FAQ

How to use ICE Book Reader Professional for book reading ?

1. Start ICE Book Reader Professional.
2. Open the library. Library will open automatically if it is empty.
3. Import book from file.
4. Select your books, press OK
5. For archives, select files to be extracted.
6. In "Book Preview" specify correct codepage, press "Import".
Now you can see the book added to your library. Double click on the book to open it.
7. Enjoy reading your book !

How to turn on speech mode ?

1. Open options.
2. Select "Mode" on the tree.
3. Select "Speech mode" on the panel.
4. Select "Speech mode" on the tree.
5. Select speech engine.
6. Close options.
Start scrolling (press key Insert or second button on the toolbar from the left side).

How to change font name, size, style, etc. ?

Very simple. Just find in options the button witch look like to this is image and click on it:

What is the Ultra Smooth Scrolling Engine ?

Scrolling is a very simple operation: it's just a shifting of the image step by step with constant frequency. Theoretically it's very simple: all you need to do is to use a timer or a custom delay. For instance, to make text scroll with a speed of 150 lines per second, you need to make a delay of 1000/150 = 7msec after scrolling the text by one line. Microsoft Windows has an internal clock working with a 100 Hz or less frequency, the exact frequency number is dependent on the OS version and CPU speed. But that means that the minimum delay specified in MS Windows roughly equals 10msec. Using only standard methods, the following frequencies can be implemented: 100 Hz, 50 Hz, 33 Hz, 25 Hz, 20 Hz, etc. ICE Book Reader Professional uses its own scrolling technology which allows you to specify any frequency within the 1HZ - 500Hz range to the nearest 1Hz. Hence the name of the technology: Ultra Smooth Scrolling Engine.

What is variable scroll speed scrolling ?

This mode is supposed to make your reading more comfortable and natural. In this mode, ICE Book Reader Professional adjusts the scroll speed automatically depending on the text density. Thus, more text on the screen makes scrolling go slower, less text on the screen does the opposite. All you have to do in this mode is just specify your comfortable reading speed, and ICE Book Reader Professional will take care of all the rest.

What is text antialiasing ?

Text antialiasing is a technology whereby small fonts are replaced by bigger fonts (2, 3 or even 4 times bigger) to paint all the text. This large matrix is then scaled down to the actual requested size just before output to the screen. This allows all the calculations to be done with larger numbers and therefore to achieve more precise font imaging. Here's how antialiasing makes text more readable:

Antialiasing gives text a smoother look, without blurring

Without full text antialiasing

With full text antialiasing

Text antialiasing should be applied not to a single letter but to the entire text. As a result, letters are positioned with subpixel precision.

Bigger fonts always have better detalization

Original text, font size 20

Original text, font size 80

Original text enlarged in 4 times (for comparison), font size 20

If we shrink both texts (size 80 and size 20 enlarged) and enlarge both again, we can see:

Look at the top of the letter 'E'. It is clearly visible that full text antialiasing gives a more accurate result.

There is another software-based font rendering technology which is used by Microsoft Reader: ClearType. This technique uses another approach to improve on-screen reading performance. But it has been found that ClearType adds more color distortion to its text, which isn't always good for reading. Full text antialiasing technology surpasses ClearType technology in most aspects. The most noticeable advantages are font imaging quality improvement and no color distortions whatsoever.

Why text antialiasing isn't implemented in another programs for on-screen reading ?

Text antialiasing is actually implemented in some readers, although all of them do not support smooth text scrolling. The main problem is that it's very difficult to generate antialiased text fast enough. For instance, to make an antialiased text image with mask of 4x4 pixels for the screen of 1024x768 pixesl you'll need to operate with a bitmap of 4096x3072 pixels, which is 37 megabytes. After all the operations, we have to downscale the bitmap. Everything alltogether shouldn't exceed a time of 0.01 sec (100 lines per second) or 0.005 sec (200 lines per second). ICE Book Reader Professional does everything in time, producing a really smooth operation.

What is Super Scrolling ?

