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Old 06-21-2012, 01:14 PM   #1
rkomar
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Building pdfviewer from PocketBook sources

I'm a bit disappointed with the way fonts are rendered in AdobeViewer and pdfviewer. Thin fonts that were designed for paper end up mostly as grey pixels when rendered with anti-aliasing turned on. Turning off ant-aliasing (in the main configuration) does nothing for AdobeViewer on my device, but it does affect pdfviewer. In the latter case, the fonts are rendered darker, but the strokes are very thin.

Long ago, @LoneTech suggested that ebook specific hints for fontconfig might be useful for improving the output. So, with that in mind, I downloaded the source code for pdfviewer from the repository to hack on it and see if I could make the text look clearer. Unfortunately, the source code seems to be all there, but the makefiles and configuration info isn't. So, there is no way to build the code as is. Has anyone put together the necessary files for building pdfviewer?

Edit: the config.h file is there for poppler, so that helps when trying to decide what configure options to use.

Last edited by rkomar; 06-23-2012 at 06:12 PM.
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Old 03-04-2013, 08:44 AM   #2
fredyd
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Hi,

Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar View Post
Long ago, @LoneTech suggested that ebook specific hints for fontconfig might be useful for improving the output. So, with that in mind, I downloaded the source code for pdfviewer from the repository to hack on it and see if I could make the text look clearer. Unfortunately, the source code seems to be all there, but the makefiles and configuration info isn't. So, there is no way to build the code as is. Has anyone put together the necessary files for building pdfviewer?
Did you get any further on that subject?
Is that the pdfviewer from https://github.com/pocketbook-free/pdfviewer ?
Did you manage to compile it?
And change font hinting?
Or maybe just add a gamma setting (the e-ink display is linear, whereas most rendering software assumes a display gamma of 2.2)?

Any hint on how to compile this code would be helpful.

This pdfviewer seems to be using poppler, which needs a lot of ressources. A lightweight PDF viewer would rather use mupdf (as kindlepdfviewer does). There is a comparison of both engines at http://hzqtc.github.com/2012/04/poppler-vs-mupdf.html

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Old 03-04-2013, 02:52 PM   #3
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I was able to get it to build, but it was a lot of work. The source code was out of date with the current firmware versions, and one of the necessary libraries wasn't on the devices anymore (libpbframework.so). After I got it working (added library to device, and library and header files to the build environment), and upgraded to a newer version of poppler, I played with the font rendering hints but never noticed any difference in the output. I was probably changing stuff in poppler/splash that was never used in the program. So given my lack of success and the fact that a different source version was actually being used on the devices, I gave up.

If you like, I could zip up what I have and make it available to you, but it's in a state of hackiness, and I can't even remember what I did to make it all work. I vaguely recall using Sergey's build environment for the last step rather than cmake, but I could be wrong.

As far as swapping out the rendering engine, if you look at the source code, you'll see that that would be a massive undertaking. I think you'd be better off starting a new application from scratch. At least that way, you won't have to mess with pbframework anymore.
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Old 03-08-2013, 10:05 AM   #4
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What parameters did you try to change in poppler? screen gamma?

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Originally Posted by rkomar View Post
If you like, I could zip up what I have and make it available to you, but it's in a state of hackiness, and I can't even remember what I did to make it all work. I vaguely recall using Sergey's build environment for the last step rather than cmake, but I could be wrong.
A zip file would be fine, though a better way would be to branch from the github repository, so that everyone could contribute. If you find it simpler, please send me the zip and I'll make the github branch.
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Old 03-08-2013, 10:26 AM   #5
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I just came across this: https://bitbucket.org/vamonster/adva...for-pocketbook
They seem to have fixed many compilation issues (as I can see from the commits - I didn't test it)
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Old 03-08-2013, 01:26 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fredyd View Post
I just came across this: https://bitbucket.org/vamonster/adva...for-pocketbook
They seem to have fixed many compilation issues (as I can see from the commits - I didn't test it)
Yeah, I looked at that a while ago. It didn't seem to have got very far, and even worse for me, seemed to be aimed at the models with touchscreens. It's also based on quite an old version of pdfviewer. Maybe the best thing is to fool around with the font rendering on any old version, and then send an E-mail to PB telling them what they should do in their official version. That way, we may see it in the next firmware releases. The official versions have proprietary decryption and text-to-speech support that will never be seen in the open-source versions, so getting PB to improve it is the best option.
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