Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[cbarnett]

Oh, and one more thing!

I asked about this before, but I'll throw it out again: Can the Max Margin option be made more granular, and allow scaling by a factor of 5 rather than 10? Quite a few ebooks I've tried would be far more pleasing to read if I could set this to 5 rather than 0 or 10.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Deleting books from the library is tricky, and a bit confusing. I just deleted the whole library, meaning only to delete one book. (It's easy enough to recreate the library, but the bookshelf info is all gone, and your place lost in anything you were reading.) What's confusing is, you get this prompt asking about the source. I still don't quite understand what I'm supposed to choose there, even after fumbling with it several times.

I agree, it could be clearer, and certainly should warn you before removing books from the library (I'm thinking in terms of, when you do something that will remove more than 1 book from the library, putting up a confirmation dialog saying "Do you really want to remove 123 books from the library?"). The idea is that, when you do 'Actions...>Remove Books' from the library screen, the program then presents a list of available sources, and expects you to select one of them for deletion. I will tidy up the UI to try and make this clearer.

Originally Posted by starrigger

Question: Is it possible to restore Bookshelf info, if one happens to have backed up the Bookshelf folder prior to messing around? Can I just write the old Bookshelf folder over the new?

You can preserve all of Freda's settings, library content and bookshelf content by copying the folder 'settings2', which should be in the same folder as the program file (usually \Program Files\Freda). The file 'freda.bks' is the bookshelf, 'freda.fst' holds the current settings and 'freda.lby' is the library. The subfolder 'booksettings' holds any book-specific settings you have defined.

Originally Posted by starrigger

It's pretty strange. Can I safely delete these folders, as long as they are empty?

EDIT: I just tapped on one called "Booksplash," and I got an apparent image of a book's text page--in the picture viewer. Several of them are listed as being over a GB. (Which is more than the memory in the device.)

ANOTHER EDIT: A lot of these files and folders are dated in the years 2028 and 2035. They're from the future! (I wonder if they contain stock prices.)

And they're all locked and I can't delete them. I wonder if I should uninstall, scrub, and reinstall Freda.

Can I do that without losing all my settings again?

That booksplash file is something created by freda1.1. The other names sound like corrupt data of some kind. Certainly they are nothing that Freda knows about.
By preserving the files I mention above, you can do a re-install without losing Freda's settings. I don't know whether that will make those weird files go away, but it might be worth a try (first uninstall Freda, then try manually deleting those files). I have sometimes had problems with the storage card file system getting corrupted - not from specifically Freda-related causes, but typically when a file transfer operation gets interrupted. That corruption produced un-deletable files with weird names, and I was only able to get rid of the problem by reformatting the storage card (a tedious operation, particularly as it meant backing up all the card contents first and restoring them after ... which is not quick).

Jim

[chaley]

Originally Posted by starrigger

The names of the folders are odd distortions of names of books, folders, and even of Kovid:

e_Starda.nce
__Spider
bre.kovi.dgo
SD.ard

It's pretty strange. Can I safely delete these folders, as long as they are empty?

EDIT: I just tapped on one called "Booksplash," and I got an apparent image of a book's text page--in the picture viewer. Several of them are listed as being over a GB. (Which is more than the memory in the device.)

ANOTHER EDIT: A lot of these files and folders are dated in the years 2028 and 2035. They're from the future! (I wonder if they contain stock prices.)

And they're all locked and I can't delete them. I wonder if I should uninstall, scrub, and reinstall Freda.

This sounds very much like the file system on your card is badly corrupted. The folders and data storage areas are intertwined, so that writing to a file also writes to some folders. In this case, uninstalling and reinstalling won't fix anything, and will probably make it worse.

Try the following:
1) Ensure no program that might try to look at the card (like calibre) is running on your computer.
2) Plug the card into your computer/card reader
3) Backup any files on the card that you want to keep to somewhere on your computer. Why? Step 5 might 'fix' many things into a black hole.
4) Right-click on the drive letter, select properties, then tools, then push the button that checks for errors.
5) Check the 'automatically fix errors' checkbox
and let it rip.

