ebookutils : Impserve

What is impserve?

impserve can act as the following

serve as a local content server so that you can download IMP books to your device (you no longer need software like GEB Librarian / eBookwise Librarian)
serve static pages/media residing on your hard-disk
browse the net using impserve as a proxy server
download IMP books directly from the net
automatic conversion of PRC/MOBI, PDB, LIT, DJVU and PDF books to IMP (via plugins)

impserve has been designed to be extended with plugins written in Python. Please see the current list of plugins on the plugins page.

Configuring your eBook

EBW 1150 (GEB 1150)

The 1150 needs a USB driver to be installed. It should be already available automatically when you plug in your ebook, else you might want to download and install it manually.

Turn on your 1150 and open Settings. Go to the Phone Connection page.
At the bottom of the page, click "Use HTTP proxy". In the input area directly below type in 127.0.0.1.
Next, click "Use proxy for USB". In the input area directly below type in 9090.

REB 1200 (GEB 2150)

The 1200 uses an ethernet connection, so you'll need to connect it and the machine you're running impserve on the same network. Take a note of your IP address, this will be required below (you can find it on Windows by typing ipconfig on the command prompt).

Turn on your 1200 and open Settings. Go to the Ethernet Connection page.
Configure your ethernet connection -- usually DHCP is a safe bet, if not then you can configure it manually.
Click "Use HTTP proxy". In the input area for HTTP proxy address, type your IP address noted above and 9090 as the HTTP proxy port.

Installing impserve

Windows

Download and unzip the latest ZIP and double-click on impserve.exe in the extracted folder to accept the default address 0.0.0.0, port 9090 and local shelf bookshelf. In case you wish to run it as a service, please double-click on windows-service.bat and follow the instructions.

Linux/OS X

Please install Python 2.5. You can then download and extract the source archive and run

    python src/impserve.py

Optionally, if you have setuptools installed you can execute

    easy_install ebookutils==0.8

which will usually install the scripts into /usr/bin

Please note that you can create an ~/.impserve folder, which will then act as the root -- your plugins, shelf and content folder will have to be under this. When you install via setuptools, this is mandatory.

Using impserve

as a personal content server

When you run impserve, all IMP books in the local shelf folder are automatically indexed and available from the Online Bookshelf. The books in this folder can be organized in any fashion, and if you drop new books impserve should automatically detect and index those. Please note that you may need to tap eBookshelf and then Online Bookshelf again -- the ebook has to request the updated list for it to be displayed.

If you want to serve books from a particular folder, please pass it as a command line parameter when starting impserve. Multiple folders can be specified from which to serve.

as a internet browsing proxy

For internet browsing, you will need to have an index.html file in the content folder, which serves as your homepage. Whenever you go to Menu -> Bookstore, it will visit this page. You might want to put links to your favorite sites so that you can directly go to them. Everything else works directly -- even the Google search in the default homepage!

You might want to try an alternate version provided by Nick Rapallo. It is also advisable to have a next.html (see here) for that start page where you can place all your own personal links (it is better and faster to place direct links there instead of navigating down through a series of links for frequently visited websites).

While browsing, going to Menu -> Directory will act as a back button. If you want to go to the homepage, you can either turn the eBook off and turn it on again, or go to the Online Bookshelf and then back to the Bookstore [this doesn't always work due to a limitation in the ebook software] so just tap Directory again.

Tutorial / Typical Usage

A typical session when using impserve follows:

First and foremost, run the impserve program (using its defaults) by double clicking impserve.exe (on windows) or executing impserve.py. Then turn on your reader.

Next (always) tap your Online Bookshelf icon to initalize the communications and retrieve your local content library booklist.

To start surfing the internet, tap your menu button (little ebook guy at the top left) and select the Bookstore icon.

An updated content index.html page is supplied here, and allows you to visit useful weblinks, any user-supplied URL or google for any term using the search box and the reader's on-screen keyboard to enter any text. In the case of a Google search, once done entering, tap the (google) search button and google will return the results.

Usually this page will have words down the left side and that's it! BUT it's not....

Using your page button, advance one screen forward and viola, google results galore! Just click a link to surf the internet. You may notice that often the text runs off the screen to the right. We'll that's just (bad) fixed width coding done by many websites. There is a plugin available which will help get more text crammed onto the screen (using the smallest font), but it won't make this problem go away, unfortunately.

A word of caution, though. The EBW1150 is very memory-constrained and cannot surf to too many pages with large images; it will eventually crash. You will then have to wait 10-15 sec. until the 'reset' button appears and then hold that button for 3-5 sec. until the reader resets! In extreme cases, you might have to use the reset hole on the back of the reader, under the SM flap.

PDA-friendly pages work best as do the MobileRead Mobile site, the upload ebook forums there, the Munsey's Mobile site or the Feedbooks' Mobile page! To return to a previous page, tap the menu button and tap the Directory icon; in essence, this simulates the 'back' buttton on a browser (for now, max. cached sites is 10). To start over and clear the cached websites, just tap the Online Bookshelf icon, then the Bookstore icon and then quickly the Directory icon (just ignore the last page shown again; that's a hardware/firmware issue).

There are many pre-defined links on that updated content index.html page that you should surf to. Also, there is a reference to 'next' page; this is where you place your own personal links (entered in next.html in the content directory). Experiment and explore what works and what doesn't. The 'next2' page is for more experiements/quick links!

If you see a .imp ebook that you like in the Mobileread.com IMP ebook upload forum, then just click it's link and in seconds it's being downloaded onto your reader. There is even a plugin to have that .imp simultaneously stored in your local shelf. You'll have to find it in your eBookshelf first and then open it as you would for any other ebook on your reader. Just check the dos (terminal) window that impserve was started in to see some helpful information about that downloaded .imp, i.e. Title/Author/Category!

Or if you see a .prc ebook that you like, then just click it and within a minute it's downloaded onto your reader. (Requires a plugin - PrcConverter.py)

Or if you see a .pdf ebook that you like, then just click it and in several minutes it's downloaded onto your reader. (Requires a plugin - PdfConverter.py)

There are other plugins for different conversions and/or tweaks to websites you may visit. Try them, one at a time or all of them. While you're at it, why not create your own plugins and offer them back for others to use.

Now what also can be done is to download a .imp that has links to the internet within it and then you may be able to access those links while reading. I say may because this part relies on the original links being capatible with impserve and the reader's firmware. See the original Mobileread.com thread for further information!

Screenshots