DR800 ANN: DR800+. Port of some DR1000 features to the DR800

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

Thanks for the help. I'm sorry to be fussy but xournal is too heavy and doesn't give me the same satisfaction as being able to annotate inside the basic FBreader. I like having the same kind of feeling as writing on the newspaper that I am reading. Now I read my newspapers on the DR800 I still want to be able to do Sodoku , crosswords, or just write thoughts onto it. Also it's a step backwards from the previous firmware, so possibly just a small bug that got introduced, since it still almost works(?)

So my questions are - is there any good explanation for why the PDF annotation no longer works? I'm happy to go poking around but would appreciate any prior knowledge that readers of this thread may already have.

Loving the DR800+ as a whole new toy

There was a format change between version 1 and version 2 (beta) of DR800 software, and if I remember correctly there were more people saying that their annotations corrupted...
try to search in the forum.

[jonathan_s]

I'm not sure about annotations being corrupted, I only ever made them on a temporary basis, usually proof-reading my own work. But I do know that since DR800+ they don't work any more.

This may be the wrong thread, but I know you are the author anyway, so can I report another problem. I installed FBReader 2.10 v3b to see if it would make a difference. It actually made my DR800 behave very strangely - if I suspended it with PDFs open, the light would continue flashing. Also the time it takes to load a PDF page was greatly increased compared with the last version of the DR800 software (was that called version 2?). So I tried to uninstall, but that made no difference. It looks to me like the uninstall failed but I'm not really sure how to check what's going on.

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

I'm not sure about annotations being corrupted, I only ever made them on a temporary basis, usually proof-reading my own work. But I do know that since DR800+ they don't work any more.

DR800+ uses UDS (pdf reader) from DR1000 so it's somehow possible there are some incompatibilities. Anyway, the back end libraries for annotations are the same so I don't think on any issues on this side.

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

This may be the wrong thread, but I know you are the author anyway, so can I report another problem. I installed FBReader 2.10 v3b to see if it would make a difference. It actually made my DR800 behave very strangely - if I suspended it with PDFs open, the light would continue flashing. Also the time it takes to load a PDF page was greatly increased compared with the last version of the DR800 software (was that called version 2?). So I tried to uninstall, but that made no difference. It looks to me like the uninstall failed but I'm not really sure how to check what's going on.

That's strange.
Last official firmware from IREX was 2.0RC3, the final version 2.0 was never released.
DR800+ is based on that last original firmware.
FBReader hasn't any connection with DR firmware (original or DR800+) so if there are problems they should come from other things.


So my recommendation is:
1. make a complete backup of your SD card
2. format SD card
3. reinstall original IREX 2.0RC3 firmware and copy your contents from the backup
4. play with it and check what works and what does not work
5. install FBReader and check again for any problems
6. try DR800+ and report any issue

Iñigo

[fekhner]

I am not using annotations heavily so I cannot really tell ... I just tried it out on the DR1000 with Mackx's hack (the analog of DR800+) and it seems to me that annotations on the built-in UDS pdf reader (which is not related to the FBreader that has been ported to the DR's) can still be made and saved without any problem. I will try later today on the DR800+ and let you know if there are problems on my device...

[jonathan_s]

I couldn't resist the temptation to show off And ask a few important questions while I'm here. The attached thumbnail demonstrates openoffice running on the dr800 (not the emulator) using easy debian. I was a bit surprised that it worked without a swapfile. Anyway, as far as making it usable goes, there are a couple of sticking points, which I'm sure people have addressed in porting other applications:

1. The device doesn't seem to know when to refresh the screen. My understanding of e-ink is that the screen refresh is a big deal and chews power, so it makes sense to want to be economical with refreshes. But I often find that I have to force a screen refresh by hitting the bottom button to launch the start menu. Can anyone advise on how an application may force a refresh?

2. Doesn't appear in the taskbar, so if you move away from it you can never come back

3. The little keyboard is pretty much useless. I tried installing the ported matchbox-keyboard, but that doesn't seem to work. Can anyone advise?

3a. I'm still hoping to get an external USB keyboard connected anyway. Virtual keyboard is too painful for serious work.

Once again, many thanks to all involved.

[yuri_b]

Actually IREX ebook reader are designed as book reader not as book writer
So:
1) E-Ink display not designed for writing and refreshing screen takes a while
2) Overall system not designed for writing: virtual keyboard useless
3) A battery will be drown quickly, because, by design, most time a device should be in a sleep mode.


Sincerely
Yura

P.S. I also started with this Idea, but quickly realized that as ebook reader it is good device, but for other better to use a smart phone

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

I couldn't resist the temptation to show off And ask a few important questions while I'm here. The attached thumbnail demonstrates openoffice running on the dr800 (not the emulator) using easy debian. I was a bit surprised that it worked without a swapfile. Anyway, as far as making it usable goes, there are a couple of sticking points, which I'm sure people have addressed in porting other applications:

1. The device doesn't seem to know when to refresh the screen. My understanding of e-ink is that the screen refresh is a big deal and chews power, so it makes sense to want to be economical with refreshes. But I often find that I have to force a screen refresh by hitting the bottom button to launch the start menu. Can anyone advise on how an application may force a refresh?

