LIT

LIT is intended to be an abbreviation for Literature and is the extension used to identify eBooks in a format that works with the Microsoft Reader software.

Overview

Microsoft LIT consists of a container that is an MS "ITOL/ITLS" HTML Help 2.0 file (CHM), providing all sorts of exciting features like LZX compression, binary representation of markup content, and arbitrary optional auxiliary data associated with each content stream. Book text is an arbitrary number of OEBPS 1.0 markup streams (essentially HTML 4.0 as well-formed XML) plus a subset of OEBPS 1.0 CSS (no contextual selectors). Images are GIF, JPEG, and PNG. See Open eBook for more data on the source file.

Devices and Software

• PocketPC and Windows Mobile devices usually include the Microsoft Reader (also known as MS Reader) program built into the ROM image.
• If it is not included it can be downloaded from the Windows reader web site. Versions exist for Windows, Tablet PCs, and Windows Mobile units. Windows Smartphones are not supported.
• Hanlin eBook can read LIT files on both the V3 and the V5
• windows download available in 2014 - The official Microsoft web site is missing this download

Utilities

• Microsoft Word 2000 and later can be used to generate lit files with WordRMR which is a download from the Microsoft web site.
• Book Designer can create and convert lit files.
• Converters exist to translate .lit files to other formats.
• Readerworks from Overdrive can create lit files. The standard version is free.

SDK

Microsoft SDK includes DLL for Microsoft Visual Studio C++ developers to generate LIT formatted eBooks. They have also have tools for Dictionary development, TTS and other capabilities. These are free downloads