Kobo Start Menu 07

[Ken Maltby]

I can try and give you a series of results, of your tests as applied to my AuraHD.

First as it is now with KSM7 +1 & 2, and no rotation issues.

Second with update 3 added, no rotation issues.

Third with update 4 added, no rotation issues, sorry not much help here.

Luck;
Ken

Also, my Aura HD is still under firmware 3.5.0

[tshering]

Thank you, Ken!

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

... no rotation issues, sorry not much help here.

You did help me! I am glad that there were no rotation issues. Actually, I tried to avoid them. I am interested in seeing with which rotation values the different models start and how they change when running nickel, or maybe also pickel in the case of some models.

[church mouse]

Coolreader has the sleep functionality you are asking for.

[KoboNewbie]

Hello, first of all let me say I'm a total layman where programming is concerned; I have a few very basic skills (and fair intuition, I guess) which allow me to tamper with some config files at the most. I've very recently installed Kobo Firmware 3.15.0 and a mega package which included KSM 07, koreader and a bunch of other stuff. I was really blown away by the possibilities (before that I had only Nickel) and I started exploring the new options & tweaks etc. I find it all pretty sensational, but have a few questions and doubts, if I can bear on your patience a little:

1) I still can't figure out how to go smoothly from Nickel to KSM or Koreader without restarting the device. My Glo doesn't recognize the switchtokoreader and exit_nickel PNGs unless they are in the Ebooks directory. When I copy them to that directory, they appear in the library in duplicate. At first they seemed to work (I tapped on them and the switch happened), but then they simply wouldn't anymore. I've read on some post that you had to use the nickel koreader switch, I tried that and it worked at first, but then something weird happened, I guess I tapped on switchtokoreader.png while on Nickel, and Koreader was on the ko/nickel switch, so whenever I pressed the "home" icon on Koreader, then Nickel started to load, but then (I guess) it read the switchtokoreader.png and looped immediately back to koreader! If I powered off then on, it started to load nickel but looped back to koreader anyway. This went on for a while until, out of desperation, I used koreader's file manager and deleted the PNGs, thus being able to access nickel again. Which leads me to ask...

2) What is the PNGs "magic"? What triggers the switch? Is it their name or their content? I saw that tshering said that he'd enabled nightmode toggling with a new png in one update, but after I updated to 4, there was no png by that name in the kbmenupngs folder. Was that supposed to enable nightmode on Nickel? That would be awesome. I tried renaming a random png to toggle_nightmode, but that didn't work. Did I do something wrong? Because now none of those pngs work when I copy them back to the Ebooks folder. On my Aura HD they still work fine, though.

3) Also, after I installed the Update 4, when I try to start vlasovsoftlauncher, it says it's an unsupported version. Is there a new version out?

Thanks in advance for any answers you can give me.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by KoboNewbie

1) I still can't figure out how to go smoothly from Nickel to KSM or Koreader without restarting the device. My Glo doesn't recognize the switchtokoreader and exit_nickel PNGs unless they are in the Ebooks directory. When I copy them to that directory, they appear in the library in duplicate. At first they seemed to work (I tapped on them and the switch happened), but then they simply wouldn't anymore. I've read on some post that you had to use the nickel koreader switch, I tried that and it worked at first, but then something weird happened, I guess I tapped on switchtokoreader.png while on Nickel, and Koreader was on the ko/nickel switch, so whenever I pressed the "home" icon on Koreader, then Nickel started to load, but then (I guess) it read the switchtokoreader.png and looped immediately back to koreader! If I powered off then on, it started to load nickel but looped back to koreader anyway. This went on for a while until, out of desperation, I used koreader's file manager and deleted the PNGs, thus being able to access nickel again. Which leads me to ask...

I admit that this story is to long and confusing. In any case, avoid to have duplicates of the png files, otherwise it will lead to confusion. As for the rest please have a look at the post that I am going to post immediately after the current one.

Originally Posted by KoboNewbie

2) What is the PNGs "magic"? What triggers the switch? Is it their name or their content? I saw that tshering said that he'd enabled nightmode toggling with a new png in one update, but after I updated to 4, there was no png by that name in the kbmenupngs folder. Was that supposed to enable nightmode on Nickel? That would be awesome. I tried renaming a random png to toggle_nightmode, but that didn't work. Did I do something wrong? Because now none of those pngs work when I copy them back to the Ebooks folder. On my Aura HD they still work fine, though.

Yes, you have to put an image file with the name toggle_nightmode.png into kbmenupngs. I will start to work the second time after you started nickel. See the next post.

Originally Posted by KoboNewbie

3) Also, after I installed the Update 4, when I try to start vlasovsoftlauncher, it says it's an unsupported version. Is there a new version out?

Yes it is, pchess 2015-5.

[tshering]

fmon is a program provided by sergeyvl12. One can tell fmon to watch a certain file and launch a certain script as soon as any process accesses the file. For instance if you run fom by calling "fmon myimage.png yourscript.sh" (for the sake of brevity I omit here the path names), fmon will watch myimage.png. If any program (for instance nickel) opens myimage.png, fmon will start the script yourscipt.sh.

