iLiad Anyone thinking about a dotReader port?

[jæd]

Originally Posted by nekokami

The technology is not new. There are plenty of clients and sites out there that have each of these features. But bundling them together around the core functionality of reading is what makes this client AND server package so attractive to me.

Is it in the open-ebook spec, or is it a just feature of the reader...? I can't see low spec readers supporting this...

Btw, has anynoe noticed M's request regarding fbReader...? I thought someone tried back in the Summer...

[wallcraft]

FBReader would "solve" many of the reader requests under Additional Software on the ILiad Software Wishlist. It is just about the only full function e-book reader for Unix, but I think this is in part because it is so good. dotReader is shaping up as a viable alternative, and it is cross platform. I don't know, though, if dotReader will improve on the reading experience provided by FBReader. Some of the initial features of dotReader are on FBReader's "planned for future versions" list (e.g. Bookmarks and Tables). FBReader will probably never support encryption, so dotReader has the inside edge for commercial e-books.

[DHer]

i'm trying to get FBReader to compile, but the huge amount of dependencies sucks.

Or maybe i'm quite a newbie when it comes to this. Is there a possibility to install arm-debs directly into the toolchain?

[wallcraft]

I see that a FBReader port has been attempted several times, so it is obviously more complicated than it seems. Part of the problem is the list of dependencies (libenca, libexpat, libbz2, libstdc++, and libgtk+), but usually all but enca eventually end up in the default software set or in standard repositories. This is the downside of software reuse (otherwise definitely a good thing), particularly for early adopters.

There were port attempts to the Pepper Pad 2 that never worked out until the FBReader developers produced a port to the Pepper Pad 3 (which is actually just a Fedora Core 4 i386 "workstation" rpm). Once that was available as a guide, a Pepper Pad 2 port was quickly produced by a PP2 developer. I take two lessons from this: a) when you are stuck ask the (FBReader) developers for help, and b) sometimes a device's software needs to mature before attempting a significant port. My sense it that the iLiad is "ready" for a FBReader port, but that is easy for me to say. Since there is a cross-compile toolchain available, the FBReader folks may be able to help. I encourage participation in FBReader's Google group where the developers are very responsive and helpful.

[Matthijs]

Which dependencies are missing?

[DHer]

ok, i finally got it to compile and link.

I think these were the required libraries: libbz2, libcairo.2.9.2, libenca.0.5.1, libgpewidget.so.1.0.0, libpixman.so.1.0.0, <b>libpng12.so.0.13.0</b>, libsvg-cairo.so.1.0.1

I also had to add some header files.

the libpng12-version differs from the version included in the toolchain, and if i recall correctly the libcairo-version had to be slightly outdated to be compatible with libgpewidget.

To be honest: in the end i just poked around with the libraries i got from various sources (mainly openzaurus and debian) until the linker stopped moaning.

I'll try to figure out what i did tomorrow and add a complete list. Next thing to do is adding the screen refresh calls.

(and a note to the debian packagers: add some hints if the package is compiled with hardware-floating point or softfloat)

[scotty1024]

All Debian ARM's are compiled hard float. Not all of them actually us Floating Point, but you find out if they do when they explode with an illegal opcode exception.

You also can't mix n' match hard and soft float libraries. The loader pretty much wants you to make up your mind one way or the other.

My toolchain is up to 1GB of stuff now due to all the dependencies I've had to download and compile for various projects.

[scotty1024]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Which dependencies are missing?

How about an xpm loader for GTK? That one is very annoying...

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-xpm.so

The one for GIF's would be handy as well but most X programs expect to be able to load xpm's....

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-gif.so

/usr/bin/glib-genmarshal is missing from the tool chain and and causes a certain amount of annoyance as well when porting.

[Matthijs]

Here you are.

[CommanderROR]

Thank you for supplying, Matthijs!
I'm sure this will be very helpful.

[scotty1024]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Here you are.

Thank you!

[Matthijs]

BTW:

root@ereader:~# ipkg list_installed
...snip...
libpoppler1 - 0.5.4+cvs20060926-r0 - Poppler is a PDF rendering library based on the xpdf-3.0 code base.
...snip....

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

BTW:

root@ereader:~# ipkg list_installed
...snip...
libpoppler1 - 0.5.4+cvs20060926-r0 - Poppler is a PDF rendering library based on the xpdf-3.0 code base.
...snip....

Thanks Matthijs. I attach to this message the sources from that version (cvs20060926), just for reference and to obviate others the need to read the manual hunting for the cvs option for checking out a specific date out of the repository :-).
P.S.: The checkout was done with:

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/poppler login
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/poppler co -D "09/26/2006 09:00" poppler

[scotty1024]

Originally Posted by Antartica

Thanks Matthijs. I attach to this message the sources from that version (cvs20060926), just for reference and to obviate others the need to read the manual hunting for the cvs option for checking out a specific date out of the repository :-).
P.S.: The checkout was done with:

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/poppler login
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/poppler co -D "09/26/2006 09:00" poppler

You and I both scratched our heads on Poppler. Their ipkg said it was 0.5.4 but the official 0.5.4 doesn't compile against gtk 2.4 (needs gtk 2.6).

M told me they used whatever was in Poppler's CVS when they started developing the iLiad(!). So I assumed the ipkg tag was from their CVS not Poppler's.

All these stories about what Poppler is in the iLiad and yet all they need do is make available (as they are required to do) the source they actually used to create the binary they shipped us.

[Matthijs]

It is exactly this version: 2006-09-26 from poppler CVS (which is 0.5.4 plus 2 or 3 checkins). What I said is that we used the CVS version of when we started to develop iPDF, which is indeed 2006-09-26. Before that date the PDF viewer was xpdf.
Also: we are using GTK 2.6 on the iLiad, so I don't understand your remark about the compilation.

To end this once and for all, use the attached files. This will EXACTLY build the same version as we do. Compile with "--enable-xpdf-headers --disable-gtk-test --disable-poppler-qt --disable-poppler-glib --disable-utils"

I am aware of the fact we should do this for everything we used in OpenEmbedded and we will do that as soon as we release the full SDK.