iLiad Improved contenLister (with installer)

[hansel]

Originally Posted by syltao

Hello All,
Just relating installation using pendrive.
[...]
I think to try "Reflash / Boot from CF".
I'm right ?

Hello Syltao,
I'm sorry to hear your sad story. I can see nothing wrong in what you did. I also looked again at the install scripts: I cannot find what might go wrong...
If the Iliad does not start anymore, I'm afraid you'll have to reflash

I'm wonder what happended:
Can you remember ther error message after choosing 20 items?
Can you look in on your pen drive? Ther may be a logfile called _install.log
Did you change the install script (start.sh) before, or was it the original one?

I hope you get your device working again soon!
Hansel.

PS: If you try the same install procedure again you might try to reboot directly after intalling newLister. It should start with 12 items...

[syltao]

Hello Hansel,

Thanks for your reply.

>Can you remember ther error message after choosing 20 items?
If I well remember something like "error xxxxxxxx:yyyyyyyy" where xxxxxxx and yyyyyy where sequences of numbers & letters.

>Can you look in on your pen drive? Ther may be a logfile called _install.log

Here is the log file:

Starting installation
ERROR: Starting installation
2.12
Copy files...
Edit start script...
SUCCES: newLister has been installed.
Starting installation
ERROR: Starting installation
2.12
No newLister in /home/root/start.sh, not installed?.
ERROR: No newLister in /home/root/start.sh, not installed?.
Starting installation
ERROR: Starting installation
2.12
SUCCES: OK.

Seems that I did more than one installation. I remember that, after the error message appear, when I clic to have 20 items, I click again on installation line.

>Did you change the install script (start.sh) before, or was it the original one?
I didn't modify start.sh

Just need, now, to buy a CF card, to reflash. And try again ! Your contenLister is the application that I was waiting.

syl

[hansel]

Hello syl,

I have no idea where messages like 'xxxxxxxx:yyyyyyyy' come from. never seen them before...

From the logfile I can see that 3 things were clicked:

1. install
2. select 20 items
3. reboot

This is exactly the normal way of installing...

1: the script thinks all went well: it copies files and chages the start script
2: the script fails because it thinks newLister is not installed
3: reboot: nothing can go wrong with that...

It looks as if the start script did not get written properly. I have no clue as what has caused this it should just work...

If you dare try it again, can you add one line to the file 'run_common.sh', with 'set -x' in it?
That would get more info in the logfile. Thus:

#!/bin/sh
set -x
DIR=$scriptdir/..	# always called from a subdir
...

[PhRex]

Hi Hansel,

Thanks a lot for this very desired and appearingly fantastic work.

Unfortunately, I unpacked the archive on a CF and nothing happens when I choose "Install Newlister" on the screen. The green light flashes once, then nothing. Same for reboot or any other option.

It did not work anymore with a MMC card.

My firmware version is 2.12.

Any idea? Did I omit or do anything wrong?

TIA
Philippe

[PhRex]

Oops, sorry! I did not see that Habell had the same issue than me in the previous page and that they were given an answer. I follow those instructions immediately.

[2 minutes later]

And that works... great! Now, I can browse my 80 books from Balzac on 4 pages only instead of 14! I save time, I save my battery energy (less page flips) and I find the interface more beautiful than before! All benefit!

Hansel, if you were a girl, I would kiss you!

[zerospinboson]

is there any way to improve the speed with which the contentlister displays the index pages? it seems a bit sluggish, considering all it has to do is list a bunch of file names.

[syltao]

Hello Hansen,
Sorry to answer so late, until now I didn't find a CF card in my city, and will probably need to order one from outside. Two weeks shipping...
I'l try tour suggested script modification.

syl

Originally Posted by hansel

Hello syl,

I have no idea where messages like 'xxxxxxxx:yyyyyyyy' come from. never seen them before...

From the logfile I can see that 3 things were clicked:

1. install
2. select 20 items
3. reboot

This is exactly the normal way of installing...

1: the script thinks all went well: it copies files and chages the start script
2: the script fails because it thinks newLister is not installed
3: reboot: nothing can go wrong with that...

It looks as if the start script did not get written properly. I have no clue as what has caused this it should just work...

If you dare try it again, can you add one line to the file 'run_common.sh', with 'set -x' in it?
That would get more info in the logfile. Thus:

#!/bin/sh
set -x
DIR=$scriptdir/..	# always called from a subdir
...

[haven]

hansel,
This is not so much a bug report as an FYI.

