[Sugar-devel] GetBook activity

[James Simmons]

Gonzalo,

I haven't tried out your Activity yet but I do want to warn you about
one thing.  The RESTful service from IA does not give you the file
name of the book, just it's identifier.  Now for MOST books in the
Archive you can derive the file name from the identifier, but that
isn't true for all of them.  For Community Books (those uploaded by
outsiders) the filename can be quite different and the REST API
doesn't give you a way to know what it is.

For some examples of this, do a search for the word "nicestep" in the
archive and you'll see all the community texts I've donated myself.
You'll see a couple of issues:

1).  Filenames that don't match the identifier + a suffix.
2).  Filenames that DO match, but are not what you want.  For example,

http://www.archive.org/details/TheContinentsAndTheirPeopleOceania

If you try to download the PDF using the filename that GIAB uses
you'll get a 203 megabyte monster!  The one you want is called

TheContinentsAndTheirPeopleOceania_text.pdf

and is only 4 megabytes.  It also includes searchable text, which the
monster does not!

OPDS is supported by IA (I think they helped to develop it) and should
probably be used for all searches.  We can leave GIAB around until it
has outlived it's usefulness.

James Simmons


On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Gonzalo Odiard <gonzalo at laptop.org> wrote:
> Here there are a new unofficial version of GetBooks to test.
> You can download it from http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/GetBooks-6.xo (the
> name of the file is the same, but is updated)
> New improvements:
> * Don't save entry in the Journal.
> * Download cover images in separated threads to do the UI more responsive.
> * Use REST client backend to search in Internet Archive (from Get Internet
> Archive Books activity)
> * Show books in the journal (My books, in the sources combo)
> * Improved work flow (using "Open in Journal" buttons, like in Browse)
> * Add support of DejaVu files.
> * More minor fixes
>
> You can see the code (and start to contribute ;) ) in
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/~godiard/get-books/gonzalo-mainline
>
> If you want test adding a private bookserver, you can install Pathagar
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/ch026_the-pathagar-book-server
> and copy the file get-books.cfg from the activity to /etc directory and add
> a section:
>
> [MyBookServer]
> name = MyBookServer
> query_uri = http://IP_NUMBER/catalogs/?q=
> opds_cover = http://opds-spec.org/cover
>
> Gonzalo
>
>