iLiad ipdf with CPU Throttling

[yokos]

State-of-the-art is using programs which throttle CPU. This saves energy & you get more reading time.
rincewind modded iRex's pdf viewer this way & added some nice features like "remembers pen-settings" or "Hide scribbles". He uploaded the binary in this thread on forum.irexnet.com. Thanks, rincewood!

I attached a installation & deinstallation script.

Oh, Adam B., I hope you get a unbricked iLiad in near future. Therefore I run the script several times, did a reboot, tested the firmware check; I found no problem: so it should be safe for all.

[EDIT]: I updated ipdf binary and changed readme.txt a bit in zip file [rincewind's Mar 23, 2007 version, md5: a6a2650badb6007a34158b064293c6d3 changes: stripped binary, not working easter egg removed.]
[EDIT II]: fake FAQ: Ok, some new ipdf binary was released. I have installed a older ipdf with the script. Do I have to deinstall ipdf with the older script before I can install the new ipdf binary? No! Just remove the old script on MMC/CF, copy the new script to it & execute the script.

[henkvdg]

Originally Posted by yokos

State-of-the-art is using programs which throttle CPU. This saves energy & you get more reading time.
rincewind modded iRex's pdf viewer this way & added some nice features like "remembers pen-settings" or "Hide scribbles". He uploaded the binary in this thread on forum.irexnet.com. Thanks, rincewood!

I attached a installation & deinstallation script.

Oh, Adam B., I hope you get a unbricked iLiad in near future. Therefore I run the script several times, did a reboot, tested the firmware check; I found no problem: so it should be safe for all.

If I understand well, Throttle_ipdf = 1232 KB, Irex_ipdf = 76 KB !
Why is that? Are a lot of libraries replaced? Or is it Rincewind's mods?

Nice work, anyway!
Could someone add search and use of a look-up dictionary. Would make me very glad!

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by henkvdg

If I understand well, Throttle_ipdf = 1232 KB, Irex_ipdf = 76 KB !
Why is that? Are a lot of libraries replaced? Or is it Rincewind's mods?

Nice work, anyway!
Could someone add search and use of a look-up dictionary. Would make me very glad!

My best guess is that the cpu-throttled ipdf wasn't created with the zlib compression libraries. Or maybe there were other libraries or functions that were included with the program enhancements. I haven't tested it, so I do not know.

I have no idea what's involved in searching, so I can't answer that. I think it's on iRex's planned feature list though. As far as a dictionary search, it shouldn't be *too* difficult to program a button that will launch stardict from ipdf. It should run on top of it, so when you close out of the dictionary, your document will be there.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by henkvdg

If I understand well, Throttle_ipdf = 1232 KB, Irex_ipdf = 76 KB !
Why is that? Are a lot of libraries replaced? Or is it Rincewind's mods?

Perhaps he forgot to strip the debug information from the binary?

[henkvdg]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

My best guess is that the cpu-throttled ipdf wasn't created with the zlib compression libraries. Or maybe there were other libraries or functions that were included with the program enhancements. I haven't tested it, so I do not know.

I have no idea what's involved in searching, so I can't answer that. I think it's on iRex's planned feature list though. As far as a dictionary search, it shouldn't be *too* difficult to program a button that will launch stardict from ipdf. It should run on top of it, so when you close out of the dictionary, your document will be there.

Yes, but I can imagine that the library defined appears as a pop-up box when you select a word with the pen and click the library icon in the tool bar, but your solution is OK too.

Searching is available in many PDF viewers. It is nothing special, I think. Just pattern recognition in the PDF file, with a little sophistication. Irex promised it long ago. Why it was not there from the start, I do not understand. Probably not in the source of the software that was chosen.

It is a problem on the iLiad to switch applications. The user interface is very primitive (or simple). As far as I know, you leave the application and return to the contentlister and you choose another application. If you use buttons in a program, you could go to the contentlister without leaving the application, like a MP3 player and it goes on in the background, if we could swith applications fast (and have them running together) we could switch between documents or between documents and notes or diary or webbrowsing, e-mail, or ....

There could be a toggle icon in the tool bar, subsequently switching through the running user applications (or their respective screen-image-memory pages, and attached controls!).
It will take some amount of memory to have a number of applications active simultaniously and, if they are actually running, like the MP3 player, also some processor sharing.

The iLiad is not really meant for too much of that, but a little bit of it would be nice.

[jayk]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Perhaps he forgot to strip the debug information from the binary?

Yup.

>file ipdf
ipdf: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), for GNU/Linux 2.4.0, 
dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

I don't have my dev tools installed in a usable form at the moment, but I'm quite sure that it would be significantly smaller once stripped.

JayK

[jayk]

Attached is the same zip, with the throttle ipdf stripped of all it's debugging info. As you can see, it's significantly smaller. Nothing is changed except the ipdf binary is stripped.

JayK

[yokos]

Originally Posted by jayk

Attached is the same zip, with the throttle ipdf stripped of all it's debugging info. As you can see, it's significantly smaller. Nothing is changed except the ipdf binary is stripped.

Thanks, jayk.
Now rincewind strips the binary, too. I updated the zip-file in 1st post [changed binary to rincewind's lastest version, added in readme "You need Shell Access Package" etc.]

[k2r]

Originally Posted by yokos

State-of-the-art is using programs which throttle CPU.

<nitpick>Throttling means skipping CPU cycles. AFAIK the modified iPDF does use frequency scaling instead. Throttling - if possible - might be a way to save even (a little) more energy on the lowest CPU frequency.</nitpick>

[yokos]

Originally Posted by k2r

<nitpick>Throttling means skipping CPU cycles. AFAIK the modified iPDF does use frequency scaling instead. Throttling - if possible - might be a way to save even (a little) more energy on the lowest CPU frequency.</nitpick>

Thanks for the lesson, k2r. I used the word rincewind has utilised, dummies can only copy & past.
Yamp! I learned a new English word: nitpick.
I like the feature "hide scribbles with dot button", I use it all the time.

[k2r]

Originally Posted by yokos

Thanks for the lesson, k2r

D'oh, actually I'm not the most competent person to teach people about hardware design/powersaving issues. However, cpu-throttling - if possible in hardware and kernel - might even give us an additional way to save (a little more) power, one day.

Originally Posted by yokos

I like the feature "hide scribbles with dot button", I use it all the time.

Yes, it's very useful to me, too. As is the "delete-all-scribbles" trick.

[Mambo]

Scribbling does not work well in landscape mode.
Scribble something move to the next page and come back. It will not be visible, although it is visible in portrait mode.

[narve]

I just confirmed a hunch I had: After reading a book with the excellent power-saving ipdf viewer, the frequency is stuck at 99000. This makes everything a bit slower (but also adds to battery life). Would it be better if the ipdf viewer reset the frequency to max (or to the original value)? Or perhaps make it configurable?

Of course, we could have a separate script "reset cpu freq to max" but that is a bit cumbersome...

[realityloop]

Is anyone working on this for 2.9.5?
*fingers crossed*

[narve]

Yeah, that would be nice... I loved the battery savings!