VOGONS


First post, by Dhigan

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Hello !
It is a definite anachronism, but do you know any epub reader that would work under windows 98 ?
By epub I mean the real format, not .lit or .fb2

Win 3.1 : HP Omnibook 425 + Toshiba T2130CT
Win 9x : Dell Latitude Cpx H500GT + Dell GX1
Win XP64 : Asus P5B Xeon

Reply 1 of 13, by BitWrangler

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FBreader for windowsXP mayyyy work, but haven't tested it personally...
https://fbreader.org/obsolete

Edit: Alternate suggestion is to install a Win98 compatible FireFox version, 3.0 should work, unsure how late 98 support lasted, and then try to find a version of an epub plugin that works with that.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 13, by akula65

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Adobe made a product called Adobe eBook Reader at one time: https://web.archive.org/web/20011218014659/ht … ader/main.html#
System requirements say it did support Win98:

System Requirements Windows • Intel® Pentium® or AMD Athlon™ processor • Microsoft® Windows 98, Windows NT® 4.0*, Windows 20 […]
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System Requirements
Windows

• Intel® Pentium® or AMD Athlon™ processor
• Microsoft® Windows 98, Windows NT® 4.0*, Windows 2000, Windows Millennium, or Windows XP**
• Color palette with more than 256 colors recommended for best display
• Internet Explorer version 4 or later must be on the system; however, any browser can be used
* Note: For Windows NT, you must have Administrator privileges to install Adobe® Acrobat® eBook Reader™
** Note: If you have installed a previous version of Acrobat eBook Reader, you must first install Windows XP using the recommended upgrade procedure, then download and install the latest version of Acrobat eBook Reader for Windows, which is qualified for Windows XP
Macintosh

• PowerPC® processor
• Mac OS software version 9.0 or 9.1
• Color palette with more than 256 colors recommended for best display
• QuickTime™ version 4 recommended
• Internet Explorer 4.5 or later (recommended), or AOL 5.0 or later, or Netscape Communicator 4.75 or later
• Mac OS X is not yet supported in either Classic or native mode

I don't remember what file formats it supports, but it looks like there may be a download link here (eBookReaderInstall.exe):
https://am.net/lib/TOOLS/Adobe/

Reply 3 of 13, by elszgensa

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Since epub is pretty much just HTML files (using a strictly limited subset of the language) inside a renamed zip - have you tried extracting one and opening the contents in a browser? What did/didn't work?

Reply 4 of 13, by Dhigan

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Thanks for your suggestions. No luck yet, here are my findings so far ...

Will launch in Win98, but ...
- sumatra pdf 0.8 tweaked version : compatible with .pdf only
- abode eBookReaderInstall22.exe : compatible with .pdf .htm and .edt only
- cool reader 2 eng : compatible with .doc .htm and .fb2 only

Will not launch in Win98
- docviewer-master : not able to open document with internet explorer 5
- can't get the jar file epublib-tools-viewer-latest.jar to launch with jre-1_5_0_22-windows-i586-p-s.exe
- Koodo-Reader-1.5.1
- doxillion-document-converter-6630.exe
- FBReaderSetup-0.12.10.exe
- Python 3.6 will not launch in w98 so no luck with termpub-master
- stduviewer_epub reader W2K

Good trick to unzip the .epub. But sometimes files are html, sometimes xhtml . But they are also split in chapter (or even not by chapter), so not very convenient.

Of course I could too use on a recent computer with calibre and translate from .epub to .lit and use microsoft reader 2.1.1 (small and fast app), but I would like to find a lazy boy solution ...

Win 3.1 : HP Omnibook 425 + Toshiba T2130CT
Win 9x : Dell Latitude Cpx H500GT + Dell GX1
Win XP64 : Asus P5B Xeon

Reply 5 of 13, by BitWrangler

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Oldversion is claiming Kindle 1.4 is 98 compatible, but earlier versions were listing only later OS http://www.oldversion.com/windows/kindle-for-pc-1-40

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 8 of 13, by BitWrangler

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Dhigan wrote on 2023-01-25, 10:18:

Thanks for suggestion. Tried Kindle but no version is compatible with win98.

Some version is, there are old posts on forums google is finding about linux users getting kindle working and it's always "get the win98 version" to use with Wine. However they keep linking to dead tucows files, at one point "the beta version" was mentioned, not sure if the beta that's oldversion has or not.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 10 of 13, by BitWrangler

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The older Nook reader for PC downloads are saying they work with "all" windows versions... https://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/E-Book/N … OK-for-PC.shtml Since that's a prior to Win8/10 release I would consider it likely they meant 98 too, but yeah, all these file sites suck at accuracy.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 11 of 13, by Dhigan

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Thanks again for support !

Found the thread for Kindle I guess ... The way I understand it : to make it work in wine you need to tick the "Windows 98 wine setting" in wine. This does not mean that kindle would be compatible with win98.
I also found this "kindle for PC" "beta version" but not working, seems logical according to this post.

BarnesAndNoble's NOOK reader : will read with no less than XP

emacs : well that is another story ... as I need to get up to speed first. emacs-20.7-fullbin-i386 is ok with win98. Nov.el install procedure does not seem to be compatible with emacs-20.7 ?

KernelEx : I would like not to temper with my actual win98 installation. So I keep this solution in the back of my mind for the moment.

Win 3.1 : HP Omnibook 425 + Toshiba T2130CT
Win 9x : Dell Latitude Cpx H500GT + Dell GX1
Win XP64 : Asus P5B Xeon

Reply 12 of 13, by hail-to-the-ryzen

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Test with newer versions of Emacs for Windows to find the most recent compatible version with your operating system and CPU architecture:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html

Another epub reader with very basic functionality - depends on Emacs version 24.4 or later:
https://github.com/bddean/emacs-ereader

The above works on my newer system, but it requires time to find the libraries listed as dependencies by the above epub reader.

The procedure requires a lot of reading of documentation, so the bigger problem is motivation to work through the instructions. This may help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-3Yok5D3Aw

Reply 13 of 13, by Dhigan

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I can install emacs 24.3 and add/unzip unicows dll in the bin folder. I have then emacs running in win98.
But when it comes to chase for the additional libraries to make ereader.el work, I am lost (thank for the music though).

So I went for KernelEx and .. joy !!! Sumatra 2.1.1 works. Epub reader is in its infancy but works !
In the long run, microsoft reader as reading tool is way more comfortable. So I will translate .epub to .lit with calibre. This is my fate 😉
Thank you all for support.

Win 3.1 : HP Omnibook 425 + Toshiba T2130CT
Win 9x : Dell Latitude Cpx H500GT + Dell GX1
Win XP64 : Asus P5B Xeon