Textreader v0.9Beta6 - faster loading of large text files

If you like reading on the go and use the iPhone to read e-books, chances are you run the risk of encountering some problems if you used some of the existing iPhone text reader applications. If you always experience snags while doing so, or if you’re tired of the long load times, then you may want to check out the textReader.

TextReader basically allows users to seamlessly open large text files (.txt, .text, pdb, among other file types), but with a trade-off: iPhonetextreader doesn’t have any fancy-schmancy text formatting feature, so expect a plain vanilla - but very much readable - interface while you go off and read your text files.

Here’s the lengthy changelog for iphonetextreader’s current release:

• Fixes a serious issue with cover art images in the file open table. If you use the “Show Cover Art” feature make sure you update!
• Now displays cover art as file is being loaded/converted. Basically, we now switch back to the text view immediately when a file is se lected instead of waiting until the file is loaded to switch.
• I have had many requests for “Automatic” encoding. This problem is, most encodings overlap, so it is exceptionally difficult to guarantee you pick the right arbitrary encoding.
• As an alternative, I have changed the settings to allow you to specify up to 4 different encodings to try. It tries to load the file using the first encoding, if that fails it tries the second, etc. This way you get to pick which encodings get tried and the order rather than complaining to me that I didn’t add support for a specific sequence. Note that I am at the mercy of the iPhone SDK encoding support, so if they say a file encoding isn’t valid I can’t do much about it. Let me know if this helps (it can’t really hurt since you can get the old behavior by setting the other encodings to “No encoding specified”).
• Add option to display cover art
• It will look for <filename>.jpg, <filename>.png, cover.jpg, cover.png
• Covert art will be displayed next to the title in the File Open Table
• When a file opens, the cover art will be displayed cenetered on the screen above the text. Tap on the image to dismiss it and begin reading.
• Adds setting to hide/show the status bar while reading text
• Setting for Left, Right, Centered, and Justify text alignment
• 2 Flavors of Justified Text:
• Word Justified - blank space is expanded between words
• Character Justified - blanks space is placed between characters
• Renamed “Ignore Single LF” to “Strip Line Feeds” - The goal of this option is to improve the display of text that has embedded carriage return/line feed characters (presumably added to format the text for a wider display, but it makes it look worse on the iPhones narrow display).
• The single option is equivalent to the old “Ignore Single LF” option. It will strip any single LF it encounters.
• Format tries to be a bit more creative - it will strip single LF characters unless it is
• followed by a ‘-’, a single or double quote, or a tab
• after a ‘.’, ‘:’, ‘!’, ‘?’, or a single or double quote (ignoring any intervening blanks)
• I’m not clear on how other languages will handle uppercasing, so I’d like some feedback on whether or not these formatting rules are an improvement, or if folks can come up with better rules.
• Note: The new justify and strip code cause textReader to do a lot more work on the fly (remember, the reason it displays quickly is because it doesn’t preformat the text) - so you’ll have a price to pay with smooth scrolling if you turn on all of the options.

To directly download and install iPhonetextreader, just open your Installer.app, go to Productivity, and just choose textReader among the list of other apps. Enjoy!