EBookME 2.5

EBookME is a free, open source tool for building books in JME containers from the most widely used text formats. These packages hold a Java version of the book (both the text and the reader) that can then be opened on mobile phones and other portable devices as long as they are Java ME-enabled. The supported input formats range from MS Office to OpenOffice files, and include PDF, HTML, and XML.

Using this tool is fairly simple – you just drag and drop your text documents into the main window to build your own library. EBookME then makes use of another open source initiative (Aperture) to extract the text and metadata included in PDF, HTML, XML, MS Office and OpenOffice input files. Then you will have the possibility of previewing a preliminary conversion, to check the integrity of the content, the way more complicated expressions and special characters will be converted (scientific text, text in other languages, etc.), as well as the overall conversion results of the layout of not purely textual input documents.

Once the conversion is done, the program will open Microemulator, another open source tool that will show you what the text will actually look like on your mobile device. This viewer has the look and feel of a mobile phone and you can scroll through the text, the chapters and the menus in exactly the same way you would when using your mobile device. Despite some minor mistakes when displaying non-English characters, the program makes a good rendition of the overall content and structure of the original file (when present in the input file). As a bonus, you can customize your library by adding your own splash screen to each book.

Francisco Martínez

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