PRS+: Enhanced firmware for Sony Reader, Folders, Games & more

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by MiK77

You can find the current version here:
http://miksworld.de/prsplus/

Thanks for posting this link. I'm not up to compiling my own so I normally have to wait for the official releases.

I can't believe how much has been added in v2.1 So many options, so few buttons/gestures to assign them all to!

My particular favourites (so far):

• Change fonts with only 2 taps. Brilliant!!!
• Next/Prev Chapter navigation
• Change auto standby time
• Standby current book cover now completely fills the screen again

Thank you Developers Now are you sure you wouldn't like to apply your talents to the PRST1? I'm seeing more features in PRSPlus that actually help me read than anything I've seen written about the various Android apps that people have loaded on their rooted T1s (IMO only, of course)

[quisvir]

sengian:
I've been able to reproduce the problem, but I'm afraid I've some bad news. After some hours of testing, I've come to the conclusion that it's probably the reader running out of memory. I ruled out PRS+ by uninstalling it, and ruled out Calibre + plugin by changing the cache file manually. But even then, disconnecting from usb after making the changes crashed the reader. I did put 4328 epubs on the SD, so I may have been pushing the device a bit further than you did. And it's likely that the limit is lower when PRS+ is loaded than without it, simply because less memory is available. This could explain why in your case it only crashed with PRS+ loaded. In all, it seems this is a problem that can be avoided, but not fixed.

PS: you can enable logging by putting user.config in /Beta folder on IM. The only line needed is the one that changes defaultLogLevel; you can comment out or remove all the others.

jackie_w:
I'm glad you like the new additions, enjoy

[sengian]

Originally Posted by quisvir

sengian:
I've been able to reproduce the problem, but I'm afraid I've some bad news. After some hours of testing, I've come to the conclusion that it's probably the reader running out of memory. I ruled out PRS+ by uninstalling it, and ruled out Calibre + plugin by changing the cache file manually. But even then, disconnecting from usb after making the changes crashed the reader. I did put 4328 epubs on the SD, so I may have been pushing the device a bit further than you did. And it's likely that the limit is lower when PRS+ is loaded than without it, simply because less memory is available. This could explain why in your case it only crashed with PRS+ loaded. In all, it seems this is a problem that can be avoided, but not fixed.

PS: you can enable logging by putting user.config in /Beta folder on IM. The only line needed is the one that changes defaultLogLevel; you can comment out or remove all the others.

This is indeed a bad new. There is no way to handle memory better or to add a swap, optimisation, etc?
I don't know how memory is allocated so I am wondering about it.
Otherwise could it be possible to make a switch ie in PRS+ add an option so that read book are considered unread and read unread. The rationale behind this is that for large book collections the number of book in the list to read is small so that wouldn' t normally be a problem for the reader to handle it.
I can already do this using the read collection, but it would be a nicer and cleaner if a switch was available.

Thanks for PS.

[quisvir]

Unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge of the device's memory management to come up with a way to increase the available memory. We (the developers) have been trying to do that for a long time, since the instability of games/apps is likely to be a memory issue as well. But so far, no luck...

Adding an option to switch read/unread is probably not feasible, but I'll see if I can find a way to mark all books at once, and/or mark a selection of books.

[sengian]

Originally Posted by quisvir

Unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge of the device's memory management to come up with a way to increase the available memory. We (the developers) have been trying to do that for a long time, since the instability of games/apps is likely to be a memory issue as well. But so far, no luck...

Adding an option to switch read/unread is probably not feasible, but I'll see if I can find a way to mark all books at once, and/or mark a selection of books.

I think the problem with this is that you will have the same memory problem. As I have it now even with only 40 unread book, I am still wondering if there isn't a problem with book management.

Anyway, do you think that disabling addons wouldn't be a way to gain memory?
Because another think which could be nice would be to be able to make simply a custom build with only the addons used.

[quisvir]

Do you mean you have 40 unread books out of the 3000, or that you have only 40 books on the card?

Disabling addons would gain only a minimum amount of memory, as most of the games/apps stuff is loaded on demand.

Lastly: adding read/unread switches should be possible, provided it doesn't trigger a complete rescan (the way I'm thinking of doing it would essentially be one by one).

