PRS-500 Direct Page Control Hack - Page 3

Xenophon · 08-13-2007, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ns66

yes that's what i have in mind, that's way better than flip 50 pages, i think with more and more books available and bigger card, people will have a growing list of books, i read ppl have 2000 books, finding a book will take hundered page turns (there's just NO other way), if we can do jump page that will be mjor help

Actually, there may be another way, if it is possible to make a link in a document that switches to ANOTHER BOOK ENTIRELY.

I've described before my idea for hierarchical navigation on the reader (divide the list of books/authors/titles/whatever into 10, present those as the 10 choices, expand the one the user picks, and so on).

Now imagine that some program that "just knows" what's on your reader produced an lrf file that has pages for each of the possible screens you might see when navigating around. All the internal links would be to other pages of the document, but the leaves would open the desired book on your reader. At that point, all you'd need would be a way to have the 0-9 buttons select one of the 10 options staring at you on the current page of that document. Three button presses could get you to any of 1000 documents!

I mention this possibility, because here at Mobileread we have an active programmer (cough) Kovidgoyal (cough) who just happens to have a tool that "just knows" what's on your reader. If we had a clear idea of how to implement the reader side of the hack, it shouldn't be too hard to get libprs500 to create and download an index lrf document that you could navigate to get the hierarchy that the Sony reader won't give us.

Any thoughts, anyone? Is kovid going to kill me for suggesting yet more work for him to do? Can the reader extension hackers figure out what the right kind of link is to get from a screen in a 'book' to opening a different book entirely? ...and what about Naomi?

Tune in next week for another thrilling ad...

... got a bit carried away there.

Xenophon

JSWolf · 08-13-2007, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloNL

Let's find out.

Are there more people who would like to see this happen? So you will get direct page control in book menu's etc. but will loose numeric choice of a book and instead use the joystick up/down/enter.

Can you please keep this seperate from the main.xml that was last posted. This idea is one I don't want. So in order to not have it on my reader should there be other stuff created I do want, I think the only way is to fork off the mods.

Nogg · 08-13-2007, 05:40 PM

Hey diablo,

I'm at work so I don't have time to dig into the xml files right now, but there must be a way to load additional xml files after the main ones have loaded, right?

So then we could separate each hack into an individual file that could then be included or not at will. So you could choose clock.xml, joystickpageturn.xml, or DirectPage.xml or all three or any other hacks people develop.

diabloNL · 08-13-2007, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can you please keep this seperate from the main.xml that was last posted. This idea is one I don't want. So in order to not have it on my reader should there be other stuff created I do want, I think the only way is to fork off the mods.

No worries.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nogg

Hey diablo,

I'm at work so I don't have time to dig into the xml files right now, but there must be a way to load additional xml files after the main ones have loaded, right?

So then we could separate each hack into an individual file that could then be included or not at will. So you could choose clock.xml, joystickpageturn.xml, or DirectPage.xml or all three or any other hacks people develop.

Actually I was thinking of writing a VB application that let's you select the hacks desired after which the application will generate the correct XML file. Not sure yet if I will do this because it will be time consuming.

diabloNL · 08-13-2007, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Can the reader extension hackers figure out what the right kind of link is to get from a screen in a 'book' to opening a different book entirely?

Interesting...

ns66 · 08-13-2007, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloNL

No worries.

Actually I was thinking of writing a VB application that let's you select the hacks desired after which the application will generate the correct XML file. Not sure yet if I will do this because it will be time consuming.

time will be better spent for the book list page hack

anyone with more than a few hundred books will like it i am sure

because there's NO other way, say you have 500 books, you want to find the book start with p, you know it must be around page 40, currently there's NO other way but to flip 40 pages, ouch

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2007, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Can the reader extension hackers figure out what the right kind of link is to get from a screen in a 'book' to opening a different book entirely? ...and what about Naomi?

Xenophon

Naomi?

I'd be very surprised if it were possible to go from one LRF file to another. Looking at the LRS spec I don't see anything that allows for this, which means you'd need to replace the LRF reader app on the device, which is a little beyond the scope of the current generation of device hacks, I think.

