Terminal program for PB622/623

[jtt]

Hi Paolo,

Originally Posted by paolog

could you add a 'free' command in the panel called by the tap in the low left corner?

For istance I've copied some arm binaries in /mnt/ext2/bin/ (I want those there instead to put those in /mnt/ext1/system/bin)

once I need them I have either to type $/mnt/ext2/bin/find (for istance) or to modify the path

It's in the new version just uploaded, the menu has now a new submenu labeled "User command". Just put the commands you often use into a file, one command per line, and copy that to "/system/share/pbterm/user.cmd" (but you can also modify that default file name via the configuration file). The commands from this file are then shown in the new submenu. Note that if a line in that file ends in a '#' this command gets executed immediately, i.e. without the keyboard popping up to let you edit it. As usual, empty lines and lines starting with a '#' are skipped.

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

telpathy

[paolog]

Hi Jens
I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!
btw Happy New Year!

i write because after the fw update (now I'm at the 444 version) the command history shows only the first page, the others are blank

do you think it could be something that can be solved?

bye

Paolo

[jtt]

Hi Paolo,

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!
btw Happy New Year!

Thank you and also my best wishes for the new year to you!

i write because after the fw update (now I'm at the 444 version) the command history shows only the first page, the others are blank

do you think it could be something that can be solved?

Hopefully yes;-) But at the moment I'm still on the 4.3 version of the FW (I tried to upgrade some time ago to a 4.4 version but it broke too much for my liking:-( So I've got to get hold of the newest version and install it to be able to check if I can reproduce this problem - at the moment I have no idea what could be the reasons. I guess with "the first page" you mean what you see when you open up the submenu with the previous commands and the "other pages" are what you expect to see when scrolling down, correct?

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

hi Jens

your guesses are right

anyway we can wait for the last fw release

best regards, Paolo

[jtt]

Hi Paolo,

your guesses are right

Just upgraded to 4.4.463 (from December 25, 2013) and, for the first time since I bought the device, I'm able to connect to my WLAN that uses static addresses (which hopefully will help a lot with development since I now don't have to copy stuff onto the device via USB). On the other hand I still can't reproduce your problem (as far as I understand it): when I open up the menu and then the "Prev.commands" sub-menu I can scroll through all the commands I entered previously all the way down the list (which I have restricted to 50 entries). That's just the behaviour I expected.

As far as I can see there are two things that could lead to the strange effects on your device. First of all, the file that stores the previous commands (system/share/pbterm/pbterm.cmd) could, for whatever reasons, have been damaged and the pbterm application doesn't deal with that gracefully. On the other hand, it might be an issue with the inkview library, i.e. that the FW version you've got installed differs from mine and has some problems. Could you help me by comparing if you also use 4.4.463? And, if they're the same, could you perhaps send me the pbterm.cmd file from your device? That would allow me tp put it onto my device and check what's happening. My email address is jt@toerring.de.

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

Hi Jens

I've the 'old' touch, the 622; the last fw (euro) is 4.4.443 and I've put this one on the reader

The firmware 4.4.663 that you've loaded is for the touch lux 2, the 623.

file pbterm.cmd sent

best regards

Paolo

[jtt]

Hi Paolo,

I've the 'old' touch, the 622; the last fw (euro) is 4.4.443 and I've put this one on the reader

Thanks to the file with the commands you sent me via email I was able to reproduce the problem also on the PB623 with the FW 4.4.663.

I've now rechecked a number of things in the program (especially memory allocations etc.) but didn't find any obvious issues that would explain what's going on. So, at the moment, I tentatively tend to put the blame on an issue in the inkview library (i.e., some hard-coded but undocumented upper limit on the number of entries a (sub)menu can have). Of course, since I don't have the source code for the library, there's no proof - it could as well be some stupid mistake of mine I haven't found yet.

A few tests showed that there seems to be a "magic" number: if I allow only 539 or less entries in the list of commands then the effect seems to go away (at least on my PB623). The moment I raise it to 540 or above again it reappears. I'm not happy with "magic" numbers but currently my only recommendation is to avoid exceeding this strange number of 539 for the 'max_history' value in the pbterm.cfg file (and staying a bit below with e.g 500 might be prudent).

Best regards, Jens

[marzipankaiser]

Will this also work on the new pb626 (touch lux 2)?
Is there a SDK also for the newer versions?
(The pocketbook-free.sourceforge.net site seems to be quite inactive...)
I consider buying one and I'd like to play around with sth. like this.
----
(I hope this is the right place to ask this question)

[jtt]

Hi,

Will this also work on the new pb626 (touch lux 2)?

If you mean the pterm program I would guess it will though, since I haven't a PB626, I can't be 100% sure. But I wouldn't expect that it is that different from the 622 or 623.

Is there a SDK also for the newer versions?

I would expect that it does.

(The pocketbook-free.sourceforge.net site seems to be quite inactive...)

As far as I can see the newest stuff there is nearly 3 years old, so I wouldn't consider it to be very active... But given that the newest version of the SDK is that old and works with the newer 622 and 623 models makes it look rather likely that it will also work with the 626. (The SDK seems to be a bit outdated when compared to what can be found in the libraries distributed with the current firmware versions, i.e. the newer inkview library versions have some new functions never mentioned in the SDK, but the "old" stuff seems to continue to work pretty well.)

I consider buying one and I'd like to play around with sth. like this.

Out of curiosity: what's the advantage of the 626 over the 623 beside it being a bit thinner? I was a bit disappointed when I noticed that it seems to be missing audio...

Regards, Jens

[marzipankaiser]

AFAIK the 626 should have a better light and better CPU+RAM. Well, I don't need audio so it may be the better choice for me.
Regards, Marzipankaiser

[marzipankaiser]

I got my pb626 yesterday and now tried pbterm. As of now (without much testing) it seems to work fine (i.e. it shows a terminal, I can enter commands and get results)

[jtt]

Originally Posted by marzipankaiser

I got my pb626 yesterday and now tried pbterm. As of now (without much testing) it seems to work fine (i.e. it shows a terminal, I can enter commands and get results)

Thanks, good to know;-) Let me know should there be any problems.

Best regards, Jens

[rkomar]

I finally tried this and I have to say it works very well. The user.cmd file is a very nice feature. I even tried starting pbimageviewer.app within the terminal and was able to see the debug messages coming up from that program. Great job!

On a side note, typing on the software keyboard with touch on the 623 is _so_ much nicer than typing with the D-pad on the 902.

[jtt]

Hi rkomar,

Thank you for your kind words!

Best regards, Jens