Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[starrigger]

A little more feedback for you, Jim. I've got v. 1 and v. 2 running on essentially identical platforms--slightly different builds of WM 6, but identical Axims. I'm reading toward the end of a long omnibus edition, which means a fairly large book file. I find v.2 noticeably more sluggish on page turns, and sometimes I get a black or red screen (using red font on black) when turning pages, which require flipping back and forth several times before I get the actual next page. I've never encountered this in v. 1. Animation is turned off in the settings, but I notice that the page turn nevertheless involves a visible leftward movement of the text in v. 2.

I also managed to crash Freda 2 the other night, when switching between this large book and and even larger one. Crashed it enough that I had to reset the device.

I can't remember if it was before or after the crash...I changed the setting so that Freda now unzips all the files and keeps them unzipped. I thought that might be better for long books, esp. since I have the temp folder on the SD card, which has tons of free space.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

[Marseille]

A day or so after installing the freda beta to my SD card (at least I thought that's where I put it), I began getting endless warnings about my device's storage, which had dropped to 0mb free. I noticed Freda had cache files stored in the device memory, so I uninstalled it and deleted that freda directory, recovering 98mb of space.

I'll reinstall it later today and let you know if it takes up device space and how much after I open a few books again. I don't know how much space had been taken up by the prior version of Freda's files, but no warnings were forthcoming until I installed this one. Are the cache files supposed to be in device storage space if I installed the program to a card? Are they supposed to be so large? I had probably opened about 20 books with the previous Freda version, but only 2 or 3 with this one.

[starrigger]

I've also noticed Freda v.2 pausing sometimes to tell me it's reclaiming memory. That's with the temp files located on the SD card. And that's with only one book open.

On the plus side, I notice that it's rendering centered text correctly (which v. 1 didn't).

[starrigger]

On the question of minimize vs. program exit, I've noticed at least sometimes when I open another app, interrupting Freda, that when I come back to Freda, I get the intro screen rather than the book. Which would seem to suggest the program had shut down. (?)

[Marseille]

Upon re-installing (once again, to the SD card), no new freda directory was reinstalled in device memory. However, once I started opening books, it was recreated. That's problem #1, and if at all possible, I'd prefer Freda's temp files were created in it's install directory when that's on a card, not device memory.

The second problem is that for certain books (converted by calibre), it can't seem to paginate, but in the course of trying, it creates a ton of files in its temp directory. One book, one of my largest at around 1.2MBs, never paginated with Freda, but I didn't care because it worked fine anyway. With the most recent public release version after failing to paginate it gave me a dialog at the bottom with the chapter number followed by a period and the page number (11.4, turn the page to 11.5 etc) even though it didn't know how many pages there were. I've open 4 books whose combined size is a little more than 3 MBs, and in the time, watching the memory consumption in control panel, I've watched the free device storage drop 15MBs.

I'm going to open some more books and see how far it goes, then I'll email the log file and some additional details.

Edit: Well I feel like a moron, I just noticed you can set the temp directory in settings. Still, 100 MBs for a couple of books? I just opened 1 532k epub, and lost over 4MBs to temp files. I suspect my books that refuse to paginate are resulting in much larger temp files over time.

[Jim Chapman]

I've just uploaded a new (102) build of the the Freda 2.0 beta. I've emailed details out to all my panel of beta-testers (I think) - so if you want to receive it, but haven't, please email me at home@jim-chapman.net.

I think it might be worth a word or two on how and why Freda uses storage and memory space on the device, because it's clearly creating some complications.

Here is an over-simplified story: A WM phone has 3 kinds of memory:
1) Program Memory
2) Storage Memory
3) Storage Card
These names are silly, but they are the ones that you'll see on the phone's memory manager screen.
(1) and (2) are like the RAM memory on your PC, except that the content is preserved when the phone is switched off.
(1) is dedicated for the use of running programs; when a program needs 'scratchpad' space, it asks the operating system, and it will be given some of the 'Program Memory'. You, the user, cannot put files in this kind of memory. When Freda complains it has run out of memory, this is the type of memory it is complaining about (it means that the operating system has refused Freda's request for an additional allocation of 'scratchpad' space - there can be all kinds of reason why the operating system might do that).
(2) is the space you normally see in a file explorer on your phone. If you save files to \my documents\..., this is the place they will go. Normally, there is a very limited supply of this kind of memory (maybe a couple of hundred MBs). If you get a message saying that you've run out of storage memory, it means this is full up. It's exactly like the situation where you've filled up the hard disc on your PC. The \Program Files\Freda\ folder is in this type of space, and - because Freda by default keeps its temp files under that folder - you're very much at risk of exhausting your storage memory, unless you tell Freda to keep its temp files somewhere else.
(3) is like an external disc pack on your phone - it's a large supply of additional memory space that works exactly like (2), except that it's (a) a bit slower to access (b) much more copious. Normally you can find it on your phone by looking for a folder with a name like "\Storage Card". If it was always called 'Storage Card' I'd have made Freda put its temp files here - but there are many variants of the name (even in English, never mind the various other languages of the world!).

