Re: Alternative User-Agent header

Nothing personal, but that sounds like a mess.
I read my fanfiction, off line, in wordperfect, with a cup of tea thank 
you very much smiles.



On Sat, 26 Jun 2021, Travis Siegel wrote:

> For what it's worth, epub books are already html.  An epub file is just a 
> zip file renamed to epub.
>
> Simply extract the epub file into a directory of your choice, and generally 
> (though not always) the html files are layed out in name order, and you can 
> simply open each one in your browser, or if so inclined, just open lynx on 
> the directory, and go down the list of html files reading them one at a time 
> until you've finished the book.
>
> With that said, there are times epub creators do stupid things with the html 
> files and their names, such as making the names 40 characters long, and not 
> numbering them in order (or at all), and in those cases, the only way to read 
> things in order is to open the toc.ncx file (if there is one), or using the 
> content.opf file for a complete reference to the html layout and order.  I 
> prefer toc.ncx files when available, because they are much simpler than 
> content.opf files, and it's much easier to pick out the files in order.  The 
> only caveat to that is that some epub creation programs don't produce proper 
> toc.ncx files, and in those cases, you generally get only a single entry in 
> the table of contents file, which doesn't help anybody, so no clue why the 
> programs generate such broken content files, but there it is.
>
> 90 percent of the time, you can simply extract the epub file, then load the 
> files in order in your browser to read them as desired.  It's the other 10 
> percent of the time that requires an actual epub reader to extract things in 
> the proper order.
>
> For what it's worth, I did write an Epub reader, and you can find it at:
>
> http://www.softcon.com/files/softconreader.exe
>
> It doesn't handle content.opf files, so if your toc.ncx file is broken, 
> you'll only be able to read the chapters in the book by typing them in on the 
> file line, but as long as your toc.ncx file is properly formatted, the reader 
> will work fine.
>
> I have another version that does work with content.opf files, but there's 
> still too many bugs in the opf parsing to release that version, so it remains 
> in testing mode for the moment.
>
> The only issue with that epub reader is that sometimes (for reasons unknown 
> to me), the html parser I use to display the text drops shortcuts onto your 
> desktop, without asking for permission to do so, nor telling you it did so, 
> so sometimes you'll find hundreds of html shortcuts on your desktop.  The 
> fastest way to remove these is just to go into your desktop folder and remove 
> all the .htm or .html or .xhtml files.  Unfortunately, this is a result of 
> the html interpreter built into windows, and there isn't anything I can do 
> about this that I've discovered yet, but considering it's the only major bug 
> I've found with it's operation, I'll take it.
>
> There is one other bug I can't solve, though I've tried, and that is that if 
> there is a vector graphics file in the epub content, (*.svg), and this file 
> is referred to in one of the html files, it will hang with a error until you 
> tell it no (alt-n) to trying to read/display the file.  Sometimes, it takes 
> several iterations of this no answer before it goes away.
>
> Otherwise, the reader works fairly well, and I personally use it for all of 
> my epub reading, (sometimes generating toc.ncx files when they aren't 
> present), but I plan to build a utility program that ships with the reader to 
> fix broken toc.ncx files at some point in the future.
>
> Sorry for the rambling message, but I hope it helps (someone). Softconreader 
> is of course free, as are all of the programs in my files area.
>
>
> On 6/26/2021 5:36 PM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>>  While fichub.net is frankly fantastic, I get the epub files, and send
>>  them  to [email protected]
>>  Which results in html that I convert  to text,  there is still an
>>  important issue.
>>  First, one must have the fanfiction.net link to use fichub, which can be
>>  challenging to discover.
>>  second, there is being able to check for story updates. I have never been
>>  able to finish setting up a fanfiction.net account, but bookmarked several
>>  user's m.fanfiction.net pages allowing me to check for stories I was
>>  following...and read them too since the main site used javascript on the
>>  next chapter link.
>>  That and I sometimes want to read a bit of a work before   sending
>>  things to fichub.
>>  still, to be sure, it is far far better than nothing.
>>  I only browse at ao3, so browsing is less important for me then keeping
>>  track of writers who either update works I love, or who have not written
>>  for years then suddenly return.
>>  But that is me.
>>  Kare
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>
>
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