Kindle Terminal app (sort of)

[Hydron]

Thanks lrizzo, i was trying to get Ajaxterm going a couple days ago myself, but got put off by the installing-python issue. Great timing!

[centaurian]

I successfully compiled Midnight Commander for kindle :-). From ssh it's good. Encoding is ok and mouse is working too. On AjaxTerm is bad encoding (I can rebuild it with ISO-8859-1, but some encoding switch will be nice - especially for different languages (Default <-> UTF8)). But main problem is missing keys (F1..F12, arrows etc.). How Ajaxterm emulate them? How about add some virtual buttons for 'crtl' and 'function key' (for example with mouse click on 'function key' and on keyboard press Q for F1)

[NiLuJe]

Can't remember if mc is using ncurses or slang, but if it's ncurses, check if using the xterm terminfo file bundled with usbnetwork helps. (The one shipped with the Kindle is like a gazillion years old).

(That is, if AjaxTerm does indeed set xterm as TERMINFO, and the browser doesn't mess things up after that. Make sure you have a proper environment set up in your shell too (ie. a proper login shell, not just calling /bin/sh, or source /etc/profile at least).).

Granted, that won't change a thing for the key mapping, but it'll maybe help with the color/ansi escape stuff.

[lrizzo]

i am working on completing the ANSI/xterm support in my version of ajaxterm (it is done in the backend, myts.c, function page_append(). Currently, support is limited to the basic positioning commands and line/screen erase.
Full support for colors and attributes requires a small revision of the code, to keep track of attributes for every single character (right now i only track the cursor position).
Encoding is UTF-8, but the code at the moment only supports plain ascii codes (0-127).

Key emulation instead belongs to the javascript code. i already remapped ALT so that it works as CTRL
(but you lose numbers on the Kindle3, you need to use sym for that) and the 'prev-page' on the left to generate an ESC. I'd avoid depending on mouse clicks on some area of the screen as it takes time to move the mouse to the right position. Maybe shift-alt could be used instead, possibly also popping up a window with the mappings so people don't have to remember them.

[lrizzo]

[removed, it was a duplicate]

[centaurian]

Yes,but in this way it still don't have some keys.


I think, that's best way to add two virtual modifiers - one for CTRL, second for FN.


For example you click on CTRL modifier and on real keyboard on C key -> emulates CTRL+C. Second press on key C only C.
FN modifier keys:

In this way is possible to emulate all keys without too much cursor moving on virtual keyboard.

What do you think?

[thebroker]

6 mounth ago I developed a nice simple Webshell for hacking embedded devices like NAS or E-Book readers.

Is more simple that ajaxterm, but with less features:

http://downloads.plextor.nas-central...ock/webshell.c

[centaurian]

OK. Just by do it yourself metod, I make some changes in ajaxterm.js and implemented full keyboard support and handles some UTF8 characters from terminal.

Changes from Luigi last version:

Virtual keys:
Zoom: Change font size (to better fit to window), tree steps
Alt: Toggle alt key. Real alt key is working too, but by this way, you can press more combinations such as ATL+Q etc. (ALT+Q on real kindle keyboard meas 0)
Ctrl: Toggle Ctrl key.
Fn: Toggle virtual FN key. Shows help image. In this way, you can use F1-F2 keys, arrows, TAB, ESC etc.


Keys on side of Kindle:
Up: Toggle FN key (same as virtual button)
Down: Toggle CTRL key (same as virtual button)

Double UTF8 handling (only some characters).

Screenshots:



Instalation: just replace ajaxterm.js

[centaurian]

Here is compiled MidnightCommander for use in Kindle term. Fully functional.
Just extract it to flash root (/mnt/us/) and start it with:

cd /mnt/us/local/terminal/

Edit:
Added missing libslang.so.2

[ankigodzi]

hey,
how can we use this hack of Ajaxterm for Nell (Kindle DX) which doesn't have a wifi option.
Can we use it on wan?
Is it possible throught USBNet hack. if yes how?

[lrizzo]

Originally Posted by ankigodzi

hey,
how can we use this hack of Ajaxterm for Nell (Kindle DX) which doesn't have a wifi option.
Can we use it on wan?
Is it possible throught USBNet hack. if yes how?

I have not sure but there is probably a better approach, as described below, that we might be able to implement in not too much time.

As the author of "launchpad" mentioned me, and there is code included in his latest version, see

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97636

the Kindle's framebuffer is accessible through /dev/fb with a standard and easy API (the screen is memory mapped, and there are a few ioctls to update the screen).

So we can implement a proper terminal by merging launchpad and ajaxterm as follows:

1. extend launchpad with some option to enter a "terminal" mode where input from keyboard and fiveways is captured (so, not sent to the kindle's framework) and used as below;

2. convert kindle events into keycodes produced by a terminal (with ALT, CTRL, cursors...). This is more or less what ajaxterm.js does .

3. use the code in myts.c (the ajaxterm backend) to send keycodes to a shell, and interpret the responses to update a virtual screen (we need better ANSI emulation)

4. convert the screen into a proper bitmap that we can display in the framebuffer.

The missing code is not particularly difficult, just boring to write: for #2 is purely a translation from js to C, for #3 we need to extend the ANSI emulation, for #4 we need a 7 pixel-wide monospace font (so we can display 80 columns on the Kindle3 which has 600 pixels) and extend the blitting code so it can handle areas that are not byte-aligned (the Kindle3 has 4bpp so a 7-pixel font occupies 3.5 bytes per line; not sure if the DX has 4bpp or less).

cheers
luigi

[jetfin]

Originally Posted by centaurian

I made run script for launchpad. On first run it runs AjaxTerm from /mnt/us/local/terminal/ directory. On second run it kills it.

I can't get this to run through launchpad, it just fails. Here's my launchpad.ini entry:

T = !/mnt/us/local/terminal/terminal.sh > /dev/null

The terminal works fine when I start the server through ssh.... Any ideas?

Also, regarding MC, when i try to run it I get:
./mc: error while loading shared libraries: libslang.so.2: cannot open shared oy

[centaurian]

I added missing library to that archive.

I running it with:

B = !/bin/sh /mnt/us/local/terminal/terminal.sh ;echo 101 >/proc/eink_fb/update_display

It runs script and show lines on screen to show script execution.

What I found, ajaxterm works only, if you are connected to wifi network. After going to sleep it's frozen, so you will need to restart it with double execution of Shift-B.

[jetfin]

Thanks, the launchpad shortcut now shows "Success!" but the server still does not seem to be running... -still works fine when I start it through command line on ssh...

[ranza]

Maybe i just dont get it but i dont have a ctrl key on my kindle? Is it some magic hidden key?