When Freda opens an epub file, it will create temporary files (in whatever location - 2, or preferably 3 - that you told it to use). It will take roughly as much space as the contents of the EPUB would, in unzipped form (note: an EPUB file is just a ZIP-compressed archive). A 2MB epub contains about 10MB of data in unzipped form. If you view the same file using many different font sizes and settings, this will multiply the amount of temporary space that Freda uses (because tempoary files will be created for each variant of settings that you're using). Freda frees up the temp space for a book when it's removed from the bookshelf (either automatically, as the bookshelf discards its oldest entry once it gets to 20, or manually when you tap 'forget book'). Bottom line: Freda needs quite a lot of elbow room - say 100-200 MB of Storage Card space at a minimum.

If this turns out to be a major problem for many people, I can add features that might help (the most obvious being to let you set a lower limit for the maximum size of the bookshelf).

Hope these comments are helpful.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

[Marseille]

I knew epubs were zip archives, but I didn't realize they actually utilized compression. They seemed so close to my original format's size, but that must use compression too. Sorry for the confusion. I suppose it's possible that I got to the 100MB point with so few opened books on the first install while I was getting the right font and color options on first setup.

For the record I love the new UI/UX, and am glad you did away with windowed mode. It's one less re-pagination trap to fall into.

[JBlyth]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the link to the updated Version 2.0. It is a magnificent and progressive upgrade.

In a few minutes "playing", I found the new layout very intuitive, with the only the "Save Preset" being slightly confusing. The lines below the dialog box say "Check the settings you want to save under this present" - which to me implies that only those items manually checked will be saved. However, it would appear that they are all saved in practice. Or have I misunderstood this function.

I also use a Kobo Reder which has a slightly annoying habit of displaying only the Chapter and page number of the chapter being displayed. It would be really nice for me if there was an option in Freda to be able to mimic this as well/instead of the current page numbering system so it would be easier to "sync" between the two readers. Perhaps even a current chater display alongside the page numbers would suffice.

Regardless, congratulations on another quantum leap forward with your program.

Cheers
John in Sunny Carnarvon - Western Australia

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by JBlyth

"Save Preset" being slightly confusing. The lines below the dialog box say "Check the settings you want to save under this present" - which to me implies that only those items manually checked will be saved. However, it would appear that they are all saved in practice. Or have I misunderstood this function.

Your understanding is correct. To create a preset that will turn the text yellow but leave all other settings alone, I do:
1) Tap the Settings icon, then tap on Text Appearance.
2) Tap Foreground and move the colour sliders to yellow. Tap OK to return to the text appearance screen.
3) Tap OK to return to the Settings screen.
4) Tap 'Actions... > Save Preset'.
5) Tick the 'Ink' box (and leave all other boxes unticked).
6) Type 'yellow' into the 'preset name' text box.
7) Tap OK to return to the Settings screen.
8) Tap Cancel (or 'Actions ... > Use these settings', if I want my text to go yellow now).
I have now created a preset called 'yellow' that, when I load it, should turn my text yellow, but leave all other settings unchanged.
To load that preset, I do:
1) Tap the Settings icon.
2) Tap 'Actions... > Load Preset'.
3) The settings screen should display, with the text appearance showing yellow text
4) Tap 'Actions ... > Use these settings'.
That should leave my text yellow, but all other settings unchanged (because 'ink=yellow' was the only setting that was saved in the preset).

If you're not getting that behaviour, please let me know, because it is a bug.

Originally Posted by JBlyth

I also use a Kobo Reder which has a slightly annoying habit of displaying only the Chapter and page number of the chapter being displayed.

Is that chapter number (with the first chapter numbered at '1') and page number-within-chapter (with the first page of each chapter numbered '1')?
If so, yes that would be fairly easy to implement. Actually, easier that implementing what I have now!

Thanks for the feedback,

Jim

[silkshadow]

First off, thanks for letting me try the beta Jim!

Right off, v2 has fixed my issue with the TOC, so thank you very much for that! Continuing this vein of the positive,

-Overall I like the new version very much!
-I like the new library.
-I like the idea of Calibre web integration but I have not had a chance to test it yet, I will post back when I do.
-I love the ability to save presets by book.
-I like the lock backlight feature, now I can set my system backlight back to 10 seconds to dim.

