TICT eBooks Reader v2.09 | Copyright (c) 2000-2009 TICT |
General Informations |
The TICT eBooks Reader is used (as the name implies ;-) to view books from the TICT eBooks Series 2000 or compatible ones, which will bring high quality literature to your TI89 or TI92plus calculator.
These books come in high-compressed state to make maximum usage of your calculator's memory. The penalty for this is lower than it used to be, thanks to Samuel Stearley's great work on the decompression routine (parsing the text for page breaks is now longer than decompressing).
If you want to make your own ebooks just download the TI-68K Developer Utilities and read the included documentation (but this package will always be the most recent version).
- First of all: its size. It is under 8kB so it can be started directly on any available AMS version till now without the need of an installed kernel or some kind of ROM patching (HW2/3Patch).
Just upload it to your calc, archive it and start it. That's all.- The next main feature its maximized usage of the calculator's screen by using the smallest TI font in combination with intelligent end-of-line treatment. No words will be cutted into pieces at the screen border.
- The reader automatically detects during startup which books are installed on your virtual book shelf (a special folder) and will show you a list from which you can choose.
- The navigation within a part of a book is really easy. Use the up/down cursor keys or '+'/'-' keys to step pages for and back and use the left/right cursor keys to jump to the beginning or the end of a part. To scroll back or forward 10 pages at once just hold down key [2nd] while paging.
- And last but not least you can set up to 10 bookmarks for each installed book. To set a bookmark just press key 'x' and then one of the numerical keys (0..9). Think of the 'x' as making a virtual cross in your eBook!
To load a bookmark just press a numerical key (0 .. 9) and the reader will bring you immediately to the corresponding location in the book (of course you have to load the book first and you have to set a bookmark for this key).
(Note: you can press 'x' twice instead of pressing 'x' and afterwards '0').
- Thanks to Joel Thompson (joelt49@yahoo.com) you can hold now [2nd] while paging to jump back or forward 10 pages.
- Leading spaces after a linebreak will not removed anymore. Thanks to ilidio.martins@netvisao.pt for the bugreport.
- There exists now a special versions which use the 6x8 font to display ebooks and which scales the title picture up to fullscreen on the TI92p/V200. If you want to use the large font version load file ebook_large.89z into your TI89 or ebook_large.9xz into your TI92p/V200 and start it as usual with "ebook()" (ebook_large is only the PC file name!). Thanks to janjan2 (mister.janjan2@laposte.net) for these modifications.
- TI-89 Titanium compatibility.
- New fonts support (way faster at startup, doesn't need backbuffers and charwidth anymore).
- New much faster and significantly smaller decompression routine.
- Other code optimizations, the usual tricks used in various other TICT programs (tthdex, tictexpl, etc.).
- The first step is, of course, uploading the reader to your calculator ;-)
Upload file ebook.89z to your TI89 or ebook.9xz to your TI92p/V200.- If you have already an eBook installed on your calculator, start the reader by just typing: ebook() [ENTER]. The program will show you a list of all books on its virtual shelf. This virtual shelf is a folder with the name
tictebks
. I have choosen such an uncommon name to prevent conflicts with already existing folders on your calc.
If the program will state that it hasn't found any book and you have already installed eBooks, just move them into folder tictebks. Then the reader will find them.- If you haven't already eBooks installed, download one ore more eBooks of your choice from ticalc.org's eBooks archives (TI-89 eBooks-Archive/TI-92plus eBooks-Archive) or from the TI-Chess Team HQ at http://tict.ticalc.org.
- After downloading just transfer the file with extension 89y to your TI89 or the file with extension 9xy to your TI92plus. If you have downloaded an eBook of the TICT eBooks Series 2000, it will be automatically installed in the virtual book shelf. Otherwise move it by hand to folder tictebks.
On the VAR-LINK menu you can guess easily which files are eBooks. eBooks will have the extension "ebk" (all lowercase letters).- Within the reader there is not many to know: choose a book, press enter, select a part of it, press enter and there you are. Enjoy it!
Additional informations:
The bookmarks will be stored in an own folder namedtictmarks
. Again I have choosen this strange name to prevent conflicts with existing folders.
If you store the first bookmark of a book a variable with the same name as the book, but with extension "cfg" will be generated in folder tictmarks.
If the folder doesn't exists it generates first the folder and the variable afterwards.
It doesn't matter if you use just one bookmark or all ten bookmarks for each book: the variable which holds the bookmarks of a book will keep the same size (48 bytes).
You can delete the bookmark variables as you wish. Nothing else than the bookmarks is stored these variables and the folder.
This program may be distributed by any other website for non-commercial use only.
DISTRIBUTIONS ON ANY OTHER MEDIUM (Disc,CD-ROM,DVD etc.) are PROHIBITED without separate allowance of the author.
The author makes no representations or warranties about the suitability of the software and/or the data files, either express or implied. The author shall not be liable for any damages suffered as a result of using or distributing this software and/or data files.
You are free to re-use any part of the sourcecode in your products as long as you give credits including a reference to the TICT-HQ (http://tict.ticalc.org/).
- Pasi 'Albert' Ojala (albert@cs.tut.fi) for his compression/decompression algorithm which I have ported to the TI environment
- Loic Minier (lool@fr.fm) for suggestions and hints on the sourcecode
- Denis Bernard (denis.bernard@freesbee.fr), Samuel Stearley (samuel@nyall.net) and Greg Dietsche (greg@gregd.org) for ASM optimization on the decompression algorithm; the version used starting from v2.08 is only Samuel's work, with several suggestions from other persons.
- Zeljko Juric (zjuric@utic.net.ba) for his great TIGCC library, the book selection code, which I "borrowed" from his ScottFree Driver and for helping me out many times
- Valentin Durif (val.snoop@freesbee.fr) for reporting the problems with french ebooks and testing the (fixed-again) french support
- Joel Thompson joelt49@yahoo.com for reporting the serious "book mark selection" bug which was fixed in v1.80
- Joey Merfalen aka "Lazy Joey" joey@50-50.com for suggesting many useful additions
- Austin Chu (qarv@yahoo.com) for pointing me out how stupid and therefore slow NextLine() used to be implemented
- Francesco Orabona (bremen79@infinito.it) for minor code size optimizations
- Joel Thompson (joelt49@yahoo.com) for the 10 pages forward/back feature
- Benjamin Canou aKa janjan2 (mister.janjan2@laposte.net) for the TI92p/V200 large font version
- Lionel Debroux for the modifications in 2.03-2.09
- ... and me (thomas.nussbaumer@gmx.net) for the rest ...
- You can reach Thomas Nussbaumer at thomas.nussbaumer@gmx.net
- Marcos Lopez can be reached at marcos.lopez@gmx.net
- Lionel Debroux can be reached at lionel_debroux@yahoo.fr
Suggestions, bug reports and similar are VERY welcome. Please use our Messageboard at http://p080.ezboard.com/btichessteamhq for this.
... and last but not least: The TI-Chess Team (TICT) Website can be found at: http://tict.ticalc.org