Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

The 'library' list is just a list of all the files existing in some folder structure. About the only way to group the books into categories is to put them into different folders (then you can sort by folder name in the library view, in order to see the categories separately).

I'm of two minds as to whether I should build more sophisticated library-management into Freda, since it would mean implementing a database, plus a range of fiddly functions to spot files being added and removed, to keep the database in synch with the folder structure. And all this work would just give me something which is already done by other programs (Calibre on the desktop, WattPad on the handheld). I certainly won't be including it in release 1.1; after that, I guess I'll see whether it's something that lots of users are clamouring for ...

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

I'm no programmer, but instead of building a database, couldn't you just create a dropdown menu for subfolders, limit the initial list to books in the root book directory, and then display a new list when I select a different subfolder? I'm happy to manage the files in explorer. It's just that scrolling through a list of hundreds of books, even when properly grouped, is a little rough on the brain.

It seems like everything is in place except a slight alteration in how the information is viewed. And by slight I don't mean to low ball the amount of work, I'm just not sure why you'd need a database and extra functions. Couldn't you display the same information you're gathering now in a slightly different way? Not having the directory field on the display would free up extra screen real estate for title and author name as well.

Whether the feature comes or not, I do appreciate the program. My needs may not be mainstream, I get that, and I look forward to whatever path you take the program on. \

For some positive feedback, I've been using it for a couple of days now and it's really fantastic. In addition to being able to read full screen, I love being able to alter the way paragraphs display -- space inbetween, indent is how I read. I don't care whether background images come up anymore because I've found a color combo I love, black background, green foreground. It reminds me of the way my old Palm m500's (monochrome LCD) backlight used to work, and I consider it very easy on the eyes, especially for night reading before bed. I like the quick access to presets as well.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by hakan42

Is there any chance that you might look into AppToDate support for 1.1? Please? Pretty Please?

I'm using Visual Studio to build Freda, and I noticed from the AppToDate page that that seems to pose some challenges. I will have a go at it, though.

Jim

[hakan42]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

I'm using Visual Studio to build Freda, and I noticed from the AppToDate page that that seems to pose some challenges. I will have a go at it, though.

Jim

Regards,
Hakan

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

I'm no programmer, but instead of building a database, couldn't you just create a dropdown menu for subfolders, limit the initial list to books in the root book directory, and then display a new list when I select a different subfolder? I'm happy to manage the files in explorer. It's just that scrolling through a list of hundreds of books, even when properly grouped, is a little rough on the brain.

Hmmm. That might work. One complicating factor is folders-within-folders (for instance, consider someone who has such an unreasonably large number of books that they keep their books in separate folders according to author's first letter, and then for some authors also also split by series - so the whole path to a book might consist of "\Storage Card\Ebooks\H\Harrison, Harry\SSR\01 - The Stainless Steel Rat.epub"). So I'd potentially need a cascading list or tree structure of folder names.
Anyone fancy mocking-up a GUI design for that? Ideally one that uses only .NetCF2 components

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Hmmm. That might work. One complicating factor is folders-within-folders (for instance, consider someone who has such an unreasonably large number of books that they keep their books in separate folders according to author's first letter, and then for some authors also also split by series - so the whole path to a book might consist of "\Storage Card\Ebooks\H\Harrison, Harry\SSR\01 - The Stainless Steel Rat.epub"). So I'd potentially need a cascading list or tree structure of folder names.
Anyone fancy mocking-up a GUI design for that? Ideally one that uses only .NetCF2 components

I wish I could help with that. Out of curiosity--and I'm new to Windows Mobile (1 month ago I was a little shy of being a decade long Palm user)--does the Windows Mobile enviornment allow you to import File Explorer functionality the way virtually every windows desktop application uses Windows Explorer for file open/save etc? So you click "open library" and you get the familiar file explorer interface, hopefully, without you having to build too much.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

Pffffft. Thanks for building it AND taking input... for free no less. On that note, I can't seem to find a donate link for you here or on your freda site. If you took donations via paypal, I'd use it. FYI. I'm not exactly rolling in dough, but I could buy you a couple of beers. I don't know if your post beta plans involve anything commercial or not, but plenty of freeware authors have donate links even if you're going that route.

