{"id":64536,"date":"2024-06-25T02:47:10","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T02:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/?p=64536"},"modified":"2024-06-25T21:46:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T21:46:34","slug":"keep-on-taking-the-tablets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2024\/06\/25\/keep-on-taking-the-tablets\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep on taking the tablets…"},"content":{"rendered":"

New ebook findings re: my new Microsoft Surface Pro 3<\/a> 12″ as an entertainment touchscreen tablet. Which may interest some readers.<\/p>\n

I settled on Cover<\/a> as the free reader for .CBR<\/strong> etc comics. Free, superb, and lovely design\/usability. Set a landscape-orientation screen on the Surface, ‘fit width’, tap to scroll down a third of the comic page. Assuming a traditional page-layout, it’s then almost better than guided panel-by-panel view, as at the high screen-resolution you’re effectively on a huge BD-sized page — which means you can focus on a panel but also see parts of the panels around it. Cover is one of the best comics readers I’ve seen, and I tried quite a few on the Kindle (Android OS). Cover is now also my default .PDF reader on the Surface, as it’s lovely for that and can do double-page magazine spreads without a gutter-line. <\/p>\n

Sadly, Cover has no .ePUB<\/strong> support other than for any images inside the file. But I need .ePub on a tablet for monthly Instapaper-like bundles of news and magazine articles I save from the Web for later armchair reading. Windows .ePub readers are nearly all deficient in some way, but I’ve found Koodoo Reader<\/a> just pips the latest Thorium to the post, due to ‘swipe to turn a page’. Thorium only has fixed page-turn buttons, at the bottom of the screen (poorly placed, for a Surface held propped in hands). Possibly I’ve yet to discover some Store app that does .ePubs better, though.<\/p>\n

The Kindle app is deliberately dire on Windows, so purchased Kindle ebooks can be read in your favoured browser at read.amazon.com\/kindle-library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Windows donationware VoiceMacro<\/a> also looks useful, though has not yet been tested. (Update: tested and useful. The words ‘nine’ and ‘he’ are trigger words that, even when softly spoken, are always recognised)<\/em>. The OS’s built-in Windows Speech Recognition is very flaky at transcribing my speech-words from the built-in microphone, but maybe this freeware will handle a basic utterance. Say “turn”, send a keypress = the book page turns. That’s all I want. One Android comic-book reader has a ‘turn page by any noise’ feature, but that’s the only place I’ve seen the idea implemented.<\/p>\n

That’s it, hope this helps some Tentaclii<\/em> readers with a Windows touchscreen tablet in desktop mode, and reading ebooks of various sorts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New ebook findings re: my new Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12″ as an entertainment touchscreen tablet. Which may interest some …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odd-scratchings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64536"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64575,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64536\/revisions\/64575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}