Librerator - multi-format e-reader, fork of KPV

[playful]

Hi Kai,

I have been using (and loving) Librerator for some time.
Yesterday, it stopped working, and I wonder if the symptoms are some you have seen before, and if you might have an idea about how to make it work again.

Installed on: DXG with launchpad.
Symptom: after typing Shift + L + L (which always worked before), the screen shows the "Success!" message but stays in the Kindle software (Lib is not launched).

What I tried:
- restarting (Menu/Settings/Restart): no change
- reinstalling Lib: put the zip in customupdates, then pressed
Shift-Shift-I => "Success!"
Shift-Shift-Space => "Success!"
Shift-L-L => "Success!" but still no Lib

Thanks in advance for any thoughts. I miss Lib!

EDIT:
More things I've tried.
Uninstalled and reinstalled Launchpad.
Reinstalled Lib => Success, Success, Success but no Lib.
Deleted the Lib folder.
Tried to reinstall Lib.
Shift Shift I => "Failure"

[Kai771]

@playful

Hi playful,

I'm sorry, but I really don't know what could've caused such behaviour. The only thing that I can suggest is to try doing the hard reset of the Kindle pressing power button for 30 sec, and trying installing all anew. (Hard reset holding power button for 30 sec is stronger than Menu/Settings/Restart).
Before you try hard reset do a backup of all important stuff on your Kindle, just to be safe.

I hope it helps.

Regards,
Kai

[playful]

Thank you Kai, I might gather up my courage and give that a go in the coming days.

Wishing you a fun weekend.

[antithesis]

I've installed Librerator and at first it works just fine (great, in fact!), but after not too long, it starts getting glitchy. Starting from a certain time after installation (I don't know what triggers it), moving the slider will fail to show my screen saver. Instead, it will just show the popup "activating screen saver." When I move the slider again, it displays a blank screen for a second, then a glitched / scrambled screen, and finally it will return to where it was and my device is usable again. However, when I exit Librerator, I get the scrambled screen and my device becomes unusable until I hold the slider for a couple of seconds and connect it to a PC.

The same happens when I let it idle long enough for the screen saver to appear. I'm using a Kindle DX White model D00661. I haven't used it much so I can't provide more details, but I'm afraid to use it much more. I've already reinstalled it once, but to no avail.

[playful]

Glitched screen bug

FWIW, that sounds exactly like something I experienced a few times over the months—until lib stopped working completely a few days ago (sob).
Haven't yet tried resetting the device to factory settings.

[hawhill]

Somehow I doubt that factory reset will solve this. My suggestion is to wipe the librerator folder, since my guess is on a broken config file or a broken history / document settings file. After deleting the folder, do a reinstall of librerator. There's not much that can get in the way that a factory reset would fix. Factory reset _may_ solve it, but just because it wipes the librerator folder, along with everything else on the user/document partition.

antithesis: what method do you use to launch librerator? Kite, by chance? I've always found kite a bit bumpy. Did you try KUAL yet? Or launchpad?

[playful]

Hello hawhill,

Thank you for kindly sharing your thoughts.

My suggestion is to wipe the librerator folder

That is indeed one of the things I tried. After reinstalling lib, the symptom mentioned a few posts up remained: Shift L L to launch lib results in a "Success" message, but lib doesn't launch, and the Kindle stays in the original DXG interface.

The next step I tried was to reinstall lib (in the customupdates folder), but Shift Shift I results in "Failure".
It's at this point that Kai suggested trying a factory reset.

Wishing you all a beautiful week!

[playful]

Update:
Librerator is back.
After a couple more manual restarts, tried again to install (Shift Shift I). This time, it worked.
I had made a copy of defaults.lua, so nothing is lost.

So happy to have my old friend back!

[antithesis]

Originally Posted by hawhill

Somehow I doubt that factory reset will solve this. My suggestion is to wipe the librerator folder, since my guess is on a broken config file or a broken history / document settings file. After deleting the folder, do a reinstall of librerator. There's not much that can get in the way that a factory reset would fix. Factory reset _may_ solve it, but just because it wipes the librerator folder, along with everything else on the user/document partition.

I've already tried this once, and the results were the same. After that, I've uninstalled Librerator and installed KPV, and I now have a similar bug. Although the device does stay usable, I get a glitched screen instead of a screen saver which is ugly and freaks me out.

Originally Posted by hawhill

antithesis: what method do you use to launch librerator? Kite, by chance? I've always found kite a bit bumpy. Did you try KUAL yet? Or launchpad?

I've only tried Launchpad, in fact. Will try KUAL.

[hawhill]

The advice was meant for the not-start-at-all case. As for the garbled screen saver, I'm not sure at all...

[cr0n0sT85T]

Sorry, do you have any tutorial for install in normal kindle 4?

I don't understand the first post sorry!

is it needed make jailbreak or not?

do you have any captures of this program? or link in youtube?

is it better than duokan?

I only need a good pdf reader with good zoom. The other features I not need.

thank you!!

[hawhill]

Use the instructions for installing with KUAL. That means, you should install KUAL first, then Librerator. Check the link on the bottom of the first post.

You need to jailbreak for KUAL, yes.

I'm not aware of screenshots or Youtube vids.

Can't comment on Duokan, I didn't use that in a while. However, it *is* a good PDF reader with good zoom.

[cr0n0sT85T]

ok! thank you for the information!

[memeplex]

Update: this also happens with latest kpv in k3. And also in two column mode if you turn on/off pan_by_page (by pressing fw_press) and then pan left/right. Just do it a couple of times and you'll notice the problem.

Just set "fit to content width" or similar while reading a pdf, pan right, press fw_press, pan right again and contemplate the unexpected weird behavior that sometimes even hangs librerator and requires rebooting.

Btw I wasn't able to file an issue in your github.

[memeplex]

Update: there is a quick hack to get this working in post 182. Thank you kai.

Feature request: in comic mode with shading enabled there is no point in shading when you scroll backwards: you're not reading bottom up and you know for sure you have to start reading from the top of the page after scrolling. There is all the difference when you scroll forward: you usually have read a part of the page and you need to continue at some point you can't easily discern immediately after scrolling. Otoh the typical use case for scrolling back is to go to a previous page to start reading something there. And the shading makes this reading impossible. I think there are good reasons to disable shading for backwards scrolling or at least to make this configurable.