PRS-T1 New Homescreen

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by mrspaceman

this is what I have so far:

Excellent progress, one of these days I'll have to buy a T-1.

You can click the paperclip on the toolbar in the advanced edit window and simply attach the image to your post, there is no need to send us to another site when attaching it to the post will allow it to pop up without leaving the page.

To attach the image to your existing post just click edit, then click the Go advanced button.

[mrspaceman]

thanks for that.
I've edited my post.

I only bought the prs-t1 because it had been hacked, and I could write apps for it.

[porkupan]

Looks pretty cool!

Do you think you can add support for non-epub book types into the home screen? I am talking about the .FB2 and .FB2.ZIP files, which are the formats very popular in x-USSR.

[mrspaceman]

We have two options for our new homescreen.

1. let the original Sony code do most of the work and just display a new UI (the current approach)
this means that only the books that the sony software picks up will be shown.

2. write our own code to grab the books. (which lets us accept all ebook formats)
If you use calibre this is easy as Calibre creates it's own 'database' (actually a text file) which I already have code to parse, but this would be entirely separate from sony's code and you would not be able to use the sony windows reader software.

3. write our own code, but update the sony on device databases. we could do this, but making sure we don't kill the sony software will make it a more time consuming task.

4. Or we could do a mix, read in from sony's on device databases AND read in from calibre files, but then we'd have to check for duplicates, etc...

at the moment, I am working on option 1 as it is the quickest, but if everyone uses calibre then option 2 would be just as easy.

we could have a vote to see how many people use calibre versus sony reader software, so we could work out what people actually want.

I think option 4 will be the best compromise, so we let the sony handle all of it's formats, but read in from calibre any other formats.

you would need a reader installed (I assume that coolreader works for you).

[opitzs]

I am flabbergasted! That was quick! And it looks great.
As I am a Linux user, the Sony Software doesn't work for me anyway, but there are those of course, who don't dedrm ebooks, so if you switched to Coolreader or something similar, those would be left out.
Of course, I don't know if users who don't dedrm who root a device like this...

Anyway, thank you for the screenshot and the work you do!

[mrspaceman]

Here is an apk that people can have a look at to see if it will be of any more use than the original.

please remember that I've only spent a few days on this so far, so it will have bugs and flaw, it may eat your data, reformat all of your drives, cause tornado's, but I am not responsible if it does

(apk has been moved to first post)

[opitzs]

Thank you mrspaceman!
I'll have to wait for the weekend, when I can use a windows pc to root my device. Then I'll give it a try...

[porkupan]

Originally Posted by mrspaceman

Here is an apk that people can have a look at to see if it will be of any more use than the original.

please remember that I've only spent a few days on this so far, so it will have bugs and flaw, it may eat your data, reformat all of your drives, cause tornado's, but I am not responsible if it does

Not bad for a concept. Looks very nice. I wonder if it would go crazy on someone with 5000 books on their reader though.

I don't know how those scrolling lists are organized internally, but perhaps it might be smarter or safer to show those books/covers in small portions. Say, scroll up to 50 (or 15?) recently opened books? Another idea is to organize the "shelves" by the genre, like Netflix or online book stores, but I don't think the genre info can be obtained without some serious parsing of file metadata. If via the Settings the user could select the genres to display on the from page...

I don't have any collections on my reader. Is that why the second and the 3rd "shelves" are empty?

In general, for people with a large library on their readers scanning of the entire memory doesn't make a lot of sense. That's the main premise behind PRS+. It may be a whole another project, but it would be nice to have an option to disable the total scanning, and rely on the filesystem/directory tree instead.

I wonder if it would make sense to have a link to some sort of a file manager, so we could jump directly to the filesystem view? I haven't found a file manager that would look nice on eInk and understand how to open files (except perhaps ReLaunch). Root Explorer is OK for browsing (I wish it was black text on white background, and supported the paging via paging buttons of swipe), but it doesn't know how to open most file types.

[mrspaceman]

okay, the concept is that your currently reading list (starts off as 10 items, but configured via the preferences) is shown as the top shelf.

the next two shelves show two user configured (via preferences) collections.

I agree that it would be better to only show 50 (or so) items in a list and then have a 'next batch' button.
I was also wondering about having buttons at either side instead of scrolling the list, so you press the button and the 'next' set of books are shown.

it's the sony software that does all of the media scanning, and I just grab the info out of their database (only use the internal memory one at the moment)

I don't want to try and disable any of the inbuilt software at the moment, as I wouldn't know what else might depend on it, so for now I'm just adding on top.

if I add in the Calibre metadata parsing, I could grab the tags for each book out of that (although I have calibre set to create collections for my calibre tags and use the tags as genre)

I'm also trying to keep the look and feel as close to Sony's as possible to make users more at home with the app

[mrspaceman]

for people who jump straight to the last page of the forums, I am going to update the first post in this thread with new apk files.

[adbosch]

Sorry for my ignorance, but how do I get an apk-file to work on my T1?

[mrspaceman]

you need to root your T1, then you can copy the apk file to internal storage or an sd card. then you run root explorer, find the apk file and install from there.

If your not sure about rooting your T1, it may be best to investigate that before trying to install this apk. you really do need to be happy with rooting, unrooting before you try this.

[ewandeep]

Probably in your application there is somethink tied to your settings and it does not work well in my sony prs-t1.

If I click on collections a black screen appears and in the second (and third) row of the homescreen, appears the collection "science fiction" and all empty (but I have not this collection, so I think it is yours..)
I hope this helps..

[mrspaceman]

This is only a concept to see what people think.

You have to select which collections you want displayed on the home screen by going into the preferences (press the menu button to get to the preferences).

none of the buttons work yet. they are just there to show a possible layout.

[ewandeep]

Originally Posted by mrspaceman

This is only a concept to see what people think.

You have to select which collections you want displayed on the home screen by going into the preferences (press the menu button to get to the preferences).

none of the buttons work yet. they are just there to show a possible layout.

you are right, (of course, you are the author), I did not think there was a menu...

The layout is very useful to scroll many (recents) books and collections.
Just we miss a folder explorer, maybe you can configure one (or more) button to associate to a particular android application.
Thank you for your work