squirt Allow reading of plain text

The bookmarklet currently doesn't allow for this. Even better would be able to read epub and mobi formats

Mar 17 '14 12:03 sfacets

I think @sfacets talks about ability to read text from content-editable textboxes. I vote for this feature too.

Mar 17 '14 14:03 vladholubiev

Yeah, please add this feature :8ball:

Mar 19 '14 17:03 chillingtouch

do you mean you can't read a txt file with it? if so, that's because a txt file can't run javascript, and the bookmarklet is javascript. it's possible the content extraction code is overcomplicated and fails to grab body text if that's all there is.

w/r/t epub and mobi, i don't read those often, so can you tell me how you read them? is it in a browser? in an app?

Mar 21 '14 11:03 cameron

I don't think that somebody often read epub in browser, don't bother with this. Instead you may pay attention to blocks. Every time I try to read selected text frim it Squirt says that it is too hard to read. I often face with this while editing documents in Google Drive and articles in Wikipedia. In the first case it displays the text that my browser doesn;t support Javascript and in second - That this page is too hard to read. I also had problems with this online-notepad, it displays a rubbish such as JS code related to Google Analytics.

Mar 21 '14 13:03 vladholubiev

What browser?

Mar 21 '14 14:03 cameron

Selected text reading doesnt work on FF Nightly 31, under Linux

Mar 22 '14 07:03 chillingtouch

Wouldn't the JavaScript be run externally from the text file when using the bookmarklet? For instance, if I were to open a plain text document in the browser, the bookmarklet doesn't work.

epub is an open standard, and is basically just a zipped collection of xml/html files mobi is similar, not sure of how it is put together

They can be read i the browser through a plugin, or on ebook apps such as Calibre, or the Kindle app.

Mar 22 '14 07:03 sfacets

@cameron latest 33d Chrome, Win8.1

Mar 22 '14 12:03 vladholubiev

A solution for this would be a page on squirt.io that you can paste text into and squirt, this would also work for PDF:s, which is common, specially for students.

Mar 27 '14 08:03 kristoffernolgren

Part of the case for reading ebooks: a gazillion sold/read every day; lots of material only available in book form; they are 10x to 200x longer than most web articles, so readers benefit from RSVP even more; fiction and narrative books (like biographies) are perfect for high speed linear reading.

About ebook formats. epub, mobi are often read in native app readers. for instance, Amazon's Kindle mobile and desktop apps read .mobi files. Calibre (github: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre) is a popular FOSS desktop ebook client that reads/converts all these ebook files; about 3.5 million active users.

You already parse html to find the relevant text. For ebooks, I'd want the addition of a few book-specific features:

Navigate within the book using table of contents links. ToC is usually provided, along with anchor links.
Remember last place in book read. Book reading is often interrupted.
Multiple progress bars: % of section/chapter/book

Thanks.

Phil

Jul 24 '14 00:07 evanwolf