Thursday, November 16, 2006

Reading .lit files in GNU/Linux

With the start of holidays thought of starting the long forgotten habit of reading novels and story books again. lit files are confined to the windoze platform and are readable using MSReader. Searched for something in GNU/Linux to read lit files. There is no direct software to read lit files but there is something called convert lit which can be used to convert the lit file into html and opf and can be read on any platform. Convertlit can be downloaded as a single zip file from convertlit.com and is released under GPL. Installation is not a difficult task if u have libtomcrypt installed. libtomcrypt is a library that provides a rich set of integer functions that can be used for many crytpgraphic applications. libtommath can be downloaded from math.libtomcrypt.com. Once that is installed convertlit (clit) can be installed by using the following step.

 1) Download the clit18src.zip file from convertlit.com and unzip it. Unziping it will produce a Readme file and two folders, lib and clit18.

2)  $cd lib

3)  make

4)  $cd ../clit18

5)  Change the Makefile and set the correct path of libtommath.a

6) $ make

That would install the clit in the system. The lit file can be converted using "clit filename.lit dirname/". To know more about the three mode of operations and about the command line options follow the unix tradition of "clit --help".

12 comments:

Daniel Horchner said...

Thanks a lot for the info. It works great :-)

Rafael said...

Thanks also from another reader.
Though I think that it will be better to use non proprietary file formats to distribute 'e-literature'.

senthilkumaran said...

I agree with what rafael says. It is always better to stick on to non proprietary file formats. That post would help those who want to read .lit files very badly.

gnuton said...

Great!! thnx!

Beavis and/or Butthead said...

Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh. CLIT.

Cyanide said...

How do u install libtommath in ubuntu?? The library does not show up in synaptic!! So how do I install it???

senthilkumaran said...

download libtommath from http://math.libtomcrypt.com and you have the makefile readily available. all you have to do is to type "make" i think.

ntrval said...

good instructions. works well. Thanks!

ntrval said...

yes, just type make for any distro of linux.
It's called compiling source code. More or less.

vectrum said...

Hello,

I got the following error. First make went fine but got error in clit18 dir.
How can i change the make file and set path to lib file. gcc detail at the end.
Plz help,

bash-3.1$ cd ../clit18

bash-3.1$ make
cc -funsigned-char -Wall -O2 -I ../libtommath-0.30/ -I ../lib -I ../lib/des -I . -c -o clit.o clit.c
cc -funsigned-char -Wall -O2 -I ../libtommath-0.30/ -I ../lib -I ../lib/des -I . -c -o hexdump.o hexdump.c
hexdump.c: In function `hexdump':
hexdump.c:37: warning: implicit declaration of function `memset'
cc -funsigned-char -Wall -O2 -I ../libtommath-0.30/ -I ../lib -I ../lib/des -I . -c -o drm5.o drm5.c
drm5.c:38:21: tommath.h: No such file or directory
drm5.c: In function `get_element':
drm5.c:267: warning: implicit declaration of function `isalnum'
drm5.c: At top level:
drm5.c:295: error: syntax error before '*' token
drm5.c: In function `my_mp_to_unsigned_bin':
drm5.c:298: error: `mp_int' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:298: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
drm5.c:298: error: for each function it appears in.)
drm5.c:298: error: syntax error before "t"
drm5.c:300: error: `b' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:300: error: `len' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:301: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_init_copy'
drm5.c:301: error: `t' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:301: error: `a' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:301: error: `MP_OKAY' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:303: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_iszero'
drm5.c:306: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_div_2d'
drm5.c:308: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_clear'
drm5.c: In function `drm5_handle_key':
drm5.c:342: error: `mp_int' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:342: error: syntax error before "c"
drm5.c:376: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_init'
drm5.c:376: error: `c' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:377: error: `p' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:378: error: `mod' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:379: error: `d' undeclared (first use in this function)
drm5.c:380: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_read_radix'
drm5.c:382: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_read_unsigned_bin'
drm5.c:383: warning: implicit declaration of function `mp_exptmod'
make: *** [drm5.o] Error 1

==============================
gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/3.4.6/specs
Configured with: ../gcc-3.4.6/configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-checking --with-gnu-ld --verbose --target=i486-slackware-linux --host=i486-slackware-linux
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.4.6
======================================

senthilkumaran said...

@vectrum: The error is drm5.c:38:21: tommath.h: No such file or directory. Reason seems to be that "libtommath" is not installed in the system. Think you need to check that.

heerdyes said...

nice!
there also exists a program by the name of 'calibre'. opens just about any e-book.
just ...
$ sudo apt-get install calibre
(on debian/ubuntu)