302 Good news for the owners of 302

[review]

Dear all,
What is the most desperate feature you want on the 302? The most annoying bug you want removed?
As I said the other day, Pocketbook Europe is indeed interested in keeping all owners of 302 devices happy. And as their best evidence to prove that they still fully support the 302 models they have send me a 302 which I have received today.
So feel free to post your comments. Of course it will take me a while to get familiar with the differences to the 903 but if all goes well you can expect that by the weekend you might see already some improvement.
Review

[kacir]

Originally Posted by review

Dear all,
What is the most desperate feature you want on the 301+? The most annoying bug you want removed?
As I said the other day, Pocketbook Europe is indeed interested in keeping all owners of 301+ devices happy. And as their best evidence to prove that they still fully support the 301+ series they have send me a 302 which I have received today.
So feel free to post your comments. Of course it will take me a while to get familiar with the differences to the 903 but if all goes well you can expect that by the weekend you might see already some improvement.
Review

I am confused.

Are you talking about 301 or 302?
Those two are very different machines.
301 is the oldest model. Software compiled for 301 will also run on 360 (just do not use Del button hardwired to some function).

302 is the model that was released much later. It is model with the touch screen, bluetooth, USB host. 302 is the model that same people are grumbling about.

By the way, I am practically jumping up and down with excitement!

Thank you PocketBook.

[review]

Oh, I'm sorry that I mixed up things. In the russian forum they always spoke about the 301+ so I thought this includes 301, 302 (and maybe 360).
So, I have received a 302 and will develop for that model. Will the code developed for 302 run on the 301 models?
Cheers,
review

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

And as their best evidence to prove that they still fully support the 302 models they have send me a 302 which I have received today.

well done Pocketbook - though I think they should have rewarded you with hard cash, too!

[guyanonymous]

Originally Posted by review

Dear all,
What is the most desperate feature you want on the 302? The most annoying bug you want removed?
As I said the other day, Pocketbook Europe is indeed interested in keeping all owners of 302 devices happy. And as their best evidence to prove that they still fully support the 302 models they have send me a 302 which I have received today.
So feel free to post your comments. Of course it will take me a while to get familiar with the differences to the 903 but if all goes well you can expect that by the weekend you might see already some improvement.
Review

Can I inquire as to who you are/what you do for pocketbook? Are you an employee, a programmer, or a customer?

[review]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

Can I inquire as to who you are/what you do for pocketbook? Are you an employee, a programmer, or a customer?

Right now, I'm a customer (recently purchased the 903). Further I'm a passionate and enthusiastic programmer. As of now, I'm in no way officially affiliated with pocketbook and I'm doing the programming in my spare time on weekends and during the evenings.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by review

In the russian forum they always spoke about the 301+

301+ is slightly enhanced version of 301, if I am not mistaken
Bookeen Cybook was the same hardware.

[review]

Just finished porting the djvu viewer with alternative render modes for the 302

See here for download:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...14#post1389214

screenshots:
left: the only render mode of pocketbooks version
right: black and white of foreground layer in my version of the djvu viewer

the modes can be changed while reading with a double click on the corners.

[review]

I just finished to port the newest version of wget for the 302. Wget is the essential ingredient if you want to have a more sophisticated RSS Feedreader (were I developed some in the German from for the 903). Those scripts are a lot calibre like, in the way that you need for each webpage another "recipe" however, the advantage of my project is that you can use them on the go... without a PC or calibre at hand.

There are infinite number of uses for wget basically, it can download any webcontent....

Download here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...59#post1389259

[guyanonymous]

Thanks, I'll check them both out when I get a chance.

I'm appreciative for any development on the 302.

[guyanonymous]

Originally Posted by review

Dear all,
What is the most desperate feature you want on the 302? The most annoying bug you want removed?

I missed your original question.

I'd like

a) to be able to plugin a USB keyboard or use a Bluetooth keyboard in some sort of typing application that saves/opens a .txt file.
b) my notes/highlighted text to be saved out as a .txt file or copied to internal memory to be pasted into a txt file in the above typing app.
c) a working webbrowser that, at the least, will let me log in to my various webmail accounts to check email.
d) a calendar app that syncs with anything...I'd prefer something open like Thunderbird, but would accept Outlook syncing as well.
e) for the PDF browsers to actually deal with forms etc. correctly (and allow saving of that input as the current acrobat browser does).
f) improved zoom control/memory of settings for PDFs. (let me type in the % of zoom I want, at the very least...sometimes the jumps are simply too large). I liked the suggestion I saw earlier (another thread?) to let you draw a quick box around the area you want zoomed
g) to be able to download a book to my device via wifi - from Calibre's server or just from a url/link.

