launchpad -- yet another hotkey manager for Kindle

[geekmaster]

[This post is intended to inject a little humor and education into this thread that is relevant to recent posts. Please do not take it as any kind of criticism or contempt. Just a little advice from an "old-timer". Thanks. ]

Originally Posted by hawhill

That search box really has nothing to do at all with "the command line", i.e. a shell prompt. The single quote (') isn't dangerous at all. In the search box it just has no meaning that would have helped with your problem. On a typical shell command line, it would introduce a string. The ">" that the shell displayed is a continuation marker, telling you that you're still in the course of entering a string. You mark the end of such a string with another single quote ('). This is all horribly Off-Topic in this particular thread, so I stop here.

@anonimo200: What hawhill said is all documented in "The Manual" (the 'T' and 'M' in "RTFM").
RTFM is considered by many to be "The First Commandment of Technology", and it may have first appeared in print in 1979 on the Table of Contents page of the LINPACK Users Guide. RTFM was in common use in the US Air Force in the early 50's as well, but nothing in print is known to have survived from that earlier time.

RTFM links:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/R/RTFM.html
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs/299a/?srp=12
http://xkcd.com/293/
http://www.readthefuckingmanual.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM

A variant of RTFM is UTSL:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/U/UTSL.html
(Yifanlu referred geekmaster to "The Source" on the IRC channel!)
[ This may be and but I think it's required knowledge at this point. ]

EDIT: This is cool too (been there, done that):
http://catb.org/jargon/html/R/RTFB.html

And, on a related note: while FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is commonly pronounced "fack", how do you pronounce the acronym for "Frequently Unanswered Questions" (in the all-too-common "me too" threads scattered across the net)?
http://traevoli.com/fuq.php

[anonimo200]

All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you and sorry for the offtopic.
Great forum with great people who really help the rest of us (both of you :-) )

[Tegan]

Noob at rooting Kindles here... I gave in and installed Launchpad when I saw I could rotate the screen quickly and keep the screensaver from coming on, and I also like the idea of having the ability to record with my Kindle. So I put those in, but now I'm having an annoying problem when taking notes with the Kindle.

I keep accidentally rotating my screen and turning on my recorder while typing because I can't seem to get the timing right on the SHIFT and then letter.

Is there a way for me to change the Introducer key to the ALT key instead, or will this cause problems? If so, how do I go about doing it? Keeping in mind that I can't telnet into my Kindle, and all I've tried editing so far is the ini files. I changed "Introducer = Shift" in the launchpad.ini to "Introducer = Alt", but it didn't work.

I couldn't get the recorder to work until I shortened the key combo to just one letter. I've never been able to get any combination longer than SHIFT-X to work at all. My old fingers can't type fast enough or something. If changing the introducer to alt wouldn't break something else, that's what I'd prefer to do.

Edit: D'oh, I've got a K3SO. Just in case anyone needs to know to help.

[Matan]

Originally Posted by Tegan

Is there a way for me to change the Introducer key to the ALT key instead, or will this cause problems? If so, how do I go about doing it? Keeping in mind that I can't telnet into my Kindle, and all I've tried editing so far is the ini files. I changed "Introducer = Shift" in the launchpad.ini to "Introducer = Alt", but it didn't work.

The ALT key is handled differently from other modifiers (such as SHIFT) on the K3, because of the ALT+top row = numbers mapping. When ALT is pressed, no event is sent to the application, only when another key is pressed then two events are sent (or one for a number key without ALT if appropriate).

[Tegan]

Originally Posted by Matan

The ALT key is handled differently from other modifiers (such as SHIFT) on the K3, because of the ALT+top row = numbers mapping. When ALT is pressed, no event is sent to the application, only when another key is pressed then two events are sent (or one for a number key without ALT if appropriate).

So... that's a "no" then?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Dumb it down for me?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Tegan

So... that's a "no" then?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Dumb it down for me?

Okay, here is a "For Dummies" version:

You CAN assign a different introducer key for launchpad -- just not the Alt key. Alt is special. It does not even return an event showing that it was pressed, until AFTER another key is pressed, and even then, it may not return an Alt key.

For example, Alt followed by Q returns only a single keycode, which is a numeric 1.

Any *other* key could be used as an introducer key though. 5-way keys would require support by launchpad, and may not be supported as an introducer key.

That being said, it is possible to use an Alt key as an introducer key with suitable modifications to launchpad and/or its config files, but it would add the undesirable complication that top row keys (on kindles with no numeric keys) could not be used as the second key in a hotkey sequence.

[h1uke]

Originally Posted by Tegan

My old fingers can't type fast enough or something

try to increase the hot key interval by editing [Settings] section
in launchpad.ini file. By default it is set to 0.7 second

HotInterval = 700

which is, probably, not enough for you.

Of course, then you have to re-read settings by pressing

Shift Shift space

Hope this helps,

h1uke

[Tegan]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Okay, here is a "For Dummies" version:

You CAN assign a different introducer key for launchpad -- just not the Alt key. Alt is special. It does not even return an event showing that it was pressed, until AFTER another key is pressed, and even then, it may not return an Alt key.

