Nintendo DS as eBook reader

Ok, I like games. Scratch that, I love games. But more than any game, I love reading. In fact, it's not a hobby but a vice.

I have a Nintendo DS but lately I noticed that I'm using it mostly to read eBooks. And that games are now mostly used to "rest" when I get tired of reading.

Among the good things about DS is its size, hence its portability. That also brings its own problems - some people would find the screen too small. However, I have no problems with that. With it, I can read AND play on the save device - two of my favorite past times.

My favorite eBook reader is the homebrew, Free and Open Source dsLibris - that means, you're given the freedom to modify the program itself (if you want to). Written in C++, if that means anything to you and GPL licensed.

It only reads eBooks in xHTML format. There is a plethora of eBook Formats out there but there's only one other format that should interest you: ePub. Converting books from another format to xHTML used to be a tedious process, but thanks to an emerging open format developed by International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF):ePub.

It is essentialy a zipped xHTML file. Now, all you need to do is open the archive, extract the xhtml file residing in it then rename it. Wham. Bang. Done.

This used to be a tedious task. First I had to convert the eBook from one format (most often, PDF) to HTML, then to xHTML using Tidy. Review it using a word processor in case of errors, then save.  Now, all I need to do is download an ePub version.

For your store of truly free eBooks, head over to Manybooks.net, they sources their books from the thousands of public domain books from Project Gutenburg. Another is MobileRead.

Too many books, too little time ....