Feature requests etc.

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by fekhner

you guys are really motivated

for the moment, I am not really able to make it work though, on the DR800SG, error message: application cannot be opened, possibly already open etc.

on the DR1000, it does not start

but of course it is late and I might have done something stupid, will try again tomorrow ...

small addition to the instructions: it seems to me that the "share" directory should be removed from the path where the inbox-manager.lua file goes ....

... the attached package does not include any directory except the root container.

You have to copy:
- the 3 .png image files into <SD>/Programs/_lua/share/pixmaps
- inbox-manager.lua into <SD>/Programs/_lua/scripts
- INBOX-Manager.desktop into <SD>/Programs

Ouch, I see, yes, I wrote something wrong, "scripts" dir is in _lua, not it _lua/share. I'll fix the error in the previous message.

if it doesn't work, please run from a terminal and paste the output here:

# /media/mmcblk0p1/Programs/_lua/scripts/inbox-manager.lua

Regading DR1000, is SD card mount on /media/mmcblk0p1?
Perhaphs you have to change some of the constants defined at the top of the file. Could you run the script from terminal, please?

EDIT: I've forgotten to mention you need to create a "INBOX" folder at the root of the SD. Thanks Mackx for remember it.


Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by Mackx

Hi fekhner,

I had the same problem when I first ran the program, with rxvt, I discovered that it is important that you create a INBOX-folder in the root of the SD-card, otherwise the program stops.

Marcel.

Ouch, sorry again. It was too late and I was sleepy
I'll update (again) the previous message.

[Iñigo]

as we are in this mood, I'll write about my wishlist for DR:

- management of book metadata:
  . edit title, author, publisher, added date, pages
  . this is not so difficult for pdf files, as poppler lib can read them.
    The real problem is that UDS will revert the values

- tags:
  . custom tags: fav, mustread, work...
  . be able to tag a ebook (if too complex, can be an external app)
  . tag navigation
    . an entry on HOME, then an entry for each tag
  . this could make inbox-manager.lua hack obsolete, or maybe
    I could change "shortcut?" option by a "tag selection"

- other ebook formats: fb2, chm...
  . current port of FBReader and extensions scripts already do a good job
  . thumbnails: icon.lua

- programs
  . thumbnails: icon.lua
  . new entry in HOME

- HOME:
  . new entries (see above):
    . Programs
    . Tags
  . remove other entries for make room for above items?
    . candidates: News, Images, Personal Documents, Help

- General:
  . system info & process viewer/killer, accesible from ctb menu

- UDS:
  . DR1000-like uds for DR800, or better, and open-sourced uds!
  . FBReader-like page bar

The most important thing for me is the Tags system.
On regard of the "system info & process viewer/killer" I think I could translate some old lua code I wrote for the iLiad and a simple hack to popupmenu and sysd...

Iñigo

[Mackx]

Hi Iñigo,

Nice list, some remarks/info/questions.

Originally Posted by Iñigo

- management of book metadata:
. edit title, author, publisher, added date, pages
. this is not so difficult for pdf files, as poppler lib can read them.
The real problem is that UDS will revert the values

Do you want to edit the real metadata inside the document or the title/author that the DR is showing? At this moment every time a document is displayed with UDS, the metadata is extracted and the title and author are updated in the global.db on the DR. The advantage of this is that you do not have to type the title/author yourself but that they are automatically extracted. However, when the metadata in the document is incorrect, it keeps displaying the incorrect data, even when you (manually) changed the data in the global.db file. (probably you new this already)
I made a change to metadb so that it checks for a specific value inside of the tag-attribute. Based on that it can prevent updates to title and author. So the first time the document is opened UDS extracts any metadata and stores it into global.db. I created a new menu entry that allows changing title, author and tag. So if the extracted value are not correct, they can be manually updated and protected by adding a special keyword to the tag. (I can imagine a future version that uses a checkbox and adds the keyword.)
(only available in the next update of MackxPatch :-)

You also mention publisher, added date and pages, what are you planning to do with these on the DR?

Marcel.

[Mackx]

Hi Iñigo,

Some more remark/questions.

