[bksvol-discuss] Re: epub converter
- From: "Chanelle Allen" <chanellem.allen@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:49:09 -0500
Q-read will not read protected EPUB files, but I thought I heard that it was a
goal for the software at some point. Stanza will also only recognize
unprotected Epub files, but it is able to convert files into a variety of
formats: Doc, RTF, PDF, Txt, HTML, etc. It does not have the bookmarking
capabilities of QRead. I read a review of QRead which mentioned that it works
great for some files or documents structured a certain way while other
mainstream applications do better with other things. A review from the NFB
Access Technology blog is posted below my name. However, Stanza works great for
me so that I do not need to be tied to my computer to read. If one has an
iPhone and the iBooks app, it is possible to convert books to EPUB with Stanza
or some other converter and then put them on the phone. I'm sorry if this is
too much information. It's great that there is more than one way to accomplish
a task.
Chanelle
QRead is a new book reading solution being sold by Chris Toth, the blind
programmer who is best known for creating the Qwitter client for Twitter (no
longer in development) and the Hope client for Pandora Radio. It is intended to
be a simple solution for reading a fair number of different file formats, and
to provide bookmarking and search features within the text. As a great lover of
books, and a devoted reader of eBooks, I sat down with the program to give it a
spin.
According to the documentation QRead is capable of reading PDF, TXT, HTML,
EPUB, zipped and unzipped Bookshare titles, Microsoft Office documents from
Office 2007 or newer (.DOCX) and Microsoft Help files (.CHM). It is intended to
automatically bookmark a user’s place as they read the book and remember that
place every time the book is closed, even if the book is closed because of a
crash of the program or the computer. Other highly useful features mentioned by
the documentation include the ability to search forward or backward within a
file, a manual bookmark system, which allows a user to have one temporary
bookmark, and many “named” bookmarks, and compatibility with the major screen
access software packages for Windows.
In order to give the program a fair trial I collected a large number of
different files to test its usability, and ran its major functions against
NVDA, Window Eyes, and JAWS (All current versions). My first file was a PDF
document containing links, headings, a captioned picture or two, a table, and a
large amount of text. This is a very usable document in the Adobe Reader
software with JAWS, so I expected that it would work well in QRead as well.
When I opened the file in QRead, I discovered that the program essentially
stripped all non-textual elements from the file, and presented nothing but the
straight text to the user. In the case of this file, this actually caused a
number of different problems. First, all traditional navigational elements such
as links and headings were stripped from the file, which left me forced to use
the find dialog to move to the beginning of the desired section of text,
instead of the links and heading structure which were available in Acrobat
Reader. Furthermore, QRead broke the structure of the file’s embedded table, so
it was not clear in QRead, though it read quite well in Acrobat Reader.
Finally, when I compared the two readers, I found that QRead left out the image
descriptions which were found in the original text, so if a user has a
well-formed PDF, it may be in their best interest to continue using Adobe’s
Reader to consume it. One advantage that I found for QRead which must be
mentioned is that it allowed for continuous reading of the document, which in
larger files with Adobe is not advisable (or sometimes even possible) since all
but the most powerful computers seem to choke in large PDF files when using
speech.
The next file I attempted was a much less well-formed PDF. The text was
available to JAWS, but there was no navigation embedded in the document,
pictures were not mentioned, and the file was large and unwieldy. When this
file was loaded into QRead, it came up quickly, and it was easier to traverse
the document than in Acrobat, because of the bookmark, find, and percentage
slider features, and the smaller impact on computer resources. So, for PDF, the
program is a bit of a toss up. Whether or not QRead is the better option is
going to depend on what you want to read, and how you want to read.
EPUB, .docx, DAISY, and HTML files are presented as plain text, just like the
PDFs are. Specifically in the case of the EPUB, DAISY and HTML documents, this
presentation strips useful features from the files, and acts as a real
detriment to the reading process, though it does once again offer bookmarking,
so when reading these types of files it is important to determine whether the
ability to easily bookmark the user’s place is more important than to have
access to navigational links and headings. For me, the answer is clear, I want
the navigation, but each person has a different reading style, and different
needs.
Text files work just as the user would expect. Since all files are read-only,
this is a good solution if a user wants to read and copy bits of text from any
of the aforementioned formats. The bookmarks do give a person a fair bit of
power in creating their own navigational structure, and can even be used by a
creative soul as a basic system of highlighting important information within a
book. The percentage slider is a useful tool for moving quickly through a long
document, or for finding out just how much longer that bit of assigned reading
really is. Finally, the find command works well enough for traditional searches
through the text, though some problems were encountered with this feature,
which I will outline below.
I want to preface these remarks with the statement that I do understand that
this is fairly new software which was programmed by one person, and it has
already been updated once since its initial release. I expect that these
problems will be rectified in time, but I discovered several problems with this
software in its current form. While running QRead on a Windows XP SP3 system, I
found that the program was prone to some random crashes, particularly when
opening files. If other files were open at the time of a crash, there was about
a 50/50 chance that the files would re-open upon launching the program, and
whether or not those files would still have their automatic bookmark in place.
Another problem that I found was that although there was an option for using
regular expressions (a special set of syntax that allows for complex searches),
my tests would cause the search box to not respond when I attempted to use
them. In the same way, when searching backwards in a file, the search box would
sometimes hang, and never give any indication of either finding or not finding
a result. Looking specifically at the search box for a moment, it is important
to note that this program is actually more accessible to screen access software
users than it is to anyone using the screen visually (with or without
magnification) because it is not possible to see or manipulate the buttons in
that box without speech. I attempted to open a few files with the program that
were not explicitly supported, such as an .rtf file, a .doc file, a zip file
containing PDFs, an adobe protected EPUB (.acsm extension) and an EPUB 3 not
because I expected them to work, but to simply see how the program handled
errors and unsupported document types. It handled the .doc, .rtf, and the
protected EPUB by not offering them in the file list in the open dialog box,
which made a lot of sense. If the program cannot open the file, it’s just as
well it not make it available by default. More interestingly, the EPUB 3 and
the .zip file simply dropped me back in the main program interface without
warning me that the file was not supported, or that it couldn’t be opened. It
would be nice to have the program mention limitations like this when it cannot
handle a document which is passed to it. Unfortunately, there were two document
types which were supported according to the documentation which would also not
open on my test machine, the Microsoft help files (.chm), and the zipped
Bookshare DAISY files, though as of version 1.11 of the software the
uncompressed files now open just as they should. Most of my testing was
performed on version 1.0 of the software, and at that time, all Bookshare books
were refusing to open, so as you can see, there has already been improvement in
the program, and I only expect that to continue.
The bugs and limitations of the software do mean that it will not have as broad
an appeal as it might, but QRead is becoming an interesting option for reading
some books in certain file formats. It is my hope that there will be added
support for RTF files in the future, as well as the older .doc format (This is
a planned feature according to the website.) Whether or not this support is
added, it will be a useful tool for reading some common file types, though it
won’t be the only, or even preferred, tool for reading many of them.
From: Ali Al-hajamy
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 9:36 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: epub converter
I believe she was referring to QRead, which can be found at:
http://www.accessibleebooks.com
It's going to cost thirty dollars, but there is a full-featured demo whose only
limitation is that it will load thirty percent of your book, and you can
associate it with EPUB files, as well as all the other formats it supports, so
that you can press enter on a file anywhere in Windows Explorer and have it
open in QRead.
On 25-Apr-12 09:59, Dan Beaver wrote:
Hi,
A short time ago Monica told us about an epub converter program. I thought I
had saved that posting but I can’t find it now.
does anyone still have it?
thanks.
Dan Beaver
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