Using external keyboard with KOReader's Text Editor

[kaspar]

Originally Posted by kaspar

Wow! I'm sorry I didn't notice! Thank you for your work on all of this. It has really gotten me interested in what can be done from here.

Over the past three days I've spent about 15 hours of attention cross compiling Abiword 2.8.6 (old GTK 2 version), and just got it to launch!!! Keyboard works if launched from Kaul, but not from kterm (text typed ends up in kterm instead of Abiword). I can hardly believe it. There was so much trial and error. Now I need to fix dialog windows (titles) and so many other things. I will share this when I get it working better.

Here's a picture!

[mergen3107]

It say font is “Times New Roman”, but typed text is definitely not it more like Bookerly

[kaspar]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

It say font is “Times New Roman”, but typed text is definitely not it more like Bookerly

Good catch. Times New Roman is the default font for Abiword. I think it says that at the top when I open a file or create a new one, but font selection is definitely working. It's using the system fonts just like a normal Linux distribution would. Does Times New Roman even exist on the Kindle Scribe? It could be calling a font that isn't there.

[mergen3107]

Err, I don’t think so because it is licensed by Microsoft? I’ll double check.
So it doesn’t have a fallback mechanism? Like you know when you type a glyph that this font doesn’t have it replaces the font to the ones which has it. Or just the UI doesn’t update

[mergen3107]

Err, it isn’t so straightforward with the license.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/an...n-font-license

One thing I know for sure is that Kindles don’t come with Times New Roman bundled

[kaspar]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Err, I don’t think so because it is licensed by Microsoft? I’ll double check.
So it doesn’t have a fallback mechanism? Like you know when you type a glyph that this font doesn’t have it replaces the font to the ones which has it. Or just the UI doesn’t update

Right now when the application is launched it says Times New Roman, but it does default to some system font so typing can begin right away without setup. I didn't do that on purpose, so it's an Abiword fallback. Eventually I'll look at the code and change the default font that Abiword calls to one that is present on all Kindles.

When I open Abiword on my Fedora PC install, it's also Times New Roman.

Also, the more I use it in portrait mode, the more I like it. It's like typing on an interactive piece of paper.

Edit: All I need to do is deploy it with a modified normal.awt (Abiword's default template) to be Bookerly instead of Times New Roman.

[kbarni]

Originally Posted by kaspar

Here's a picture!

That's really neat!

Note that Kindle's GTK2 implementation lacks the standard icons (like open, save, print...), that's why the toolbar buttons are invisible.
Unfortunately you'll have to rewrite the buttons with custom icons.

Some advice: use the material icons collection to get custom icons. Then, convert them to header files using gdk-pixbuf-csource. Then, replace the toolbar buttons to custom buttons using the icons you created.
Use AI to automate this task, it should be able to handle it.