Feedbooks.com iLiad Downloader

[DeGodefroi]

What I would love is that the pdf created by the software would include the comics that the rss feed would link to. Or am I asking too much?

[Hadrien]

Finally, here's a first test version. This is purely for testing, and if you have any comment on the app itself, if you encounter any bug, please report it in this thread.

A few extra points:

• We've added epub and mobipocket support for the books. This is 100% server side, we could add any other format in the future without any change on the app.
• Books should already work very well.
• Feeds/Newspapers is still a bit complicated for the moment. As long as we don't have the cache, some feed will work much better than others. For the moment I would advise you to use only single feeds instead of newspapers, and feeds without too many images. This will change in the future: as soon as we're done working on the cache system, everything will work fine and run much faster.
• The connection on the iLiad keeps turning off, there's something to keep it on, but you might get the "connection not working" error a few times. This might be the biggest bug/problem left in the application.

[Blue]

Woohoow! Thx!!

Now if only I could find my iliad...

[Hadrien]

Stephen also did a short video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pu_G5KpAnR8

We'll do a real demo once we're past the first public beta.

[PhilT]

Just tried it with 8 feeds and a book. Works great! However, some of the RSS PDFs don't seem to get generated correctly but this ocurrs from the website too.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by PhilT

Just tried it with 8 feeds and a book. Works great! However, some of the RSS PDFs don't seem to get generated correctly but this ocurrs from the website too.

Yep that's what I said in my previous post. It's due to the current lack of a cache system, but we're working on this...

[Adam B.]

Okay, this is a great application. I think that if iRex could deliver this through the IDS, it would be the killer app for the iLiad.

There are a few notes I have that could make it even better, some I have discussed with Stephen, but I figured I'd put them here for all to see and to keep them organized.

• Change the LDFLAGS line in the makefile to the following to get rid of the cairo and pangocairo dependencies:
  

  LDFLAGS=-I`pwd`/include/ -pthread -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/ssl/lib -lgtk-x11-2.0 -lgdk-x11-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -lfreetype -lfontconfig -lpng12 -lm -lXrender -lX11 -lxml2 -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lz -lgthread-2.0 -lglib-2.0

• If you use this version of curl in your development environment, it will prevent needing the updated curl library.
• Using the above 2 methods, I can get the installer down to 190k. This can easily fit inside the main memory and hopefully be distributed via IDS.
• If you store the configuration xml file in /mnt/settings it should remain after firmware updates and iNewsStand version upgrades.
• The program should trap the upper left button and use that to close out of the application.
• It would be nice if the page flipper was able to flip between tabs of the application. Perhaps also update the page counter at the bottom as well.
• Perhaps the program could issue a ping command every few seconds to keep the wireless connection alive
• Something was wrong with the manifest in the post. I had to recreate it for it to work.

I'm attaching a version that I compiled that does not need any dependencies other than what's built into the iLiad.

Really, this is excellent work. Great job to Stephen and Hadrien.

[narve]

I've been really looking forward to this program!!!

Unfortunately, I didn't get it to work. Hadrians version crashed my iLiad (an empty error dialog popped up and stayed there, had to reset). Adams version causes the green light to blink for a while, then it is back to the content lister.

Probably just my bad computer karma. I guess I should do some serious work anyway :-|

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by narve

I've been really looking forward to this program!!!

Unfortunately, I didn't get it to work. Hadrians version crashed my iLiad (an empty error dialog popped up and stayed there, had to reset). Adams version causes the green light to blink for a while, then it is back to the content lister.

Probably just my bad computer karma. I guess I should do some serious work anyway :-|

Are you running firmware 2.11?

[narve]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Are you running firmware 2.11?

Wow, are you RSS'ing this forum or something? Fast response!

Yes, I'm using 2.11. Any more info I can give you?

[narve]

Originally Posted by narve

Wow, are you RSS'ing this forum or something? Fast response!

Yes, I'm using 2.11. Any more info I can give you?

I could try to start it using SSH, but I have a stupid problem: I'm out of TP-cables, and the wireless connection from iLiad is the most crappy thing I have ever seen. I am lucky for it to remain stable for more than 2-3 minutes.

(But it works perfectly when updating...)

And this while running a ping to the iLiad, and a ping the other way if the connection is alive long enough for me to start it.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by narve

I could try to start it using SSH, but I have a stupid problem: I'm out of TP-cables, and the wireless connection from iLiad is the most crappy thing I have ever seen. I am lucky for it to remain stable for more than 2-3 minutes.

(But it works perfectly when updating...)

And this while running a ping to the iLiad, and a ping the other way if the connection is alive long enough for me to start it.

Yep the wireless connection is a real problem here. Might be the reason why it crashed although it should simply display an error message instead.

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by narve

Wow, are you RSS'ing this forum or something? Fast response!

Yes, I'm using 2.11. Any more info I can give you?

I get automatic emails any time there's a repsonse to a thread I post in. And I 'm notified of new emails automatically.

That's odd. Try the file attached. If it doesn't work, let me know what's in the error.txt and output.txt

[narve]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

I get automatic emails any time there's a repsonse to a thread I post in. And I 'm notified of new emails automatically.

That's odd. Try the file attached. If it doesn't work, let me know what's in the error.txt and output.txt

Later - I am busy downloading books using the now-working iNewsStand

I tried ssh'ing in. I keep an ping -t iliad (from my windowsbox), and the connection is up and down. I have auto-reconnect in my ssh-client, and the connection goes up again quite often.

I then tried starting run.sh thru ssh, and it didn't work. I think the problem might be the connectionmanager part of run.sh - it crashed my ssh-connection and the network connection. I then started a new ssh-session and tried ./iNewsStand, and the application is up and running.

I've even downloaded Also sprach Zarathustra twice - I guess the GUI could need some minor adjustments

Do you want me to attach my entire ssh log? There were quite a lot of messages there

[narve]

Hm, check this out:

root@ereader:/media/cf/books/iNewsStand# ./run.sh
-sh: ./run.sh: not found
root@ereader:/media/cf/books/iNewsStand#

I am not a linux expert - what does this mean?

Anyways, if I start the application using ./iNewsStand it works. I don't know if the command

root@ereader:/media/cf/books/iNewsStand# connectionMgr --background --stay-connected

worked or not, but it could seem as if the connection got back up again whenever iNewsStand needed it. At least I managed to download three books even though my ping sometimes were silent for long periods.

I'll do some more experimenting and report back if I find out anything. Gotta try some of the RSS functionality. I attach the output of the connectionMgr in case it is of interest.