JBPatch

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Dr.Frankenstein

I am trying to remove the ads on my 5.1.0 FW Kindle Touch.

Moderator Notice

Mobileread disapproves of and does not condone circumventing the display of advertisements in advertisement-subsidized devices.

If you don't want adverts on your Special Offers Kindle, just pay the fee to Amazon that's the difference between the Special Offers price and the non-Special Offers price.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Mobileread disapproves of and does not condone circumventing the display of advertisements in advertisement-subsidized devices.

If you don't want adverts on your Special Offers Kindle, just pay the fee to Amazon that's the difference between the Special Offers price and the non-Special Offers price.

Well, that is a new policy. It is contrary to what I was told in PMs a few months back, about the site owner saying SO removal was legal and therefore okay. Did that policy change recently?

I realize that we neither encourage or discourage removing ads, being a personal moral choice, but your notice above ads a new DISAPPROVES message.

Is your new policy documented somewhere that we can read (besides in your new warning that conflicts with previous information from site moderators)?

It is hard to follow rules that keep changing without warning.

Is it safe for us to ignore your warning? Can we still try to help people who ask questions that indicate that they have made moral choices different from our own? What are the consequences of ignoring your "conflicted" warning? Inquiring minds want to know.

Please provide a link to the new mobileread rules that state CLEARLY that discussing removal of kindle special offers is not allowed. Thanks.

Also, am I free to publish here the PM from a site moderator (pdurrant) that I received saying that discussing removal of Special Offers *IS* allowed? P.S. I sent you a PM including that message.

[geekmaster]

We have a legal right (in the USA and other countries) to modify devices that we own, despite any Terms of Service. Also, we have a legal right to freedom of speech. Of course, those rights can be limited ON THIS WEBSITE by local website policies, but those policies and rules should be clear and obviously visible without needing to hunt for them, and they should not be in conflict with OTHER messages from the site moderators. We need a CLEAR decision on this, not just arbitrary and conflicting warnings. IMHO.

Also, many of us developers here have changed OUR policy of not helping people with special offers removal AFTER amazon released the new firmware (such as 5.1.0) in which they began being actively hostile to us "unauthorized" developers. I and others applied for OFFICIAL developer status, but amazon IGNORED our requests, and their new mistreatment of us deserves the loss of respect that we previously had for them. We will continue to do what we can to repair the damage that they have done to their new firmware (and our hacks), and we will continue to adapt our hacks to overcome their annoying obstacles (including SO removal hacks, until they are CLEARLY outlawed here).

P.S. We understand the difference between morality and legality, and as stated by the mobileread website owner, although Special Offers removal may not be moral, it is legal and therefore okay to be discussed here.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Well, that is a new policy.

No. Same policy. Messages about ad removal are currently permitted and won't be deleted.

Ths "...disapproves of and does not condone.." wording has been used in mod comments on such posts since the beginning of the year.

[geekmaster]

UPDATE: After a PM discussion, it appears the "disapproves of" in the warning was not meant in the meaning of the synonymous "does not allow", but is rather meant as "does not recommend". At least that is my understanding at this point. But we already know that the site rules (and the opinion of most devs) is that this procedure is neither recommended or forbidden (a neutral stance) making it a personal moral choice. In which case, when there are entire OTHER threads devoted completely to ad removal, then WHY was the warning even given here, in a thread devoted mostly to other stuff?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No. Same policy. Messages about ad removal are currently permitted and won't be deleted.

Ths "...disapproves of and does not condone.." wording has been used in mod comments on such posts since the beginning of the year.

Somehow I missed (or did not notice) the "disapproves of" before. If you look up the definition of "disapprove" you can see that "disallow" (i.e. "forbid") is a synonym, and that was my concern. To me "permitted" and "disapproved" (disallowed/forbidden), are in definitive conflict.

Thank you very much for clearing this up with the "currently permitted" comment. We already know that this is a moral decision that we do not encourage. However, we no longer discourage like we did in the past, due to amazon's recent treatment of new firmware that actively seeks out and damages some of our "unauthorized" enhancements (or just bricks the kindle during an update).

[yifanlu]

Holy crap, this is awesome. I love you

I haven't even looked at your code yet, but since I have the official sdk (so I can test code easily), could I use this to say, make a cover view for the home screen?

[aditya3098]

There is a cover view for 5.1.0 and there is a jbpatch on this thread that enables the hidden cover view. It is still very proof of concept.

[yifanlu]

Originally Posted by aditya3098

There is a cover view for 5.1.0 and there is a jbpatch on this thread that enables the hidden cover view. It is still very proof of concept.

I need to catch up on some reading :O

[sdrs]

[QUOTE=ixtab;2131029]Hmm... that's weird. Can you narrow this down, perhaps by providing the output of "showlog" (ideally with "debugOn.sh" done previously)? Thanks!

