DR800 Public BETA of the DR800S and SG 2.0 software available

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

I would like to get some feedback on how to best implement a shortcut for the various pen modes. Let me explain the problem:

In the document viewer (UDS), the stylus can be in one of the following modes:

• pencil
• eraser
• panning
• zooming
• nothing

In the Notepad app, it is easy: the stylus can be either a pencil or an eraser, so switching by clicking on the icon is unambiguous.

In the document viewer, it's not that easy. There is no logical 'next state' to be defined. If you're in pencil mode, you may want to either go back to 'nothing' or go to 'eraser'. When you're zoomed in, you may want to switch between 'panning' and 'nothing', but you may also want to enable the pencil.

What we could do is by clicking the icon it will cycle through the modes which are available in the current state, which may be (depending on your settings):

nothing, pencil, eraser, panning, (zooming)

I would personally exclude zooming from the list, as you don't need that too often.

Comments, thoughts? I cannot promise this will make it into 2.0 (since that's mostly finalized) but if it doesn't make it we will certainly look at this for the next version.

I would vote for a different and simpler approach: 2 independent "circuits".
- a drawing state machine, with 3 cycling states: pen, eraser, nothing
and:
- a viewing state machine, with 3 cycling states: zoom, pan, nothing

Activate or change to one of these circuits using the menu (isn't it a popup menu in fact?).

The reasoning behind this proposal is that both circuits are very different in nature, and it's not usual to change from one activities to the other.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Iñigo

I would vote for a different and simpler approach: 2 independent "circuits".
- a drawing state machine, with 3 cycling states: pen, eraser, nothing
and:
- a viewing state machine, with 3 cycling states: zoom, pan, nothing

Activate or change to one of these circuits using the menu (isn't it a popup menu in fact?).

The reasoning behind this proposal is that both circuits are very different in nature, and it's not usual to change from one activities to the other.

I second this option, should be more than enough space on the status bar at the bottom. And I still think after zooming, the next natural state is panning (I zoom to see details more clearly and then often have to move around -- is it just me?), so it would be logical to go to pan mode automatically. Full screen could be re-enabled by pressing the icon.

[CoolDragon]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

I second this option, should be more than enough space on the status bar at the bottom. And I still think after zooming, the next natural state is panning (I zoom to see details more clearly and then often have to move around -- is it just me?), so it would be logical to go to pan mode automatically. Full screen could be re-enabled by pressing the icon.

What about documents that you don't need to pan around after zooming? Like those with white space around the four sides, zoom to crop the margin would be enough. Of course, click the icon to go into panning mode will be much easier than going through the menu.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by CoolDragon

What about documents that you don't need to pan around after zooming? Like those with white space around the four sides, zoom to crop the margin would be enough. Of course, click the icon to go into panning mode will be much easier than going through the menu.

I agree, but I figured the zoom option on the status bar would activate the manual zoom option (where you circle the item) rather than crop margins. Crop margins would only be used once per document, so we should be ok if that was in the regular menus.

[catharsis]

@Matthijs: Will there be continous panning in the final 2.0? (I mean when using the flipbar in landscape more, next part of the page would be shown, not the next page). I remember a post from you that said it's not trivial to do that, but did you do it?

[Matthijs]

Thanks for the feedback on the stylus state. I should have mentioned that since we are very close to release we cannot make any major (GUI) changes such as the fly-out/popup or even separating it into 2 icons.

Our GUI designer would like the fly-out as well, so that may happen in the future. For now, really there are only two realistic possibilities:
1) Nothing changes; you cannot click the icon it is there only for your information
2) You can click it, which will change the stylus state

I think we'll attempt the 'cycle through all options' approach I posted earlier, because that is easy to implement and kind of consistent with the Notepad app.

We realize that it should be made better in the future.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Thanks for the feedback on the stylus state. I should have mentioned that since we are very close to release we cannot make any major (GUI) changes such as the fly-out/popup or even separating it into 2 icons.

Our GUI designer would like the fly-out as well, so that may happen in the future. For now, really there are only two realistic possibilities:
1) Nothing changes; you cannot click the icon it is there only for your information
2) You can click it, which will change the stylus state

I think we'll attempt the 'cycle through all options' approach I posted earlier, because that is easy to implement and kind of consistent with the Notepad app.