When you start nickel from KSM by selecting "start nickle", KSM looks in the folder .adds\kbmenu\fmonsh for script files. If it finds any script files, it looks whether there are png files of the same name in the folder kbmenupngs. If there is such a png file, KSM checks whether this file is already in the database that is used by nickel. If it s in the database, KSM calls fmon against this png file and this script file. For instance if there is the script file exit_nickel.sh and the image file exit_nickel.png, it will call fmon against those to files. If you select in nickel exit_nickel.png, nickel will try to open it, fmon will start exit_nickel.sh, and exit_nickel.sh will close nickel.

One problem is that sometimes nickel tries to access a file even if you do not try to open it. This can happen if nickel needs to create thumbnails. Let us image you start nickel, and at this point nickel is going to place exit_nickel.png as a tile on the home screen. For this purpose it has to create a thumbnail of exit_nickel.png. In order to do this nickel opens exit_nickel.png. Therefor fmon start exit_nickel.sh. exit_nickel.sh closes nickel. You try to start nickel again, nickel tries to put exit_nickel.png on the home screen, and so on and so on.
To break this circle you can start nickel via: tools > kobo diverse.msh > start nickel no fmon.sh. In this case KSM will start nickel without involving fmon, and nickel can open the concerned png files and create thumbnails of them.

Two important things:
1) If you want that a certain script is started if you open x.png from nickel, put it in the folder kbmenupngs, and put a script x.sh in the folder .adds\kbmenu\fmonsh. Note that nickel has to be aware of the png file and write concerning information into its database. Therefore, copy the png file to the reader while connected to the pc by nickel (rather than via KSM "enable usb"). The png will be "activated" the next time you start nickel.

2) If nickel does not start as usual, start it via tools > kobo diverse.msh > start nickel no fmon.sh. After the next reboot, nickel should start normally again.

[Ken Maltby]

It looks like I get that same message on trying to launch vlasovsoftlauncher, after the updates I did today. I have "pbchess-2015.05_kobo.zip" installed.

I also found a "start_vlasovlauncher.zip", from May 17 2015, that looks to be for KSM. Don't remember if I applied it last month, or if today's updates would impact it anyway.


Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

It looks like I get that same message on trying to launch vlasovsoftlauncher, after the updates I did today. I have "pbchess-2015.05_kobo.zip" installed.

Luck;
Ken

Did you try to restart the reader?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by tshering

Did you try to restart the reader?

Several different ways, but the start vlasovlauncher keeps giving me "unsupported version of launcher".

Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I also found a "start_vlasovlauncher.zip", from May 17 2015, that looks to be for KSM. Don't remember if I applied it last month, or if today's updates would impact it anyway.

Update 4 would have replaced those files anyway.

I installed today the last version of vlasovlauncher. It is working for me. At the moment, I do not have any idea why it is not working for you.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by tshering

Update 4 would have replaced those files anyway.

I installed today the last version of vlasovlauncher. It is working for me. At the moment, I do not have any idea why it is not working for you.

I reinstalled a new download "pbchess-2015.05_kobo (1).zip" and installed it with the KoboRoot.tgz, then moved the folder to .adds. It is working now, and (it may be my imagination but...) it seems to have some differences from the 2015.05 version I remember.

Luck;
Ken

[outlandos]

In the OP it says it only supports up to 3.15.0, is this true?

[KoboNewbie]

Hi tshering, first of all, I appreciate your detailed and useful replies very much. It took me some time giving this feedback because I wanted to try everything I could first. After I read your explanation of fmon, I must have done something right, because switchtokoreader and exit_nickel are working as they should, yaaay. Anyway, I'm sad (and frustrated) to say that toggle_nightmode simply. won't. work. I've tried and tried, but the pngs I use keep opening in nickel like simple images and nothing else happens. Maybe I got something absurdly wrong? Please confirm whether the nickel night mode is supposed to come "bundled" with KSM 07. I only need the toggle_nightmode.sh script in the fbmonsh folder and the toggle_nightmode.png in the library, right? Is that it? Because those files are in place, but it still won't work. Please understand that I'm not expecting you to help me solve this if it's just my Glo behaving in some freaky, alien way. What I really hope is that I'm missing something really stupid and easy to solve, like not installing something I should've installed first. I've tried to find that out by myself by reading the posts in this thread, but I've read until my eyes hurt now and I'm still at a loss.

BTW, I've installed pbchess 2015-05 the same way Ken Maltby did (I think):

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I reinstalled a new download "pbchess-2015.05_kobo (1).zip" and installed it with the KoboRoot.tgz, then moved the folder to .adds. It is working now...

...but sadly in my case I'm still getting the "unsupported version" message.

Anyway, your replies explained a lot that I didn't know and they helped a lot, so thank you very much indeed! Also for all this cool stuff you've developed!

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I reinstalled a new download "pbchess-2015.05_kobo (1).zip" and installed it with the KoboRoot.tgz, then moved the folder to .adds. It is working now, and (it may be my imagination but...) it seems to have some differences from the 2015.05 version I remember.

Luck;
Ken

Right, pbchess-2015.05 is work in progress. That is why I installed yesterday the most recent version to see whether it breaks the KSM call. I am still wondering why it did not work for you yesterday.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by outlandos

In the OP it says it only supports up to 3.15.0, is this true?

I updated the OP to 3.16.0. Thank you!