Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[Bald Eagle]

Thank you Jim, you are a genius!

Went ahead and installed .net CF and Freda now works.

However (inevitably ) I have a few problems:

• HTML files ending in .html are not recognized, they appear when renamed to .htm (might be a Windows Mobile problem)
  
• leading or trailing spaces in non-empty paragraphs are rendered as squares
  
• (inlined) stylesheet is ignored
  
• <br> tag leads to blank lines between text

I have attached a test file for you.
The same file looks ok (if somewhat small) in Opera.

*edit* Freda reports Version 1.0 (build 325)

Best regards
Eagle

[starrigger]

Freda's jammed up on me pretty good. I tried opening an epub file that I'd unzipped to fix a formatting error, then zipped up again. It works fine in ADE and on my Sony, but when I tried it in Freda, it crashed the program. Now I can't open Freda again. I've deleted the book file, and reinstalled Freda--but still, when I open the program, I get a message that it can't open that book file, and then the program is frozen. This has persisted even after removing the program altogether and installing again.

Any ideas for what I can do? I've been using the program, but now I'm at a standstill with it.

Thanks.

EDIT: I went back and deleted the relevant book file from the temp folder in the program directory. Then I did a soft reset of the PDA. That seems to have unjammed it.

However, I notice now that when I tap or swipe to turn a page, the response is sort of jittery and sometimes delayed. I hadn't noticed that before. (When I reinstalled, I downloaded the last zipfile that you put here, and loaded the Freda6.cab.)

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

EDIT: I went back and deleted the relevant book file from the temp folder in the program directory. Then I did a soft reset of the PDA. That seems to have unjammed it.

However, I notice now that when I tap or swipe to turn a page, the response is sort of jittery and sometimes delayed. I hadn't noticed that before. (When I reinstalled, I downloaded the last zipfile that you put here, and loaded the Freda6.cab.)

I guess that - somehow- Freda's temp file got corrupted. Re-installing Freda doesn't clear the temp files (maybe it should ... but that isn't necessarily what you'd want to happen). Could you send me the /program files/freda/logfile.txt file, and I'll see if I can figure out what caused the problem.

The 'jittering' problem sounds like a memory space issue. Because of the crazy way that WinMo handles memory, you can get a situation where applications have trouble with memory because of which DLLs have been loaded by other applications (it's ugly!). And it can actually make a difference which order you run them in (i.e. launch app1 then app2 = no problem; launch app2 then app1 = app1 suffers memory allocation problems). And all the time the system would report that it has plenty of free memory (but behind the scenes some applications would not be able to use the supposedly 'available' memory). Could you have a think about whether that could possibly be happening in your case. Though to be honest, if it is, there may not be much I can do about it - Freda already tries to be as frugal as reasonably possible with memory allocation. But if you do find that the behaviour depends on which other applications are running, I'd be glad to receive details, and I can do a bit of analysis.

Windows Mobile 7 will sort this out by moving to a more rational memory model. I realise this may not be much of a comfort.

Thanks for using the program,

Jim

[HansTWN]

The easiest way to get rid of memory problems is to install the little add-on cleanRAM and run it if the device slows down. Or do a soft reset, that takes longer, of course. Some ROMs just tend to have memory leaks. With the first user ROM I tried on my Touch Pro2 I had to run cleanRAM twice a day, with the ROM I use now maybe once a week.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

I guess that - somehow- Freda's temp file got corrupted. Re-installing Freda doesn't clear the temp files (maybe it should ... but that isn't necessarily what you'd want to happen). Could you send me the /program files/freda/logfile.txt file, and I'll see if I can figure out what caused the problem.

The 'jittering' problem sounds like a memory space issue. Because of the crazy way that WinMo handles memory, you can get a situation where applications have trouble with memory because of which DLLs have been loaded by other applications (it's ugly!). And it can actually make a difference which order you run them in (i.e. launch app1 then app2 = no problem; launch app2 then app1 = app1 suffers memory allocation problems). And all the time the system would report that it has plenty of free memory (but behind the scenes some applications would not be able to use the supposedly 'available' memory). Could you have a think about whether that could possibly be happening in your case. Though to be honest, if it is, there may not be much I can do about it - Freda already tries to be as frugal as reasonably possible with memory allocation. But if you do find that the behaviour depends on which other applications are running, I'd be glad to receive details, and I can do a bit of analysis.

Windows Mobile 7 will sort this out by moving to a more rational memory model. I realise this may not be much of a comfort.

Thanks for using the program,

Jim

Okay, logfile attached. (At least, I think so.)

The whole process got delayed by my new laptop suddenly going all flaky on USB ports, which required some unscheduled IT work. I'm a little concerned that my Axim, with its patched-in version of WM6, may be causing problems.)

Anyway, I can't really tell you about what other apps might have been open or in what sequence. I generally have Mobipocket Reader open, as well, and I switch back and forth between what I'm reading there and what I'm reading in Freda. Aside from that, I periodically hit the buttons for Contacts, Calendar, etc., by accident and open up apps that I really don't want open. So really, it could have been anything.

Right now, I notice that the pages are changing pretty smoothly. Except that the finger-swipe method of changing page is not really usable, because most of the time my swipes open the menu rather than changing the page. Is there anything I can do to minimize that?

I think I'll look into that cleanRAM utility.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the book that caused the trouble with Freda was one that I'd bought in mobipocket, but converted to epub in Calibre. I then unzipped it to fix an unclosed bold tag, and zipped it up again. I think I remember seeing others mention problems with Freda and books converted in Calibre.

