Help needed
We’re looking for new coders and new maintainers. If you are interested, please contact Yoric on Sourceforge.net .
May 8, 2008
December 6, 2007
How-to …
Some documentation for end-users has been uploaded. This should help you if you have trouble reading Microsoft Reader e-Books or Cabinet e-Books. Additionally, Nikola Knežević has posted a Serbian version of this how-to for Ubuntu users.
December 4, 2007
Another review
This time, we’ve been reviewed on TeleRead.
Let me quote the last sentence
Lector has now set the bar that other e-readers will have to to meet.
Always nice to have good reviews 
November 11, 2007
Mozilla add-ons
We have just been officially accepted on Mozilla Add-Ons. Thanks to all the people who reviewed OpenBerg Lector, here or around the web. Among other things, this should make downloads easier for end-users.
November 1, 2007
Lector on CD ?
Extract of today’s new mail:
We plan to add your software on the CD-Rom of one of our magazines. We would like to get your agreement for its distribution and reproduction on this CD-Rom.
‘nough said
October 18, 2007
Bye, bye Vigdor ?
Update éditions Vigdor have returned ! More details on their website.
éditions Vigdor are no more.
In addition to being the initiators of OpenBerg, éditions Vigdor were among the first (perhaps the very first) e-Books editors on the web. The story began in 1992, in France, with a team composed only of volunteers, with floppy disks, with a proprietary software written in Turbo Pascal, and these floppy disks actually getting distributed in bookstores and visible in libraries. In 1995, they moved on to the Internet, with an aol.com-provided webpage, entirely written in HTML 2, and using their proprietary book reader based on Asymetrix Toolbook. Since then, they have grown in notoriety and technological offerings, peaking in 2003 with their cross-platform proprietary book reader and proprietary book generator, both based on Java. A little later, the still 100% volunteer-led éditions Vigdor initiated project OpenBerg, in an effort to contribute to the edification of a standard among e-Books, a standard that would allow people to continue reading books even after the demise of an editor, and started their transition to open-source tools. By then, éditions Vigdor’s e-Books were available in the library of Sorbonne, in the French Bibliothèque Nationale (the counterpart of Library of Congress) and a number of other institutions.
The objective of éditions Vigdor was to promote scientific edition using electronic media. While, in the grand scheme of things, only a small part of this recognition is due to éditions Vigdor, it can be said that they contributed to this future, if only by editing the first e-Books to enter the Sorbonne, the Bibliothèque Nationale and other major libraries. A few weeks ago, due to internal disagreements, and partly prompted by the fact that the OpenBerg Project was outgrowing its initiators, the volunteer-led association decided to cease its activities.
How will this impact OpenBerg ? Except for the moral blow, it won’t. The OpenBerg project will carry on. Every so often, we are contacted by editors who are interested in using or customizing OpenBerg Lector or OpenBerg Rector, or by checking compatibility of their e-Books. The editing projects under way involving OpenBerg Lector and éditions Vigdor will be subjected to other scientific editors.
So long, Vigdor, you will be missed.
October 14, 2007
Work is hard
These days, we’re drowning under real-life work. It’s therefore quite difficult to update OpenBerg, not to mention this blog. So, if you’re willing to help, please contact us.
September 18, 2007
Lector for Songbird ?
On the left side, we have Songbird, a multimedia player based on Mozilla/Firefox technologies and heavily inspired from iTunes, plus the ability to follow music blogs and other mp3 sources as if they were podcasts, plus video, plus web browser, plus the ability to add new types of contents.
On the right side, we have Lector, our eBook reader for Firefox, that adds new types of contents to Firefox. For quite some time, we have been convinced that iTunes-style interfaces are the (near) future of computing and thinking about adding an iTunes-style interface to Lector.
A few days ago, a reader suggested that we could try and port Lector to make it a Songbird extension. At a first glance, this seems feasible : Songbird supports XUL-based extensions, upon which Lector is based, Songbird contains a web browser that’s essentially Firefox with different buttons, Songbird already has a contents-database in place and Songbird supports new types of contents. So we’re now officially investigating this idea.
September 11, 2007
Pagination is broken
Contrarily to what we posted a few weeks ago, Pagination doesn’t quite work yet. Back to work, then.
August 30, 2007
Hey, we’re on Wikipedia !
Someone — and I promise it’s not one of us, to the best of my knowledge — has added an entry on OpenBerg on Wikipedia. While it’s currently very preliminary, it’s a nice gesture. For ethical reasons, we (the developers) probably shouldn’t contribute to this entry. On the other hand, if you’re reading this post, feel free to give a hand.
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