Tech Forum

Is anyone tracking on the lightweight electronic book readers such as the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle? Is anyone developing LDS scriptures and other LDS resources such as songbooks for these platforms? They are much thinner and lighter than PDAs which make it ideal to replace carrying bulky scriptures. I cannot determine if any of the present electronic LDS formats will work on either system. Does anyone know?

lacylee wrote:Is anyone tracking on the lightweight electronic book readers such as the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle? Is anyone developing LDS scriptures and other LDS resources such as songbooks for these platforms? They are much thinner and lighter than PDAs which make it ideal to replace carrying bulky scriptures. I cannot determine if any of the present electronic LDS formats will work on either system. Does anyone know?

Currently the Church does not have a version of the scriptures for these platforms in development. Maybe this is something that the community can help with?

Tom

I just purchased a Kindle 2 and I have found the Book of Mormon in both *.awz (Amazons format) and *.prc (Mobipocket). There are several other free ebooks that are church related material if you search for it.

I'm glad to see others interested in eBook reading. I recently discovered it myself with my iPod Touch. I use the eReader app. and can download all the publications the Church offers (the eReader format -pdb-).

I find the iPod very useful in Church -- hymns, lessons, and scriptures all handy -- and it fits in my pocket.

At first I was a little reluctant to use it, but there are three of us now in Elder's Quorum that use the iPhone / iPod.

Take Care --

Songcatcher wrote:I just purchased a Kindle 2 and I have found the Book of Mormon in both *.awz (Amazons format) and *.prc (Mobipocket). There are several other free ebooks that are church related material if you search for it.

I don't know much about the Kindle, but if it supports the Mobipocket format (.prc), then there is quite a bit of free ebook material you can download in this format. I use Mobipocket on my Pocket PC (Windows Mobile 5.0), and found a ton of stuff in the Gospel Library on the Church's main web site at http://lds.org/handheld/newarchive/0,18 ... -2,00.html.

If you follow the link on the Gospel Library archive page to the Mobipocket Reader download site, you can also get the complete standard works in this format. I'm not affiliated in any way with the LDS Bookclub site, but have found their reader and materials to be most useful.

tomw wrote:Currently the Church does not have a version of the scriptures for these platforms in development. Maybe this is something that the community can help with?

Tom

I am very interested in doing the legwork for putting together the scriptures and other church publications in the Sony Reader format. However, it seems that the church is reluctant to support or distribute any forms aside from the EZreader format that is no longer supported. The FAQ's suggest that the reason is a stringent review process; how does this review work, and what would be required to get a version through this process to make it available to all the users like me who would really like to have this available?

Also, is there anyway we can be provided with starting text approved by the church, as the html version available on the web is a rather cumbersome starting method?

you can use a program like foxit phantom and convert things to pdf (such as folio view files) and convert them to pdf by printing the file to foxit phantom, than save it as a .txt document through foxit. the files are than in a native format for kindle... this also works for all the books that are already available on the maxwell institute file.

The issue with converting to text for the scriptures is twofold. First, the format of all the subnotes and markings leaves lots of extra letters floating around. Second, text is note indexed at all, and to have a set of the scriptures be truly usable for study, it will need to be indexed in such a way that you can rapidly access book, chapter, and verse.

I am willing to go through the effort of doing that referencing in the sony reader structure, but I would really like to start from official text, instead of the Project Gutenburg or other initial format.

Unfortunately, since the initial post, the admins have not responded at all to this thread. ltom mentions that the community might be able to help, but no information is given as to how to get involved, and no upon sending messages, I have received no response. Obviously, not a priority at all for the Church.