Feedbooks.com: Beta released - Page 10

techReader · 10-05-2007, 12:26 PM

[QUOTE=Hadrien;102884]Haven't made a delete newspaper action yet, mostly because I'm not sure how such an action should behave. For private newspapers, it's simple: deleting the newspaper. But for public newspapers it's a lot more complicated. Let's say that 20 members also subscribe to your newspaper. Should we also delete the newspaper and therefore those 20 members wouldn't be able to use it anymore ? I need some extra thinking on all this...
QUOTE]

Hadrien,

I agree there needs to be a separate case for public and private newspapers, when the number of subscriptions > 0. I was only experimenting with a private newspaper. But wouldn't the following logic cover both private and public cases?

If the "current viewer" = "newspaper creator" AND # subscriptions = 0 then allow delete.

That should work unless you count the creator of the newspaper as always having subscribed, in which case the #subscriptions could be checked against 1 instead of 0.

Cheers,
T.

flamaest · 10-05-2007, 02:56 PM

I love the feedbooks site BTW!

About the public vs private feed issue:

When a user adds an RSS feed to their account, feedbooks should catalog that feed and update it's own public repository of all feeds added by all users, so the site is not connected to any single user's list of private feeds.

About dealing with Newspapers and RSS feeds:

I would suggest making user newspapers simple aggregations of RSS feeds, but keep the actual RSS feeds as a separate source list for the user to manage.

So the user would have an RSS feed list and a newspaper list.

When you create a newspaper, the RSS feed list should show up and individual RSS feeds would be selectable with a checkbox indicating which RSS feeds belong in that newspaper.

When you delete the newspaper, the RSS feed list remains for addition into a new newspaper.

When a user deletes an RSS feed by itself, the feed should be removed from any of the user's newspaper/s which has this RSS feed listed.

About the caching feature:

I would also recommend seeing about implementing the caching feature mentioned before in the thread. I have noticed at certain times of the day, most of the downloaded PDF feeds are empty, but later in the day they will contain data.

Sort of like something is timing out and just feeding a PDF with no content.

I mostly don't care if the feed is a few hours old. At most I will pull daily so if I miss an article or two it won't matter much.

PS: I am buying the Sony cradle and was wondering if the FB-sync tool was working with libprs500 yet?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 12:10 PM

Hello everyone,

Sorry for this late answer to all of your questions, but we've been quite busy with the epub output and the API. Now that our API is open to anyone, it should be very easy for anyone with decent programming skill to create software using Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand_api

About the news section: we need to support cache on the RSS feeds in order to output epub files. This means that for the upcoming weeks, we'll focus on both cache and epub for the RSS/newspapers.

Flamaest: You've got some pretty good ideas here. Displaying the list of RSS feeds in the newspaper edit screen for example.
I'd like to create some sort of "fork" system too. If you discover a newspaper that you really like but that need some extra editing to suit your taste, you could basically create a newspaper using this one as a template. Much easier than having to add manually all the RSS feeds.

For the libprs500 output on our sync tool: we can make this work, but auto-sync won't work. This mean that instead of simply plugging your Sony PRS-500, you'll also need to press sync on the tool.

Is anyone using our sync tool with the PRS-505 ? I know that the 505 can automatically sync with a local folder. Should be very easy to sync and read multiple RSS feeds with the 505 everyday.

flamaest · 10-18-2007, 01:44 PM

Yes, manually pressing "sync" on the feedbooks-sync-tool would be OK.

I noticed this sync tool can't remember it's settings when restarted, is that a feature?

The 505 sounds great, but I just got my 500 and can't see moving to a 505 anytime soon. I hope Sony adds some of the 505 functionality to the 500, like the folder sync feature. I wonder if this is hardware based, if so, maybe these features won't make it to the 500.

Thanks Hadrien!
Fabian.

kovidgoyal · 10-18-2007, 01:52 PM

hadrien the 505's sync feature only works if sony's software is running, which makes it pretty pointless. If you want that feature it should be pretty easy to script on top of libprs500 using the windows scheduling services.

