A Google group has been established to discuss FBReader — the world-class e-book reader that runs on the Nokia 770, Linux desktop, Sharp Zaurus and other devices.

The Google group URI is groups.google.com/group/fbreader.

The FBReader forum at mobileread.com will continue, but the Google group permits posting in Russian (although the primary language is English).

And I will continue to post matters of interest here, with comments and discussion in our forums also encouraged.

Btw, I understand a new format and a new platform are in the works for FBReader, but I’ll wait till their announcement — or mention in one of these forums — before writing about them here.

In one of the first posts at Google groups, Geometer (aka Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader’s developer) writes:

About platforms: currently I am working [on a] port for GPE
(http://gpe.handhelds.org). In fact, the version for OpenZaurus/GPE is
almost ready, I hope to release it next week. Another device planned to
support in near future is Archos PMA430. (This device runs Qtopia and
is very like to Sharp Zaurus.)

About formats: I plan to add support for OEB and CHM files. And maybe
for OpenReader format.

This is great news — the tools to disassemble encrypted but non-DRMed[*] (or “personalized”) e-books in the Microsoft Reader .lit format are not hard to locate, their result being an OEB package file and the content files. Plunk ’em all into a zip file and add the OPF to FBReader’s library and you’ve got a direct pipeline for thousands of e-books in this very popular format.

And isn’t CHM the most popular format for documentation of Windows-based programs? The universe of content readable in FBReader is about to get very bigger.

[*] I can’t say what they do with DRMed content, because I’ve never owned any such in .lit format.