[sengian]

Originally Posted by quisvir

Do you mean you have 40 unread books out of the 3000, or that you have only 40 books on the card?

Disabling addons would gain only a minimum amount of memory, as most of the games/apps stuff is loaded on demand.

Lastly: adding read/unread switches should be possible, provided it doesn't trigger a complete rescan (the way I'm thinking of doing it would essentially be one by one).

40 out of 3000.

Maybe, but I am thinking that something more modularly build at it is fairly modular from what I see could allow 'experienced' people to make custom build with only the selected features. It is nice to have all those features but at some point I think one will have to chose the features wanted as I don't see the memory problem solving itself.

But what I find interesting also is that I reverted to 2.0RC3 and the problem disappeared, so it may not be so clear it is a memory problem or at least it is not a PRS+ memory leak like the one in standby image. I had a problem of lag before which disappeared around this revision.
EDIT: when I say it disappeared, I am meaning that using the normal way to do thing ie mark 40 book as unread and 3000 as read I had no problems.

Anyway, thanks for all your efforts.

[quisvir]

Well, we have to solve the memory problem anyway, if only because the status quo (games/apps being as unstable as they are) is not acceptable in the long run. Although, as the problem occurred (at least on my device) without PRS+ as well, even increasing PRS+ stability (or decreasing its memory use) won't really fix it.

I'm curious whether the crashes I saw without PRS+ would happen on your device as well, though. Do you think you could do a test with 4300+ files to find out?

PS: I'm guessing the number of files on your card and the size of the cache are just about on the edge of where it starts to crash. So without PRS+, no crashes, and with 2.0.17rc3 being 'lighter' than 2.1, no crashes there either. But with 4300 files, you'd probably see crashes in all cases.

[sengian]

I can do it as I have the files even if they are not in calibre, but addding all those files will take some time.

I will post the results after it is finished.

[mimosavj]

Wow, you guys are great. I wonder when you will officially release version 2.1? Should I wait until then to upgrade my reader or should I just use the one provided by Mik77?

[sengian]

Originally Posted by quisvir

Well, we have to solve the memory problem anyway, if only because the status quo (games/apps being as unstable as they are) is not acceptable in the long run. Although, as the problem occurred (at least on my device) without PRS+ as well, even increasing PRS+ stability (or decreasing its memory use) won't really fix it.

You were right at around 5000 I get a reboot also. I am wondering about the hardware of the reader. I would have thought it was enough to handle a little bit more but it was always a problem of the reader, it can accept a SD card but not the books you put on it.

[elcreative]

Can't just be that... I've got a 505 with 25000 books on an SDHC card running an older version of PRS+ as well as a 600 with nearly the same quantity also on an SDHC card and running an older version... it must be something in newer versions rather than hardware or it wouldn't handle my collections.

[albogango]

Originally Posted by Analogus

albogango:

I don't understand why it does not work. Month ago I had to whipe it and it worked that way.
PRS+ is mainly on a hidden part you cannot see. That's why you cannot delete it in a normal way. Even when you formatt the reader.

A.

I was finally able to get rid of it. Thank you for your help.

[sengian]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Can't just be that... I've got a 505 with 25000 books on an SDHC card running an older version of PRS+ as well as a 600 with nearly the same quantity also on an SDHC card and running an older version... it must be something in newer versions rather than hardware or it wouldn't handle my collections.

Do you use the Sony cache? Because if you are not and only search using filebrowser it is not the same. The problem here comes from the creation of collection and loading of cache IMO.
For the 600, I would be really surprised as one of the reason for me to switch to the 650 was the very slow loading of collection/books and I had like today around 3000.

[quisvir]

sengian:
Thanks for testing. It's not that surprising that 1000s of files causes problems actually: the device only has 128MB internal mem, and Sony uses silly xml files for cache instead of a proper database. Although the physicial memory might not actually be the limit it is hitting, but rather an internal limit set in the software.

In any case, there is always Browse Folders, which is great for handling huge numbers of files. So you might want to consider using that, instead of the inefficient Sony cache system.

PS: I did a quick test with making a PRS+ command that marks ALL books as read or unread, and it had no problem with 4300+ files. So I'll add that once I've decided what the best implementation is (it should offer a choice between IM/SD/MS, for instance).