Originally Posted by Iñigo

- tags:
. custom tags: fav, mustread, work...
. be able to tag a ebook (if too complex, can be an external app)
. tag navigation
. an entry on HOME, then an entry for each tag
. this could make inbox-manager.lua hack obsolete, or maybe
I could change "shortcut?" option by a "tag selection"

Custom tags are working with the MackxPatch, I modified metadb to allow multiple keywords in the tag-field, so a document can be 'fav' and 'mustread'. The tags can be edited on the DR, however the current dialog is not the most user-friendly way to change the tag.
Tag navigation is currently implemented with 'Views' on HOME. This must be done by installing a schema-file and settings some value defined in the schema. This must be prepared on a PC and installed on the DR, so this is not very user-friendly. The position on HOME (and if displayed at all) can be modified on the DR, they way that must be done is also not very user friendly right now.
There is currently no 'View' that allows to navigate tag based, all views are static, for one single tag only. I like your idea of tag navigation. Maybe it can behave like the SD-Card view, but then folders are tags. So on the first level, you would see all tags (more precise all separate words in tag) and all documents. Selecting a tag would open a new view that shows all documents that at least have that tag. It would also show the other tags that this new set of documents also has. I.e. if we would select the 'mustread'-tag and there is a document that has both a 'mustread'- and a 'fav'-tag there would be a 'folder' named 'fav' to limit the selection further.
This would only allow to implement an 'and'-view. What are your ideas on how a tag-view should look like? Which functionality would you like it to have, i.e. complex selection of tags or only simple and of tags to limit the seletion.
I like the functionality of the inbox-manager to move files to other locations (although I have not used it). Maybe that can be extended to update the title/author/tag of the documents. See the mtag-program in Programs\_mackxpatch\bin\mtag (sources in patches\mtools\mtag) which allows to change title, author and tag.

Marcel.

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Iñigo

- programs
. thumbnails: icon.lua
. new entry in HOME

Maybe mdbindex can be modified to handle the Icon-entry in the desktop file? In that case there is no need for a separate program.
On the other hand being able to add short-cuts to application on HOME is also somewhere on my todo list (but not that high).

[fekhner]

Hi Marcel, Iñigo,

Now all works of course, thanks, btw to illustrate the usefulness of lua, the rundebug.desktop that Iñigo did with lua is nicer to check what went wrong than doing it manually with rxvt

I still have to really use the Inboxmanager now though and move files around ...

Concerning the multiple tag view navigation, if I understand correctly, you have in mind the same kind of navigation on the DR that you have on the PC with calibre for instance? Could any of that code be used? Or a scaled-down version of calibre directly ported to the DR ? Or, since there is a metadata.calibre exported when you put books through that application, use this as an example of an external tag application that you were mentioning?

Sorry if this obvious, naive or unrealistic ....

Cheers,
f

[Iñigo]

Please find attached a lua-based System Information script, which shows data about hardware, OS, cpu, memory, load, disks and processes.
You can kill a process tap-ing at it. It will asks for confirmation.

The data is refreshed each minute.

Installation instruction: uncompress and copy
- sysinfo.lua to <SD>/Programs/_lua/scripts
- sysinfo.png to <SD>/Programs/_lua/share/pixmaps
- sysinfo.desktop to <SD>/Programs

I will include it in next version of lua bindings.

The next step is to add a permanent new entry on popupmenu which launches this script.

Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by Mackx

Do you want to edit the real metadata inside the document or the title/author that the DR is showing? At this moment every time a document is displayed with UDS, the metadata is extracted and the title and author are updated in the global.db on the DR. The advantage of this is that you do not have to type the title/author yourself but that they are automatically extracted. However, when the metadata in the document is incorrect, it keeps displaying the incorrect data, even when you (manually) changed the data in the global.db file. (probably you new this already)
I made a change to metadb so that it checks for a specific value inside of the tag-attribute. Based on that it can prevent updates to title and author. So the first time the document is opened UDS extracts any metadata and stores it into global.db. I created a new menu entry that allows changing title, author and tag. So if the extracted value are not correct, they can be manually updated and protected by adding a special keyword to the tag. (I can imagine a future version that uses a checkbox and adds the keyword.)
(only available in the next update of MackxPatch :-)

Call me lazy, but to be completely honest I have to say that I think this is not a task for the DR. If file metadata is incorrect, go and fix it outside the ereader.
[In fact I started a .pdf metadata editor some time ago...]

Anyway, it would be a nice feature to have, but not on top of my ideas.

Originally Posted by Mackx

You also mention publisher, added date and pages, what are you planning to do with these on the DR?

Oh, nothing. Those are the fields UDS shows in the info window.

Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by Mackx

Maybe mdbindex can be modified to handle the Icon-entry in the desktop file? In that case there is no need for a separate program.
On the other hand being able to add short-cuts to application on HOME is also somewhere on my todo list (but not that high).

I thought so, but the code I'm using (icons.lua) is lua-based, and perhaps a bit slow.
F.e., for fb2 the script has to search for proper files in the db, parse the files (xml), get .png data and store on db... No fun to write all this code in C.

A fast&dirty hack is to:
. rename "/usr/bin/mdbindex" binary to "/usr/bin/mdbindex-dr"
. create a "/usr/bin/mdbindex" shell script which executes "/usr/bin/mdbindex-dr" and "icons.lua"

This shell script could contain some flags to activate the different types of files (DR-supported ones (pdf, epub, images, notes) and icons.lua-supported (.desktop and fb2 by now)).

