Native Abiword 2.8.6 for the Kindle Scribe (and possibly other Kindles)

[Frogm4n]

Thanks for updating with a scriptlet. I've got a Scribe 2022 running 5.19.4, and Amazon broke KUAL and other things in this release so I hadn't be able to use that to launch AbiWord before. Now, however, it looks like it goes deeper. Trying to run it with the scriptlet just flashed the screen and I gave it several minutes to be sure it wasn't doing the cache refresh. I tried running the same commands via KTerm and saw that it fails quickly due to missing GLIBC. The usual screenshot function doesn't work in KTerm so here's a phone picture of the errors.

[kbarni]

I'm impressed every time a new version is released. This app is getting more and more usable. Almost everything works, even things like columns, tables, images, symbols, file format support...Kindle integration also works (orientation, backlight...)

Some bugs after a quick test:
- The menu bnar still doesn't like translations. My Kindle is set to French, and normally I don't see the menu items. As workaround I removed the share/abiword-2.8/strings folder to force it to the default English.
- Some dialogs don't work: Format/Bullets and numbering; Edit/Go to.
- Still can't get focus in the edit fields in the dialogs (e.g. I can't type in the Find dialog)

Couldn't test the USB-C keyboard (as I only got a PW5).

@Frogman: maybe try to remove /kindle-abiword/lib/libc.so.6 and libm.so.6 so it will use the more recent versions from the system.

[mergen3107]

@kaspar

Thank you for the new version and sources! Continuing my testing on KS1, this time with Abiword 1.1.
1) Brightness/Warmth controls work!
2) I didn't try Symbols menu last times, but now I can see some issues with it:
- Starting up, Symbols menu takes surprising amount of refreshes. Other windows open without this many screen refreshes
- The window is still very small, and I don't think it much useful without the pen, hard to select symbols. Focus doesn't shift to the symbols box even after manually tapping a symbol, so user needs to input symbols by touching them by hand. See screenshot.
- It defaults to "Symbols" which I think then falls back to Bookerly, which in turn doesn't have all the symbols (they show up as a generic missing box). Maybe Abiword should be bundled with a full Unicode font and have Symbols menu default to it?
3) Refreshes while typing is improved! Thank you. Although I really think that Backspace shouldn't have refresh on each input. I think only newline (Enter) deserves, if at all. The ghosting I observe isn't too bad while typing up a paragraph, so it is not a huge deal after all.
4) There is still issue with missing scrolling. For example, when choosing fonts. There a strange with rectangle hovering on the right hand side when such menu is open, and scrolling doesn't work. For now I resorted to a workaround where I select the topmost font I can select in current view, so the next time I open the list it scrolls up a bit.
5) I finally got my Russian layout working with my BT keyboard! Now my next questions is can other spell check dictionaries be added? For example, Russian, Kazakh. I presume yes, but wanted to confirm with you first (in case in needs code changes). I can see kindle_abiword/dicts/ folder has two files en_US.aff and en_US.dic , but I don't know which format is this.

I think after the Find/Replace typing is fixed and PDF output generation creates searchable text this setup (KS1 + Abiword + BT Keyboard) will become my typewriter beast machine!

Thank you very much for your hard work!!

[mergen3107]

After quick googling I found out that this is a Hunspell dictionary format (aff and dic files).
I was able to set the language in Tools - Set language.
1) Is it possible to have Abiword auto detect the language?
2) Can I combine them when choosing a language? For example, a text that contains words from two (or more) languages. I guess my brute force way would be to add other languages to English dictionary files as far as I can understand these are just text files with compiled words/patterns.
3) In the language list there are all maybe originally included languages. Can other languages that have no matching dictionary files be removed?

[mergen3107]

Russian I got from here: https://software.sil.org/fieldworks/...-dictionaries/

Kazakh I got from here: https://github.com/TLemur/hunspell-kk
However, Abiword doesn't have the Kazakh in the language list.

[kaspar]

Originally Posted by kbarni

I'm impressed every time a new version is released. This app is getting more and more usable. Almost everything works, even things like columns, tables, images, symbols, file format support...Kindle integration also works (orientation, backlight...)

Some bugs after a quick test:
- The menu bnar still doesn't like translations. My Kindle is set to French, and normally I don't see the menu items. As workaround I removed the share/abiword-2.8/strings folder to force it to the default English.
- Some dialogs don't work: Format/Bullets and numbering; Edit/Go to.
- Still can't get focus in the edit fields in the dialogs (e.g. I can't type in the Find dialog)

Couldn't test the USB-C keyboard (as I only got a PW5).

@Frogman: maybe try to remove /kindle-abiword/lib/libc.so.6 and libm.so.6 so it will use the more recent versions from the system.

Hi kbarni,

Thank you! This is an excellent bug report. It is greatly appreciated. I have fixed the keyboard focus on the text fields for Find, Replace, Go To, fixed the Bullets and Numbering dialog. I referenced the Insert, Table dialog code for the first fixes (because it has keyboard focus for number of columns), and I referenced the Word Count dialog code to get the Bullets and Numbering dialog open. Same fix I had to use to get Word Count to show early in the project.

I'm also working on a robust solution for multi-language support. The next release should work perfectly for any language that the Kindle can be set to, as long as Abiword also has the translation. I have tested French, German, and Russian so far. It works automatically by detecting the unix locale. Other languages can be set under Tools, Set Language. I haven't tested everything yet.

@Frogman, I am looking into this. I actually ordered another 2022 Scribe yesterday (refurbished), so I will try to get it on the higher system version for additional testing. Don't worry, I'm sure I will be able to fix it.

In other news, I got USB keyboard support working on the Kindle Oasis 10th gen and the Paperwhite 7th gen. Both are micro-USB port devices, and both can supply 5v of power. I don't think anyone has done this before? It was the same principles I learned figuring out the Scribe.

You're probably wondering about the Paperwhite 7th gen. It's not armhf! I used the kindlepw2 koxtoolchain and was able to get it running with soft float! That device has no Bluetooth, so USB keyboard is necessary. Another surprise, it runs very well on that 11 year old device. I need to either adjust the dpi scale, or default the Paperwhite version to landscape mode, because some of the menus (like Help) on the right side do not show in portrait mode.

I need to think about integrating all of the USB support into that one dialog with hardware checks. Right now I made simple scriptlets for kstart.sh and kstop.sh for the Oasis and Paperwhite. I think it can be done.

I might integrate a hardware check into the launcher that would decide armhf and armsf - that way I wouldn't have to release two versions. But then I would have to have the hardware detection also change screen orientation for the PW. So it's getting pretty complicated.

More to come. Aiming to release this weekend or sooner.

Hey Mergen, this should fix Russian support as well. Good work looking into dictionaries. Also, I will make the Insert, Symbols dialog a little bigger. I can't really change the rendering mode. It has many icons, so it is what it is. Default font could probably be changed for it in the future, however.

[mergen3107]

> I don't think anyone has done this before?

I don’t think anyone got it working before, so you are the pioneer!

[kaspar]

I just cross compiled cups-2.4.11. Haha. I think I can actually get local network printing to work.