Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I've given it a try on my iPaq (running WM 6 Classic). ... Italic text is displayed as bold, not italic.

Oops - a bug. I will fix that.
Jim

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

Jim:
...
When I look at the speed, small footprint, and clear viewing of Freda, and then I look at the list of things people here would like:

Hard page breaks
Control over justification
CSS support
Options for complex vs. simple rendering
Initial sort order

I'm sort of leaning towards "none of the list", just keep the speed and small footprint. Sometimes more isn't better.

Good luck, and good work,
Jack Tingle

I think we can have the best all of all worlds. I've already found a free third-party CSS parser that I think I can adapt to let me do basic CSS decoding, and in terms of options for controlling justification/rendering complexity, it doesn't add much to the footprint of the application - I just need to add more 'advanced' options; people who care to can adjust these, and people who don't care don't need to go to the 'settings/advanced' tab. It will increase the amount of space used by the program's temporary files, but I don't think that's too much of an issue.

I'll work on this for version 1.0 - give me a week or two, and let's see where we end up

Thanks for trying the program, and please do continue to give me your feedback,

Jim

[jimnutt]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Actually you can sort them into whatever order you need by clicking the heading on the column (click on title to sort by title, author to sort by author, etc.). When it loads the detail list, it just puts them in the same order as the files are in the physical directory, which is pretty lame. I will fix this in the forthcoming release.

Cool, I'll give it a try (I thought I did, but probably didn't)

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

The program only displays cover images for books that it has opened previously. And it just tries to guess which is the right cover image. For the 'beta' version I implemented it that way, because there are too many different 'metadata' schemes in use for specifying the cover image, and I didn't fancy trying to implement all of them. I'm working on doing it properly for the 1.0 release. If you tell me which metadata scheme you're using, I'll fix that one first.

I set all the metadata using Calibre, so whatever scheme it's using. Another possibility to consider is to look for a jpeg file with a name matching the epub file and use that for the cover.

jim nutt

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

I think we can have the best all of all worlds. I've already found a free third-party CSS parser that I think I can adapt to let me do basic CSS decoding, and in terms of options for controlling justification/rendering complexity, it doesn't add much to the footprint of the application - I just need to add more 'advanced' options; people who care to can adjust these, and people who don't care don't need to go to the 'settings/advanced' tab. It will increase the amount of space used by the program's temporary files, but I don't think that's too much of an issue.

I'll work on this for version 1.0 - give me a week or two, and let's see where we end up

Thanks for trying the program, and please do continue to give me your feedback,

Jim

Looking forward to it!

[DDHarriman]

Hi Jim

Thank you very much for your fast and accurate answers.

Concerning my (3) question, it was me the culprit, I think I was using the ok option of windows mobile (top window) to confirm the choosing paths in the end of the process and not the one of the program (bottom left side, activated by the pen or the “hardware button” under it). Using one of those made the options chosen stick.

I will be waiting with lots of interest for the quaestions you say will be resolved in not long from now.

One more idea: I advise you to take away, or at least to hide and make difficult to choose the option to clear the bookshelf (advanced option), as it does really what it says, clears everything in that folder!
I have made a mistake and instead choosing the other option (clear temporary files), choose this one… and away all the files went... now this was after I have changed the folders to that one where all my eBooks from all my other readers where… good that I have backups of everything, so no problem in the end.
Anyway, that option being there like that is quite dangerous.

Once more: outstanding fast and sleek program!
Best solution to ePub I have ever seen up to now for the windows mobile platform.

Best regards,

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

... the option to clear the bookshelf ...

Odd. I'll check the code because 'clear bookshelf' should only be changing Freda's settings file, it shouldn't be deleting files from the device.
But the adjacent 'clear temp files' option is dangerous, and I think I do need to fix that to ensure that it only deletes files that belong to Freda.

Thanks for the feedback,

Jim

[Icarusbop]

OK:
so sar so Good.

I've installed Freda and it looks very good.
I like the interface and the library management works well too.

I had a small problem when I first installed it - It failed with some kind of error 'main()', but I cannot remember the details.
Investigation has revealead it failed because I installed it on my memory card, I removed it and installed it to internal memory and it works fine there. When you get time could you investigate this as I try to install everyting to mym memory card to save local space.