Super Scrolling permits the inclusion of additional scroll steps with sub-pixel precision. Instead of 1 scrolling step, Super Smooth generates 2, 3 or 4 small sub-steps. This technology resembles the one used in 100Hz TV refresh rates. Super Scrolling offers visible improvements only for low-speed scrolling, i.e. less than 40 lines per second.

This is the classical scrolling (animated GIF)


This is the Super scrolling (animated GIF)

Why isn't Super Scrolling implemented in other programs ?

Super Scrolling is a complex technology. Classic scrolling doesn't repaint the screen with every scrolling step. Instead, it just moves the image by one or more pixels and repaints only small portions of the image. With Super Scrolling, the entire image is repainted with each scrolling step. Moreover, due to Super Scrolling's 2x, 3x or 4x enhancements, the physical screen refresh rate can be very high. For example, a scrolling speed of 100 lines per second would send to the video roughly 1024 x 768 x 4 x 100 x 4 = 1.2GB per second !!! This figure exceeds the AGP 2x transfer speed by 2.5 times !! No existing program can do that today except, of course, ICE Book Reader Professional.

What is Wave scrolling ?

Wave Scrolling is scrolling without moving the text. Instead of scrolling smoothly, the text is updated by a wave. This is very useful for slow LCD displays. Also, anybody who does not like moving text can use wave scrolling instead of manual browsing. For wave scrolling, the use of "DirectX mode" is not recommended. It's best to use "Hardware mode" for wave scrolling.

What are the numbers in the top right corner of the ICE Book Reader Professional program?

While screen scrolling, you can see something like this: or . The first picture shows your real scrolling speed (lines per second). The second picture shows your real scrolling speed (lines per second) and a quantity of frames, if and when synchronization was lost. You can also call them "dropped out" frames if you like, though it's not absolutely correct.

The first picture shows scrolling working correctly. The second picture shows synchronisation being lost for 2 frames.

Why do some frames appear to lose synchronisation ?

There are a number of reasons for this:
Your computer was busy at the time. Do no try to read a book on a busy file server.
Your computer might be too slow to catch up with the scrolling speed selected (i.e. it scrolls the text at your speed, but not all frames are shown).
Text antialiasing requires a lot of CPU power. Upgrade your computer or use a less demanding text antialiasing mode. For comparison, a computer using an Athlon XP 2000 processor can run full-screen scrolling 1024 x 768 with antialiasing 4 x 4 at a speed of up to 300 lines per second without loss of frames.
Super Scrolling requires a decent video card - one with 64MB DDRAM RAM or better. As an indicator, a weaker video card (GeForce 2 MX 32MB SDRAM) can run super scrolling without synchronisation loss at a speed of no more than 10 - 12 lines per second. If your card is less advanced than a GeForce 2 64MB DDRAM - just forget about Super Scrolling.

Scroll mode: software vs hardware vs DirectX

Software scroll mode implements scrolling as a continuous screen repaint. Hardware scroll mode uses direct access to the screen buffer. As a result, hardware scroll mode works much faster. Software scroll mode is mostly used in those rare cases when hardware scroll mode fails. DirectX mode uses Microsoft DirectX. Super Scrolling works only in DirectX mode. Keep in mind that DirectX requires a more powerful video card and CPU.

Anti Flicker

Some thin and small fonts can cause text flickering during Super Smooth scrolling. To prevent this, ICE Book Reader Professional has a special anti flicker filter built-in. Do not activate this filter unless you have visible text flickering. This filter might make your text look more blurry.

Text navigation: scroll vs jump

Text navigation with "scroll" means that pressing one of the movement keys on the keyboard (Arrows Up/Down, PgUp/PgDown) would make ICE Book Reader Professional scroll the text faster in the specified direction (i.e. if it's PgUp or PgDown, the program will scroll the whole screen of lines very fast). In the "jump" mode all  the text movements will be done without actual scrolling (i.e. the current position will jump to the specified one, and the whole screen will be filled with new lines instantly). Scroll mode is better by default, due to the fact that human eyes have  base points for tracking text movement. Jump mode is good for LCD display with slow refresh rate (notebooks with passive LCD). Also it can be good if you want to read text without automatic text scrolling.

Priority: quality vs speed

Search mode is a special navigation mode for ultra-fast text navigation - up to 30 pages per second. In this mode, it is easy to find any lines of text by using only PgUp and PgDn.

Cache size

ICE Book Reader uses an internal cache for storing text images. Without this cache, fast page moving would be more difficult. A large cache size guarantees that multiple pages will move without visible delay. However, a large cache requires a lot of RAM. Check it carefully. If your computer does not have enough free RAM, do not use a large cache size. It's recommended that not more than 50% of total RAM be used for the cache. Also, a very large cache size can make ICE Book Reader Professional run more slowly in other modes.

Library

There are three main parts in library window: a tree (at the left), the list of books (on the right) and area for fast viewing (below on the right). In many respects use of library reminds use classical Windows Explorer. To use library productively, it is necessary to understand the following concepts:

User can NOT edit tree directly. It's possible only to change book fields. There are a lot fields, but user can edit only next fields: Author, Title, Series, Category and Comments. According to the information stored in these fields ICE Book Reader Professional automatically builds a tree.

There are a lot of root nodes on the tree:

• Categories - this tree node shows a tree of categories. It is a branch it is defined by the user on the basis of field "Categories" of each book. For example, some book has field "Category" as: "This is my books\Classical\Mark Twain". This is book automatically creating the next tree nodes: "This is my books" inside "Categories", "Classical" inside "This is my books" and "Mark Twain" inside "Classical". If to select tree node: "Mark Twain", you can see what books at right panel. It possible to tell, what book fields "Categories" is look like to file path. ICE Book Reader Professional do not modify field "Category" without user assistance. Its mean, what sub tree "Categories" define only by user.
• Category is unknown - if book field "Category" is empty, what book place in what tree node.
• Authors - work almost like Categories. However use book field "Author" instead of "Category" and allow only one level of tree. ICE Book Reader Professional fill what field automatically if can to determine the author. If can not, user can change field "Author" manually. If book property Series is not empty, it place inside appropriate author node.
• Author is unknown - if book field "Author" is empty, what book place in what tree node.
• Found - show list of found books. This node fill only after activating Find in Library.
• Duplicates - show list of dupliactes books in the library. Books are duplicates only if at them the author and the name coincides.
• Last read - show list of books sorted in descending by last read time. Only books with not empty field "Last read" place in what node. What tree node ignores default or user defined sorting. Book property "Last read" change only when user open a book for reading.
• Last books - show list of all books sorted in descending by last time access. What tree node ignores default or user defined sorting.
• All books - show list of all books.

ICE Book Reader Professional has a language independent system which can determine the author and title of any book. The algorithm works correctly in most cases. However, there are some situations where it is impossible to automatically place a book in a library group. For example, this happens when there is only one book by a particular author. So, if you see that the program didn't correctly determine the authors of some books, don't think it's a bug. It's a feature. Of course, you can change the author and title manually.

ICE Book Reader Professional support multiple authors and categories for any book. Just enter new author or category on the new line. Multiple categories are not meaning multiple file copies. It's more look like to shortcut.

ICE Book Reader Professional support Series for any book. Categories and Series are various concepts. Categories are created for association of group of books of various authors. Series define groups of books at one author. If series is define it use for generation book name like as: "Author - Title - Series.ibk". Any book can have only one Series.

There is special book property "State". This are three possible property states of that properties:

• Field is empty - everything is OK
• Not text - ICE Book Reader Professional decided, what this is file is non-textual file. If you think what this is mistake you can reset this flag. To reset this is switch set not empty author or title for this is book.
• Corrupted - ICE Book Reader Professional could not open or edit what book. To reset this is state try to open this is book for reading. If the book will open, the flag will be reset.

How to change author and/or title of books in the library

You can manually change the author and/or title of any book or group of the books. Just select required books and press "Edit" on toolbar.

A dialog box will appear. There are three ways to enter the right author name and/or title of the book:

• Just find the author's name in the text and click on it. Left mouse button click add information. Middle mouse button click replace information. Right mouse button switch between fileds.
• Just select author from ComboBox list.
• And of course manual editing is allowed.

Using special symbol & is possible to mark author surname. For example: Mark &Twain, Artur &Conan &Doyle. Surname always place at beginning of the author name and automatically change register size. You will see on tree or in list changed author name. For example: TWAIN Mark, CONAN DOYLE Artur.

Search in the Library

ICE Book Reader Professional allows searching by any books properties. There are two main search groups: textual search and non-textual search.

Usually there are four checkboxes and one text field for every textual search criterion.

• Text field - there are four ways to search for the text:
  1.TEXT - The exact word is searched.
  2.*TEXT - The word terminating on specified the word is searched. Disabled in Exact fraze or Fuzzy search mode.
  3.TEXT* - The word beginning with the specified word is searched. Disabled in Exact fraze or Fuzzy search mode.
  4.*TEXT* - The word the containing specified word is searched. Disabled in Exact fraze or Fuzzy search mode.
  If there are more than one word each word is searched separately. The word order is not important.
• Active - This is checkbox define to use or not this is search criterion. This is field will enable automatically, if you enter some text in textual field. However, if you want to find all books with empty field just enable this checkbox manually. And do not fill textual field.
• Exact phrase - In what mode whole text entered in textual field search as substring.
• Fuzzy search - Most inquiry programs require a user to enter the exact value or exact beginning portion of a value to be located. Unfortunately such programs do not find the desired data if the user doesn’t remember the exact spelling of the search term. ICE Book Reader Professional use an algorithm that allows searching by any portion of a textual field, even if the user misspells the search argument. Recommended to combine this is mode with "Exact phrase" search. For example: need to find books written by "Lewis Carroll". All next search string produce correct searching: "Lewis Carol", "Carol", "L. Carrol", "L. Car", "Lui Karrol". Checkbox "Exact phrase" is enabled also.
• Case sensitive - it's simple. If it's active, case sensitive search is occur.

There are one checkbox and two text field for every non-text search criterion. Checkbox Active work as well as in textual mode. For non-textual search is important color of text field. Remember, if the textual field red, entered value is invalid.

What is Collection ?

Collection is a set of books stored somewhere, as on DVD, local hard drive directory folder, or on LAN. Your personal collection is called MAIN. In this collection you are free to make any changes you want, such as renaming books and importing new ones. You can read from other collections also. The collections contribute to the following:
 You can hold in personal collection (on local hard disk) only those books you intend to read in near future.
 All other books can be stored elsewhere, e.g. burned to DVD. This can save you hard disk space.
 The exchange of books between different users becomes easier and convenient, no matter if they use the same computer or different ones.

Types of Collections

There are three types of collections:
MAIN COLLECTION – every user has its own single personal collection of books. All his books are stored there. It's location is predefined and can not be changed.
EXTERNAL LIBRARY – these are books that stored somewhere, and you have access to read them
EXTERNAL DATABASE – this is actually a list that contains information about book, such as title, name of author, series, etc. It does not contain the text itself. This kind of collections is useful for book exchange.

Using Collections

If you want to read a book from external collection, just start reading it. This book will be automatically copied to the main collection. If you are interested in more than one, just select the books (or mark using sticky selection) and copy them to main collection using menu command Copy the Books from the External Library to Main Library.

There is a possibility to select books using powerful search options. Now it is possible to search for books using full or partial name of collection. There is also a possibility to compare main collection with external collection to search for books missing or duplicated. You can select specific fields for this comparison. The most informative results are received when using fields Author Name and Book Title. The results of comparison are showed in tab Others, in tree nodes Collection Differences and Collection Duplicates.

Creating New Collection

To create a new collection select books you want to export, and use menu Export. Select Copy the Books or Copy the Books from the Collection if you want to create an external collection of books. Select Export List of the Books to Database or Export List of the Books to Database from the Collection if you want to export only information about the books (such as book titles, author names etc.) Text of books would not be copied.

Examples of Collection Usage

You can create library on removable media:
1. Select books for export
2. At Export menu choose Copy the Books and select destination directory.
3. Now copy the content of the directory to Flash drive or burn to DVD.

