FBReader 0.72 is something lefthanded readers will really love — now the text will rotate 90, 180 or 270 degrees, allowing the user to hold the 770 in the right hand and easily page through a book. While the Preferences dialog is blocking most of the screen, you should be able to see that the text in the screen capture above is rotated 180 degrees.

The Enter key (in the center of the scroll wheel) still switches between normal and rotated text; the Rotation tab lets the user select which rotation.

Today’s new release fixes a few minor bugs and adds a few other new features, such as support for bzip2 archives and another file format, TCR.

You can download the latest installer-ready version from the FBReader home page:

only.mawhrin.net/fbreader/maemo/fbreader-maemo_0.7.2a-1_arm.deb

While lefthanders have been asking for this on all programs to make the 770 more usable, I can only recall seeing one game — Frozen Bubble — that also rotated, but it’s never come out. I wonder how long it will be till this is a feature built into the OS? According to Lemody’s blog, Ramblings of a Madman, it’s technically feasible “without speed or memory loss.” See his photo from December in an earlier item, “The Nokia 770 and the Pong clock.”

When I had a RocketeBook, one of the first devices for reading e-books, I used to read for a while holding it in my left hand, then rotate the text 180 degrees — then physically rotate the device so the paging keys were on the right — and then hold it for a while in my right hand.

The RocketeBook was considerably heavier than a 770, but I imagine I’ll end up doing the same with it. After all, when you’re getting sleepy, that six ounces becomes heavier and heavier, doesn’t it.

I note that a newer version of the FBReader deb file has been posted:

only.mawhrin.net/fbreader/maemo/fbreader-maemo_0.7.2a-1_arm.deb

(Yes, I changed the link above, too.)

Unremarked in the earlier description is a fix to FBReader that prevented it from seeing e-books installed in the Documents folder. A post by geometer (aka Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader’s creator) in the Mobileread.com forums alerted us to that. That’s the best place to get FBReader information beyond our reports here at itT.