602 Lynx for pocketbook

[Teorist]

Is it possible to install a text only web browser, such as lynx, on the Pocketbook 602? The reason I ask this is that I feel that such a browser would improve the pocketnews application. It's only weak point, IMO, is the web browser especially when having to use the scrollbars to see the parts of an article not displayed on the viewport.

Thank you,
Teo

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Teorist

Is it possible to install a text only web browser, such as lynx, on the Pocketbook 602? The reason I ask this is that I feel that such a browser would improve the pocketnews application. It's only weak point, IMO, is the web browser especially when having to use the scrollbars to see the parts of an article not displayed on the viewport.

Thank you,
Teo

lynx is based on "ncurses", which is a library for handling character screens. The readers don't have terminals for ncurses to operate over, so it wouldn't be trivial to do the port. As it so happens, I did a fair bit of work writing a curses clone for the pocketbook readers, but it is incomplete in that many curses functions aren't implemented yet. I did enough to allow an old text-based version of sokoban and hangman to be ported, but kind of lost interest after that when I discovered that most curses-based games depend on colour support, which the gray-scale inkview displays can't duplicate very well. Anyway, I'll do a quick test to see how much work it would be to get lynx building with my curses clone, and decide after that whether it's worth continuing.

Edit: Phew, I just looked at the code and this is going to take a few days to figure out. Don't stay up waiting for a quick answer.

[Teorist]

Thank you very much for taking the time to look for an answer to my question! It is really appreciated. I am not too familiar with development on Linux, especially for something like Pocketbook so I am not sure even how to install the sucker even if I found it compiled.

PS: Any text based web browser will do, IMO, as long as it can interface with the reader's input. This would be a great addition to Pocketbooks. Maybe I should ask for the source code from PB but the problem is that I lack time, my Linux programming skills are pretty anemic and I don't even know if I should use an emulator for testing, so I don't mess up my beloved reader (girl friend will skin me alive - I didn't quite get a green light from the Budget when I bought this ).

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Teorist

Thank you very much for taking the time to look for an answer to my question! It is really appreciated. I am not too familiar with development on Linux, especially for something like Pocketbook so I am not sure even how to install the sucker even if I found it compiled.

PS: Any text based web browser will do, IMO, as long as it can interface with the reader's input. This would be a great addition to Pocketbooks. Maybe I should ask for the source code from PB but the problem is that I lack time, my Linux programming skills are pretty anemic and I don't even know if I should use an emulator for testing, so I don't mess up my beloved reader (girl friend will skin me alive - I didn't quite get a green light from the Budget when I bought this ).

I've seen it mentioned in this forum that the "links" browser is provided (rather than "lynx"). "links" doesn't seem to be based on curses, so a one-off port might be easier to do. As far as testing goes, I'm not sure if the emulators support network-related tasks. However, uploading to the reader and testing there is pretty straightforward. You're not allowed to change anything in the main system area, so it's pretty hard to do any real damage no matter how hard you try.

[Teorist]

Thank you, I would like to try that. Can you point me to any resources about installing "links" on the device? I just got it last week, so I am quite a n00b to all this.

Teo

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Teorist

Thank you, I would like to try that. Can you point me to any resources about installing "links" on the device? I just got it last week, so I am quite a n00b to all this.

Teo

I can't help you there. Search this forum for links and see what it says. All I can remember is that someone complained that links didn't have wide character support, so it was unsuitable for use with many languages. The discussion may have been about a rumour that PocketBook was going to provide links in the future.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Teorist

Thank you, I would like to try that. Can you point me to any resources about installing "links" on the device? I just got it last week, so I am quite a n00b to all this.

The pocketbook representative that posts on Russian-speaking forum the-ebook.org said that they dropped the development of Midori browser and that they are going to use links browser in future releases of firmware.
Some people voiced concerns that the Links browser doesn't support many languages. Only latin (and obviously cyrilics) based ones.

[Tulapi]

Originally Posted by Teorist

Thank you, I would like to try that. Can you point me to any resources about installing "links" on the device? I just got it last week, so I am quite a n00b to all this.

Teo

See some information here.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Tulapi

See some information here.

Excellent! That relegates any "lynx" tinkerings on my part to very low priority.

[Teorist]

Oh, very nice! Thank you all!