We realize that it should be made better in the future.

In that case, of course, go for the "cycle-through" approach. Still a lot better than what we have now.

[Mickey330]

I just want to say how awesome this is ... watching this conversation about the beta software and the DR800 - and all the other conversations about operating and improving the DR800 (to include active company encouragement for private "hacking").

It is so cool for me to see a company actually ask its customers for input on device upgrade - and then actually act on those suggestions! I mean, we got PDF zoom support ... even if it does need tweaking. And, looks as if we'll get an easier way to toggle the pen/eraser in scribble mode... Cool.

Way to go Irex team! And, thanks.

Marilyn

P.S. And I'm not just saying this because I have a DR800 that will benefit from all these mods. Honest!

[HansTWN]

One problem I just ran into (again) is the airplane mode toggle. You can switch the airplane mode off (press once and 3G is turned on), but you can only turn airplane mode back on by going through the settings menu. A real hassle when you accidentally hit the icon on the taskbar. Logically it should work both ways, just pressing the icon a second time.

[ErikG]

First of all: thanks for all the improvements in v2.
A lot of focus in the posts has gone to displaying of pdf's.
As my own focus lies more on reading of epub's I would like to make an observation on the display of font size in an epub.
In v1 the default was small which was nearly always too small. So I switched each book to medium and that was perfect. Now the default is medium and I find that the displayed font size is nearly always too large. The option small seems to display larger than in v1 but still a bit too small for me. The two other options large and extra large are imho only for sight-disabled people.
So what's really lacking is more finetuning in font size. The perfect display that I found in the medium setting in v1 is no longer available in v2.

Erik

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Mickey330

I just want to say how awesome this is ... watching this conversation about the beta software and the DR800 - and all the other conversations about operating and improving the DR800 (to include active company encouragement for private "hacking").

Definitely. Has Sony or Amazon ever done something like this? IMO, the public beta was a great idea.

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Definitely. Has Sony or Amazon ever done something like this? IMO, the public beta was a great idea.

Agreed, and I would complement them on a very stable beta. A few bugs, but non that have impacted me and it's a great way for them to get real world design feedback. Kudo's to the developers for their active participation.

[Turquoise]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

I would like to get some feedback on how to best implement a shortcut for the various pen modes. Let me explain the problem:

In the document viewer (UDS), the stylus can be in one of the following modes:

• pencil
• eraser
• panning
• zooming
• nothing

In the Notepad app, it is easy: the stylus can be either a pencil or an eraser, so switching by clicking on the icon is unambiguous.

In the document viewer, it's not that easy. There is no logical 'next state' to be defined. If you're in pencil mode, you may want to either go back to 'nothing' or go to 'eraser'. When you're zoomed in, you may want to switch between 'panning' and 'nothing', but you may also want to enable the pencil.

What we could do is by clicking the icon it will cycle through the modes which are available in the current state, which may be (depending on your settings):

nothing, pencil, eraser, panning, (zooming)

I would personally exclude zooming from the list, as you don't need that too often.

Comments, thoughts? I cannot promise this will make it into 2.0 (since that's mostly finalized) but if it doesn't make it we will certainly look at this for the next version.

[*]pencil[*]eraser[*]panning[*]zooming[*]nothing

I want them all including zooming. Because sometimes I make 2-3 trials to find the best zooming percentage and it has been hassle to go to menu for each try. Also when I re-open the document, the document does not recognize that it was left with PAN option. For me continuous reading in ZOOM function is now the most important function to be included. I guess they are not planing on adding HIGHLIGHTING in pdf documents option in the upcoming release right? In addition somebody was mentioning the possibility of changing the direction of the rotation in the landscape mode.

What IREX is doing now is AWSOME. Getting our opinion and revising the upcoming firmware as soon as possible is a great idea. That would be really nice if IREX open a new topic about the planned modifications in the upcoming 2.0 version before the offical release.

[catharsis]

Will there be any changes in panning? I would need to be able to go to the begining of the next page once I'm on the bottom of the current page and I press the sidebar (or however is that big button called).

[orenr]

Any news on the 2.0 release date? I mean production, not beta