Re: [seul-edu] ebook readers and other such devices...

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

Adam Cody wrote:
> 
> http://www.allnetdevices.com/news/9911/991122linux/991122linux.html
> http://www.mobibook.com/download/dwnlmac.htm  (Mobibook read software,
> Linux version!!)
> http://www.screenmedia.com/
> http://www.qubit.net/
> http://www.qubit.net/
> http://www.softbook.com/

I took a look at these, and at the Open eBook link listed later.  Here
are my thoughts.

The first link, allnetdevices, is a short article about the qubit and
screenmedia devices.  Enough said.  The www.screenmedia.com link goes to
some commercial site in Australia, not the Norwegian site that we were
lookng for.  This isn't Adam's fault, as allnetdevices gets it wrong
too.  I don't know how to get to the FreePad site.  Qubit looks
interesting.  As far as I can tell, it should run pretty much any
standard Linux program, and WWW-based content is no problem either. 
Softbook is part of the Open eBook initiative, so I don't think they
need to be considered separately from it.  Mobibook claims to have
downloadable software for Linux, but the only downloadables I could find
were for WinCE and PalmOS, even on their Mac, Linux, and Unix download
page.

Open eBook looks like something we should look into.  It could be a very
useful thing for the Open Book Project, and for our Documentation task
group.  Ramin, you probably know more than the rest of us about
SGML-related things; could you take a look at it
<http://www.openebook.org/> for us and see how it relates to things like
DocBook?  Jeffrey Elkner, you may want to look into it too.  Bruno,
should we be concerned about transformation mechanisms between EduML and
OEB?

More generally, is this that SEUL/edu should attempt to become actively
involved in?  I don't have an opinion on this question yet; I'm inviting
discussion.

-- 
Doug Loss                 The difference between the right word and
Data Network Coordinator  the almost right word is the difference
Bloomsburg University     between lightning and a lightning bug.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain