Principia Discardia

dslibris: an ebook reader for the Nintendo DS

dslibris is a back-to-basics homebrew book reader for the Nintendo DS, DS Lite, and DSi. Its main idea is to provide a comfortable and uncluttered reading experience.

multilingual support

Features:

  • antialiased, proportional text
  • UTF-8, so a wide range of languages are honoured
  • auto-scan for books stored on your media
  • power-save upon closing the DS lid
  • restoration of previous page on restart
  • brightness control on DS Lites
  • support for adding TrueType and OpenType fonts

dslibris supports EPUB format files encoded in UTF-8. Calibre is a powerful tool for converting a plethora of formats, including PDF, to EPUB. See the book preparation postings on Sourceforge for other methods for format conversion.

This being DS homebrew, you’ll require a media card for your DS, and you will need to DLDI patch dslibris for your DS media device.

The latest news, release downloads, and source code are available on GitHub. Also check there for release notes, to find or post issues or feature requests or get help.

Comments

98 responses to “dslibris: an ebook reader for the Nintendo DS”

  1. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Brandon at Moon Books will be hosting downloads of dslibris.

    http://moonbooks.net

    Reply
  2. Wiitendo64DS Avatar
    Wiitendo64DS

    Any chance of a source release?

    Reply
  3. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    the idea has come up – it’s certainly possible after I do some necessary refactoring and talk with some other developers about possible collaboration.

    Reply
  4. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    See the post ‘Preparing HTML and XHTML books for reading in dslibris’ for more on book preparation.

    Reply
  5. Gerry Quach Avatar
    Gerry Quach

    Just wondering if you could make it possible to adjust the font size? The default size is much too small for my eyes and it makes reading very straining and difficult. Apart from that, great application!

    I also noticed that it’s possible to substitute a different TTF font by copying and then renaming the filename to dslibris.ttf — this is very handy.

    Reply
  6. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Gerry, in the next release I’ll try to put in a method for specifying a different font size in the prefs file.

    Reply
  7. Gerry Quach Avatar
    Gerry Quach

    Thanks Ray, good to hear — I can hardly wait!

    Reply
  8. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    Thanks Ray for this excellent app. I’d like to echo Gerry’s request for different font sizes. 🙂

    Reply
  9. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    0.2.5 is released and supports setting a different font size. The default size is 10.

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/ndslibris

    See the release notes for instructions.

    Reply
  10. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    Thank you for listening to our feedback! But the archive is corrupt it seems, and I’ve tried more than one mirror. 🙁

    Reply
  11. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    Thanks for updating the archive 🙂 Now I’m clueless as to how to resize the font, and pressing Start yields a fatal error on my R4DS!

    Reply
  12. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    OOPS – START is very broken, don’t press it! it is a reboot function that does not work. I’ll turn it off.

    I saw your response on gbadev so you know what to do for font size control – edit the prefs in dslibris.xml. more explanation can be found in the [User Guide] inside dslibris, or in the Sourceforge release notes for this version.

    Reply
  13. jackman Avatar
    jackman

    Cool app, works very good on my card.

    It is possible to include support for left-handed people (with rotating both screens by 180 degrees, like in Nintendo’s Brain Age)?

    Reply
  14. ray Avatar
    ray

    hi jackman,
    well there’s an interesting question. i asked myself, “which orientation is left-handed”? turns out both are – and neither are. the current setup puts the D-pad at the bottom for your thumb. otherwise there’s the shoulder buttons, which actually work for either hand currently, using the thumb or index finger to page forward.

    Reply
  15. jackman Avatar
    jackman

    OK, but you have to include support for rotating the screens, if you include functionality for the touch screen, because with the current orientation they block the upper screen with their left hand when using the touch screen.

    Reply
  16. Daniel Avatar
    Daniel

    when start the app up it says startup console [ok] media filesystem [ok] typesetter [fail]

    what do i do to fix that

    Reply
  17. Dude Avatar
    Dude

    Works on my R4

    Just put everything in the root directory and don’t forget to DLDI patch it! 🙂

    BTW, the library needs to handle more than 7 books.

    MAXBOOKS 7?

    Thanks
    Dude (yes that is my real name!)

    Reply
  18. echo Avatar
    echo

    Be nice of you to give the source considering you are using sourceforge 🙂

    Reply
  19. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Echo, the source is up on sourceforge, see the CVS menu for info.

    Reply
  20. Nobody Avatar
    Nobody

    It’s too bad that you can’t store the support files in a directory other than the root.

    I’d also like to be able to navigate folders rather than to have all the xhtml files dumped into one directory.

    Reply
  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Just curious, is there any way that, in future releases, you could extend the compatibility of this app beyond only XHTML files? Most of the eBooks I have are in other formats like .lit, .chm, and .pdf.

    It would be greatly appreciated!
    😀

    Reply
  22. Waldemar Avatar
    Waldemar

    It’s
    It won’t display the pictures embebbed with the code, correct?

    Reply
  23. Waldemar Avatar
    Waldemar

    it’s an amazing homebrew, better than reading on PALM! Congratulations!

    Reply
  24. darkcombat Avatar
    darkcombat

    Very nice Reader, I took it as my favourite immediately.
    However, i found a little mistake:

    If there are longer words at end of lines, the program has Problems with seperating right. Sometimes words are cut in the middle, other times the rest of the words disappears.
    The same with too long words without space, the program doesn’t split them and information is lost
    Examples:
    a) This is an examp
    le of the mistak //This is an example of the mistake
    b) or-if-there-are- //or-if-there-are-longer-lines-they-disappear

    Reply
  25. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Waldemar, yes, images are not supported but
    are on my wishlist.
    Darkcombat, the long line breaking problem
    should be fixed in the latest release, pls
    send me an example file if not. the problem
    with some words breaking in the middle is
    still there AFAIK.

    Reply
  26. SomGNU » Blog Archive » Programari lliure en pantalla doble

    […] suport multillenguatge i ha estat programat per Ray Haleblian. Es pot llegir més informació a la pàgina oficial de presentació, en alguns fils de fòrums que parlen del tema o en diferents pàgines d’anàlisi […]

    Reply
  27. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    Hello Ray, I see DSLibris’ up to version 1.0.3 and it’s getting better with each release. However, speaking to a friend of mine she suggested adding a new colour scheme, in her words “black text on an off-white, like cream is usually ok, emulates a real book, less eye strain”. Is that at all possible?

    Thanks again for DSLibris and the many hours of cozy reading 🙂

    Reply
  28. Lou Avatar
    Lou

    To Anonymous (post 21). You can convert your books to xhtml. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdftohtml/ is a program to convert pdf files to html (I’ve not tried it yet), and http://www.convertlit.com/download.php converts .lit files to hml (it also produces other files which can be ignored).

    Reply
  29. Smith Avatar
    Smith

    So do I just install in on my nintendo DS? and how do I go about doing that?

    Reply
  30. astrogirl Avatar
    astrogirl

    hi, I have tried to get this to work with my CyloDS Evolution card but when I load the dslibris.nds file I get a white screen on the bottom screen and a red one at the top. Both blank. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

    Reply
  31. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    smith, there are a few pages out there about running homebrew, you can google for ‘ds homebrew’ or ‘dldi’.

    Reply
  32. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    astrogirl, if you’re running an older version, that probably means the font file can’t be found. make sure you copy dslibris.ttf to the root of your media card (not into a folder).

    Reply
  33. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Pulstar, an off-white bg option is a good idea. I will look at this when I am in that section of code next.

    Reply
  34. Rich P Avatar
    Rich P

    This is a great app and very promising. Big thanks for your hard work!

    I wonder if you’d consider removing, or significantly reducing, the size of the margins? It seems that around 20% of the screen space is currently left blank in the margins. The extra width would accommodate more characters per line, and the longer lines would be a little bit more comfortable on the eye. Need to squeeze every available bit out of the DS’s limited screen real-estate! 😀

    Reply
  35. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Rich, good point. I’ll add this to the feature request list on Sourceforge.

    Reply
  36. Jc Gomez Avatar
    Jc Gomez

    I find DSlibris as a good application for e-book reading and i’ve downloaded it’s current version..
    But i have problems launching it it says on the screen Guru Meditation Error the screen turns red with lots of numbers and letters..
    Can you help me regarding this problem, it would be a big help, and since i’ve downloaded the moonbookspack in moonbooks.net it would be a waste if i could not launch it..
    Any advice or help will be appreciated..hehe

    Reply
  37. Jc Gomez Avatar
    Jc Gomez

    I forgot I’m using DSTT with its current firmware version..
    thanks again..

    Reply
  38. Ess.uk Avatar
    Ess.uk

    Great little program, Thanks so much, I’m so pleased with myself. I followed all the advice I read from the good people here and got it running on my R4DS!! All I need to do is convert some books from .txt to .xhtml!!! great!!!

    Reply
  39. cylver Avatar
    cylver

    Perhaps having a configuration screen where people could do all these little tweaks themselves would be a cool idea. Background color, text color, margins, backlight level, etc.

    Also on my wish list is an option to invert the l/r buttons (I hold my DS from the bottom in my left hand, and I mostly use the next page function when I’m reading so having next page be L would be nice. Right under the thumb.)

    Reply
  40. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    After much fiddling around trying to convert my PDFs to XHTML, I think that the easiest way is to use Open Office. Quick and easy.

    Reply
  41. Eddie Avatar
    Eddie

    First of all, thank you for the hard work!
    I got the last stable version (1.0.4) from Sourceforge (the current one, 1.2.143, crashes when trying to navigate the book menu) and couldn’t find any dslibris.xml file so I can edit the prefs in, as you suggested before…
    Can I still change the size of the default font in the 1.0.4. version ?

    Reply
  42. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Eddie, 1.0.4 should allow you to edit the ‘size’ attribute in the font element of the dslibris.xml prefs file.

    If you’re willing to experiment, try putting just one book, or leave out all but the included quickstart book, and see if it still crashes.

    Reply
  43. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    The sourceforge site has a place where you can post issues (bugs) or feature requests.

    There’s also a mailing list you can subscribe to where people are discussing using dslibris.

    Reply
  44. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    Hi Ray, sorry to bother you with this but I’m really excited to use DSlibris. Unfortunately I’m getting a:

    console [OK]
    filesystem [fail]

    for both versions 1.0 and 2.3 downloaded from moonbooks. The sourcefourge link doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.

    For v2.0 I get this:

    console [OK]
    filesystem [fail]
    typesetter [fail
    book library [fail]

    I’m using an m3ds simply. Any ideas what’s going wrong?

    Reply
  45. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    @Ryan: ooh, Brandon interpreted the version numbering i was using, so those versions are quite old, they are actually 0.1.0 and 0.2.0 respectively.
    The current version is 1.2.143 and is available on sourceforge (do search). See the release notes for how files get set up. The messages you got before now get written to a log file called ‘dslibris.log’.

    Reply
  46. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Ryan, also if you could subscribe to the mailing list we can talk further to get dslibris to work for you.
    I’ll also check the sourceforge link, I’ve had problems with the .zip files being broken.

    Reply
  47. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    The .zip looks ok and I can reach sourceforge at the moment.

    Reply
  48. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    JC, if you’re still trying to get dslibris to work, subscribe to the mailing list on sourceforge and we can troubleshoot.

    Reply
  49. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    Wow, absolutely awesome. I checked out the wiki and the guides and did all the dldi patching and hey presto my DS is an ebook reader! I woud kiss your feet if I could. and the community is awesome as well, thanks to keishava for reformatting the gutenberg books to xhtml!

    Hey Ray if you ever want to jazz up the UI a bit, I’d be glad to help. I’m currently working as an artist for a small DS game and would like to offer you my services as a UI/graphic designer. If you’re interested hit me up at ryan.sumo@gmail.com. Thanks again for an excellent product.

    Reply
  50. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    Thanks Ryan, i’ll include you in future discussion about UI design.

    Reply
  51. Danny Chicago & New York City Kid Avatar
    Danny Chicago & New York City Kid

    Hey, I’m opening up a homebrew site, with links and other stuff and eBooks in .xhtml. I was wondering if its ok to make a page dedicated to dslibris? The page on my site would have my homebrew video review of dslibris, along with a description for the app, a link to your site and I would give credit to you for making the program. Please tell me what you think!

    Reply
  52. Danny Chicago & New York City Kid Avatar
    Danny Chicago & New York City Kid

    I’ll give you the page so you can take a look at it, its a flash page not html.

    Reply
  53. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Excellent work. Reading a well-formatted xhtml sideways feels like, and is convenient as reading a real book.
    It is well worth the little effort of converting the files to xhtml.

    Reply
  54. anon Avatar
    anon

    How does Tom use OpenOffice to convert PDF’s? What program can even open a PDF with OOO? With Writer, it only outputs junk (You can create PDFs with OOO writer, but can’t open PDFs) . Also, there’s a bunch of ‘Freeware’ products out there that only let you convert the first 3 pdf pages. PDFtoHTML has no useful documentation for installing. ./make ./configure….blah, blah. Where’s the INSTALL.readme?

    Yes, and then there’s the PDF picture…scan it with OCR, and then convert it to XHTML. Uh, Terrasect, SimpleOCR, blah.

    Frustrating.

    Reply
  55. nick Avatar
    nick

    I’m still not finding anything for converting pdf to xhtml. I’m on a windows machine that I use with my flash cart, but I do have an old powerbook with Tiger on it if need be. What can I use?

    Reply
  56. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Nick and Anon, i am skeptical that much PDF can be translated into a form that will work. The limitation is in the PDF format, which presupposes a certain page size when it is laid out and throws away paragraph information in the process.*

    The exception may be tagged PDF, which can be reflowed. I have not done a full test of tagging a PDF and running pdftohtml on it. If somebody has some experience with tagged PDF, you could try and see what you can come up with and share it. OS X users can get pdftohtml via Fink as package … lessee … ‘poppler-bin’. Fedora users should look in apt. Surely a Windows version is out there too.

    I’ll post to the SF list if I find out any solution for this.

    * viewing PDF on a mobile browser or in Reader for WIndows CE/Mobile is illustrative. There’s a lot of panning and zooming involved.

    Reply
  57. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    also, see the ‘preparing books for reading’ posting for a note about “Convert Doc” which apparently does PDF to HTML.

    Reply
  58. nick Avatar
    nick

    I managed to find a copy of some books in lit format, then converted them with .. ConvertLit, then AbiWord into xhtml. It works now. I’d really love a more full-featured bookmark system.

    Reply
  59. . the staCius . Avatar
    . the staCius .

    besides brandon’s MOON PROJECT site… does any one know a site where i can find other ebooks available to add onto my NDSL?

    Thanks in advance! (^_^)

    . the staCius .

    Reply
  60. Demonman Avatar
    Demonman

    Why can’t yu just read books straight fom a *.txt file?

    Reply
  61. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    @demonman: 98% of the time, TXT format is preformatted for a certain screen width assuming some fixed width font. The assumed screen width is never the width of a DS screen. TXT content can’t be reflowed into a DS-sized screen with any reliability.

    Reply
  62. BlueZoidberg Avatar
    BlueZoidberg

    Love your program! Converting books can be a pain sometimes (abiword has been my best success) but it’s worth it. I only ask that maybe you put a ‘forward/back 10 pages’ kind of feature (maybe up and down?)

    Reply
  63. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    @BlueZoidberg: fast page flipping is in the upcoming 1.3 release.

    The project has multiple developers now, they monitor the bug and feature request lists on SourceForge, so folks can post their ideas there.

    Thanks to everybody for their comments.

    Reply
  64. . the staCius . Avatar
    . the staCius .

    I converted some books to .htm .. they didnt work. do they HAVE to be “xhtml” and what conversion prgram can i use and where to find it so i can do just that.

    thanks in advance!

    . the staCius .

    Reply
  65. tepkel Avatar
    tepkel

    Hi, I like your program alot, but no matter how many files I have on my sd card, I am unable to get more than 30 books to show up in my library. Am I doing something wrong? or is there some sort of limit?

    Reply
  66. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Tepkel, it’s not you, it’s dslibris. There is a limit on number of books. We’re going to look at removing that restriction in a future 1.3 release.

    Reply
  67. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    Stacius, check the wiki on SourceForge for the location of an HTML Tidy online service. Or google “html tidy web”.

    Reply
  68. Hangfromthefloor Avatar
    Hangfromthefloor

    By the way, the Hebrew is all backwards. For example, in English it would look like “olleH dlrow” for “Hello world.”

    Reply
  69. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    True. Arabic will be backwards too. And traditional japanese vertical layout isn’t supported. Hebrew and Arabic need to be put on the fix list.

    Reply
  70. Raistlin Avatar
    Raistlin

    Is it possible to launch dslibris from another directory but the root one?
    (e.g. using it as moonshell for CycloDS Evolution?)

    Reply
  71. Elfen Avatar
    Elfen

    Cool Packages… i just got a question to ask.. where is the best place to get e-books to upload on my ds?

    Reply
  72. Daniel Cubero-Matos The Chicago & New York City Kid Avatar
    Daniel Cubero-Matos The Chicago & New York City Kid

    My new website, kinda slow progress, but I’ll have tons of hit book in a dsdlibris compatible format. dsh-supplies.com, not open yet, I might change the url.

    Reply
  73. Rose Avatar
    Rose

    Thanks a lot for this great program, I use it all the time! I like how simple and convenient it is. I’ve seen it requested by other people, but I would LOVE it if dslibris was capable of recognizing more than 6 book files at a time–I’d love to be able to scroll through all the book files on my ds.
    Thanks again!

    Reply
  74. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    @raistlin: Possibly, but I can’t test right now, no DS.
    @rose: The latest version now supports a lot more than 6 books, there should be prev/next buttons on the browser screen.

    Reply
  75. Rose Avatar
    Rose

    oh…I have the latest version, I just (stupidly) didn’t notice that option. Got it now, thank you!