Hope my requests aren't too much!

If you're able to do any of the things Pocketbook hasn't been able to, I thank you.

[fragile]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

I missed your original question.

f) improved zoom control/memory of settings for PDFs. (let me type in the % of zoom I want, at the very least...sometimes the jumps are simply too large). I liked the suggestion I saw earlier (another thread?) to let you draw a quick box around the area you want zoomed

Thats my most wanted feature too. More than anything a way to specifcy % zoom for PDFs will improve this devices capability as "reader" leaving all the other browser aspects et all aside.

Anoying bugs:
1. When the book is zoomed in such that its about 10% larger than the screen, panning doesn't work.
2. quicker search without affecting the zoom setting. (Currently, when you search it takes time proportional to size of book and there is no way to
specify direction of search, it always searches forward.)
3. Ability to select case sensitivity for search.
4. search should warp around once it hits the end of book.
5. More fine-grained panning in horizontal direction (probably through buttons?)
6. Highlighting for pdfs.

I made a detailed post here as well:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=120565

How will you correct these? Do you have access to their code? Is pocketbook granting you access to their code to fix issues? If so this is a great step forward.

[prusaks]

review,
you are the best!!!

There are two functions that I would like to see for pdf files. First is as mentioned earlier x% zoom option. The second is regulating the darkness of font, some books have several fonts and the lighther ones are hard to read. It would be great if you could get it working on pdfviewer.

djvu viewer - your added feature has disabled everything else, can't do anything but go to next page. It has lost all the touch screen capabilities. The new feature is nice but can you make it optional? One book I opened had pictures and they were ruined to say the least with this djvu viewer. The thing that is missing in default djvu viewer is touch screen movement from right to left and l-to-r like in pdfviewer. Right now it allows to go up and down only.

wget - can you give me more information where it should be placed and so on? It does not have the .app extension and I couldn't find any file with that name on my PB302.

I could keep on writing about the things I don't like but for beginning this would be enough I think. By the way are these updates that you are making for fw 15.2?

Thanks mate.

[review]

Originally Posted by prusaks

review,
you are the best!!!

There are two functions that I would like to see for pdf files. First is as mentioned earlier x% zoom option. The second is regulating the darkness of font, some books have several fonts and the lighther ones are hard to read. It would be great if you could get it working on pdfviewer.

djvu viewer - your added feature has disabled everything else, can't do anything but go to next page. It has lost all the touch screen capabilities. The new feature is nice but can you make it optional? One book I opened had pictures and they were ruined to say the least with this djvu viewer. The thing that is missing in default djvu viewer is touch screen movement from right to left and l-to-r like in pdfviewer. Right now it allows to go up and down only.

wget - can you give me more information where it should be placed and so on? It does not have the .app extension and I couldn't find any file with that name on my PB302.

I could keep on writing about the things I don't like but for beginning this would be enough I think. By the way are these updates that you are making for fw 15.2?

Thanks mate.

Hi prusaks, thanks for your feedback.

pdfviewer:
I haven't had the time to commence the work on the pdfviewer but I will keep the comments in mind when I start going through the code. It is always good to have in advance a very clear idea of what one wants to implement and how. So the feature request and discussion should be at the beginning. So I will keep you updated as the work on pdfviewer commences and how it progresses.

djvu viewer:
But first let me comment on "your added feature has disabled everything else":
You're probably right with that. but there are a few reasons to that which I will expand on briefly.

First: this was not a kind of final release for an updated and polished new version. Porting my modifications to the 302 models was done in a rush, so I noticed myself that some things were not working 100% in the updated version. But I'm still working on it and feedback is very important to get to a stage were the software is nearly perfect for all users.