The things I might like to see starts with the lock backlight. Is there a way to make this permanent? It seems every time I open Freda I have to turn it back on.

-I did like the old top dropdown menu that allowed me to navigate bookmarks, TOC and chapters. Since there are two "hotspots" (top and middle screen clicks) is it possible to have an option to return the former "go" menu (chapters, TOC, bookmark nav) for one of the hotspots then assign the other to shortcuts?

-The library, is it possible to add a "source" dropbox? What I mean is there is an author and title dropdown next to the search box. Could there also be a quick navigation dropbox that just listed the source? So say I have sources of "\storage card\eBooks\News", "\storage card\eBooks\fiction", "\storage card\eBooks\Nonfic", Calibre ODPS. Could there me a drop box that lists them and when I click one it lists all books from that source?

Bug I encountered:

-The auto-open option doesn't seem to stick. I set it to yes and every time I open Freda it doesn't auto-open and I find the setting set back to "no". Its the only settings option that behaves this way for me. To note, I have not done an uninstall and install. I just did an over the top of 1.1 install. I will try to do a clean install later today and see if that fixes it. I am also installing to ROM and using a temp directory on my storage card for Freda. Maybe I should try installing the app to Storage card?

Thanks again Jim, great app - yet again!

[JBlyth]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Your understanding is correct. To create a preset that will turn the text yellow but leave all other settings alone, I do:

That should leave my text yellow, but all other settings unchanged (because 'ink=yellow' was the only setting that was saved in the preset).

[Snip....]

Is that chapter number (with the first chapter numbered at '1') and page number-within-chapter (with the first page of each chapter numbered '1')?
If so, yes that would be fairly easy to implement. Actually, easier that implementing what I have now!

Thanks for the feedback,

Jim

Hi Jim,

I have had another look at the "Save Preset" function, and it does function as you say. It is just rather different from my expectations. However, you have some very good logic in the way you do it. I guess it is an "opt in" rather than an "opt out" approach. Perhaps a "Select All" button could be a consideration?

On the chapter side of things, your summation is correct:-

Chapter 1 of x - Chapter Page 1 of x
Chapter 2 of x - Chapter Page 1 of x

would be total perfection. Having an option of the normal page x of x could be liked by some users as well. Having an option of both would be even better.

The Kobo does - Chapter 15 - 2 of 62 - for example

Cheers
John in Sunny Carnarvon - Western Australia

[silkshadow]

A quick question. I noticed that after I opened a book, the library is able to process it for author, title and series number.

Does this only happen when you open a book? Is it getting the metadata from the filename? If so, is it possible to force it to process all books on adding? Or is it coming from the decompressed epub files somewhere? If I export the ofp from Calibre, is it able to read the metadata from there?

Thanks!

[brewt]

Got to spin it up a little last night - thanks again, Jim, for making this work for everyone.

The unpacking/temp files issues are ok if the file one is working with is small; if it's a large one, say, this: http://home.comcast.net/~brewt.black...y%20James.epub (12 megs compressed, 35 megs uncompressed) the initial unpacking and paginating took way longer than I had to throw at it last night. Not that I know anything about how multi-threaded programming in Windows Mobile works, but is there a way to move that task into the background while starting to read in the foreground? It would at least give the illusion of working faster.

The animation glitches I had seen in previous versions appear to be gone (thank you). Over all the program continues to improve in responsiveness.

I am still having trouble making custom color foregrounds/backgrounds - I can get the grayscale ones to stick, but the color ones don't load into the custom color palette for me.

There seem to be more css calls being utilized - thanks - I can see some indented paragraphs now - woo hoo! I still want to encourage you to recognize more of those, such as recognizing <MsoTitle> as an <h1> variant, and using some kind of "small" type size. For those of us who put in a modicum of effort along those lines, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've built a Mobi version of the Henry James file above (see site at http://home.comcast.net/~brewt.blacklist/site/), which does follow at least some of the css - so seeing the variations are possible on the diminutive screen.

Thanks again for your efforts, Jim. Always a pleasure.

-brewt

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

A quick question. I noticed that after I opened a book, the library is able to process it for author, title and series number.

Does this only happen when you open a book? Is it getting the metadata from the filename? If so, is it possible to force it to process all books on adding? Or is it coming from the decompressed epub files somewhere? If I export the ofp from Calibre, is it able to read the metadata from there?

It's coming from the decompressed epub file.
If Freda gets a book over the air (from an on-line catalog) it will get the metadata from the catalog. Otherwise (i.e. for a book on your device's local file system) it won't get the metadata until you open the book.

Jim

[starrigger]

I'm unclear on the Calibre integration someone mentioned. Does this mean that Freda can download books via the Calibre content server, when the device is connected to the web? What about when it's connected via USB?