    Reply
  76. Meghan Avatar
    Meghan

    Just another vote for .txt support here, as by the time I’ve gone through the inevitably problematic conversions of one of my e-books I’ve lost the desire to read it. DSLibris seems like a great piece of homebrew otherwise, I enjoyed the books I did have the patience to convert (& troubleshoot)! Would LOVE a good .txt reader instead of being stuck with Moonshell as the “best” (ha!).

    Reply
  77. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    Hello Ray, this awesome project has been in hiatus for a while. I hope it’s not been discontinued. 🙁

    Reply
  78. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    @Pulstar: hello again. It’s still barely alive, but I’ve been without my hardware and there have been performance issues recently due to code changes, yada yada.

    Reply
  79. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    I’m glad to hear you’re still working on it at all 🙂 Homebrew for the DS has certainly slowed down but your app remains my #1 favourite. I’ve read dozens of ebooks using it. It already has most of the features people want but things like auto shut-off and 8-bit colour palettes would bring it closer to perfection! 😉

    Best regards!

    Reply
  80. Annoyed Avatar
    Annoyed

    Can’t you somehow figure out how to use dslibris to read .lit files? All this extra bs I have to go though to figure this out simply isn’t worth it.

    Reply
  81. Meghan Avatar
    Meghan

    After I realized that Open Office converts files into xhtml pretty painlessly, DSLibris became one of my most-used apps! Are there continued plans for development or was 1.3 the last release that can be expected? Thanks again for letting me carry one less device!

    Reply
  82. Ray Haleblian Avatar
    Ray Haleblian

    @Meghan: great, one more point for OpenOffice!
    @Annoyed: annoying, isn’t it? Microsoft provides tools for creating LIT files but not for decoding them, at least not for people without a special arrangement with them, perhaps.

    Reply
  83. Annoyed Avatar
    Annoyed

    :: Gives OpenOffice a shot :: (Disclaimer: I love the idea of your application, I’m just not as tech savy as many others are. I do try though.) <3 U

    Reply
  84. Ebooks coming to the Nintendo DS – Daily Buzz

    […] open-source dslibris looks interesting as well; it’s homebrew, so you’d need to load it on an appropriate […]

    Reply
  85. Sandra Avatar
    Sandra

    I have a nintendo ds. How and where can i get this ebook reader for it? sounds great.

    Reply
  86. Pulstar Avatar
    Pulstar

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndslibris/

    Reply
  87. adi Avatar
    adi

    Now where do i get books from?

    Reply
  88. [Info] Clubul Nintendo DS – Page 56 – Computer Games Forum

    […] astept replay… Homebrew care sa citeasca fisiere pdf direct nu exista. In schimb exista un ebook reader numit dslibris care citeste fisiere html care le poti obtine folosind un convertor pdf to html. […]

    Reply
  89. Roo’s View » Blog Archive » Nintendo DS Lite (NDS)

    […] dslibris – an eBook reader […]

    Reply
  90. roberto Avatar
    roberto

    no entiendo la pagina para k sirve

    Reply
  91. wal Avatar
    wal

    excellent program!! ¿there will be pictures in epub support?

    Reply
  92. Rj Avatar
    Rj

    hi
    if the first ebook you install is a massive English dictionary,
    how does this affect the number of ebooks you can fit into ram? can it not be used for compression of other ebooks?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc4Xoz75yHI

    Reply
  93. erick posadas Avatar
    erick posadas

    CAN YOU PLEASE HELP ME ?
    When I open the homebrew , it loads for a while then it shows:

    $ dslibris
    fatal: no filesystem.
    info: DLDI patch?

    (is shows in green font color) PLEASE HELP ? thanks.

    Reply
  94. nds roms free download sites Avatar
    nds roms free download sites

    A nightmare hath no rage for a nintendo 3ds scorned 🙂

    Reply
  95. rosaverde Avatar
    rosaverde

    Ohhoyea…i wanted to do homebrew, but then i bought a 3ds. i have no idea if nds roms etc.’s post is good for us 3ds users or not. is it?

    Reply
  96. Ebook : DSLibris lire un roman en epub sur votre nintendo DS (ou 3DS) | @Hack Acide

    […] Ca se télécharge ici : http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndslibris/, et le site du programmeur c’est là. […]

    Reply
  97. Kiki Chwan Avatar
    Kiki Chwan

    Ok, this is a longshot, considering the last post is two years old… but I’m having a problem and I need help. After it loads the books I get this error:

    terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘st9bad_alloc’
    what (): std: bad_alloc

    Any ideas?

    Reply
    1. Ray Haleblian Avatar
      Ray Haleblian

      I haven’t encountered that. In case it’s still a problem, you could try asking on the forums at SourceForge. The links are in the article. -r

      Reply

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