To exchange books with others users of ICE Book Reader Professional:
1. Export a list of books to external database, for example a file ONE.CFG will be created.
2. Send this file to another person.
3. This person imports it as external database, selects desired books and creates another external database file, for example TWO.CFG.
4. This new external database file (TWO.CFG) he/she sends back to you.
5. You import the received external database TWO.CFG, search for duplicates in main collection and external database. The found books are those the other person would like to receive from you.
6. Now you can create a library (see previous example) out of the found books and send this library to that person.

Creating video books

1. Select books for export.
2. Choose Export Image Sequence in Export menu. For each book a directory will be created with sequence of images. Each image corresponds to book page. Recommended to use font size 32 or large.
3. Create AVI file. Recommended settings: 1-Pass encoding, Quality based, disable B-frames, disable GMC.
4. Use any DVD mastering software for making DVD movie, like Nero Vision Express.
5. For reading this is video book start your DVD player in play mode, after what press pause. For reading use navigation button for moving to next shot of your video book.

Presets

There are a lot of various options in ICE Book Reader Professional. Therefore, switching of the mode of formatting can demand some operations. Presets allow to simplify switching between basic operating modes ICE Book Reader Professional. Presets split on two sections: Scroll and Book. The first section includes various scroll modes, and the second various "book view" modes. There are three modes in each section: DOS, WIN and Original.

DOS. This mode assumes, that is used DOS format. It's mean, what length a line usually is less than 80 symbols. And the paragraph is united from several lines.

WIN. This mode assumes, that is used WIN format. It's mean, what one line of the text are one paragraph.

Original. In this mode of the text it is shown in an original format. Original format usually use monospaced fonts. However in "Book view" mode switching in monospaced mode occur only if monospaced font is using.

Profiles

Profiles allow you to save any set of the options. You can store a single option or any given group of options. To create a profile, set all the program options to desired values - for instance, adjust the font family/size/color, scrolling speed, etc - and then press the "Create profile" button. In the dialog box which comes up, tick all the options you want to be stored in your profile, and enter the name in a text field. Press Ok to finish the operation. To make use of a profile, simply select it from the profiles drop-down menu.

Using profiles can really simplify program operations:
If two or more users use ICE Book Reader Professional, each one of them can have all the options adjusted and saved in his/her profile.
Managing different modes of reading - for instance, switching from close-to-screen reading and distant reading.

Panels

There are two panels in ICE Book Reader Professional:

Progress bar - used only in Book View or Page View modes. This is panel show when page switching will occur.

Navigation bar - show real-time cursor and all bookmarks positions. Click to that panel change text position. Navigation bar is disabled by default.

Teleprompter mode

Teleprompter mode is a mode where all texts are mirrored. Use of a mirrored image is required for an LCD/CRT operating as a teleprompter. The computer outputs a video signal to a monitor or monitors. A one-way mirrored glass is positioned over the monitor to reflect the text to the speaker. Several lines of text are visible and the text is scrolled by an operator who moves the lines at the speaker's pace, always allowing for pauses or adlibs.

Windows teleprompter software normally costs more than $200. ICE Book Reader Professional presents you with a low-cost teleprompter solution.

You can use different modes for changing teleprompter speed. There is special mode, adapted for teleprompters. Select in Options: "Options - Mouse click will change - Speed". In what mode mouse click will start/stop scrolling. Moving mouse up/down you can increase/decrease scroll speed very fast and accurate.

Crop

In the Crop mode, letters are never cropped by the window border.

Hide ToolBar

If this option is activated, the Toolbar will be removed from the screen after 3 seconds of mouse inactivity in scrolling mode, or after 15 seconds of mouse inactivity in stay mode.

Text Selection

If this option is activated, text can be selected by the mouse and copied to the clipboard (Ctrl + C).

Scroll the Title

If this option is activated, the long author name and/or title will scroll in the Toolbar.

Negative Time

If this option is activated, ICE Book Reader Professional will estimate the amount of time left to complete reading the book. This option is supported in both scrolling and manual-reading mode.

Mouse click will change ...

Reactions at pressing buttons of the mouse can be various. There are four reactions:

"Selection" - left mouse button (LMB) use for selecting text, right mouse button (RMB) use for activating pop-up menu.

"Position" - LMB use for smooth text scrolling, RMB use for activating pop-up menu.

