The Four Great Novels as Ebooks?

[ipsi()]

I'm vaguely interested in acquiring 红楼梦、三国演义、水浒传和西游记, but preferably as Ebooks. They seem old enough that they're no longer in copyright I don't suppose anyone knows if they exist in the format for Palm eReader? Or even just if they exist in electronic form at all?

Also, my Chinese is not good enough to understand them yet, I'm merely looking into this because I can.

Actually, while I'm at it, does anyone know if there are electronic versions of other famous texts floating around? Along with a list of famous texts?

Thanks all!

- ipsi

[roddy]

Palm Reader or any other actual ebook format I don't think so - in fact, if you know of any Palm format which will read Chinese characters, let me know.

However, finding the books themselves shouldn't be too hard - I turned up one just by searching for the title, and I suspect the others will be easy too - try adding dianzishu or dianziban (where's my characters gone! ) as well.

That's in HTML format and there's also a download. What you'll need to do to get that onto your palm is basically do some copying and pasting into a word document and then read it via docs to go - not ideal, but it works. Best thing to do is transfer the file to an SD card and then put it in your palm - using the docs to go or palm file transfer programs can sometimes cause problems. Also make sure you've got English file names.

[ipsi()]

Actually, I've found that by using CJK OS, I can read Simplified Chinese (and probably Traditional, but that's an unknown factor) by doing the following:

Write a text file using Palm's Markup Language

Save that text file in GB2312 encoding, run it through palms eBook creation software, hot-sync, make sure that CJK OS is enabled, and away you go. Of course, if you want to read a non-Chinese Ebook then I'd recommend disabling CJK OS as it seems to interfere with eReader. And mixing Chinese and English would be a bad idea as CJK OS intereferes with the English.

What actually hurts is that I can't view Pinyin. I'm not sure what software I'd need to install, but it doesn't seem to be happy about it.

Anyway, thanks for the link, I'll download that and have a play around.

Huh. Simply going to http://book.myrice.com/gd/novels/ would appear to give me exactly what I just asked for. How about that? The only exception is that 西游记 isn't bundled, but it's only a few HTML files, so I'll survive.

I'll have a look at writing something to convert them to the eReader format, so I can carry them around with me.

Oh, and what's 三言两刻, and 其他作品 (EDIT: Adso told me 其他作品)?

Thanks,

- ipsi

[studentyoung]

Oh, and what's 三言两刻

“三言”即《喻世明言》、《警世通言》、《醒世恒言》的合称。

http://baike.baidu.com/view/77569.htm “三言”

“二刻”指的应该是“二拍”

中国拟话本小说集《初刻拍 案惊奇》和《二刻拍案惊奇》的合称。

http://baike.baidu.com/view/27371.htm “二拍”

Thanks!

[ipsi()]

Thanks.

Roddy: I was kinda right. I can create Ebooks that are readable, but some characters just aren't encoded properly, and I'm not sure why. I also can't parse it as easily as I would like as the damn fools didn't use a standard markup between books (within books, it seems to be ok)... They also didn't use Chinese punctuation, so I see <<...>> instead of 《...》, which is a pain when you're using an XML processor...

I'll play around a bit more at some point and see if I can get it displaying properly, as there's no real point if I can't.

[roddy]

If you get anywhere stick them on here, they'll be appreciated. However, in my experience of Palm PDAs and Chinese, desperately clinging to the first solution that works and not trying to do anything clever is generally the way to go. I'd either put them into a word doc or read them via Blazer. One advantage of this is that both Docs to Go and Blazer work with Plecodict's Instant Access, which makes life a lot easier.

[ipsi()]

Yeah, I noticed that I can't get Pleco's Instant Access working with the Ebook readers. Admittedly, it doesn't matter if CJKOS is enabled or not, it's fucked up either way. I'll have a look on Pleco's forums tomorrow, see if I can find anything to shed some light.

If you're interested in having them as an eBook, the best way I've found is to either mark up with the Palm Markup Language, save it in GB2312, and convert it like that, or to not mark it up at all, and use Mobipocket Creator (Actually, you can probably mark it up as an HTML file. Not sure how well that'll work though. Will test more later).

The one thing I've found, though, is that you need to have a space between each character, otherwise it just won't work. Mobipocket seems slightly better. eReader files seem to drop the occasional character somehow, even when they don't touch exactly the same character to the left or right (and given that there's spaces on each side of every character, it seems a bit weird...).

[gato]

Yeah, I noticed that I can't get Pleco's Instant Access working with the Ebook readers. Admittedly, it doesn't matter if CJKOS is enabled or not, it's fucked up either way. I'll have a look on Pleco's forums tomorrow, see if I can find anything to shed some light.

TealDoc is the only doc reader that works with "instant access", I think (outside of DocsToGo and Blazer, that is).

[ipsi()]

Interesting. Is there a particular reason for this, and thus some way to figure out what will work with Instant Access?

[gato]

I think Mike Love is the person to ask. It's probably due to hackiness of PalmOS.

[ipsi()]

Actually, it seems to work with Mobipocket. if you copy the character you want to search for first, and you don't mind having to delete spaces when copying multiple characters (because the damn thing won't work without spaces between each and every character). It also needs to have the "External Text Encoding" property set to GB2312 (the same as the encoding that CJKOS uses, oddly enough), and finally it needs the "Use Clipboard" option set.

Seems like an excessive amount of work, really, but there we go. Guess you can get Chinese documents working with eBooks, even if it is slightly weird (and it looks funny with all the spaces).

[ipsi()]

I think Mike Love is the person to ask. It's probably due to hackiness of PalmOS.

Fair enough. I'll post something once I've had some sleep...

[gato]

"Instant access" works fine with TealDoc without all that work you described, so you might want to give it a try. But keep in mind that PlecoDict 2.0 will have a built-in doc reader!

[ipsi()]

I'll have a look, thanks. EDIT: Yay for built-in doc readers.

[roddy]

Yeah, I used to use TealDoc. TealAgent is also handy if your PDA doesn't have web access. Now that I've got Docs to Go and wifi though I don't find I need any of Teal's apps.

[ipsi()]

Hey folks. For those of you running Pleco 2.0 Beta 2, I've posted to the Beta forums with some links for Pleco 2.0-formatted (PalmDoc, UTF- versions of the Four Great Novels. If you're interested, go and have a look. . If you want, I have the plain-text versions sitting around as well, and I can put those somewhere if you're keen.

[zozzen]

I like haodoo.com's reader for pocket pc and palm.

The website is great because all books are proof-read. And that is the only Chinese ebook reader that shows characters vertically, a traditional way to read Chinese.

紅樓夢

http://www.haodoo.net/?M=book&P=246

三國演義

http://www.haodoo.net/?M=book&P=84

[muyongshi]

I have the plain-text versions sitting around as well, and I can put those somewhere if you're keen.

Could you post them here?

Zozzen it would be nice to mention for some people that the website, program, and files for download are all 繁体. I'm fine with it but some people might need to know.

[ipsi()]

They can be found at http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/ebooks.html.

All in UTF-8, and all in Simplified. While I could probably run a converter to Traditional, it's unlikely to work too well, and proofreading would be a pain. A huge pain.

Pure plain text - no markup, and it's one book per file.

[muyongshi]

Thanks for the link!