Quote:
Originally Posted by curstpriest
Honestly the only thing worth using in duokan is the PDF viewer, possibly DJ-VU (if you really need it) because it's got better features like darkening/zoom and it's faster.
Other than that, it just doesn't do much that the kindle doesn't do already or can't be done with conversion.
DOC/CHM/EPUB support VIA duokan appears to be accomplished only through temporary conversion. This conversion takes place each time you open the book into the temp folder.. so the reader doesn't view the file natively... you might as well just convert it to MOBI and use that.
This problem with conversion leads to other problems - formatting errors, missing/misaligned graphics/images, and missing characters.
The TTS engine is poor, and every time you initiate it, it spits out a string of Chinese.
3-g browser doesn't work (because amazon's proxy uses a device-specific encryption key) Even if they did do this and it worked, it's quite likely that amazon would be able to EASILY detect their version of the browser.
Overall, it's just not finished enough to be anywhere close to being useful. Too many bugs, too few features. Not only are there some bugs with random crashes/restarts, but USB sometimes does not work. Even if you can get around all of these flaws - the poor translations, truncated text, misaligned menus, malformed/misaligned images in books - you still have to deal with missing characters with accents and whatnot that cause words to lose meaning.
If amazon were to do an update allowing for the following, this type of custom firmware would not be necessary:
1) custom user fonts (through GUI menu, so you can easily change multiple fonts)
2) better pdf tools: darken, crop, scroll/zoom faster
3) file browser / directory structure based "collection" view
4) proper image viewer (with archive support)
5) metadata search tools + cover display (some people just want that)
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you seem to be reviewing Duokan as if it were a potential replacement for Kindle OS, but it's not designed in that way. also, i can't say i've found any random crashes with yet, i think you're being overly harsh.
i think it's pretty obvious that Duokan is geared towards PDF users, and as a PDF viewer it's leagues ahead of my Kindle DXG, i can crop everything perfectly and darken text. it's also much more efficient and quicker at rendering. for me that alone is worth the download.
other great things about Duokan:
- proper folder support so i can have sub catagories
- i can access existing Kindle library without having to duplicate anything
- quick dual booting so i can switch back to Kindle OS in about a minute or so
- PDFs: text flow, font change, note taking and dictionary look up.
- built in support for user screensavers
- fully customisable fonts
- can change page flip speed
i'll admit i don;t use it for ePUB or mobi reading because i can quickly use calibre and go back to Kindle OS for that. i'm sure the missing character thing will be fixed quite soon, they only just released the english support afterall.