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What is the "Retro Reader Library"?
The Retro Reader Library program is an actual library, able to store and access thousands of books (converted from any text file, such as, the twenty thousand free books on www.gutenberg.org) in a library keeping them all organized and easy to access.
You can either read your books in a pleasant 'book-like' format with page 1 facing page 2 (just like in a real book) or have the program read to you. There is a full screen option which makes the program very convenient for those of us with less than perfect vision.
- A pleasant natural way to read or listen to long text files
- Full screen option for those who need it
- Quickly find and access thousands of books
- Easy to use, Searchable
- Text to Speech functionality
- Imports and Exports books
- Prints out bindable books
- New ... customize background picutres
- New ... Create 'audio books' from your library to listen to on CD
There are many more features but why not download the program and try them out yourself for free.
The program can also create 'audio' versions of your books which can be easily put on CDs.
This is great for the student who has to cram or the business person who needs to review
large quantities of text or just to listen to on that long drive to and from work.
The program is also great for kids. My children enjoy listening to books being read to them.
The cool part is that as they are listening, they are reading the words going by. Of course,
the program can be set up to read aloud with nothing on screen but a tray icon but, while the
animated character is reading, your child is improving their recognition / reading skills by
following along and maybe getting to read Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, or The Prince instead of
listening to the latest drivel from hollywood. Senior citizens with limited mobility and/or vision can use
the program to continue enjoying literature as long as they want. Your library can be searched for a
particular passage. Controlling the program is very simple and you can change the backgrounds of all
the screens to personalize your library. Lastly, you can even print out your books in a form that
can be bound into a real book, you know, the kind that goes on a shelf.
There are thousands of books on the internet available as text files.
Many of those books are in the public domain and there is nothing wrong (or illegal) with
printing them out and binding them back into actual books. The web
site www.gutenberg.org has some 20,000+ books available for download
and there are many other sites as well. Not only that but Word, PDF, and
most other document files can be saved as Text files and so the sources
available for files to put in your library are almost limitless.
I personally am a 'book lover' and there is something pleasing about
an actual book that, I feel, is lost, when the reader has to 'scroll'
down to read (like you are doing right now) rather than, more naturally, flip the pages of a book.
RetroReader presents books in this more natural and holistic form,
rather than as gigantic scrolling text files. With the included
text to speech feature, you can even have the program read to you (or your
kids) any of those thousands of free books we were just talking
about.
If you have ever tried to print out a book for binding with any
program, such as Microsoft Word, you will have found that the program
creates 'booklets', that is, a stack of pages that are to be stapled
in the middle and then folded over. That's all well and good for
twenty pages or so but if you are trying to print out 'Meditations by Marcus
Aurelius' you'll find that it is somewhat difficult to
fold a stack of seventy some pages in half.
A book, on the other hand is created by folding each of a set of
pages in half. Stacking the 'folded' pages and then placing the stack
in a press or vise and applying a fixative to the folded edge of the
stack. After that a cover is glued on and, voila, you have a book.
Most programs won't collate the pages properly to do this, or if they
will you may find that you need therapy by the time you get it set up
right. For example, in the picture below page 8 is on the left and page 5 is on the right.
RetroReader prints out bindable books at the touch of a button.*
New features in version 4.5.x include drag and drop of text files when creating new books
making the process of choosing a text file to convert, from a large number of files, much quicker. Also, the background pictures in the library can now be customized with whatever pictures you want. Also, the ability to create 'audio' books for listening to in the car or any place you have a CD player has been added. Lastly, some small graphical enhancements to the interface have been added.
*Printing out a book for binding requires Microsoft Word 2000 or greater be installed on the machine where RetroReader is installed.
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 - Download the program
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| - Purchase the program
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| - Register and Enjoy
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Retro Reader Library
Current Version is 4.5.2
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New features:
* Create Audio Books -
Convert any book into a set of wave files that can be burned to CD. The book is broken up into tracks of about twelve minutes each and divided into CD-size sets of five. If you know how to make an audio CD, your all set. You could also just listen to the files in Media Player.
* De-Versify -
Removes verse mark-up from your text like, Jn:3:16 Useful for very ancient texts like, 'The Bible'
* Double up linebreaks -
Some text files have each paragraph (or as much as fits) on a single very wide line. The program can now intelligently 're-paragraph' that kind of text. If this feature is used on text that already is 'paragraphed' correctly it 'doubles up' the space between each paragraph.
* De-Amplify -
Many texts have the first few words of each new chapter written in all capital letters. This fixes that.
* De-Roman-Numeral chaptering -
The program will intelligently find and replace the chapter headings that are in Roman Numerals with numbers like 1, 2, and 3.
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Click here to download a bunch of pictures that make swell backgrounds for the program
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