Android Gingerbread

[gsparks2]

What CC capabilities are not available when using CC on a device running Gingerbread (Android 2.3.6)?

I have an old device I am configuring as a backup reader. The device is not upgrade-able to a more recent Android version. In CC Settings, one or more options are replaced with a statement that some options are not available because the device is running Gingerbread.

Thanks!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by gsparks2

What CC capabilities are not available when using CC on a device running Gingerbread (Android 2.3.6)?

I have an old device I am configuring as a backup reader. The device is not upgrade-able to a more recent Android version. In CC Settings, one or more options are replaced with a statement that some options are not available because the device is running Gingerbread.

Thanks!

A quick scan of the code shows:

• Locking open the grouping drawer
• Changing the language
• Scroller management
• The auto-connect-at-time feature (new feature appearing this week)
• Home screen widgets (new feature appearing this week)
• Home screen shortcuts (new feature appearing this week)
• Certain "Home button" (icon in upper left corner) functions such as closing dialogs
• Certain page styles
• Display of full HTML in comments
• Correction of colors for e-ink devices
• Accurate display of hierarchical items in the grouping drawer

I may have missed a few.

FYI: Starting this year, if a new feature or an improvement can work even marginally better if we exclude Gingerbread then we do so. That is why the home screen widgets & shortcuts and the auto-connect option are not on Gingerbread. At some point we might choose to stop development for Gingerbread, in which case users will be "stuck" at the last Gingerbread-enabled release we made.

[gsparks2]

Thank you for your detailed response. I have an old device that I am setting up as a backup reader. It is a Samsung Infuse. I have tried to upgrade past Gingerbread but cannot due to hardware limitations. I bricked it several times trying.

My main reading device has Android Lollipop.

Again, thank you.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by gsparks2

Again, thank you.

You are welcome. It was worth the few minutes to quantify what the changes were. Hadn't done that before.

[gsparks2]

I appear to have run into a brick wall on number of books I can put on the Gingerbread device. All goes well until I hit 12,401 books then all transfer stops with error message that file cannot be created.

I tried with book folder in internal storage and hit the limit.
I uninstalled CC, reinstalled CC with book folder on external SD card. Hit limit again at 12,401 book files.

The external card appears to be formatted by Gingerbread with Fat32. There is an inherent limit to number of file entries using FAT32 that may be the culprit.

Note that with the Lollipop device there are no problems with 16k+ books on external SD card which uses ext4 file system.

Not asking for any fix (I don't believe this has anything to do with CC) or help, just wanted to share info. However, if you have comments I will welcome them.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by gsparks2

I appear to have run into a brick wall on number of books I can put on the Gingerbread device. All goes well until I hit 12,401 books then all transfer stops with error message that file cannot be created.

I tried with book folder in internal storage and hit the limit.
I uninstalled CC, reinstalled CC with book folder on external SD card. Hit limit again at 12,401 book files.

The external card appears to be formatted by Gingerbread with Fat32. There is an inherent limit to number of file entries using FAT32 that may be the culprit.

Note that with the Lollipop device there are no problems with 16k+ books on external SD card which uses ext4 file system.

Not asking for any fix (I don't believe this has anything to do with CC) or help, just wanted to share info. However, if you have comments I will welcome them.

AFAIK the limit for the number of files on FAT32 is large, more than 200 million. However, that limit only matters if the number of "clusters" is sufficiently large. Each file/folder takes at least one cluster.

Have you determined whether or not the system thinks that the SD card is out of space? If your card has 65,000 clusters (the minimum is somewhere near that) then it is easy to imaging that 12,000 books could consume that many clusters, counting formats and folders.

I suppose that there could be some limit in Gingerbread itself, but this is rather hard to swallow.

One thing you could try is to turn on CC's UUID naming scheme. That reduces the number of folders to one and the number of files to the number of books.

[gsparks2]

Thanks. The Device does not show that all space has been used when the limit is reached. For internal storage, there was 3gB left and for external SD card there was 8gB left.

I will try the UUID naming scheme and see how that works.

fyi I was looking at this: http://android.stackexchange.com/que...directory-size

[chaley]

Originally Posted by gsparks2

fyi I was looking at this: http://android.stackexchange.com/que...directory-size

That says that the max number of files in a given folder is 65,500 or thereabouts. Unless you are using the root of the SD card and have a lot of other stuff in there, you shouldn't be reaching that limit.

[gsparks2]

Ah! I interpreted this to say that there was a limit of 65,500 entries in the file allocation table for a given folder and that file names that exceed the 8.3 length would use additional entries in the FAT, from 2 to 13 entries per file. If that were true then 12,401 files with long file names could use up the 65,500 limit if and only if the file names required over 5.x entries per file.

I will let you know how the UUID works out.

Thanks!

[gsparks2]

Using the UUID function, CC has blasted through the 12,401 number and still going strong.


Edit: It stopped transferring at 13k+ books.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by gsparks2

Ah! I interpreted this to say that there was a limit of 65,500 entries in the file allocation table for a given folder and that file names that exceed the 8.3 length would use additional entries in the FAT, from 2 to 13 entries per file. If that were true then 12,401 files with long file names could use up the 65,500 limit if and only if the file names required over 5.x entries per file.

I reread the document and you are right.

Originally Posted by gsparks2

Using the UUID function, CC has blasted through the 12,401 number and still going strong.

My calculations are that the UUID name will take 3 slots and the short name 1, so it should hold around 16,000 books.

Now that I understand what is going on, a better solution is to change the save template in the wireless device driver in calibre. Something like

{author_sort:.1}/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} ({id})

should work well. It creates a parent folder named with the first letter of the first author in author_sort, then a subfolder named with the first full author in author_sort, then the actual file named with the title and the calibre id to disambiguate if there are multiple books with the same author / title.

EDIT: if you do this, be sure to turn off the UUID option.

EDIT 2: You can change in mid-stream if you want. The wireless device driver remembers if a file is already on the device and will use its current name, ignoring the template. New files will use the template.

[gsparks2]

Thank you. I will try the save template change.

[gsparks2]

I went to Preferences>Sending books to devices and entered the template editor and entered the string {author_sort:.1}/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} ({id})

The Template Value: box shows "EXCEPTION: Value: unknown field id".

Edit: I tried several different templates in this dialog including the default. no matter what I do the filename shows up on the device in the format Title - Authors (id).format with no folder structure at all.

[chaley]

Two points:

1) What version of calibre are you running? I ask because copying the string from post 11 then pasting it into the text box you mention works fine for me.

2) You make the change in the SmartDevice App interface plugin. You can get there while connected by right-clicking the Device button and choosing "Configure ...", or while not connected by going to Preferences / Plugins / Device Plugins / SmartDevice ... .

[gsparks2]

Calibre 2.25 64 bit

I suspected I was in the wrong place. Thank you!