The Glorious iLiad!

[saniko]

Hey all!

I received my iLiad last night and I love it. It also sounds like it has tremendous potential. I'm migrating over from a Sony PRS-505 which I also loved but was pathetic with PDFs.

I installed the Dev Kit and got FBReader, the clock, and the iPDF bookmark update. I tried out using the premade PDFs to take notes and I love it.

Here are my questions:
1) Can the iLiad switch between open files? If I have a book open and then I want to add notes to a separate file, can I not do this?
2) Does the wacom screen have no pressure sensitivity? The text is just plain ugly to me
3) What else is worth getting for it right now? What are the Killer apps?
4) There occasionally seems to be ghosting. What's the deal?
5) I know there is no suspend mode, and while I think that is the biggest negative between it and Sony, I can live with it. How often are the software updates for this tool and what deficiencies can they improve on?

Dude, I love this device. It's slightly slow, but I think it is stylish.

[saniko]

If I could get the iLiad to export into OneNote 2007 or Evernote, I would be in heaven.

[saniko]

Bueller?

[NatCh]

I'm sorry I can't answer your questions, not being an iLiaditte, but I like your sense of humor.

[saniko]

The only major complaints I have with the Iliad are:
1) MMC? WTF? why not go SD?
2) No suspend mode
3) Pressure sensitivity for the WACOM
4) too many potential features!

[mvoosten]

Originally Posted by saniko

The only major complaints I have with the Iliad are:
1) MMC? WTF? why not go SD?
2) No suspend mode
3) Pressure sensitivity for the WACOM
4) too many potential features!

1. SD cards work, although limited to 2Gb if I'm correct

[tribble]

Originally Posted by mvoosten

1. SD cards work, although limited to 2Gb if I'm correct

Most SD cards upt to 1 GB work. 2GB SD will definately NOT work.

[-Thomas-]

Originally Posted by saniko

1) Can the iLiad switch between open files? If I have a book open and then I want to add notes to a separate file, can I not do this?

It's not directly possible, but you may use a trick: If you push one of the four category buttons twice, it will open the last read document in this section. So if you read a book and have your notes PDF into the document folder, you can switch from book to notes by pushing the "docs" button twice. To go back you have to push the "books" button twice again.

2) Does the wacom screen have no pressure sensitivity? The text is just plain ugly to me

I don't know if it's hardware or software related, but the iLiad doesn't support pressure / tilt.

3) What else is worth getting for it right now? What are the Killer apps?

Have you seen iNewsstand yet? It's a Feedbooks / RSS downloader

4) There occasionally seems to be ghosting. What's the deal?

A little ghosting is normal, and it should go away after some refreshes. Ghosting is common for ported apps as a full refresh would take too much time to keep the application usable -> Don't worry

5) I know there is no suspend mode, and while I think that is the biggest negative between it and Sony, I can live with it. How often are the software updates for this tool and what deficiencies can they improve on?

Have a look at Adam's blog about update frequency. The changes between 2.11 and 2.12 were minor.

[axel77]

I cannot find the discussion now, but on http://forum.irexnet.com/ it was discussed, that pressure information is technically available from the device, it just up until now ignored from software. However there is no tilt info available (and IMHO without the iLiad knowing how tilted it is held itself and in which direction the pen is tilted relative to it wouldn't be useable data after all)

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by axel77

(and IMHO without the iLiad knowing how tilted it is held itself and in which direction the pen is tilted relative to it wouldn't be useable data after all)

It would be usable, because that's not the way Wacom tablets work. The pen doesn't "sense" tilt via an accelerometer (and, hence, the absolute tilt w/respect to gravity vector) but using the same grid it detects the pen's position with. Tilt information is relative to the surface of the digitizer grid, regardless of the angle at which the surface itself is angled.

But it's a moot point, because tablets with tilt (the Intuos line) cost about half of iLiad and tilt/rotation sense is limited to Wacom branded tablets and screens, not OEM digitizers.

[sanders]

Originally Posted by axel77

I cannot find the discussion now, but on http://forum.irexnet.com/ it was discussed, that pressure information is technically available from the device, it just up until now ignored from software.

Pressure is definitely available, I tested it. With the included stylus it's not very "smooth" though, but with a "normal" Wacom pen you can very nicely achieve all pressure levels between 0 and 255. It even recognizes the side switch and eraser button.

It won't be trivial to include pressure data in ordinary applications, since this information is "stripped" from the data early on (the applications only get to see position). Writing an app from scratch which takes over the entire device and opens /dev/ttyS0 itself to parse the tablet data would be feasible (and is on my list of "rainy Saturday afternoon" projects).

[axel77]

Originally Posted by sanders

(and is on my list of "rainy Saturday afternoon" projects).

/me hopes for rain

[saniko]

Does this mean that if I get a normal WACOM pen (like the cross executive) that the editing PDFs in the Illiad would recognize the eraser and the pressure, or would this be one of the applications that need to be redesigned?

[axel77]

Originally Posted by saniko

Does this mean that if I get a normal WACOM pen (like the cross executive) that the editing PDFs in the Illiad would recognize the eraser and the pressure, or would this be one of the applications that need to be redesigned?

Not directly, it would mean it would technically be possible if somebody hacked iPDF to use the stylus interface directly + code that features in it.

[sanders]

Originally Posted by axel77

Not directly, it would mean it would technically be possible if somebody hacked iPDF to use the stylus interface directly + code that features in it.

I'm afraid that would be quite a hack. If you would want to read the stylus interface directly (reading from /dev/ttyS0) in iPDF, you would be "competing" with the X server (which is also reading this data). I was experimenting with stopping the X server, but can't seem to restart it (and all the iLiad applications) reliably.