I'm getting to like freda so much I'm starting to consider, uh, "exporting" my entire library to epub. I liked eReader's Palm app a lot more than I like their winmo app. Other than the built-in online library browser/store, it's largely downhill from the simplicity the Palm version had. In addition to having a lower percentage of screen real estate available to text, and not having a full screen mode to make up for that, it's a freaking labyrinth of menus. And the built-in library browser/store is practically a separate application in terms of the ease of going back and forth between that and the reader, so "built-in" is actually a generous way of describing it.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

does the Windows Mobile enviornment allow you to import File Explorer functionality the way virtually every windows desktop application uses Windows Explorer for file open/save etc?

It does, but the problem is that the file explorer functionality you get is seriously brain-dead - it only lets you see files under certain specified locations ('My Documents', storage card and the like) and it treats subdirectories in a bizarrely unhelpful way. That's why every WinMo application has built its own different way of exploring files. I understand that WinMo 7 will sort this out, if Microsoft ever get round to launching it.

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

On that note, I can't seem to find a donate link for you here or on your freda site. If you took donations via paypal, I'd use it.

Well I'm not in it for the money (I have a day job as an IT Manager in a Bank, for the money). But if you want to buy me a beer, contributions are always welcome and can be sent to my PayPal account (email home@jim-chapman.net, name "Kennington Association", for no very good reason).

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

I'm getting to like freda so much I'm starting to consider, uh, "exporting" my entire library to epub. I liked eReader's Palm app a lot more than I like their winmo app. Other than the built-in online library browser/store, it's largely downhill from the simplicity the Palm version had. In addition to having a lower percentage of screen real estate available to text, and not having a full screen mode to make up for that, it's a freaking labyrinth of menus. And the built-in library browser/store is practically a separate application in terms of the ease of going back and forth between that and the reader, so "built-in" is actually a generous way of describing it.

Yes I am a former user of ereader on WinMo - and one of my guiding principles for designing Freda was "I want to make something that has the least possible resemblance to ereader"

Cheers,

Jim

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Yes I am a former user of ereader on WinMo - and one of my guiding principles for designing Freda was "I want to make something that has the least possible resemblance to ereader"

As guiding principles go, that's not bad.

I used to hate on WinMo a lot back when it was just them and Palm--and as it turns out, I wasn't wrong to. Although I don't regret my TP2 purchase one bit, I'm amazed this OS still kicking (although its demise is newly reported every month, it's still surprisingly strong in the marketplace). I'm doubly amazed that WinMo never "borrowed" any Palm simplicity. MS has never been above ripping off competitors who have good ideas. But I'm completely astounded that at the winmo6 version developers find the file explorer functionality so useless as to not bother with it. That could be a meaningful development advantage and it's exactly what you'd expect to have access to if you were familiar with XP/Vista/7.

Ballmer has promised to get WinMo back on track, but how the crap is it still in this condition? Imagine how dominant they could be if not for, apparently, decades of neglect. Imagine how much more screwed they'd be if Palm hadn't done their own far more thorough Garnet/Cobalt death spiral, and if HTC, spb etc weren't covering up their fugly.

And I'm a Windows Mobile fan. I wonder how their enemies talk about them.

[ill_dawg]

I'm a current WinMo user, and a user of eReader. While I hate a lot of things about that program (speed, format support, layout, etc.) there is one feature that I think is worth preserving. Is it possible to add RSVP to Freda? I've found that, for me, RSVP is the best way to read on the small screen. Currently, the only readers that support it are eReader, and a couple readers that only do plain .txt files. Currently, eReader's RSVP is the best one out there for WinMo imho, because of the way it displays the current word above the current page and highlights the word as the text advances. This way, you can follow along with the paragraph in your peripheral vision without having to worry about scrolling or turning pages. I've read about a hundred books on this thing, despite its shortcomings. I've also amassed an arsenal of tools to convert everything imaginable to .pdb. If there was some way to avoid all of this hassle and get a more functional ebook reader, that would be just the program I was looking for.

