<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"> <html><body> Hi! Oh my goodness . . . you can read EPUBs? That is great!! Even the book reader people say they can't speak EPUB - I am thinking about KNO and the reader that Barnes and Noble is pushing. They say they can't do it. Can you also include a Daisy Reader or something that works with the RFB&D (Recording For the Blind & Dyslexic) books? Now they call themselves Learning Ally (http://learningally.org). There is something open source that works with Firefox for Windows called DDReader. I am not techy enough to know if it is adaptable. The Learning Ally files are audio. Formerly they have been encrypted mp3s or wmas, but now they are in a push to make everything more accessible. They have a huge collection and most current textbooks. I am also a big fan of Librivox. Last semester I was at an elementary school and had what I called an audio book server. I just used the Gutenberg html versions with embedded audio of Librivox recordings. Using the web browser, the child clicked on the book and it started reading when the text and pictures came up. Kids liked it. Can there be some sort of Sugar on a Stick version for dyslexic kids? I would definitely promote it and distribute it in Texas. Thanks to all of you who are contributing. It's great! Marilyn On Mon, 30 May 2011 12:00:05 -0400, iaep-request@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote: <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%"> <pre>Send IAEP mailing list submissions to <a href="mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org">iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to <a href="mailto:iaep-request@lists.sugarlabs.org">iaep-request@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> You can reach the person managing the list at <a href="mailto:iaep-owner@lists.sugarlabs.org">iaep-owner@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of IAEP digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Texas Senate Bills 866 & 867 regarding dyslexia passed over the weekend (James Simmons) 2. Re: Pathagar library (Tony Anderson) 3. ASUS Eee PC X101 @ $199: A worthy non-XO platform for Sugar? (Christoph Derndorfer) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 08:21:14 -0500 From: James Simmons <<a href="mailto:nicestep@gmail.com">nicestep@gmail.com</a>> To: Gonzalo Odiard <<a href="mailto:gonzalo@laptop.org">gonzalo@laptop.org</a>> Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan <<a href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au">sridhar@laptop.org.au</a>>, iaep <<a href="mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org">iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Texas Senate Bills 866 & 867 regarding dyslexia passed over the weekend Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:BANLkTim_aoCrbiFxaiq=0i_yjwatwUp6ow@mail.gmail.com">BANLkTim_aoCrbiFxaiq=0i_yjwatwUp6ow@mail.gmail.com</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Actually, Read Etexts already has a built-in downloader for Gutenberg Etexts. Just open it from the Activity ring (instead of resuming an existing text) and you'll see the Gutenberg-specific downloader. It is much easier to implement text highlighting on a plain text file than it is on a PDF, EPUB, DJVu, etc. Speech is easy. It's knowing how to do the highlighting that's difficult. Now that PG is distributing EPUBs maybe support for plain text files is less important, other than TTS with highlighting. I was scratching my own itch when I originally wrote it. I wanted to read free e-books on my XO and the only thing Read supported was PDFs. If I had known about Feedbooks, which converts the plain text files from PG to PDFs I probably would not have written it. (In fact, if the Kindle had been cheaper when it first came out I might not have participated in OLPC at all). PG text download is done using a built in book catalog that is created from a text catalog of books that PG updates now and then. OPDS support for downloading plain text files would be a lot better, but there was no such thing when I wrote it. I'm pleased that Gonzalo is working on improving Read. I'm working on a book on using e-books with Sugar and it looks like I'll need to check out his latest work before I can finish it. If he can make Read Etexts totally unnecessary it will live on as sample code in "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!" at least. Read Etexts also has multiple bookmarks, annotations, and text highlighting, and if the paragraphs aren't too long it will remove the line endings from PG texts so they can be re-wrapped to fit the screen and font size. It will even convert Baen Free Library RTFs to plain text files, another dubious feature now that Baen has EPUBs. James Simmons On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Gonzalo Odiard <<a href="mailto:gonzalo@laptop.org">gonzalo@laptop.org</a>> wrote:</pre> <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Well, you are describing our solution :) On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 3:15 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan <<a href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au">sridhar@laptop.org.au</a>> wrote: <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">On further thought, it seems to me that there should be two activities. The first is a reader. At minimum it should read plain text, PDF and EPUB files. The Read activity fulfils this requirement. An additional feature would be text-to-speech, with word highlighting (as Read ETexts has). In this way, you can run TTS on any source file.</blockquote> Read can open PDF, EPUB, DejaVu and text files. Can do text to speech with word highlighting of text files, and only text to speech of EPUB files right now. The idea is add the capability to the other formats. <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">The second is a fetcher. It allows searching through different pre-defined repositories, and the selected book can be downloaded to the journal. The Get Books activity fulfils this requirement. Files opened from the journal open up in the reader. An additional feature would be to add additional source repositories (similar to how Software Update works). This will allow deployments to create their own catalogues of books and make them available online.