EDIT: Actually there is the FileLink element, but I don't think anyone has reverse engineered that one. igorsk?

diabloNL · 08-13-2007, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ns66

time will be better spent for the book list page hack

anyone with more than a few hundred books will like it i am sure

because there's NO other way, say you have 500 books, you want to find the book start with p, you know it must be around page 40, currently there's NO other way but to flip 40 pages, ouch

Are you sure that holding the "next" button is not jumping ten pages? I have only four pages but when I hold the "next" button it jumps to page number four.

Nogg · 08-13-2007, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloNL

Actually I was thinking of writing a VB application that let's you select the hacks desired after which the application will generate the correct XML file. Not sure yet if I will do this because it will be time consuming.

I'd say that's another version down the road. I'll take a look tonight and see what I can piece together for a few individual hack files.

diabloNL · 08-13-2007, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nogg

I'd say that's another version down the road. I'll take a look tonight and see what I can piece together for a few individual hack files.

Let me know how it works out.

ns66 · 08-13-2007, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloNL

Are you sure that holding the "next" button is not jumping ten pages? I have only four pages but when I hold the "next" button it jumps to page number four.

positive, holding next for 5 sec get you to the end of all 50 pages, not going next 10 pages. so basically you can flip from beginning or from end of book list, that's it

Xenophon · 08-13-2007, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Naomi?

SNIP

EDIT: Actually there is the FileLink element, but I don't think anyone has reverse engineered that one. igorsk?

Just showing my age. There was a short-lived program on PBS that was a try at an educational show for kids who had outgrown Sesame Street -- I think the title was "Electric Company" (or something like that). Lots of kids I baby-sat for used to watch it. Think mid-late '70s.

Anyway, they had a segment that was a deliberately bad takeoff on soap operas. Each of those segments always ended with the announcer listing a bunch of questions raised by what you'd just seen, always ending with "...and what about Naomi?" Of course, there was no mention of 'Naomi' anywhere else in the show. The "what about Naomi?" thing had a brief life in teenage culture as a "you've been asking too many questions" thing around then.

But I digress...

Perhaps the FileLink element might hold some hope for supporting the kind of index document I described. Anyone know anything about it?

Xenophon

induna · 08-13-2007, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloNL

You will gain direct page entry and small fonts while keeping the clock and your modified joystick.

You are right. It works in conjunction with the hacks in applicationstart.xml.

Thank you! The direct page entry is a fantastic addition to the Reader.

sea2stars · 08-13-2007, 11:48 PM

Woot! I just flashed my Reader with this hack. Happy days are here!

ns66 · 08-14-2007, 12:28 AM

to help with finding book due to ereader flat file structure, some possibilities

1. make number button N-> N% of book list pages, just like within a book, instead of picking on a particular book (because we usually won't have that many pages for book list, this option should suffice)

2. make this direct page control hack available to book list section (even more detailed control)

3. make hold "next" 5 sec -> 10 page jump available for book list section, instead of jumping to the end

any one of these will help a great deal

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08-13-2007, 05:40 PM	#33
Nogg Literate! Posts: 256 Karma: 2247 Join Date: Mar 2007 Device: PRS-500	Hey diablo, I'm at work so I don't have time to dig into the xml files right now, but there must be a way to load additional xml files after the main ones have loaded, right? So then we could separate each hack into an individual file that could then be included or not at will. So you could choose clock.xml, joystickpageturn.xml, or DirectPage.xml or all three or any other hacks people develop.

08-13-2007, 11:48 PM	#44
sea2stars Zealot Posts: 104 Karma: 64 Join Date: Dec 2006 Device: eb1150, Sony Reader	Woot! I just flashed my Reader with this hack. Happy days are here!

08-14-2007, 12:28 AM	#45
ns66 Connoisseur Posts: 78 Karma: 156 Join Date: Jul 2007 Device: sony reader	to help with finding book due to ereader flat file structure, some possibilities 1. make number button N-> N% of book list pages, just like within a book, instead of picking on a particular book (because we usually won't have that many pages for book list, this option should suffice) 2. make this direct page control hack available to book list section (even more detailed control) 3. make hold "next" 5 sec -> 10 page jump available for book list section, instead of jumping to the end any one of these will help a great deal