Just throwing the idea out there to see if it's possible.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by ill_dawg

IIs it possible to add RSVP to Freda? ... displays the current word above the current page and highlights the word as the text advances.

Yes this is possible; Freda's design certainly supports such a thing. I guess I'd want to implement a box at the top of the page that shows the current word, and a 'highlight' box that moves through the text from one word to the next. When it got to the bottom of the page, Freda would page forward (it would be much harder to implement continuous scrolling). I would need an option to set the speed in words per minute. The tricky case would be a word that was too big to fit inside the RSVP-reading box at the top of the page; I don't know what would be the right thing to do there (maybe just split the word into chunks that are small enough to fit the box, and display them one after the other?).
It's a fairly significant piece of work, so I don't think it will be in version 1.1.
Thanks for using Freda,
Jim

[Marseille]

How complicated would it be to add a minimize option to the pop-up menu? I never leave full screen mode. To even get to an exit option requires closing the book first, and it would be the same number of steps to go to windowed mode first, except then I'd have to go back to full screen once I started using the program again.

It's not a big deal. Right now I just use a keyboard shortcut to get to another program so that when I switch back I don't wait for freda to reopen or deal with repagination. Just a thought.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

How complicated would it be to add a minimize option to the pop-up menu? I never leave full screen mode. To even get to an exit option requires closing the book first, and it would be the same number of steps to go to windowed mode first, except then I'd have to go back to full screen once I started using the program again.

It's not a big deal. Right now I just use a keyboard shortcut to get to another program so that when I switch back I don't wait for freda to reopen or deal with repagination. Just a thought.

That's a great idea. I'm always switching back to windowed mode so that I can then get to the other apps.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

How complicated would it be to add a minimize option to the pop-up menu?

For the v1.1 build at the moment, I have now got two options on the 'Close' menu item: 'Close Book' and 'Close Application' - so you don't need to go to windowed mode before exiting the application. I've also added various features so that when you start the application it quickly brings you back to wherever you were before you last exited. Hopefully that will make this sort of thing go a bit more smoothly.
As for a 'minimize' option, I tried this and it made various strange things happen to the Z-order (which is to say, when the application restarted, it tended not to display the right screen) - so I need to do some more thinking about that.
Anyway, hopefully I'll have the v1.1 build in a fit state to publish in a week or so, and you can see how it works for you.
Cheers,

Jim

[T_Frain_K]

Thats great news Jim.
Thank you for all that work

[Klutzys]

Hi Jim,

I sent you an email recently about the link for the 2003 version directing us to 2005. You mentioned that other users had gotten the 2005 version to work with 2003. So I copied the cab file to the main directory of my iPAQ pocket pc running windows 2003. I clicked the cab file, it installed, I see the reader when clicking on the start button. However, when I click on the reader "freda" it acts like it's trying to open for a second or two (you see the little windows icon timer goingt) then just goes right back to the main mene and the reader does nothing, it does not load.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tammy

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Klutzys

Hi Jim,

I sent you an email recently about the link for the 2003 version directing us to 2005. You mentioned that other users had gotten the 2005 version to work with 2003. So I copied the cab file to the main directory of my iPAQ pocket pc running windows 2003. I clicked the cab file, it installed, I see the reader when clicking on the start button. However, when I click on the reader "freda" it acts like it's trying to open for a second or two (you see the little windows icon timer goingt) then just goes right back to the main mene and the reader does nothing, it does not load.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tammy

Can you send me the log file (\program files\freda\logfile.txt) - if it exists.

I've checked Freda out on the 2003 emulator (using Microsoft Dev Studio) and it works on that ... so it's not an obvious problem. For v1.1 I will do some more work to make a 2003-compatible build, but if you are able to send me the logfile it could point me in a useful direction.

Thanks,

Jim