K5 FW 5.x ScreenSavers Hack

[knc1]

None of the KUAL stuff has been tested on a K2.

But if you should happen to discover something that works on your K2, please post a note of it.
(And if I see the post, I will edit "button blob" list in the KUAL thread)

[NiLuJe]

Nope, I think I started working with KUAL after my K2 tests were done. AFAIR, it's mostly the same as a DX, but next time I have some stuff to check on the K2, I'll take a look .

[knc1]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Nope, I think I started working with KUAL after my K2 tests were done. AFAIR, it's mostly the same as a DX, but next time I have some stuff to check on the K2, I'll take a look .

The little I have learned about the device without having one - -
I think of a DX as a "large screen, K2".

Well, anything that you get a chance to try on your K2 will help.

The KUAL stuff **should** support the K2 - -
But due to lack of anyone to make test runs, we got tired of including:
K2: - Untested
in each button description.

No code changes where made to drop K2 support - just lazy editing here.

[NiLuJe]

... And done!

* ScreenSavers 0.10.N:
Some core changes on how the cover & last mode behave internally to be more efficient, and less IO-hungry .
Same treatment for the shuffling of pictures in random/shuffle mode, it should now be very nearly as efficient as on legacy devices .

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

... And done!

* ScreenSavers 0.10.N:
.

You're killing me.....()

[NiLuJe]

@GoSharks: Mwahahahahaha.

[GoSharks]

@NiLuJe-
A thought (and I have absolutely NO idea how much work it is!)...now that your hack is integrated into KUAL, is it possible to have a button that will show what the hacks current 'state' is, similar to what is available in dsmid's BackDoorLock hack? Purely for when (not 'if' ) people have trouble setting up the screensaver hack and getting it to work?....and NO, I'm not looking for another update anytime soon!

[NiLuJe]

It's either on or off, and if it's supposed to be on but the setup is broken somehow, that's logged, and shown on screen. That and checking what happens when the device goes to sleep is usually enough to get an idea of where the issue lies (that's why I edited the fallback image in cover mode: a blank screen is also the fallback behavior of the framework on legacy devices, compared to the "nothing" (just the last thing on screen) of FW 5.x).

As for the various config combinations, that's taken care of with the next KUAL release: it only shows what's applicable to your device, and takes the current settings into account to only show the relevant switches, so that kind of tells you what's currently enabled ;-).

[GoSharks]

Got it!..-should have known better than to question the Master!.....*quietly going back into lurk mode*

[NiLuJe]

I definitely get what you meant though, but, if the process of elimination doesn't help, it leaves stuff that is unfortunately much, much easier to diagnose with a quick look-see at the logs (if possible, live over SSH, at worse from a dumpMessages), than anything else, and thus can't be (accurately) reduced to a simple automated 'Yes/No' .

To recap what I meant by process of elimination:

In 'cycle' mode (ie. not cover or last):
* Got the SO screensavers? Tough luck, it's an SO device, unsubscribe (See the 'Manage Your Devices' section in the 'Manage Your Kindle' page @ Amazon) .
* Got the default screensavers? The install failed (which should be easy to catch during the install process itself), or the hack disabled itself for some reason (that should trigger a warning at the bottom of the screen, and in cycle mode, that's usually because the screensavers folder is empty, or was emptied by the hack because none of the stuff in it remotely looked like a valid image file (on FW 5.x, that means a png file, lowercase).
* Get the default 'Hi, I'm the screensavers hack' screen? There are no custom files in your linkss/screensavers folder .
* Get the last thing shown on screen (or a blank screen on FW 2/3/4) in cycle mode, either straight-away or after a few working custom images? One of the files in your screensaver pool upset the Kindle firmware . That rarely happens on FW 2/3/4 (you're much more likely to see a corrupted image, rather than breaking the whole thing, which is what happens on FW 5.x: once it fails in this way, only a reboot will make the framework try again, even if the next file in the cycle is okay, the framework just appears to give up on screensavers), but on FW 5.x, that means checking the size, format, resolution of each and every file in your pool, to see if it matches the device, and really is a PNG8 (optionally properly dithered down to 16 colors).

* Optionally, in shuffled cycle mode, if something specifically breaks after an autoreboot, it means I messed up .

In last mode:
* It's so simple that I can't think of anything wrong ever happening ^^.

In cover mode:
* Get the default 'Hi, I'm the ScreenSavers Hack, I'm in cover mode'? Either you didn't wait long enough after opening a new book before letting the Kindle sleep, or the book format isn't supported (PDF, Topaz (+ dictionaries on FW 5.x)), or the book doesn't have a cover properly flagged in its metadata (might happen with some weird, old prc files, haven't really checked), in which case a warning is triggered on screen (in verbose mode).
* Get the cover of the next to last book you opened, not the last? Same answer as before . (On FW 2/3/4, that might still happen for the first sleep cycle after a book switch, there's an (ugly) workaround available in the settings for that).
* Get the cover of a seemingly random book? Check that the date/time on your device is sane .

[GoSharks]

@NiLuJe-
Thanks for taking the time to explain...I appreciate it! May I suggest you copy that post and set it as a troubleshooting spoiler in the first post of this thread? I think it will save headaches in the future.

[NiLuJe]

@GoSharks: Good idea . Linked to it in the first post (here & in the k2/3/4 thread) in a new FAQs section.

[NiLuJe]

A set of highly recommended updates! Both because the massive performance improvements are nice in and of themselves, but more specifically because the cover processing stage now puts much, much less stress on the system.

* Python 0.5.N:
Updated binaries, updated Python patchset (fix potential segfault issues with the re module)

* ScreenSavers 0.11.N:
Made some tweaks to the dithering process. It's now more accurate, using the proper color palette of our eInk screens.
Tweaked the ImageMagick build to drastically reduce memory usage. This should prevent it putting too much stress on the system's virtual memory managment (which then means kswapd loops @ 100% 'till everyones happy, and that can take a while), thus being both faster & safer.

[GoSharks]

[NiLuJe]

@GoSharks: I held up for one whole week!