Thread: Searching relatively cheap Android based E-Book-Reader
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Old 05-21-2018, 05:29 AM   #11
kacir
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Posts: 3,463
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Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
Quote:
Originally Posted by ars View Post
(open linux with terminal would be satisfying too, but that's just a dream).
Have a look at PocketBook.
My previous reader was PocketBook Touch Lux 1 released in 2013.

My daughter still uses it.
The software for this new generation of devices went south, when compared with the "Golden age" PB 360°, but it is still a *very* impressive device.

On my PocketBook Touch Lux 623 I have installed a VIM text editor, terminal emulator (that lets you use the built-in Busybox subsystem), an ftp server (that lets you to connect to PocketBook from a PC on the same LAN and access system files), a third-party e-book vierwer Coolreader and some other stuff. No hacking required.
You connect the device to the PC and copy a binary to an X:\\system\bin or X:\\system\game directory (depending on the version of the firmware),
replacing the built-in e-book reading app was equally easy, you took a third-party fbreader (fbreader180) and placed it with the name fbreader.app to the X:\\system\bin or X:\\system\game directory. The $PATH variable on PocketBook had this path before paths with the built-in binaries. Brilliant!

Long time ago (2009 - when the legendary PB360° was released) PocketBook company released an SDK, tools for modification of user interface, source-code for their built-in e-book reading app FBReader, tools for building dictionaries. They even sponsored a competition on a Russian speaking forum the-ebook.org that produced lots of interesting results - a terminal program, ftp server, fantastic UI modification, FBReader180 with lots of configuration options ...
Also the system architecture was very hacking-friendly. You placed your version of system binary into a directory and it was used instead of a built-in one. If you screwed up, you just connected the reader to PC using USB cable and deleted the your version of binary. It was the same with configuration files. (it doesn't fully work with configuration files anymore, so I switched to a hacked Android-based device)

Check whether there are third-party programs available for the newest PocketBooks and you can have a very hacker-friendly device.
see http://www.the-ebook.org/
http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/
Unless you speak Russian you will need to use translate.google.com, or use Chrome and have the pages automatically translated.
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