That makes sense, thank you. And clarifies what Matan said so I get it, now. I'll consider my options. I may be able to think of a better choice that will work for me.

Originally Posted by h1uke

try to increase the hot key interval ...

Excellent, I'll try this too. Thank you.

By the way, I love Launchpad. I love being able to rotate the screen quickly, love being able to stop the screensaver from going into effect (I often sit in meetings with PDF files and need to have just one section of a PDF showing for a long time), and I really love having a possible stealth recorder, though I haven't used it much. Yet. I'm glad I risked the install with my technical inexpertise, it's been very useful.

UPDATE: Changed my introducer to dot, and after a couple of weeks it's working great for me. I always pause after typing a period anyway, so it has worked out perfectly. Again, thanks for Launchpad!

[louhike]

Hi,
I've installed Jailbreak then Launchpad. These installation go flawless but shortcuts don't do anything, it just opens the searchbox when I type something. I' have a Kindle 3 EU version with the 3.3 update. Do you have clue please?

[perry261]

Originally Posted by louhike

Hi,
I've installed Jailbreak then Launchpad. These installation go flawless but shortcuts don't do anything, it just opens the searchbox when I type something. I' have a Kindle 3 EU version with the 3.3 update. Do you have clue please?

I am also having same proble. My kindle is kindle keyboard 3GWifi with 3.3 firmware. The installation goes without any problem . But just opens a search box when I type launchpad shortcuts.

[elementai]

Just a quick hint, if you've disabled Amazon updates via "mv /etc/uks /etc/uks.disabled", all 3rd party .bin packages installation will fail too. Took me some tries to realize that simple fact.

Originally Posted by dsmid

If you want to turn you Kindle into a dictaphone, just unzip and copy this file to your launchpad folder.
A S command (= Shift,A,S sequence) then starts a new recording, A E command stops it.
The recordings are stored in [USER STORE]/records by default, you can change it by editing RECDIR variable in the ini file.
E.g. changing to "music" will give you an option to play the records with MPlayer.
Generated filenames contain date, time and .wav extension:
2011-02-28_09-32-06.wav

Always make sure to stop the recording or you will run out of space after some time.

This adds some further improvements to dsmid's Dictaphone mod, thanks dsmid and Gismo!

This version will transcode recorded audio directly into MP3 format on-the-fly using the LAME encoder, using about 40-43% CPU and ~100mA extra in the process.

The resultant file is encoded as a 128kbits/s 44.1KHz mono MP3 in the format [2012-01-21]-[14.08.55].mp3

Currently, you will need to have installed Optware for the Kindle and then the LAME package for this version to work. I may make a .bin installer for this if there is enough interest.

[esunk]

This seems nice and all, but how the heck do you install it? There doesn't seem to be any real installation instructions in the README or the first post. How the heck do I get to /mnt/us? Do I need to install another hack, if so what?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by esunk

This seems nice and all, but how the heck do you install it? There doesn't seem to be any real installation instructions in the README or the first post. How the heck do I get to /mnt/us? Do I need to install another hack, if so what?

From your questions, it looks like you have a lot of reading to do to understand this stuff. This forum has a sticky that lists the various apps and hacks. Each of them has a README file. You must read the README files to understand how to install these apps/hacks/packages, and what other packages must be installed first.

To answer your first question about how to install a it:

There are dedicated wiki pages for the K4NT and the Touch, but this hack refers to the Launchpad hack that only runs on Kindles with keyboards (K3 and earlier). It also needs optware, but to use that you need to learn a little about linux loop mounts, and general command line shell usage. And to install a package such as LAME, you need to use ipkg. There is also an opkg alternative package manager available on this forum. Or you could install apt-get and install packages from the full Debian ARM package repository. But beware -- you can fill a 2GB loop mount rather quickly if you try to install all the cool stuff you find in the package repositories.

To answer your second question about locating /mnt/us:

/mnt/us is the same location as the USB Drive you see when connect to a host PC in USB Drive mode.

For example, if your Kindle is mounted in Windows as drive K:, then any references to /mnt/us/folder/README.TXT translate to K:\folder\README.txt

If your Kindle is mounted on Ubuntu Linux, then any references to /mnt/us/folder/README.TXT translate to /media/Kindle/folder/README.txt

Some Kindle hack installation instructions assume that you are using an SSH or telnet shell on your Kindle with a USB networking or Wi-Fi connection, so you will need to translate any paths using one of the methods provided above, if you wish to install them in USB Drive mode.

[esunk]

Thanks geekmaster! I'm actually familiar with Linux and have even read the whole 18 pages of the Duokan thread, but it left me with more questions than answers. Different versions of Kindles and Duokan each requiring different installations and all the instructions are not just pretty vague, but scattered in different posts of different threads and sometimes even in Chinese!

I mean apparently I have to install a couple hacks... then install an old version of Duokan, then install Duokan Lite, then install Duokan 2012, just to get the latest Duokan installed on on My K3 keyboard v3.3 611680021.

From what I can tell they're cool projects, but the documentation could use some work.

BTW If I jailbreak does it void the warranty and is there a way to unjailbreak it?