Yes, I bought Bindery. It looks pretty nice, and is quite easy to use. The
distribution, if installed stand-alone includes GEOS, program Manager,
Bindery, BookReader, GeoDraw, and Scrapbook. If installed over a current
installation of GEOS, it adds Bookreader, Bindery, and newer versions of
Scrapbook and GeoDraw, and some libraries. I don't know if these "newer"
versions of the old apps are different, but I like to have the most recent
releases.
TWO VERY IMPORTAND CONCERNS:
1. You MUST be running GEOS v2.01 or Bindery will not work. (Not an issue
if installed stand-alone.)
2. If installed into a current GEOS environment, Bindery OVERWRITES the
GEOS.INI file and OVERWRITES the icon token database. If you have not
tweaked GEOS.INI, you won't have any problems, but if you did, make a
back-up copy BEFORE you install Bindery. I had to re-build mine from
memory. Likewise I had to re-scan my directories to "get back" all the
icons I had installed. Fortunatly, I keep all my icons in a separate
directory, but I still had to waste some time doing this. The documentation
does NOT say anything about this.
Bindery works a lot like GeoWrite, but it is optimized to generate E-books.
One cool feature is its various platform emulation modes. You set it to
"Desktop", and the work space matches the size of Bookreader for the
Desktop. Likewise, there are emulations for Zoomer and the PT-9000.
Prettly slick. My only complaint is that the page size of the Desktop
version of Bookreader and the page size of the Zoomer are both small, yet
are not the same. The Desktop version has a more horizontal orientation
while the Zoomer's is more vertical. (SPECULATION: Maybe forthcoming PDA's
will have screens to accomodate the screen size of Desktop Bookreader?) I
personally would have opted to make the Desktop version match the Zoomer
version in size and orientation so we don't have to worry about optimizing
the e-book to one platform or another.
Note to e-book designers: My recommendation is to use lots of graphics to
make things look cool, but avoid full-screen graphics that are sized to
accomodate one platform. Use graphics that will fit the smallest platform.
That way, the will be easily viewed on ALL platforms. Note also that all
Bindery-generated e-books are displayable on ALL GEOS-based platforms.
Finally, (WHEW!) my only other complaint is that there is no documentations
that describes the file structures of the e-book files (typical for
Geoworks). The basis for my complaint is that I manage a VAX installation
where we generate sales reports. If Bindery files could be generated
directly without Bindery, I could EASILY have my VAX generate hypertext
documents that could be downloaded to a smaller machine such as a laptop or
a Zoomer for easy viewing. This is not so far-fetched. I already do this
now by having the VAX generate Mosaic HTML compliant files and I use
Netscape on the laptops. It is very fast and very efficient. If This same
concept could be done with Bindery, I would go out and buy about ten Zoomers
today.
Well, enough ramblings for now.
-Jim
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James W. Barr, N9ONL Check out my WWW home page at:
Buffalo Grove, IL, USA http://www.mcs.net/~jbarr/home.html