The second problem is that my modifications were not based on the djviewer sources of the djvu viewer you have been using so far. But on the only one which has been published so far:
http://pocketbook-free.sourceforge.n...urcecode.shtml which seems to be rather old. So all additions I made were on that old source code, which may have removed some features you have begun to love in the original version. On my 903 I haven't noticed a great deal of missing features.
The biggest bug I've noticed in the ported 302 version is a problem with the zoom level from the quick menu. You can't select the zoom level with the touchscreen and none of the keys appear to have the function to go to left and right. So that is the first priority. This bug should be removed fairly soon.
So you say there was touch screen based panning in horizontal direction available in the original firmware version? Well, in the source code which I have used as a basis for my modifications there was only the vertical panning I believe. I can certainly add the horizontal panning as well, shouldn't be a big of problem. I will have a look at the source code.

Now, you said something about picture quality or that all pictures are gone. Now, this one isn't a bug. It has something to do with the way how djvu files keep the filesize low. I've mentioned it here and there a few times, so excuse me that I will keep it brief here now: Djvu files store the content of one page in different layers. The background and foreground layers and there is a mask to tell what is background and what is foreground. Now, pictures are usually stored completely in the background and saved with a high compression and low resolution (to keep the filesize very low), whereas text is stored with a less efficient compression so that the readablity of the text is excellent. However, since the text is usually only 5% coverage of the page you will still have only a small file size for the foreground layer.
Now, if you have a bad scan (I've included an extreme example of a bad scan) it will become very hard to read and enjoy it on the pocketbook. Because you won't have the full contrast. I've downloaded a few books from archive.org and they were literally unusable. The foreground was a dark gray and the background of the page was a light gray. This gave a very low contrast between the foreground text and the background of the page.

So my "improvement" was to be able to select which layer to be displayed. The default is now to display only the mask between the foreground and the background. Which will give the highest possible contrast ever. Also since the background is not rendered at all this reduces the processing power and might even lead to fast page flipping times and accordingly longer battery life times. However, since pictures are stored in the background layer, you will not see any pictures at all. So you may ask: What is the point then of calling that an improvement, it is not an improvement it is a bug. Well, the definition of a bug is as follows: A bug is a feature which cannot be disabled. So you would be 100% right if my new feature wouldn't be able to be deactivated. And I agree. So I've added "sensitive corners". Not exactly the corner but the first 25% of the screen in horizontal and vertical direction. So yes, fairly large sensing area. The functions are as follows:

double tap in the top left corner will change the render mode to the native way of rendering all layers: Foreground and background. So in this mode you will see pictures and might have a slightly lower contrast.

double tap in the bottom left corner will change the rendering mode to foreground, so you will not see any pictures

double tap in the bottom right corner will change the rendering to black and white. Also without pictures. This mode is the mode with the highest contrast but with no pictures.

Changing the mode is, as you can see, only a double tap away.

So you read in black and white mode to have the highest contrast and if you think you miss some important informations like a picture or so, you double tap in the top left corner. The page will be redrawn with full grayscale you can see the picture and then you decide if you want to continue reading with this slower rendering mode or if you want to switch back to the black and white rendering mode (double tap bottom right corner).

So the missing pictures is not a bug of my version, it is a feature of the djvu file format and pictures can be displayed in less than 1-2 seconds if you wish to do so while reading.

wget:
if you've never heard of wget before you most certainly don't need it now.
Let me explain: wget is a central function to allow any unix shell script to access webpages and get one webpage with all images etc. But not to render this page on the screen but to get the files. I've used it extensively in my newspaper application I've wrote for the german community. My newspaper application is not really an RSS Reader (as it wouldn't work for a random url) but it is adapted for each webpage. So the german community can get with in a few seconds a freshly rendered version of the news but only from a selected number of webpages. This will also work on the 302 and new recipes can be easily written for any given webpage.

My work is only in the userspace. So I'm not working on the firmware and I don't have the source code of the latest versions available. So this means that my improvements should be (within reason) independent of the firmware but I wouldn't be able to add anything which would require special permission. So anything which is not directly allowed by the system wouldn't be able to be added in userspace.


Hope this extensive and detailed answer helps.

[fragile]

Review,

Would you happen to know where I could get the sources for fbreader for PB302
I've been trying this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pock...ar.gz/download

and it doesn't seem to be the right one. By default it seems to be pointing to the target lbook (hanlin I suppose) and the target makefiles refer to directories
that doesn't exist in the download (example: v3). I could keep trying to correct things as the compile errors appear, but wanted to know if you are aware of different source package, I could avoid a lot of trouble.