Keboard controlled browser for Kindle 3

[Pipeliners]

Do you like the default Kindle 3 browser?

I don't. Why does it reload page every time i go to previous page? Why cannot it save passwords? And the worst thing is the ugly way to control cursor.

I also tried arora port shipped with qindle. Imho it is ever less useful.

Maybe your know better already built alternative? I was not able to find them.

On my desktop Linux systems I use Vimperator on top of Firefox. This great extension maps the most frequently used features to 1-2 key presses. I do not use hints to follow links on computers with normal mouse but think this can be just great for K3.

I think Firefox is too heavy to run on Kindle. It has a lot of dependencies…
Alternatives I found so far:

• Midori + midorator.
• Luakit.
• Jumanji.
• Uzbl (all above are Gtk ones).
• Any lightweight Qt browser supporting userscripts?

Maybe somebody ported one of these or know better alternative? If no I'll try to port Midori.

And I need an advice then: what is the best way to build Gtk software for Kindle? Link against system Gtk or rebuild it (I tried building Amazon's DirectFB under ELDK but even ./configure failed with sh syntax error). I am not familiar with Gtk (and anything below it), autotools, crosscompilation, software porting… My current system is amd64 Debian testing.

[giorgio130]

Hi! I'm also interested in this area, I'm just waiting having enough time to try I was thinking about Lynx, or other text-based browser for a start. I can't give advice on how to proceed sadly...

[Pipeliners]

As for Lynx, you can e.g. install chroot with your favourite Linux distro (please make sure however to pass --foreign option to debootstarp if your donor machine is not ARM one. Maybe multistrap is better solution). Then you can use native terminal to run Lynx inside. However there are troubles with colors handling running Lynx.

[Pipeliners]

So far I managed to compile gtk helloworld under ELDK:

# using usr/src copied from K3 instead of ELDK's own
# the only exception is for usr/lib/crt1.o  usr/lib/crti.o  usr/lib/crtn.o not present on K3
arm-linux-gcc -Wall -g hi.c -o hi `pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0` -lglib -lgtk-directfb-2.0 -lgdk-directfb-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lgio-2.0 -lpangoft2-1.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lcairo -lpango-1.0 -lfreetype -lfontconfig -lgobject-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -lgthread-2.0 -lrt -lglib-2.0

And it runs. With the following output:

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| DirectFB 1.2.0 |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        (c) 2001-2008  The world wide DirectFB Open Source Community
        (c) 2000-2004  Convergence (integrated media) GmbH
      ----------------------------------------------------------------

(*) DirectFB/Core: Single Application Core. (2011-08-31 03:34) 
(!) Direct/Modules: Unable to dlopen `/usr/lib/directfb-1.2-0/systems/libdirectfb_devmem.so'!
    --> /usr/lib/directfb-1.2-0/systems/libdirectfb_devmem.so: undefined symbol: system_set_mode
(!) DirectFB/core/vt: Couldn't open neither `/dev/tty0' nor `/dev/vc/0'!
    --> No such file or directory
(!) DirectFB/Core: Could not initialize 'system_core' core!
    --> Initialization error!
(#) DirectFBError [gdk_display_open: DirectFBCreate]: Initialization error!

Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0

• The same question again: is dl_open failure fatal?
• … and other directfb errors?
• does «cannot open display: :0.0» mean that Gtk wants X?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Pipeliners]

I've found the solution in this post:
http://weijr-note.blogspot.com/2011/...kindle-dx.html:

# cat >  /tmp/root/.directfbrc
no-vt
linux-input-devices=/dev/input/event0,/dev/input/event1

And then sample application runs. We can make sure by updating eink display:

# echo 1 > /proc/eink_fb/update_display

However it does not react to keyboard presses.
And since it captures input devices and does not release 'em after incorrect (^C from ssh terminal) termination, standard gui does not respond until reboot when .directfbrc gets removed.

You can try on your own risc.

[fbdev]

you might want to look at this.