well i was really thinking about how to make a cala. more like a ipod touch or i pad. i thought of this: a TI-84 tender (like an amazon kindle hhahaha) so i was thinking: with the word wrap feature that Kerm gave me, and maybe an add on, to allow a 'page wrap' feature to allow a user to go to another page, could we store (on the computer) a text document as a string, then load it onto the calc and read through it like a book? My freind laughs, but agrees lord of the rings on a ti-84 would be pretty cool...

Edit: crap, lost the word wrap feature... ok need a word wrap feature AND a 'page wrap' feature... sorry for the extra problem there...

There already are some text viewing programs for the TI-83+; CalcPad and TxtView to name two. There are also text editors, such as Document DE, which could also be used to read text files.

I don't think it would be desperately pleasant to read a whole book on the calculator's tiny, low-resolution LCD, though...

There is, I think DocDE would really help you there

The only limitation I could see is that the book would have to be short >.>

anyone else have some ideas?

(wasnt there already an E-reader for the 68k line?)

Rcplanegy, please, please, oh please, use some spelling and grammar. Your post at the beginning of this thread is nearly incomprehensible. Let me correct it for you.

well i was really thinking about how to make a cala. more like a ipod touch or i pad.
Well, I was really thinking about how to make a calculator more like an iPod Touch or an iPad

i thought of this: a TI-84 tender (like an amazon kindle hhahaha) so i was thinking: with the word wrap feature that Kerm gave me, and maybe an add on, to allow a 'page wrap' feature to allow a user to go to another page,
I thought of this: a TI-84 eReader (what the hell is a tender?) (similar to a Kindle). I was thinking that with the word-wrap feature that Kerm gave me, and maybe an add-on (what?), to allow a "page-wrap" feature so that the user can scroll page by page.

could we store (on the computer) a text document as a string, then load it onto the calc and read through it like a book?
Could we use a computer to convert text documents to a form that can be loaded on the calculator and read like a book?

My freind laughs, but agrees lord of the rings on a ti-84 would be pretty cool...
My friend laughs, but agrees that Lord of the Rings on a TI-84+ would be pretty cool...

Anyway, to actually answer your question now that I'm done mocking your grammar and spelling. Yes, it's possible; I sorta did it with Document DE, although a program made specifically for reading only without editing capabilities could be made more optimized (and have page-by-page instead of line-by-line scrolling, as you mentioned) for eReader-like capabilities. However, you'd be severely constrained by the calculator's memory. The average novel is about 80K words long. say an average of 5 letters and a space per word, that's 480K of raw data just for a book. Lord of the Rings is way, way more than 80K words, so you'd have to split it up into a lot of parts to fit it even into a TI-84+SE's flash memory in many fragments of about 8K or even 16K each, let alone a TI-84+ or TI-83+. Long story short: technically easy, logistically hard.

Kerm, don't forget that text can be compressed

Ben Moody/FloppusMaximus beat the world to this one as well.

Flashbook

Very nice, I didn't know about that project. I've had a longstanding project idea for an on-calc PDF reader (or at least a reader of PDFs that have been simplified computer-side); that project makes me want to work on it more earnestly. Also, calc84 makes a good point, but there's a limit to how much compression you would be able to get.

i've used flashbook. it works well, but(as Kerm said) it is annoying to have to break a novel into pieces and come back to the computer every time you finish one. there are plenty of better solutions to the problem, such as finding another portable device with .txt-reading capabilities[when i have to, i use my tiny, rockbox'd faux ipod], reading at the computer, or even just using a library. still, the calculator isn't the worst option for reading text. in this case, the lack of backlight is a good thing. =D

also, too what extent would you be taking this PDF reader, Kerm? real-time-generated, scaled, 16 level gray images, perhaps?

At this point, no extent at all, but if I actually did it, I'd probably limit myself to monochrome or 3/4-level grayscale, and worry more about getting the formatting and layout correct.

Where is Doc DE
How do I get it, I can't find it using Google

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=document+de

Thanks