Can you kindly explalin how to export this log file ? thank you.

[ixtab]

ok... just another short status report.

jbpatch Version 2 is around 80% done.

I'm still fiddling around with the configuration UI for individual patch parameters. Looks good so far, but it's nowhere near complete, and there's still quite some work to do...

PS: @sdrs:

showlog > /mnt/us/log.txt

will probably do. Then just post the log.txt here.

[ixtab]

Finally...

after a lot of work, here is a preview of the new version, for those of you who are adventurous enough to install it.

It is not completely finished yet, but at least the important parts are working, and I feel like I have been announcing it for long enough to finally show some results.

Because it isn't finished, there is also no installer yet. Installation is simple though, just follow this procedure (this assumes that you currently have jbpatch 1.3.1 installed; otherwise, you may see no result at all):

$ scp jbp2a.zip root@kindle:/tmp/
$ ssh root@kindle
[root@kindle root]# cd /tmp/
[root@kindle tmp]# unzip jbp2a.zip 
Archive:  jbp2a.zip
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.passwd.jar
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.LegalIllegalPatch.class
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.tts.jar
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.scrollbar.jar
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.AllRotationsPatch.class
  inflating: jbpatch/com.mobileread.ixtab.patch.devcert.jar
  inflating: jbpatch.azw2
  inflating: jbpatch.jar
[root@kindle tmp]# stop framework
framework stop/waiting
[root@kindle tmp]# mntroot rw
system: I mntroot:def:Making root filesystem writeable
[root@kindle tmp]# cp jbpatch.jar /opt/amazon/ebook/lib/
[root@kindle tmp]# cp jbpatch.azw2 /mnt/us/documents/
[root@kindle tmp]# rm -rf /var/local/jbpatch/* /mnt/us/opt/jbpatch/*
[root@kindle tmp]# cp jbpatch/* /var/local/jbpatch/
[root@kindle tmp]# mntroot ro
system: I mntroot:def:Making root filesystem read-only
[root@kindle tmp]# start framework
framework start/running, process 2586

(Disclaimer: If you can't make sense of the content in the above box, then please, for your own sake, DON'T attempt to do it!)

NOTES:

• The UI requires the Kindlet Jailbreak. You will be told if it is missing. If so, you can get it from here.
• Localization is fully supported, but the distribution only includes english (and partial german localization for the UI and some of the patches). Take a look at the .txt files in /var/local/jbpatch, and you should get a good understanding of how localization is meant to work.
• The margins patch, and the ad removal patch, are not included. The simple reason is that they haven't been fully ported to the new version yet.
• The scrollbars patch may be the most interesting (from a technical perspective), because it is the only patch that is configurable via the UI.
• All relevant changes require a framework restart before they come into effect.
• This may, or may not, work with Firmware 5.1.1 (it probably won't). We really need some 5.1.1 images in order to be able to properly support this firmware version.

The final version is still a few days (or weeks) away, but all constructive feedback is appreciated and will be considered.

PS: I'll update the git repository in a few minutes with the current state, but be aware that not everything is properly cleaned up and documented yet.

Edit: attachment removed, as the final version of JBPatch 2.0.0 is now released.

[thomass]

After installing the orientation patch now the main screen also rotated by the default landscape mode.( which is a really good side-affect) Hoewer then I need to use it also from outside of a document which is currently not available. Could it be possible for you to add it (the default landscape/portrait mode item) to also the menu which works on the main screen with this app?

ie what I mean is this:
after installing the jbpacth
* open a doc
* use the landscape mode
* press home
*it is now in landscape mode but the menu item is missing. And after using the the launcher extension: orientation , I need to use the default one twice in order to make it work correctly. Therefore I rather use the default one by opening a book whenever I need.

[ixtab]

Here are the the two patches which were missing from the previous post. Unzip and copy them to /var/local/jbpatch/ on the Kindle.

They should be working just as they were before, with a minor difference concerning the margins patch:

- almost everything is configurable via UI now (yesss...!)
- well, except for the "words per line" setting in the default reader (previously "font.wordsperline.margin.list") - I just didn't get around to modify it for the new version yet, but I will.

PS: I just realized that I left some debugging code in the distributed files. Don't worry about the exceptions logged by the margins patch (example: "Loading key: reader.content.topMargin; java.lang.Exception" + a stack trace), they are (well, were) intended.

Edit: attachment removed, as the final version of JBPatch 2.0.0 is now released.

[ixtab]

@thomass:

The Kindle not always exactly knowing which orientation mode it is in is one of the many known KT oddities (especially after a reboot; and it can normally be remedied by using the launcher). Is this something that you only see happening with jbpatch v2 (but not with v1.3.1)?