Alternatively, and more certain, reformat the card. Do this only after backing up (sorry for stating the obvious). The format option should be available when you right-click the drive letter.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by chaley

This sounds very much like the file system on your card is badly corrupted. The folders and data storage areas are intertwined, so that writing to a file also writes to some folders. In this case, uninstalling and reinstalling won't fix anything, and will probably make it worse.

Try the following:
1) Ensure no program that might try to look at the card (like calibre) is running on your computer.
2) Plug the card into your computer/card reader
3) Backup any files on the card that you want to keep to somewhere on your computer. Why? Step 5 might 'fix' many things into a black hole.
4) Right-click on the drive letter, select properties, then tools, then push the button that checks for errors.
5) Check the 'automatically fix errors' checkbox
and let it rip.

Alternatively, and more certain, reformat the card. Do this only after backing up (sorry for stating the obvious). The format option should be available when you right-click the drive letter.

The thing is, these weird files aren't on the SD card, they're in the Freda program section of the PDA's memory. My suspicion is that they were created when I had that problem of the card itself showing up as SD Card2, and a folder called "SD Card" appeared in the program section of main memory. (I think Freda may have created that folder when it went looking for the Temp folder on the SD card and only found SD Card2.)

So unless there's some intimate connection between the file system on the card and the PDA's memory, I don't think that's going to do it. Although there's no harm in trying, I suppose.

Question is, what do I do if there's corruption on the PDA? If it's localized to the one folder, is there a way to force a delete of the folder?

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

The thing is, these weird files aren't on the SD card, they're in the Freda program section of the PDA's memory. My suspicion is that they were created when I had that problem of the card itself showing up as SD Card2, and a folder called "SD Card" appeared in the program section of main memory. (I think Freda may have created that folder when it went looking for the Temp folder on the SD card and only found SD Card2.)

Yes that does look likely. If Freda had previously been told that its temporary files should go in a folder called \SD Card\Temp\Freda, and when it came to it, it couldn't find a folder of that name, then Freda would create the folder. But I can't think of any good reason why you'd be unable to delete the folder later (though you would need to stop Freda, and you might have to soft-reset your device first).

Jim

[starrigger]

I have backed up Settings2 and removed Freda using Remove Programs. (There were two entries: Jim Chapman Freda and Turnipsoft Freda. I removed both.)

I still can't delete the Freda program folder from main memory, though. I get an error that access is denied. (Even after a couple of soft resets.) Any idea how to override that?

I did succeed in renaming the folder, though. So hopefully right now it's just wasted memory space and won't interfere with a reinstall.

EDIT: A reinstalled Freda is working fine. But I still can't get rid of that old folder. I hope someone can tell me how to forcibly delete it.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

EDIT: A reinstalled Freda is working fine. But I still can't get rid of that old folder. I hope someone can tell me how to forcibly delete it.

I don't have any brilliant suggestions there - did you try both of:
deleting using the file explorer on the device;
deleting using the explorer on ActiveSync
?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by starrigger

EDIT: A reinstalled Freda is working fine. But I still can't get rid of that old folder. I hope someone can tell me how to forcibly delete it.

I once had a problem like this with my old HTC Universal, running WM 5. After trying many different things (different file managers, activesync, resets, and the like), I got rid of it by reinitializing the device. Fortunately, rebuilding wasn't too painful because I still had all the programs to reinstall.

My theory is that the internal memory file system got corrupted somehow, and there is no tool I know of that can scan and fix problems. I lived with it for months, but finally got to the point where my concern that the problem could spread overcame my laziness.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by chaley

I once had a problem like this with my old HTC Universal, running WM 5. After trying many different things (different file managers, activesync, resets, and the like), I got rid of it by reinitializing the device. Fortunately, rebuilding wasn't too painful because I still had all the programs to reinstall.

My theory is that the internal memory file system got corrupted somehow, and there is no tool I know of that can scan and fix problems. I lived with it for months, but finally got to the point where my concern that the problem could spread overcame my laziness.

