[Morkl]

Originally Posted by bardo

In order to see more e-ink friendly applications and to get app designers on board, we need a replacement class for the usual WebView.

It should simply be a matter of overriding the methods that have updateMode overloads - basically, copying the methods in the EinkListView I posted about except the constructors and then adding the WebView constructors and an mUpdateMode variable. Then the update mode can be controlled by changing the mUpdateMode variable.

Being not an Android programmer, I looked around for generic code which could make it in such a replacement. So far I found these:

- The flicker-free page turn code used in cool reader:
credits to DairyKnight <dairyknight@gmail.com>
http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...ontroller.java

- Max Kammerer's code for his nook port of aarddict:
http:///github.com/max-kammerer/aarddict_nook

// from kbs - trook.projectsource code.

private final void pageUp() {
        int cury = articleView2.getScrollY();
        if (cury == 0) { return; }
        int newy = cury - WEB_SCROLL_PX;
        if (newy < 0) {
            newy = 0;
        }
        articleView2.scrollTo(0, newy);

}

private final void pageDown() {

        int cury = articleView2.getScrollY();
        int hmax = articleView2.getContentHeight() - 200;
        if (hmax < 0) {
            hmax = 0;
        }
        int newy = cury + WEB_SCROLL_PX;
        if (newy > hmax) {
            newy = hmax;
        }
        if (cury != newy) {
            articleView2.scrollTo(0, newy);
        }

}

Cool reader has very low page turn flicker, the second code I could not see in action.

In an e-ink friendly app, there would be an option to select high-contrast skins and optimize page refreshes.

Once the keyword "e-ink" or "e-ink friendly" will show up in the Android Market, then we've got the ball rolling.

The Cool Reader code looks like it does some device specific hardware magic to turn of the flashing, and the aardict code seems to be generic "page up"/"page down" code (i.e. it reduces superfluous flicker due to scrolling animations, but does not affect the way the screen behaves).

I guess the former is what everyone would like to be able to do, and the latter is something that should be the very minimal effort expected from a developer of an app if it is to be called E-ink friendly (i.e. avoiding animations of all kinds, aiming instead for static screens whenever possible).

Luckily, Sony has provided us with a higher level interface with the "update modes" in the android.view.View class, so on the PRS-T1 a non-flickery app doesn't have to worry about the hardware as long as it utilizes the update modes. It still goes in the former category though, since the methods are device-specific.

Anyhow, the source code for my ListView experiment is available at SourceForge if anyone wants to take a peek, and an APK is available here.