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flamaest

Yes, manually pressing "sync" on the feedbooks-sync-tool would be OK.

I noticed this sync tool can't remember it's settings when restarted, is that a feature?

The 505 sounds great, but I just got my 500 and can't see moving to a 505 anytime soon. I hope Sony adds some of the 505 functionality to the 500, like the folder sync feature. I wonder if this is hardware based, if so, maybe these features won't make it to the 500.

Thanks Hadrien!
Fabian.

Honestly, the auto-sync feature for the 505 is hardly hardware-based: you need to launch the new eBook Library to sync the files. They could easily add support for the 500 on this feature.

The sync tool should remember it's settings when restarted though, at least, it remembers mine. We really need to push things forward in the upcoming weeks on both caching and this tool. But now that the API is open, basically anyone could create such a tool too, in a different way, or for different OS/devices.

Quote:

hadrien the 505's sync feature only works if sony's software is running, which makes it pretty pointless. If you want that feature it should be pretty easy to script on top of libprs500 using the windows scheduling services.

I agree that it's hardly a real auto-sync feature. By the way kovidgoyal, have you checked Feedbooks API ?

kovidgoyal · 10-18-2007, 02:40 PM

I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

For Feedbooks you won't have to do much work on the files with both PDF and epub support for the 500/505. Although some PRS-500 users might be interested in an epub to LRF conversion if Adobe DE is not available on the PRS-500.

kovidgoyal · 10-18-2007, 04:46 PM

epub to LRF should be trivial. LRF to epub will be a bit more of a trick though all the infrastructure is already in place in libprs500, it just needs the loose ends tied up.

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

epub to LRF should be trivial. LRF to epub will be a bit more of a trick though all the infrastructure is already in place in libprs500, it just needs the loose ends tied up.

TOC support might be a bit different compared to what you already have for HTML -> LRF in your Epub -> LRF tool. Although the .ncx file should be pretty easy to parse too.

kovidgoyal · 10-18-2007, 05:14 PM

Isn't ncx based on opf? I already parse OPF files in html2lrf

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Isn't ncx based on opf? I already parse OPF files in html2lrf

In the OPF file, you list all your .xml files while in the .ncx file you create a real TOC.

Unzip one of our files and you'll see the difference.

Or here:
OPF: http://www.hxa7241.org/articles/cont...tml#contentopf
NCX: http://www.hxa7241.org/articles/cont...07.html#tocncx

kovidgoyal · 10-18-2007, 07:15 PM

Ah ok I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I'm writing the converters. thanks :-)

Hadrien · 10-18-2007, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Ah ok I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I'm writing the converters. thanks :-)

OK. Hope our experience with .epub will be helpful too if you have any question :-)

Hadrien · 10-22-2007, 12:28 PM

Search feature updated both on the site and for the API. Advanced query should now be supported: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/search#advanced_query

10-05-2007, 02:56 PM	#137
flamaest Groupie Posts: 155 Karma: 1044459 Join Date: Jul 2007 Device: prs-500	I love the feedbooks site BTW! About the public vs private feed issue: When a user adds an RSS feed to their account, feedbooks should catalog that feed and update it's own public repository of all feeds added by all users, so the site is not connected to any single user's list of private feeds. About dealing with Newspapers and RSS feeds: I would suggest making user newspapers simple aggregations of RSS feeds, but keep the actual RSS feeds as a separate source list for the user to manage. So the user would have an RSS feed list and a newspaper list. When you create a newspaper, the RSS feed list should show up and individual RSS feeds would be selectable with a checkbox indicating which RSS feeds belong in that newspaper. When you delete the newspaper, the RSS feed list remains for addition into a new newspaper. When a user deletes an RSS feed by itself, the feed should be removed from any of the user's newspaper/s which has this RSS feed listed. About the caching feature: I would also recommend seeing about implementing the caching feature mentioned before in the thread. I have noticed at certain times of the day, most of the downloaded PDF feeds are empty, but later in the day they will contain data. Sort of like something is timing out and just feeding a PDF with no content. I mostly don't care if the feed is a few hours old. At most I will pull daily so if I miss an article or two it won't matter much. PS: I am buying the Sony cradle and was wondering if the FB-sync tool was working with libprs500 yet? Thanks again, Fabian. Last edited by flamaest; 10-06-2007 at 01:14 AM.