</blockquote> This is the description of GetBooks. A deployment can use Pathagar to create a book repository. In eduJam, we talked about how improve the tagging of books to create catalogs, and we need to do a few changes in the server code. Nicholas and Daniel worked in code to add dynamic catalogs to GetBooks, and we are trying to improve it. GetBooks and Pathagar use the OPDS protocol. Gonzalo <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">I think it's important to split the reading from the fetching to avoid having an overly complicated activity. The journal is the means by which they connect. What do people think of this idea? Sridhar On 29 May 2011 04:07, Gonzalo Odiard <<a href="mailto:gonzalo@laptop.org">gonzalo@laptop.org</a>> wrote: <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Yes, I was working trying to merge the code in Get Books and Read activities. Now, you can read "plain text" files in Read, and Get Books can download books from Feedbooks and Internet Archive. A missing part is download books from Gutenberg project. Gonzalo On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan <<a href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au">sridhar@laptop.org.au</a>> wrote: <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">On 28 May 2011 04:36, James Simmons <<a href="mailto:nicestep@gmail.com">nicestep@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Marilyn, I wrote an Activity called Read Etexts that might be of some use to you. ?It can take one of the "plain text" files put out by Project Gutenberg and read it aloud, like a Kindle. ?As it reads the words it highlights the word spoken. ?The highlighting needs a faster computer than an XO to keep up with the word being spoken, but it doesn't need to be much faster. <a href="http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4035">http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4035</a> James Simmons</blockquote> This activity looks like it could have some real potential in our deployments. It seems like there's a lot of functionality crossover between Read Etexts, Get Internet Archive Books (your code) and Get Books (based on Get Internet Archive Books). Are there any thoughts about a merger? A reader that could pull content and vocalise the words from all of the sources supported by Get Books (plus external files) would be fantastic! Thanks, Sridhar _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a></blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <pre>------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 15:30:26 +0200 From: Tony Anderson <<a href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net">tony_anderson@usa.net</a>> To: <a href="mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org">iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> Cc: Gonzalo Odiard <<a href="mailto:gonzalo@laptop.org">gonzalo@laptop.org</a>>, Nicholas Doiron <<a href="mailto:ndoiron@mapmeld.com">ndoiron@mapmeld.com</a>> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Pathagar library Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:4DE39BF2.3030204@usa.net">4DE39BF2.3030204@usa.net</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi, I am trying to install pathagar on my schoolserver (having a little trouble configuring httpd correctly). I hope to start with a representative sample of the English items in Pustakalaya (<a href="http://www.pustakalaya.org">www.pustakalaya.org</a>). I believe the library needs to handle not only e-books but also media (images, video, audio). I am planning to use a web interface (Firefox). Hopefully, each item will be identified with a mime-type. The mime-type can then be used to download the item to the Journal and to launch the appropriate activity (Read, Read Etexts, Jukebox, ImageViewer). The item needs to be downloaded so that the child can access it at home away from the schoolserver. One of the problems with Pustakalaya is that the Nepali and English items and descriptions are intermixed in a way that would be difficult to separate. In Nepal, content in English, Nepali, and other Nepali languages is appropriate. In Rwanda, the collections are likely to be English and Kinyarwanda (with possible addition of French and Swahili). In Haiti, it is more likely to be French, Haitian Creole, English and Spanish. Django should make it easy to prepare a script which will create a copy of the library which contains only items in selected languages. I also like the interface on International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) - especially the Basic Search. It is iconic and so less dependent on translation. Yours, Tony ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 16:55:52 +0200 From: Christoph Derndorfer <<a href="mailto:e0425826@student.tuwien.ac.at">e0425826@student.tuwien.ac.at</a>> To: IAEP <<a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>> Cc: Sugar Labs Marketing <<a href="mailto:marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org">marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>> Subject: [IAEP] ASUS Eee PC X101 @ $199: A worthy non-XO platform for Sugar? Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:4DE3AFF8.5070407@student.tuwien.ac.at">4DE3AFF8.5070407@student.tuwien.ac.at</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Hi all, it's still early days but it looks like the ASUS Eee PC X101 presented at a pre-Computex press event today could be a good platform for Sugar. At a price-point of $199, less than 1kg of weight, and with a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU this really does look like an interesting product for schools, both in developing and developed nations. Since it runs Meego I would assume that on the software side of things getting other Linux distributions to run on it shouldn't be too hard, but others will know more here. Engadget has a quick hands-on video of the X101 which might of interest to some of you: <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/30/asus-brings-out-extra-skinny-eee-pc-x101-running-meego-hands-on/">http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/30/asus-brings-out-extra-skinny-eee-pc-x101-running-meego-hands-on/</a> Anyway, I'll definitely keep an eye on this one! :-) Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, <a href="http://www.olpcnews.com">www.olpcnews.com</a> e-mail: <a href="mailto:christoph@olpcnews.com">christoph@olpcnews.com</a> ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> End of IAEP Digest, Vol 38, Issue 57 ************************************ </pre> </blockquote> <div> </div> </body></html>