I just tried to install your improved Content Lister 1.04 using its installer script. While all seemed to go smoothly, I could see no change to content listings after rebooting. On poking around, I saw that I had previously followed your excellent suggestion about being cautious on changes to startup scripts, i.e. chaining /home/root/start.sh to my_start.sh iff an SD card is present.

Therefore, the changes that the Content Lister installation makes to the tail end of start.sh were never being run.

I'm manually patching around this for now, but thought you might want to know.

Maybe someone else will see this and save some time figuring it out. (It occurs to me that if any other apps automagically modify start.sh, that might cause problems like syltao's above.)

EDIT - By the way, if anyone else with a modified startup script needs to install the newlister, you can just set the startup script name in newLister-1.0.4\_files\run-common.sh i.e. fill in the actual filename in the following line:
START='/home/root/start.sh' # the script that starts contentLister

Doing it this way instead of hardwiring it with edits to the startup script allows you to use hansel's installation interface to change the number of files per page.

PS - Works great, hansel ... thanks!

[Navyboy]

Hello,

I appear to be having the same problem that Haven is reporting in the previous post (#53). I downloaded the required file from Irex, that allows 3rd party stuff to be run on Iliad (I take it that all that was required there was for the device to reboot after the download for all to be working right?), then I ran
the NewLister installer (which seemed to do things as the green light flashed
a few times and screen refreshed), then I selected the Reboot option and same thing happened, so I thought all had worked okay.
Not so.
I, too, cannot see any changes to number of items listed - still see same old normal 6 items per page. Ho hum.

So, I think that what Haven says in his post is happening with my Iliad - installer and rebooter do their bits, but whaterver they do is not being acted on by the iliad.

Is there a way to get around this - now, Haven, obviously has, but could someone please explain what needs to be done - in very simple steps, and very simple language. Please? Because what Haven describes makes no sense to me - obviously, I have come in halfway through a process, or whatever, and things that appear obvious to him, are not so for me.

Also, is the correct order of procedure - run installer, select no. of items to display, reboot? Or is it some other order of procedure?

thanks,
Navyboy

[Occam]

Did you unzip in Windows. I initially did this and got a similar response to that you are describing. I gunziped on the iLiad and it worked fine. I suspect it was the winzip tar smart cr/lf option changing the scripts but I have not checked.

[hansel]

Originally Posted by haven

hansel,
This is not so much a bug report as an FYI.

Thanks for reporting this! I've added a note to the top post.

[Pitchfork]

Hansel,
Thanks for a great alternative to the stock contentlister!
I have one request, if you one day decide to release a new version:

I installed the software, and everything was fine - apart from the selected item indicator, which to me looked wrong, so I looked at the install files and found that the look of this is determined by the file newcursor.png. I changed the file in Photoshop to a thin line that goes from top to bottom, and reinstalled. So far so good, everything looked just how I liked it, but upon moving the cursor I found that only the original small area was refreshed and the image is not used when selecting the next item. I understand that the smaller the refreshed area; the faster the refresh, but could you make it possible to refresh the entire height of the cursor, and redraw using the image in a possible future release?

[Navyboy]

Originally Posted by Occam

Did you unzip in Windows. I initially did this and got a similar response to that you are describing. I gunziped on the iLiad and it worked fine. I suspect it was the winzip tar smart cr/lf option changing the scripts but I have not checked.

Hi Occam,

Okay, I'll give that a go - if you tell me how to go about doing it? I am
not aware that you can actually unzip anything on the Iliad. If it can
be done, I sure don't know how to do it. So, how do you do it, and what
other bits of software are required - because there is sure to be something
else needed - there always is?
Sorry, but I am a dumb son of a gun, and I need to be told what to do
in small, easy steps. Intuitive software - there is no such thing!!

Cheers,
Navyboy

[hansel]

Hello Navyboy,

I believe the steps you took to install are o.k. And I don't think the problem has to do with unzipping. I would guess that something went wrong with installing the developer package form Irex. You might try to install some other Iliad program, and see if that works...

I will try to pm you a small test script later today. that will enable you to check if the developer package is active.

Don't give up

[hansel]

Hi Pitchfork,

Originally Posted by Pitchfork

...everything was fine - apart from the selected item indicator, which to me looked wrong, so I ...

Changing the cursor.png is not enough. There is also some (nasty) drawing code involved (see http://iliad.hpelbers.org/irexdox/co...a7b0dbe3ee6edd)

The problem is that the drawing code has hard coded coordinates in it, and uses a hard coded brush in the display driver. A (visually) nice design would require the cursor to adjust itself to the number of items. Due to the poor (software) design this would be a lot of work...That's why I choose a simple 'one size fits all' cursor.