Also any change of full justification sometime in the future?

apart from that no other issues, Keep up the good work - Thanks a lot!

[Icarusbop]

Originally Posted by Icarusbop

OK:
so sar so Good.
I've installed Freda and it looks very good.
I like the interface and the library management works well too.
I had a small problem when I first installed it - It failed with some kind of error 'main()', but I cannot remember the details.
Investigation has revealead it failed because I installed it on my memory card, I removed it and installed it to internal memory and it works fine there. When you get time could you investigate this as I try to install everyting to mym memory card to save local space.
Also any change of full justification sometime in the future?
apart from that no other issues, Keep up the good work - Thanks a lot!

OK - so I posted my reply them found out it was massively out of date: apparently I was looking at a cached copy of the thread so did not see the other comments until it was too late - sorry

[jimnutt]

I've used Freda to read two books now and am very happy with it. I love the speed and the clean interface. The fact that the formatting doesn't work real well bothers me not a whit, as I'm reading novels and they really don't do any special formatting in the first place. I also like the fact that it's easy on the memory, I was using ZuluReader and it was taking almost 2mb of memory up, Freda is less than 1mb (701k to be precise). The start up is snappy and it loads books quickly. Please, when you make the other enhancements, don't sacrifice speed for them (or at least make them optional).

[jimnutt]

When you go to the library it "forgets" the sort order you set and you have to tell it to sort by title, etc. again. Not serious, just a nuisance. Other than that, I've not had any problems, no crashes or anything else. A couple of timings: for a 942kb epub file, it takes 28 seconds to load on an HTC touch pro, loading a library of 531 books takes 24 seconds.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by jimnutt

A couple of timings: for a 942kb epub file, it takes 28 seconds to load on an HTC touch pro, loading a library of 531 books takes 24 seconds.

Interesting stats - thankyou for doing the timings. One point worth noting is that the time to open will change - the first time you open the book it will take longer. Behind the scenes, this is what happens when you open a book:
1) The EPUB archive is uncompressed into the temporary folder (an EPUB file is just a ZIP file)
2) Freda opens each chapter individually (each chapter is an individual HTML file within the archive), parses it and loads the words into memory.
3) Freda then saves the words for the chapter (to a 'DAT' file in its temporary folder)
4) The words are measured and laid out on screen.

The first time you open a book, Freda has to do all of steps 1-4. The second time, it doesn't have to do 1, because the files are already there in the temp folder. It might not have to do 2 either, because there might already be a DAT file for the chapter - in which case, Freda just has to load the DAT file into memory (this is much faster than parsing HTML).

Bottom line: the first time you open a book, Freda spends most of its time unzipping the archive. The next time you open it, the time will be a lot shorter (and will mostly consist of the time it takes to measure the length and height of each word in pixels).

Thanks for trying out the program.

Jim

[Straubi]

Hello, I look for a new ebook-reader. I test Freda. But I have a problem.
My device ist a HTC Diamond 2 with Windows Mobile 6.5.
Net CF 3.5 is install.
I take the cap file and test the Version for Windows Mobile 6.
I start Freda and get a Error

Freda.exe
TypeLoadException
bei Freda.Program.Main()

Any Idea?

Thanks for Help.

(Sorry for my English)

[Icarusbop]

Originally Posted by Straubi

Hello, I look for a new ebook-reader. I test Freda. But I have a problem.
My device ist a HTC Diamond 2 with Windows Mobile 6.5.
Net CF 3.5 is install.
I take the cap file and test the Version for Windows Mobile 6.
I start Freda and get a Error

Freda.exe
TypeLoadException
bei Freda.Program.Main()
Any Idea?
Thanks for Help.

(Sorry for my English)

I suspect you have installed it to a memory card, which can cause this issue. Remove the software and install to main memory..
This issue is being worked on for the release, but for mnow installing to main memory should solve the problem.

[Straubi]

Hello, no I install on my internal memory.

[Icarusbop]

Originally Posted by Straubi

Hello, no I install on my internal memory.

Sorry no idea then: I got this error when I installed to a memory card. No idea why it will happen to main memory.