MEPubReader: J2ME epub Book Reader CSCI 188/ 297. Rizwan Habib. December 13, 2010

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1 MEPubReader: J2ME epub Book Reader CSCI 188/ 297 Rizwan Habib December 13, 2010

2 Project Description MePubReader is a J2ME app for reading books in the epub format. The goal of the app was to design a light weight J2ME book reader starting that will at least support the epub format and will be extensible enough to display any other handheld book format without much change to the format and working of the app. As of now, MePubReader displays books in epub format with funcationality like bookmarking and text search but it is design such that none of the functionality will break if another format is to be displayed, provided that display module for new format is implemented. Project Features Reading area is maximized by hiding controls on the main screen. Pressing # or * key on the keyboard will bring up the main screen with all functionity. Please refer to screenshots belows for all functionity of the app, along with a description of how each of them work. Implementation Challenges Encountered The main challenge encountered during implementation was the specification of epub format itself. There are lots of free and paid tools online that will convert any format document to an epub but trouble is that most of them doesn t follow epub format guidelines but rather implement a custom subset of the format. It created issues as an app of this scope cannot cater for all custom variation of the format. Challenge was over comed by implemention a basic part of the epub format, a part which is most uniform but at the same time very limited in functionality. Second challenge faced was how to bookmark a specific screen. In order to make it work with other formats, bookmark must depend on some property which is not specific to epub format itself but ratehr intrisic to the a document in general. Also, app can t depend on screen for bookmarking as it allows the user to change text size and spacing and it will surely change contents on any specific screen. The solution that I came up with was to count the number of words to bookmark. Say that user is on 25 screen suing a small font and the first word of the screen is 556 th from the start of the document. So, our bookmark entry position to current document should be at 556 th word by displaying it as the first word of a screen. This also takes cares of the fact that no matter what font size or screen resolution user has selected, bookmark will always be consistant and will accuretly point to the correct word.

3 Screenshots and Functionality Demo Figure 1: Main Screen with hidden control for maximum view area. Top left displays the current system time in a transparent font. * key or # key pops up the main menu controls.

4 Figure 2: Main menu controls with */# key.

5 Figure 3: Bookmark Management; add, edit, delete or go to any bookmark. Memory is persistent and app will remember text location.

6 Figure 4: Search for any word within the text. Search word will display as the first work on the visible screen.

7 Figure 5: Persistent Setting Option allow to change font size, font overlap adjustment for better reading, screen text slider orientation, show or hide current system time, and background color.

8 Figure 6: Help screen with control explanation. Line count starts at 0 so line 1 is actually 2nd line on the screen.

9 Figure 7: Time splash screen. Will show current time for 2 seconds and they will jump back to reader view, back to the same screen from where it was when time check will browsed.