Time races by, and where am I with Reader? Nearly ready to stick a test version online I reckon! A few little fixes and a version 1 should be available within days. If all goes to plan I will post it (along with eLibrary) very soon. And if I fail to make good this prediction, I can always come back later and remove this text.

Other plans

Fragt is a troubling application, as it is the first windows App I wrote, and hence applies some rather "creative" solutions to non-existent problems. I actually still find it useful, but I feel wierd about having it at this site, because there are issues with it I know that I’m never going to get around to fixing. (sometimes code can be too old and strange to fix properly) So now I’m thinking of doing an all-new Fragt as a spin off from eLibrary, since eLibrary is already a file downloader (but currently specific to Gutenberg and without the bugs of fragt)

Gutenberg…

…was a great idea, way back when it all began, but to be honest I dont think it’s being used by many people (at least not as many as might be using it). Hopefully ELibrary (along with Reader?) might help awaken people’s interests in free etext. I have yet to contact them about it, though I am hoping they will agree and offer some (moral) support to my endeavours. People shouldn’t have to stuff about converting files to make them readable (or palatable). Also it seems inappropriate to require loads of different formats to be made available in the Gutenberg set, just so the latest round of readers (eg Adobe and Microsoft) can display them (it’s a lot of extra work too). The point of Gutenberg is to make text available to everyone in the least obfuscated form possible. This is plain text. So it seems to me that Gutenberg should concentrate their efforts in this direction. Anyway, I’d better try to contact them before offering any more opinions here ;)