[kacir]

I have promised to extract existing keyboard files from my PocketBook 360, so you could create Spanish, French, Vietnamese, whatever keyboard you wish.

BEWARE.
if you create keyboard using this file for PocketBook 302 it will behave very strange. This is ONLY for PB 360 and PB 301.
You can, I am pretty sure, extract files from PocketBook 302 the following way.

I switched on my PocketBook 360, went to the main menu, went to applications and started Poterm application. Poterm is a third party application that was created as a result of competition that was organized and sponsored with prizes by the PocketBook company.

/bin/ash: can't access tty; job control turned off


BusyBox v1.12.2 (2009-01-04 17:45:10 EET) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

So, here we are in an actual terminal.

$ df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                    8192      6156      2036  75% /
/dev/root                 8192      6156      2036  75% /
none                     24576        20     24556   0% /tmp
none                      4096        12      4084   0% /var
none                      4096         0      4096   0% /dev
tmpfs                    31684         0     31684   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mtdblock5           32768     32768         0 100% /ebrmain
/dev/mtdblock6          477896    453008     24888  95% /mnt/ext1

I have issued Unix command df to find out where partitions are mounted. I have noted /mnt/ext1 directory. This is the partition where the "main memory" - part visible after you connect the reader to PC - is mounted.

$ pwd
/

I have issued command pwd - Print Working Directory to make sure where I am located at the moment.
/ tells me I am at the top directory in the filesystem - so called root.

$ ls
bin
dev
ebrmain
etc
lib
linuxrc
lost+found
mnt
proc
sbin
sys
tmp
usr
var

I have issued command ls - this is equivalent of Dos command dir. It lists all the files and directories in a current directory (which is at the moment / - the "root" of the directory tree - as I have found out using the pwd command)

$ cd ebrmain
$ ls
bin
config
fonts
fsimage.tar.gz
language
lib
logo
lost+found
pocketbook
share
themes

I have changed current directory to ebrmain, because I know from previous visits that this is the directory where configuration files for PocketBook are located. You could say I "went inside the directory" so my current directory is /ebrmain/
Then I have listed contents of the directory

$ cd config
$ ls
device.cfg
extensions.cfg

I dived into the /ebrmain/config/ directory where I have "stolen" extensions.cfg file on my previous visit and I see that there in no keyboard configuration file here.

$ cd ../language
$ ls
by.txt
cz.txt
de.txt
ee.txt
en.txt
es.txt
fr.txt
he.txt
keyboard
lt.txt
lv.txt
ru.txt
ua.txt

I have changed to the previous directory .. and to the language directory, so now I am at /ebrmain/language/ directory.
I see there is keyboard directory here (well, technically it can also be a file, because I have used the ls command and not ls -l to save some typing)

$ cd keyboard
$ ls
DE.kbd
EN-HE-RU.kbd
EN-RU-UA.kbd
EN-RU.kbd
EN.kbd
ES.kbd
FR.kbd

I go inside the keyboard directory, and indeed, this is what I am looking for today.

$ cp * /mnt/ext1/
$ exit

I copy all the files (represented by *) in the current directory /ebrmain/language/keyboard/ to the /mnt/ext1/ directory that I have located with the first command df and then I end my session by typing the exit command.

Then I have connected the reader to my computer and in the "main memory" I have found keyboard configuration files.
I have also copied poterm.log from the /games/ directory (where Poterm.bin sits) so I could provide you with a listing of my session.

So.
Unpack the archive, have a look at the configuration files, start reader, choose a new keyboard and compare the keyboard layout with the configuration file. I think that it should be obvious how to modify the file to obtain different keyboard.
You have to use a good text editor that can handle UTF8 encoding. (probably something better than Notepad on Windows). I personally am using Vim text editor for most of my editing on most of my systems.

You place your keyboard file in /language/keyboard/ directory in the main memory (the partition you see when you connect the reader to your computer). You might have to create the keyboard directory.


PocketBook is different from the vast majority of reading devices out there, because with PocketBook it is obvious that developers designed the system in a way that would be very, *very* friendly to a potential tinkerer, hacker, programmer, poweruser or just anybody that wants to improve the device. Thank you Guys in Kiev (TM)!