2. Doesn't appear in the taskbar, so if you move away from it you can never come back

3. The little keyboard is pretty much useless. I tried installing the ported matchbox-keyboard, but that doesn't seem to work. Can anyone advise?

3a. I'm still hoping to get an external USB keyboard connected anyway. Virtual keyboard is too painful for serious work.

Once again, many thanks to all involved.

You have found the e-ink limitations...
Anyway, good work. Experimentation is the basis for future improvements

Now, on a more positive tone:

1. IREX modified gtk+ to allow partial refreshes. You have more information on section 4.2 (page 23-24) of the document "iOn Development Environment". Download and study it, it's quite interesting.
Also, IREX provided a low level API (liberutils) to perform partial refreshes.
Take a look at thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83641
As examples look at Mackx's xournal port or rxvt port sources.

2. To integrate with DR you have to do some calls to the API IREX provides.
Take a look to xournal or fbreader ports. Or if you prefer something smaller take a look at the vala-written sysinfo program included with DR800+.

3. "ask and you'll be given" (ok, English is not my native language ;-)
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=119617

3a. There are some threads discussing it, but I can't remember the results, sorry.


All in all, you should build a development environment with a proper emulator, it simplifies the development a lot. And read the document in point 1 above.

Download everything from: http://developer.irexnet.com/iOn/
If you are going to study IREX code you should build you own sources documentation with doxygen. https://inigo.katxi.org/ereader/dr800-sources/dirs.html

As you can see we are a small community, but there have been many efforts from some people so there are a lot of work done and knowledgement in this forum.

I've attached a very-incomplete document Mackx and me started to document some points on development/porting apps for DR devices. Maybe it would be useful for you.
Feel free to complete and return it back to the community for other people.
(Note that the versions the doc mentions are old, last "internal" version for iOn platform is 4.0, which is the basis for DR1000 and DR800 "public" version 2.0).

Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by yuri_b

P.S. I also started with this Idea, but quickly realized that as ebook reader it is good device, but for other better to use a smart phone

Same here.
My first work with DR development was to port some apps: osmo (agenda), xboard/gnuchess... then I understood that my DR800 was not the proper device to handle calendars, rss feeds, etc.
There are a lot of interesting open source apps that could be easily ported to DR, but they will also need some customization work (menus, screen size, refresh, input...) so it's not worth the extra work. I do those tasks on my android phone, and let the DR to read ;-)

Iñigo

[jonathan_s]

Many thanks for your encouragement. I'll take a closer look at that material in due course.

I had one problem with following the iOn docs, which is that it requested some packages from debian.o-hand.com. For the last few days I have seen this:

$ ping debian.o-hand.com
PING debian.o-hand.com (80.68.88.162) 56(84) bytes of data.
From ace.bytemark.co.uk (89.16.188.57) icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

Is it possible that you could send me the required packages, or have some idea where else I might find them? I'm building on a 32-bit Ubuntu 8.04 virtual machine on i686 hardware.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[fekhner]

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

So my questions are - is there any good explanation for why the PDF annotation no longer works? I'm happy to go poking around but would appreciate any prior knowledge that readers of this thread may already have.

Loving the DR800+ as a whole new toy

for what it is worth: there seems to be no problem at all with standard pdf annotations using DR800+ on my device.

[HansTWN]

Jonathan is obviously overestimating the DR800.

A great reader, good for books, newspapers, PDF catalogues, and technical documents. Great for taking notes by hand, making lists, etc. But it is no computer. Even the latest versions of e-ink are still to slow for that.

[fekhner]

well, even if it is slow, in some cases it can obviously be very useful to have all these additional apps ported for the DR when you do not have your computer with you ...

but as Iñigo and other were saying elsewhere, I also believe that the nicest additional thing to have would definitely be some wifi solution for the DR's.

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by jonathan_s

Many thanks for your encouragement. I'll take a closer look at that material in due course.

I had one problem with following the iOn docs, which is that it requested some packages from debian.o-hand.com. For the last few days I have seen this:

[...]

Is it possible that you could send me the required packages, or have some idea where else I might find them? I'm building on a 32-bit Ubuntu 8.04 virtual machine on i686 hardware.

Cheers,
Jonathan

I used to have my DR development in a (VirtualBox) VM with Ubuntu 8.04 32 bits but some months ago I moved it to my main desktop computer, a Fedora 15 Linux 64 bits.
It's much faster... I mean I don't have to share folders from one machine to the other to copy files or switch the desktop to consult documentation and I even don't need those external packages from debian.o-hand.com, just the packages IREX supplied and some shell scripts to prepare the shell vars environment.

If you are familiar with linux and use it as your main desktop computer, go for this same option and don't use a VM.

Iñigo

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by fekhner

for what it is worth: there seems to be no problem at all with standard pdf annotations using DR800+ on my device.

Good to know

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by fekhner

but as Iñigo and other were saying elsewhere, I also believe that the nicest additional thing to have would definitely be some wifi solution for the DR's.

/me wants to automatically send my rss feeds to the DR to read in the bus...