I think you're right, and I suppose that's what I'll have to do. (sigh) But for now, I'm in the "live with it" phase.

[starrigger]

Jim, were you able to figure out what was going on with those books that persistently put blank lines between paragraphs?

[silkshadow]

So I found what may be called a bug in v2.0, I'm not sure what to call it . The library doesn't refresh and there seems to be no way to refresh it (that I can see) besides removing and re-adding the folder. If I don't do this manual refresh, Freda crashes when I open an updated news book. Today, doing the manual work around froze my HD2.

I use Calibre news books which I update every day or so. What I do is save the books to a folder on my card, which I have set in the Freda library's "add books" dialog and picked the folder with all the news books called "news".

When I open Freda, and click on the library and open, say, ars technica, it opens the one from my cache. So I setup Calibre to save the books with unique filenames (which include the date) and I flush the Freda cache. After that, if click ars technica without removing and re-adding the import folder source, Freda crashes. Presumably because the book is actually no longer in the library.

So I've been doing this every day or so, removing and re-adding the news folder from sources and deleting the files/folder in Freda's cache. However, today when I was removing "news" from sources, it locked my HD2. Not a big deal, I just had to soft reset but I a not sure what triggered the freeze when I have been doing sucessfully for a few days now.

If I may suggest, a possible fix might be to offer a "refresh library" button or to automatically refresh the library when it is opened.

Thanks!

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

So I found what may be called a bug in v2.0, I'm not sure what to call it . The library doesn't refresh and there seems to be no way to refresh it (that I can see) besides removing and re-adding the folder. If I don't do this manual refresh, Freda crashes when I open an updated news book. Today, doing the manual work around froze my HD2.

I use Calibre news books which I update every day or so. What I do is save the books to a folder on my card, which I have set in the Freda library's "add books" dialog and picked the folder with all the news books called "news".

Just changing the file name may not be enough - because Freda, for managing its temporary files and bookshelf details, also uses book ID (which you can find in the book metdata). Possibly the different news epubs are being generated with the same ID. That would certainly crash Freda (as for locking up the device, I don't know - but it's clearly a possibility).

The solution: when you have finished reading the news epub, open the library, select the epub in the list and do Actions...>Remove '<whatever the epub is called>'. That will remove the epub from the library and the bookshelf, and will delete all the temporary files associated with it.

To load the next one, do Actions...>Add Books, and then use Add Folder, Add Single URL or Add Single File, as necessary.

Thanks for helping with the Freda testing.

Jim

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Jim, were you able to figure out what was going on with those books that persistently put blank lines between paragraphs?

Yes - it's happening because the book contains paragraphs that consist only of an href anchor. I've changed the way that Freda deals with that; the appearance is better now.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Just changing the file name may not be enough - because Freda, for managing its temporary files and bookshelf details, also uses book ID (which you can find in the book metadata).

Jim, are you referring to the <dc:identifier... tag in the OPF file? Calibre puts two of these into a book, one for ISBN and one for calibre's ID. The ISBN one might be empty, and is almost certainly so for newspaper articles. The calibre ID is guaranteed to be unique.

Calibre also includes the 'unique-identifier' attribute, telling clients which identifier is preferred. Are you checking that?

Example:

<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="2.0" unique-identifier="uuid_id">
<dc:identifier id="uuid_id" opf:scheme="uuid">5c72bdc4-43c4-4301-bf7d-7b22957cb00b</dc:identifier>
<dc:identifier opf:scheme="ISBN"></dc:identifier>

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by chaley

Jim, are you referring to the <dc:identifier... tag in the OPF file? Calibre puts two of these into a book, one for ISBN and one for calibre's ID. The ISBN one might be empty, and is almost certainly so for newspaper articles. The calibre ID is guaranteed to be unique.

Calibre also includes the 'unique-identifier' attribute, telling clients which identifier is preferred. Are you checking that?

Freda will ignore empty identifiers, but beyond that, it doesn't make any particular effort to use a provider's preferred ID scheme. If a book supplies several non-empty IDs, I'd expect Freda just to use the one mentioned last in the OPF file.