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10-05-2007, 12:26 PM	#136
techReader Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2007 Device: new Iliad owner!	[QUOTE=Hadrien;102884]Haven't made a delete newspaper action yet, mostly because I'm not sure how such an action should behave. For private newspapers, it's simple: deleting the newspaper. But for public newspapers it's a lot more complicated. Let's say that 20 members also subscribe to your newspaper. Should we also delete the newspaper and therefore those 20 members wouldn't be able to use it anymore ? I need some extra thinking on all this... QUOTE] Hadrien, I agree there needs to be a separate case for public and private newspapers, when the number of subscriptions > 0. I was only experimenting with a private newspaper. But wouldn't the following logic cover both private and public cases? If the "current viewer" = "newspaper creator" AND # subscriptions = 0 then allow delete. That should work unless you count the creator of the newspaper as always having subscribed, in which case the #subscriptions could be checked against 1 instead of 0. Cheers, T.

10-18-2007, 12:10 PM	#138
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Hello everyone, Sorry for this late answer to all of your questions, but we've been quite busy with the epub output and the API. Now that our API is open to anyone, it should be very easy for anyone with decent programming skill to create software using Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand_api About the news section: we need to support cache on the RSS feeds in order to output epub files. This means that for the upcoming weeks, we'll focus on both cache and epub for the RSS/newspapers. Flamaest: You've got some pretty good ideas here. Displaying the list of RSS feeds in the newspaper edit screen for example. I'd like to create some sort of "fork" system too. If you discover a newspaper that you really like but that need some extra editing to suit your taste, you could basically create a newspaper using this one as a template. Much easier than having to add manually all the RSS feeds. For the libprs500 output on our sync tool: we can make this work, but auto-sync won't work. This mean that instead of simply plugging your Sony PRS-500, you'll also need to press sync on the tool. Is anyone using our sync tool with the PRS-505 ? I know that the 505 can automatically sync with a local folder. Should be very easy to sync and read multiple RSS feeds with the 505 everyday.

10-18-2007, 01:44 PM	#139
flamaest Groupie Posts: 155 Karma: 1044459 Join Date: Jul 2007 Device: prs-500	Yes, manually pressing "sync" on the feedbooks-sync-tool would be OK. I noticed this sync tool can't remember it's settings when restarted, is that a feature? The 505 sounds great, but I just got my 500 and can't see moving to a 505 anytime soon. I hope Sony adds some of the 505 functionality to the 500, like the folder sync feature. I wonder if this is hardware based, if so, maybe these features won't make it to the 500. Thanks Hadrien! Fabian.

10-18-2007, 01:52 PM	#140
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,389 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	hadrien the 505's sync feature only works if sony's software is running, which makes it pretty pointless. If you want that feature it should be pretty easy to script on top of libprs500 using the windows scheduling services.

10-18-2007, 02:40 PM	#142
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,389 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

10-18-2007, 04:46 PM	#144
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,389 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	epub to LRF should be trivial. LRF to epub will be a bit more of a trick though all the infrastructure is already in place in libprs500, it just needs the loose ends tied up.

10-18-2007, 05:14 PM	#146
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,389 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Isn't ncx based on opf? I already parse OPF files in html2lrf

10-18-2007, 07:15 PM	#148
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,389 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Ah ok I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I'm writing the converters. thanks :-)

10-22-2007, 12:28 PM	#150
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Search feature updated both on the site and for the API. Advanced query should now be supported: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/search#advanced_query