Ray Kurzweil is developing Blio, a software package that can run on everything from PCs to hand-held devices. It displays colorful images and varying fonts with formatting similar to what people find in physical texts.

Kurzweil argued that the existing e-readers and tablets had limitations in the text formats they support and the way they handle the original images and layouts in printed texts. Blio preserves the original formatting, making it particularly attractive to publishers of things like cookbooks, how-to guides, schoolbooks, travel guides and children’s books.

The Blio free software should become more widely available to consumers over the next two months, Mr. Kurzweil said, as large PC makers and retailers like Wal-Mart begin to offer it on their own devices.