"Page, mode 1" - click by LMB to the right side of screen cause switching to the next page, click by LMB to the left side of screen cause switching to the previous page, RMB use for activating pop-up menu.

"Page, mode 2" - click by LMB cause switching to the next page, click by RMB cause switching to the previous page. Beware, due to in what mode pop-up menu is disabled, also are disabled all keyboard shortcuts.

Skins

Skins is just a simple .ZIP file. Do not unpack this .ZIP file !!! ICE Book Reader Professional opens this archive and unpacks the necessary files for use. All skins should be stored in the "Skins" directory. To add new skins, just copy new .ZIP files to the 'Skins' directory. You can see which skins have been added in the "Mode" tab under "Options". There is no need to restart ICE Book Reader Professional to use new skins.

You can easily create skins. The detailed description of structure of skins files can be found in the ICE Book Reader Professional help file.

Multi user configurations

ICE Book Reader Professional creates a different library for each Windows user. The library directories are listed as 'Books-Username' in the program folder. This means that multiple readers can use a single copy of ICE Book Reader to read their own collection of books.

It is also possible to force ICE Book Reader Professional to use a specific library and ignore the current user library. The path to this library can be set using the command line parameter: "/BOOKS_PATH=". Example: ICEReader.exe /BOOKS_PATH=E:\CommonBooks

Export to WAV/MP3 - Write to File Speed

ICE Book Reader Professional allows executing multiple copies of speech engines (multiple threads) for increasing speed of making WAV/MP3 books. Different parts of the text are "said" in parallel simultaneously. Then they gather in a uniform sound file. This is process can greatly decrease time need for making of a WAV/MP3 books. However, using more than one thread can be potentially dangerous. Some engines allow using many threads almost without restrictions (most SAPI5 engines). Some engines allow using not more than 2-4 threads (most SAPI4 engines). Some engines allow using only single thread (some old engines, like Digalo).

If you are use multiple thread, some troubles can happened. ICE Book Reader Professional can freeze or Windows can inform about application error in the ICE Book Reader Professional or something similar. This is not ICE Book Reader Professional bug. Internal speech engine errors cause what problems. It happens because most speech engines never tested for using in multithread mode. However ICE Book Reader Professional does everything for prevention of this problem, only speech mode authors can solve it completely.

Usually not need to use more than 4-8 threads, even if you have multiple CPU system. Try not set large quantity of threads from beginning. Try to increase quantity of threads slowly, beginning from 2. If you see what system is stable, you can try to increase quantity of threads.

Test text "ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND" - 115859 letters
Speech engine - Microsoft Mary - SAPI4
Output file format: 22Khz - Mono - MP3 64kbit

Pronunciation Dictionary

ICE Book Reader Professional provides advanced control over pronunciations of words that are not pronounced correctly by Text-To-Speech engines. Pronunciation dictionaries is a simple Unicode textual file with extension .dic. Dictionaries in ASCII or any other codepages not supported. Dictionaries have to be stored in SpchDict directory. Dictionary works as multiple search/replace operators by mask. Before send text to Text-To-Speech engine dictionary rules apply to specified text segment. Dictionary file format is simple. Syntax of the every line in dictionary is: MASK=TEXT. There are multiple search modes:

• MASK - search case insensitive text MASK
• *MASK, *MASK*, MASK*- search case insensitive substring MASK
• $MASK - search case sensitive text MASK
• $*MASK, $*MASK*, $MASK*- search case sensitive substring MASK
• if need to search symbols $, * or =, need to use $$, ** or ==

ICE Book Reader Professional use high efficient dictionary engine. It's allow to apply dictionaries with millions words without visible delays. ICE Book Reader Professional can process multiple dictionaries in specified order. For this is need select that dictionaries in pronunciation panel.

Limitations of trial version

The Trial Version of ICE Book Reader Professional has the following limitations:

• Books created by the trial version can only be read by:
  1. Registered Users (in the Full version)
  2. The same program that created those books. Re-installed trial version will not be able to read books created before.
• Nag screen

THERE IS NO TRIAL (EXPIRY) PERIOD IN THE TRIAL VERSION.