[HansTWN]

And remember to close unused programs from time to time. By default they are left open and running in the background. You can do that either manually, or by a utility such as HTC button. Which you can set to list open programs, and close them when exiting by either long or short press. I set it to long press to close, short press to go back to the home screen and have the program running in the background.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Some ROMs just tend to have memory leaks. With the first user ROM I tried on my Touch Pro2 I had to run cleanRAM twice a day, with the ROM I use now maybe once a week.

Good point. I actually updated my ROM while developing Freda, and noticed an improvement in behaviour (the previous ROM particularly seemed to leak Bitmap memory from within the GWES DLL).

Jim

[HansTWN]

Out of interest, which one are you using? I am using AtomAng's 6.5 CHT with Manila 2.1.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Freda's jammed up on me pretty good. I tried opening an epub file that I'd unzipped to fix a formatting error, then zipped up again.

Did you have Freda configured so that on start-up it would automatically open the last book you were reading? If so, I can see how you might end up in a 'jammed' situation if that book was broken! Fortunately it's a fairly easy fix for me to make in the code (I can just ensure that Freda turns off the 'auto open last book' feature if the book doesn't load cleanly). As a work-around for now, you have two options - either deleting the temp files, which is what you did, or manually changing the settings file - look in /Program Files/Freda/settings.fst and change the line autoopenlastbook="True" to autoopenlastbook="False"


Generally Freda is going to have problems if you edit a book file (because it when opening a book Freda creates temporary .DAT files for all the chapters, and if they are out of sync with the book file, bad things will happen). I will look at fixing this in code (which probably consists of checking file creation times). In the meantime, a reasonable work-around would be to use a different file name (i.e. if you edit a book, save it under a different file name).

Thanks for the feedback,

Jim

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

the finger-swipe method of changing page is not really usable, because most of the time my swipes open the menu rather than changing the page. Is there anything I can do to minimize that?

Freda's definition of a swipe is rather over-simplified:

If, between when you put your finger down and when you lift it, you move by more than 5% of screen height (or width) it's a swipe.

If it's not a finger-swipe, it will be interpreted as a tap (either tap-middle or tap-edge, depending on where you touched the screen, or if your finger is in contact with the screen for more than 0.5 seconds, it's a long tap).

I am using Freda at the moment with control settings:

Tap at edge: Changes page
Tap middle: Is Ignored
Long Tap: Opens Menu
Soft Keys: Change Page
Swipe to change page [ticked] Direction: Up/Down

With those settings, I get a user experience that I can live with. To change page I can either tap the border of the screen or swipe in the middle area of the screen; to get the menu, I just hold my finger still on the screen.

As long as the 'swipe' is more-or-less vertical (actually Freda's definition is just "more vertical movement than horizontal movement") and reasonably long (2 cm is enough), it works.

Do let me know if you have any thoughts on how the UI could be improved.

Thanks,

Jim

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

HTML files ending in .html are not recognized, they appear when renamed to .htm (might be a Windows Mobile problem)

A bug; I will fix it (Windows Mobile gets it wrong, but I can work round that).

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

leading or trailing spaces in non-empty paragraphs are rendered as squares

A bug; I will fix it.

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

(inlined) stylesheet is ignored

This one is a known limitation and actually rather hard for me to work round (I have a parser for style sheets, but adapting so it would parse in-line 'snippets' of style-sheet syntax would be a little tricky). I will be working on this, but it will take a bit longer. In-line stylesheet syntax is discouraged by the purists, in any case, because it entangles content with formatting.

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

<br> tag leads to blank lines between text

A bug; I will fix it.

Thankyou for using Freda, and thankyou for the detailed feedback - most helpful!

Jim

[Bald Eagle]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

This one is a known limitation and actually rather hard for me to work round (I have a parser for style sheets, but adapting so it would parse in-line 'snippets' of style-sheet syntax would be a little tricky). I will be working on this, but it will take a bit longer.

I can see that that will not be easy.

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

In-line stylesheet syntax is discouraged by the purists, in any case, because it entangles content with formatting.

Yes, ok, but it lets me put the style where it belongs, IN the book.

I store my books in HTML and let Calibre convert them. I believe Calibre produces a 'proper' style-sheet when converting HTML to EPub.
I converted the above HTML with Calibre (which produced Test_calibre_0.css from my inlined styles) but the resulting epub file is still not displayed correctly in Freda.

I have attached the file for you.

Best regards
Eagle

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

Yes, ok, but it lets me put the style where it belongs, IN the book.

You've got two ways to put the style in the book: internal stylesheets or in-line styles. Freda can handle internal stylesheets, mostly. What it can't do is in-line styles. When I say 'mostly' I mean that right now Freda can only cope with one internal style-sheet for any given chapter. I admit it, this is rather lame, and I will be fixing it. And your test file will be most helpful to check I've got it all working right.
Thanks,
Jim

[Bald Eagle]

Ah, I believe I was talking about internal style-sheets then...

Since I don't plan to use the HTML directly but want to read the Epub, this is not too important to me (now that I fixed you on this I can admit that).

Sadly the Epub is not working, could you please have a look whether that is a problem with Freda, Calibre or, um..., well... the source?

Thanks
Eagle

[Bald Eagle]

For the record I want to state that, thanks to Freda, my HTC has already superseded my PRS-505 as reading device in the morning and evening transport.

Thank you Jim!