Btw, I've attached a new version of icons.lua I've been working on this productive afternoon. It's more robust, and can delete previously-added .desktop and .fb2 thumbnails from the DB. And a new --help (or -h) flag!

Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by fekhner

Concerning the multiple tag view navigation, if I understand correctly, you have in mind the same kind of navigation on the DR that you have on the PC with calibre for instance? Could any of that code be used? Or a scaled-down version of calibre directly ported to the DR ? Or, since there is a metadata.calibre exported when you put books through that application, use this as an example of an external tag application that you were mentioning?

Sorry, don't know calibre. I tested it some time ago but didn't like.
In fact I'm coding a new ebook manager [1], it is in a early phase of development, but it's already showing some of the future potential.


An example of my idea, 3 books with tags:
Hacking the DR -> Computers
Programming in Lua -> Devel, Lua
Algorithms -> Devel

We are at HOME, now we tap on "Tags" entry, we see:

    Tags
    [Up] [Computers] [Devel] [Lua]
    "Hacking the DR" "Programming in Lua" "Algorithms"

(this is a normal DR iconview, think in the [tags] as special folders. As no tag is selected we see all books).

Now we tap on "Devel", we see:

    Tags: Devel
    [Up] [Lua]
    "Programming in Lua" "Algorithms"

(no [Computer] because there is no book sharing Devel and Computer tags. We see the 2 files with Devel tag).

Now we tap on "Lua", we see:

    Tags: Devel, Lua
    [Up]
    "Programming in Lua"

(only one book has both tags).


Looks nice, uhmmm?


Iñigo
[1] https://bitbucket.org/inigoserna/bidebarrieta

[Iñigo]

Wow, I've answered the rest of the messages before reading this, as Tags is my main interest...

Originally Posted by Mackx

Custom tags are working with the MackxPatch, I modified metadb to allow multiple keywords in the tag-field, so a document can be 'fav' and 'mustread'. The tags can be edited on the DR, however the current dialog is not the most user-friendly way to change the tag.
Tag navigation is currently implemented with 'Views' on HOME. This must be done by installing a schema-file and settings some value defined in the schema. This must be prepared on a PC and installed on the DR, so this is not very user-friendly. The position on HOME (and if displayed at all) can be modified on the DR, they way that must be done is also not very user friendly right now.
There is currently no 'View' that allows to navigate tag based, all views are static, for one single tag only.

Uhmmm... have I mentioned before I need to look at your patches?

Originally Posted by Mackx

I like your idea of tag navigation. Maybe it can behave like the SD-Card view, but then folders are tags. So on the first level, you would see all tags (more precise all separate words in tag) and all documents. Selecting a tag would open a new view that shows all documents that at least have that tag. It would also show the other tags that this new set of documents also has. I.e. if we would select the 'mustread'-tag and there is a document that has both a 'mustread'- and a 'fav'-tag there would be a 'folder' named 'fav' to limit the selection further.
This would only allow to implement an 'and'-view. What are your ideas on how a tag-view should look like? Which functionality would you like it to have, i.e. complex selection of tags or only simple and of tags to limit the seletion.

Take a look at message #86. I think we share the same design.
Maybe in the first level (no tags selected) we have not to show any files, as it would be quite slow if there are many books on the ereader.

Originally Posted by Mackx

I like the functionality of the inbox-manager to move files to other locations (although I have not used it). Maybe that can be extended to update the title/author/tag of the documents. See the mtag-program in Programs\_mackxpatch\bin\mtag (sources in patches\mtools\mtag) which allows to change title, author and tag.

Again, you are reading my mind, the INBOX Manager would add/edit those fields.


Iñigo

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Iñigo

Call me lazy, but to be completely honest I have to say that I think this is not a task for the DR. If file metadata is incorrect, go and fix it outside the ereader.
[In fact I started a .pdf metadata editor some time ago...]

I had a pdf-file of which the title was 'Layout1', which obviously was wrong. I had the impression that I could not change the metadata of this file. Can you point me to a tool that can?

Thanks,
Marcel.

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Iñigo

This shell script could contain some flags to activate the different types of files (DR-supported ones (pdf, epub, images, notes) and icons.lua-supported (.desktop and fb2 by now)).

I did not notice that the script also supported fb2, so I was only thinking how to handle .desktop files. This is indeed an extra challenge.

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by fekhner

Concerning the multiple tag view navigation, if I understand correctly, you have in mind the same kind of navigation on the DR that you have on the PC with calibre for instance? Could any of that code be used? Or a scaled-down version of calibre directly ported to the DR ? Or, since there is a metadata.calibre exported when you put books through that application, use this as an example of an external tag application that you were mentioning?

I did not look at Calibre yet, maybe that is an interesing starting point for getting extra metadata for files.