allennoren's dashboard

We've proposed that to Amazon, and will continue to suggest it, but they are the folks you need to be asking about this. They seem pretty intent on providing content that they control, and I think they see Safari as a competitor. But we'd jump on this. That being said, all of the same issues discussed previously, about the Kindle's lack of monospace font support, apply to Safari on the kindle. – timoreilly, about 10 hours ago

I see a lot of replies of getting O'Reilly books on the Kindle, but what about Safari? I wouldn't mind paying an extra 5 dollars or so a month just to access a Safari account from the Kindle.

Alrite Allennoren,

I'm so sorry

Actually i just checked out their Titles .....

now i'm going to mail them for the books.......

Sorry.

Thanks again to reply me.

Mukarram, let me know if they do or don't. They should since they are our distributor in India. If they don't, we need to find out why.

Regards, --Allen

Hi Allennoren,

I think they don't have O'reilly books in their store....btw i have checked their titles.

Thanks for replying

Hello Mukarram,

You can purchase from our Indian Distributor, Schroff Publishers. You can contact them directly at http://shroffpublishers.com/ .

Please let me know if this is a workable solution for you or not.

Thanks for your interest in our books!

--Allen

Hello Tindrum,

First off I want to say that I'm sorry that "Learning Ruby" didn't work for you. We have a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, so please feel free to return the book. You can find return information at http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/cs/gua... or you can contact our customer service folks via this page: http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/cs/

Fortunately we have other Ruby books, including several excellent titles from both O'Reilly and our partner publishers, such as The Pragmatic Programmers and No Starch. You can try the url below for search results for "Ruby," or search from the top right of any page on oreilly.com.

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=...

I hope you give us another chance, and thanks for taking the time to write.

--Allen

Got it, Thanks for the info. I checked their site and it does say that Kindle supports MOBI files. This will keep my hopes up!!
Few more question: Do you know by what time frame this is going to happen? Are you going to publish only new books or old and the existing ones in the MOBI format?

Viren: Font support isn't a publisher problem, it's a device (Kindle problem).

I would be surprised if converting the PDFs with the Amazon converter yields acceptable results (mainly because of the font problems). We hope to provide .mobi files for many of our titles, which should sidestep the need for customers to convert PDF files themselves.

I understand the problem and don't know how your systems are designed, but inability to change fonts on a piece of content...that's what gets me...but you guys are publishers I have to take your word for it.

One more thing about the PDFs you were talking about..will I be able to convert these to Kindle format through Amazon's conversion program? Or, do I have to go the conventional route of opening them on a computer cauz if I have to open it on a computer then the entire argument of having a portable device such as Kindle is lost. I may as well open the pdf on my computer.

I see two problems with this situation:
1) I will have to buy the book on Kindle and then buy pdfs from Oreilly, how do you address that?
2) Now instead of one device I will have to manage 2 devices Kindle and Computer if these pdfs are not convertable through Amazon's program.

Hmm, what may work for the lacking fonts are images of rasterized fonts. It'll show up right and you can tweak out the renderer exactly for how you want the code shown. Error on the big font side and you should be good. – Lally, 7 days ago

Hi Viren,

Viren wrote:
> So, its an important aspect of your books. In my sincere opinion, could you
> guys just change the fonts if its not that big of a deal?

(reiterating what Tim wrote)
At this point, it's not the lack of a single font that bothers us, it's the lack of a whole class of (important) fonts. We certainly would use any monospace (fixed-width) font, but the Kindle doesn't provide a single one. We're currently evaluating other options to see if a different approach to code fonts and whitespace makes more sense.

> The books will not meet the practical purpose if code is unreadable.

We hope to counter some of this anxiety by making PDF versions (with good typography) available alongside any ebooks. That way, when the reader is in doubt about the meaning of a particular section they'll have another, more legible, version available.

Hi Tim,
Thanks for the update. Just for my information, did you guys receive any updated information on this issue from Amazon? I did email their customer support about this issue. Do you know any particular contact person on Amazon side so that I can send an email them? May be, if they hear from customers, they will address this issue little faster....

--Virendra

Viren -- it isn't something WE can change. Amazon has no support for monospaced fonts on the Kindle. We've told them about this problem, and we believe they will eventually address it. But it's not something that's under our control. – timoreilly, 8 days ago

Hi Allen,
Thanks for the reply. I am happy to hear that Oreilly is moving in the right direction with Kindle. To answer your question, The code examples are the most important in understanding the technology behind it; most of the times you can directly re-use the same code. So, its an important aspect of your books. In my sincere opinion, could you guys just change the fonts if its not that big of a deal? The books will not meet the practical purpose if code is unreadable.

One more aspect I want to mention here, Kindle can operate like a single and portable manual for all the tech-books; meaning usually most of the software development community refers to various books during our day to day job and those books are scattered over different formats some are hard bound books and some are pdfs etc and Oreilly books are one of the most popular brands in tech books publications. This is because you guys do publish lot of tech books and cover broad base. So, imagine this if your books are published on Kindle I will have a single source to refer all those books on a 10 ounce device and as a bonus these books are searchable; so, I can find relevant information quickly and this is a very important feature. Instead of searching on the internet for information I can search on a more credible source (i.e books) which usually tend to have more complete information regarding a topic of interest. You guys will be doing a huge favor to Software Development community by providing support to Kindle or Kindle like devices.

Please let me know if you have anymore questions.

Thanks,
Virendra

Hello Virendra,

We're definitely moving in this direction. Our goal is have some books available on the Kindle soon, as well as to provide books in the .epub format direct from oreilly.com. Regarding the Kindle, it sounds like you'd want some of our code heavy books. One thing we've discovered is that the Kindle does not yet render monspace fonts such as courier is a way that makes the code anywhere near as readable as in the book. My question is how big an issue will this be for someone like you?

Regards, --Allen

Hi Allen,
I just bought my Kindle and hope to get the Oreilly to publish books soon. I travel a lot and being a Software Engineer I do refer to lot of books and would love if Oreilly could publish Java/J2EE and Java related open source books ( such as books on Spring, Hibernate, Web Services, Jboss to name a few) on kindle, I think these titles are very much needed in day to day development activities and being able to consolidate these books on a device specially designed for reading books would be awesome.

Regards,
Virendra

Hello QM,

Great idea, and it's been on my project roadmap for more than a year now. The way it would work is this: You purchase a book direct from oreilly.com and you get immediate online access to it on safari.oreilly.com. I hope to unveil this by summer.

Sorry that it's not available now.

--Allen

Allen,
Thank you for both your quick reply and your explanation of the issue. I understand that potential issues may arise in the type of transition you are attempting.

Likewise, I hope you can understand my frustration in attempting to purchase a product that appears to exist, but find myself unable to due to a technical difficulty. Do you have any idea when that service will become available again? Also, as an alternative until the checkout process is restored, is there any way to purchase the PDF by chapter via phone, email, or any other method?