Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If I save the presets in version 1.0 and then install 1.1 will they still work? On a different ROM, after recalling the 1.0 presets from a saved file.

Yes they will still work. It'd be a good idea, though, once you've installed v1.1, to go through the presets one at a time recalling and re-saving them (so that you populate the settings fields that exist for v1.1 but not for v1.0). Otherwise, you will have presets that, when loaded, do not update all the settings (for example, loading a v1.0-style preset won't affect the 'background texture' setting, because that setting didn't exist in v1.0).
Hope that's clear (I wrote it and it seems pretty convoluted to me!),

Jim

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

A suggestion I've been meaning to make:

It seems to me that the display would look a lot nicer if hyphens and dashes were not treated as nonbreaking characters--that is, if they would break after the hyphen or dash at the ends of lines. The lines often look really ragged when two words bound together by a dash are carried to the next line. Is this something you can control?

I won't tackle this for the v1.1 release because it's a big subject. But yes, it is on my list of things to fix. The current setup is too simplistic, though it does at least generally produce readable text (if you think it produces an ugly result for English text, you should see what it does to Chinese!). But fixing it will involve substantial changes to the book-loader and the paginating/rendering logic ...

Cheers,

Jim

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

I won't tackle this for the v1.1 release because it's a big subject. But yes, it is on my list of things to fix. The current setup is too simplistic, though it does at least generally produce readable text (if you think it produces an ugly result for English text, you should see what it does to Chinese!). But fixing it will involve substantial changes to the book-loader and the paginating/rendering logic ...

Cheers,

Jim

I should have known it wouldn't be simple. Whenever you get to it, it'll be good, I'm sure.

Jeff

[Marseille]

Impressions: The deeper the menus get, the more I'd like to see the ability to assign keys to menu functions. Since I use Rhodium Keyboard controller, I don't really care what key is assigned since once one is assigned, I can mess with it using that, but a button assignment option like WinMo Media Player has for various functions could be cool tool.

Distant Future (We're talking flying cars future) Dreams: I love reading on my smartphone, and it may forever be my main reading device. But once Pixel Qi or tech similar to it hits the right tablet, I'll want to do a little reading on both, and I'll want my tablet to know where I left off on my smartphone and vice versa.

This might shouldn't concern you at all, since I imagine my ideal tablet might have Windows 7. On the off chance it has WinMo7 though, it would be awesome if Freda could reach and touch itself... err, it's other self, and sync page turns across devices the way whispernet does across kindle and kindle for iPhone.

Personally, I'd love it if that syncing were cloud based, so that instead of having to grab both devices, BT toggle both, press buttons, wait, etc, the one I'm reading would, upon my closing a book or leaving the app, check wifi, toggle on if necessary, drop off a labeled (tags, subject lines, filenames, whatever) data point at a nice open reliable service like one of Google's many outlets, and then upon opening my other Freda it would connect to, say, Google Docs, or Google Reader or GMail for said data point, grab the change, and open where I left off.

I know you've got other more basic stuff on your mind, just planting a seed for the future.

Bug: I haven't upgraded to the version you sent out on 2/07, but in the version from January 25th, switching to the Night preset leaves me unable to bring up the menu at all, which means I can't change the preset or exit the application. When trying to repeat the issue, I switched to windowed mode, it returned to full screen upon choosing the preset (not sure if that part is by design or not). The only way I could get out was to launch another application (care of Rhodium KB controller hotkeys) where I could access the start menu, settings and shut it down in task manager. Fortunately when Freda reopened it didn't automatically reopen the last book (is that part of a safety feature? I have it set to reopen the last book I read, and it does normally. If so, it's genius.), so I could change my preset back before opening a book, and the menu worked again.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

Impressions: The deeper the menus get, the more I'd like to see the ability to assign keys to menu functions. Since I use Rhodium Keyboard controller, I don't really care what key is assigned since once one is assigned, I can mess with it using that, but a button assignment option like WinMo Media Player has for various functions could be cool tool.

It's doable but fiddly, which is why it's not implemented yet
The shortcuts screen in v1.1 might help here (particularly if you assign the short-tap action to bring up that screen).

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

Distant Future (We're talking flying cars future) Dreams: I love reading on my smartphone, and it may forever be my main reading device. But once Pixel Qi or tech similar to it hits the right tablet, I'll want to do a little reading on both, and I'll want my tablet to know where I left off on my smartphone and vice versa.

This might shouldn't concern you at all, since I imagine my ideal tablet might have Windows 7.

