FBReader is an

e-book reader An e-reader, also called an e reader or e device, is a Mobile computing, mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. Any device that can display text on ...

for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, Android, and other platforms. It was originally written for the Sharp Zaurus and currently runs on many other

mobile device A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. ...

s, like the

Nokia Internet Tablet Nokia Internet Tablets is the name given to a range of Nokia mobile Internet appliances products. These tablets fall in the range between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), and slightly below Intel's Mobile Internet ...

s, as well as

desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

s. A preview of FBReaderJ (the

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

port) for Google Android was released on April 13, 2008. Supported formats include

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

, FictionBook,

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

, plucker, PalmDoc, zTxt, TCR, CHM, RTF, OEB,

mobi Mobi or MOBI may refer to: Companies * Mobi (company) mobi, Inc. is a wireless carrier founded in 2004 and based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The company provides service on each of the major islands of Hawaiʻi, as well as on the mainland Unit ...

without DRM, and plain-text. FBReaderWindow

It has support for books with Readium LCP content protection. It was formerly

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under the GPL, but since 2015 (v2.7) is proprietary software.

History

Nikolay Pultsin wrote the first FBReader; the tool was released for the Sharp Zaurus in January 2005, a

Maemo Maemo is a Linux-based software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the Free software movement, community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and Software development ...

port was added in December 2005 for the Nokia 770. FBReader has since had binary packages released for many mobile-device platforms and for most major personal computer operating systems. The FBReader name with the FB prefix comes from FictionBook, an e-book format popular in Russia, the country of FBReader's author. The original FBReader was written in C++; however, in 2007 a fork called FBReaderJ was created, which was written in Java. As the Android platform became available in the following years, this fork became the codebase for the Android software application, while the C++ codebase remained in use for other platforms. In 2015 the software for all platforms became closed-source: the old open-source code hasn't been updated since. The Android app was split into Free and Premium versions, both closed-source, with the Premium version adding integrated support for

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

and for

machine translation Machine translation is use of computational techniques to translate text or speech from one language to another, including the contextual, idiomatic and pragmatic nuances of both languages. Early approaches were mostly rule-based or statisti ...

Components

For easy

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

compiling, FBReader uses zlibrary, a cross-platform interface library. It allows recompiling for many platforms while disregarding the GUI-toolkit used.

Features

* Support multiple book tar, ZIP,

gzip gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and ...

and

bzip2 bzip2 is a free and open-source file compression program that uses the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It only compresses single files and is not a file archiver. It relies on separate external utilities such as tar for tasks such as handli ...

archives. * Encoding detection * Generates contents table * Embedded images * Hyperlinks * Position indicator (substitutes for page number). * Library building * Most recent book * Last read positions for all previously opened books * List of last opened books. * Automatic hyphenations * Text search. * Full-screen mode. * Screen rotation by 90, 180 and 270 degrees. * Text-to-speech ** To activate text-to-speech on the Android platform, install a TTS plugin

File format support

FBReader supports the following file formats:E-book formats, supported and not supported , Free eBook Reader - Free!
Retrieved 2025-01-09 *

: all the main features except the tables. CSS support is not complete. * EPUB3 : does not support most of EPUB 3 specific features * Mobipocket : opens non-encrypted *.mobi files. DRM-protected files are not supported. * FB 2.0 : fully supported * FB 2.1 : lacks support of tables *

: limited, sufficient support * Plain text : supported, might not correctly split text into paragraphs. * RTF : subset of RTF * DOC (

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

) : subset of DOC *

: **Android: via separate plugin with third-party library **Other platforms: not supported * DjVu : **Android: via separate plugin **Other platforms: not supported * Plucker : **Android: not supported at this moment **Other platforms: "absolute positioning" commands may be interpreted or ignored *DAISY 3 : added to Go Read for Bookshare on

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

(a fork of FBReaderJ by

Benetech Benetech is a nonprofit social enterprise organization that empowers communities with software for social good. Previous projects include the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management software, Martus (human rights ab ...

)

Multi-platform support

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

BlackBerry 10 BlackBerry 10 (BB10) is a proprietary mobile operating system for the BlackBerry line of smartphones, both developed by BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion). Released in January 2013, BlackBerry 10 is a complete rework from t ...

Tizen Tizen () is a Linux-based operating system primarily developed by Samsung Electronics and supported by the Linux Foundation. The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. It was backed by o ...

* mobile

devices: ** Sharp Zaurus with Qtopia-based ROMs, pdaXrom or OpenZaurus ROM. ** Archos PMA430. ** Siemens Simpad with Opensimpad 0.9.0/Opie ROM. ** Noki
770N800N810

Nokia Internet tablet Nokia Internet Tablets is the name given to a range of Nokia mobile Internet appliances products. These tablets fall in the range between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), and slightly below Intel's Mobile Internet ...

s
maemo
. ** Pepper Pad 3. ** Motorola E680i/A780 smartphones. **

iLiad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

** Digital Reader 1000 and Digital Reader DR800SG ** Hanlin eReader ** ''Openinkpot'' - OS replacement for Hanlin eReader and ''Hanvon N516'' ** Pocketbook -

E Ink E Ink (electronic ink) is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobs ...

s ** SmartQ 5 and ''SmartQ 7''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fbreader Android (operating system) software Linux text-related software Multimedia software C++ software Java (programming language) software EPUB readers Formerly open-source or free software