Pi - text editor for Pocketbook

[yuryfdr]

Originally Posted by paola

but I tried to use it to edit typos in an epub and it cannot open it (I guess because it is zipped): is it me, or is it not possible?

it's a complex problem, as i know ebub may contains many files. Pi is a text editor like notepad or gedit. to use it with ebup you may manualy unzip edit and zip files again. or we need smth like archive manager.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by yuryfdr

it's a complex problem, as i know ebub may contains many files. Pi is a text editor like notepad or gedit. to use it with ebup you may manualy unzip edit and zip files again. or we need smth like archive manager.

unzip is available on the devices, but zip isn't (at least on my 902 with fw 2.0.4). There is another complication in that EPUB files have to be zipped in a special way. The "mimetype" file should be first and uncompressed, and the rest of the files can be compressed (I'm not sure if they have to be in any particular order). So, it would take some work to get this going.

[paola]

guys, many thanks for your explanations - never mind then, and at any rate it is still very useful to have an editor on the device!

[yuryfdr]

v 0.9 is released.
sometimes after previous search failed next search may fail. to fix it reopen search dialog. I try to fix this problem in next release.

[paola]

thank you!

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by rkomar

There is another complication in that EPUB files have to be zipped in a special way. The "mimetype" file should be first and uncompressed, and the rest of the files can be compressed (I'm not sure if they have to be in any particular order).

Just played around with zipping an epub by hand and found that the following works (from inside the folder with the book contents):

zip mybook.epub -0 mimetype
zip -r mybook.epub * -x mimetype

Of course, replace mybook.epub with whatever name you want. Hope this helps someone wanting to make simple changes to epubs.

[paola]

thansk rkomar: but from where do you run your zip command, from your computer? I thought we only had the "unzip.app" application.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paola

thansk rkomar: but from where do you run your zip command, from your computer? I thought we only had the "unzip.app" application.

Yes, it's from my desktop. I got unzip to build fairly easily using the SDK cross-compilers, so I think building zip for PocketBook devices wouldn't be too hard. However, you still need some way to run it on the reader. You could run the unzip/<edit>/zip commands from poterm, but it would be pretty clumsy. Better would be a single program or script that handled the unzip/zip steps automatically, but I can't think of an easy way of having the Pi text editor take over for editing arbitrary unzipped files in between those two stages. Maybe someone else has some good ideas, though, so I put that information out to at least help with one of the stages.

Anyway, I'll see if I can build zip (and libzip) without much effort using the cross-compilers. Who knows what might come from that. libzip will probably be useful for the pbimageviewer program I've been working on.

[paola]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Anyway, I'll see if I can build zip (and libzip) without much effort using the cross-compilers. Who knows what might come from that. libzip will probably be useful for the pbimageviewer program I've been working on.

assuming I get what you say, that would be really great, as you could unzip an epub, correct the typos, zip it back, and continue reading!

[rkomar]

I'm having a problem with the Save option in Pi on my 902. It pops up a file selection box with names to save to, and OK and Cancel exit buttons, but I can't seem to get to the exit buttons using the physical buttons on my device. I think I ended just hitting the Back button after a while (after hitting the OK button over the correct filename), and the changes were saved. However, it still said there were unsaved changes when I tried to quit right after that. What should I be doing?

[yuryfdr]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I'm having a problem with the Save option in Pi on my 902. It pops up a file selection box with names to save to, and OK and Cancel exit buttons, but I can't seem to get to the exit buttons using the physical buttons on my device.

right, left,up, down must change active widget.
I can add dialogs cancel by click Back button in future.

Originally Posted by rkomar

I think I ended just hitting the Back button after a while (after hitting the OK button over the correct filename), and the changes were saved. However, it still said there were unsaved changes when I tried to quit right after that. What should I be doing?

I've forgot clear changed flag on saving, i'll fix it in next release.

[Snuffi]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Better would be a single program or script that handled the unzip/zip steps automatically, but I can't think of an easy way of having the Pi text editor take over for editing arbitrary unzipped files in between those two stages. Maybe someone else has some good ideas, though, so I put that information out to at least help with one of the stages.

Maybe one could define a folder for zip/unzip operations. I put a zip-file into that folder, run the unzip app and it unzips everything in that folder. After that I can edit with PI and save to same folder. Last step would be to run the zip app which would zip everything in that folder.

Basically all one would need is a shell script calling zip/unzip with the parameter of that folder. What's still kinda clumsy is putting the zip file into that folder and taking it out afterwards...

I'm happy that so many knowledgeable people are working on apps for the PB, if anyone needs something tested on the 612, let me know, I have no problem tweaking scripts and such but have no experience with compiling stuff...
All that's missing now is a real RSS reader - and maybe an e-mail client ;-)

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Snuffi

Maybe one could define a folder for zip/unzip operations. I put a zip-file into that folder, run the unzip app and it unzips everything in that folder. After that I can edit with PI and save to same folder. Last step would be to run the zip app which would zip everything in that folder.

Basically all one would need is a shell script calling zip/unzip with the parameter of that folder. What's still kinda clumsy is putting the zip file into that folder and taking it out afterwards...

The problem with shell scripts executed from the Application tab is that you don't get to see any text that is outputted, nor do you get to input anything. Basically, you need to run the script from a shell to interact with it properly.

At least that was the problem until yesterday . I've been thinking that it would be good to write a simple Inkview application that could be used within a script to display messages and get input from the user. So, I did that, and the first script I wrote with it was one for editing EPUB files. Doing file selection is clunky because Inkview doesn't have such a dialog element, so I used the table of contents dialog in its place. I'm thinking that the one available inside Pi is better than mine, but I'll leave the script as is. Anyone who wants to can edit the script by hand and change it to do whatever they like.

The script can be got from: http://www3.telus.net/rkomar/edit-epub/. Some binary files are required (zip, unzip, sh_ivtools, and Pi); the addresses where they can be downloaded from are available in the README.txt file for the webpage.

If you add "edit-epub.app" to the list of EPUB applications in /mnt/ext1/system/config/extensions.cfg, then you can automatically run it from the Library application via the "Open" menu; no command-line required at all!

I would recommend having an off-device backup of any EPUB that is to be edited. The program worked fine for me during testing, but I'm sure that bugs lurk in there somewhere.

[paola]

wow, how brilliant is that?!

[yuryfdr]

v 0.9.1 bug fix release.