptures would be tedious and time consuming, because to navigate it properly you would have to create links for each book, chapter, and verse. Good luck for those who want to try it!

[danpass]

The Kindle is not a computer, so you can’t do sophisticated programming on it.

Your comment reminded me of a short presentation that I saw last year at OSCON. The segment of the video that is relevant to this subject starts shortly after 2 minutes into the video and is about 5 minutes in length.


http://blip.tv/file/2391051

[tumbleweed-p40]

No need. Just download these MOBI files and copy them to your Kindle. My mom has a Kindle, so I got these files for her. The cool thing about the Kindle is that it supports MANY book file formats.

http://members.cox.net/palm-os/kindle_scriptures.zip

A lot of content is available on lds.org that works great on Kindle.

TB

Thank you so much for the link I was beginning to think I had made a mistake buying the Kindle. Not now these scriptrues are very easy to navigate plus a few extras thanks again for your post. :p

[leejj]

I'm curious how Standard Works LLC can continue to sell copyrighted text like the footnotes in the scriptures, Topical Guide, Bible Dictionary, Guide to the Scriptures, Hymns, Children's Songbook, etc. on all these devices. I would think the Church would not allow them to charge for this content. Is this not the case? Has the policy changed?

[owenmp]

The above discussion seems to be centered around finding a version of the scriptures for Kindle or recommending a paid version.

Instead let's take advantage of the resources the church provides.

The church provides a complete copy of the standard works with links in EPUB format which is natively incompatible with Kindle. However, there are many converters on the market some of which are free.

I recommend using Calibre to convert the church provided epub version to the Kindle format. Calibre is free and easy to use although conversion of the scriptures takes a few minutes.

Download Calibre (free) here:
http://calibre-ebook.com/

Download the church provided EPUB file here:
http://lds.org/scriptures?lang=eng

[darrylglissmeyer]

I just wish I could get the scriptures in German on my Kindle. Get them on my razr