The info about what books you are reading and what page you've reached just lives in Freda's 'bookmarks' file, so synching that across multiple devices isn't, in principle, too much of a challenge. In practice, there would no doubt be complications.
As for porting Freda to Windows 7, this would actually be pretty simple. I only haven't done it because there hasn't been much point up to now.

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

Bug: I haven't upgraded to the version you sent out on 2/07, but in the version from January 25th, switching to the Night preset leaves me unable to bring up the menu at all, which means I can't change the preset or exit the application. When trying to repeat the issue, I switched to windowed mode, it returned to full screen upon choosing the preset (not sure if that part is by design or not). The only way I could get out was to launch another application (care of Rhodium KB controller hotkeys) where I could access the start menu, settings and shut it down in task manager. Fortunately when Freda reopened it didn't automatically reopen the last book (is that part of a safety feature? I have it set to reopen the last book I read, and it does normally. If so, it's genius.), so I could change my preset back before opening a book, and the menu worked again.

Yes the behaviour "if something goes wrong while loading a book, disable the 'reopen last book' option" is an intentional safety feature.
As for your problem with loading the presets, that's a bit of a mystery - since the program main menu should always be reachable by one of:
- the enter key (or the centre of the D-Pad)
- a long-tap (more that 0.5 secs) on the middle of the screen
So I guess something broke. If it happens repeatably, could you send me:
- the log file: \program files\freda\logfile.txt
- the night presets file you're using: \program files\freda\presets\night.fst
As you surmise, the 'full/windowed' screen option is one of the things that gets changed when you switch presets.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

[Marseille]

Mea culpa, bug report withdrawn. I thought presets only saved appearance settings, not control settings. My own preset has the middle tap bring up the menu while Freda's prepackaged ones are set to ignore the middle tap. I just got attached to the short middle tap and was completely flummoxed when it didn't work.

[Jim Chapman]

Hi all,

Version 1.1 of Freda is now released, so please go to http://www.turnip.demon.co.uk/jim/freda to find documentation, download links and so forth.

Please let me know of any problems.

Thanks,

Jim

[Houndx]

Hey, I just tried out 1.1 on my WinCE device. It's pretty nice but I was wondering if you might consider compiling a Windows CE 6 version? The only major problems using the WinMo version is that the forward and back arrows cover the top line of text and that fullscreen doesn't work. Fullscreen isn't a deal breaker, but getting rid of the arrows would be awesome. Oh, also the library directory dialogue doesn't work but I got around that.

Beside the first two problems, I just ended up tweaking a few items in the settings file (library directory, center screen action to 1 so I wasn't bringing the menu up constantly, animated scrolling off) and got everything working well enough. There's quite a few people in the Other Devices forum using Windows CE devices who'd really, really like epub and this would fit the bill nicely with those few small fixes.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Houndx

Hey, I just tried out 1.1 on my WinCE device. It's pretty nice but I was wondering if you might consider compiling a Windows CE 6 version?

I'll take a look at it (mainly it depends on whether I can find a device image and compile target for WinCE 6 on the development environment, which is MS Visual Studio 2008).

In the medium term (we're talking 12 months here) I'm going to have to do something about this anyway, as I imagine I will want to build a version for WinCE7 (to run on Windows Phone Series 7).

Cheers,

Jim

[Houndx]

Awesome, thanks!

[yuanlong]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for version 1.1. Just a suggestion on the downloading section of Freda homepage, would it be possible to have the freda filename with its version number ie. Freda6_v1.1.cab?

Just easier to comfirm which version we are actually downloading.

Cheers,
Jimmy

[Andreas]

Hi Jim,

many thanks for version 1.1!

I liked the old version, but the new one really is better, more stable, quicker in pagination ... Great work!

Originally Posted by yuanlong

Just a suggestion on the downloading section of Freda homepage, would it be possible to have the freda filename with its version number ie. Freda6_v1.1.cab?

I'd like to second that.
It would be fine to see on the download page, that a new version is available.

Regards,
Andreas

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Hi Jim,
It would be fine to see on the download page, that a new version is available.

Actually, if you install AppToDate it will tell you automatically.

Jim

[starrigger]

Is the release version of 1.1 different from the beta version I installed a few weeks ago? (I've had some buggy behavior that I've been meaning to report, but I've been offnet for most of the week.)

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Is the release version of 1.1 different from the beta version I installed a few weeks ago? (I've had some buggy behavior that I've been meaning to report, but I've been offnet for most of the week.)

Yes there have been a few changes between the 1.1 beta and the 1.1 release. Actually, if you've been using the beta, you should clear out your temp files before starting up the release version (just delete the folders under Freda's temp folder).
Jim