New DR1000S firmware announced

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Yes, they are still there.

Ook, I would love for that to make it into the dr800 as well, given that both devices have the exact same cpu and ram.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by badbob001

Ook, I would love for that to make it into the dr800 as well, given that both devices have the exact same cpu and ram.

I believe they've said before that the "consumer" device wasn't intended to support multiple documents opened at the same time. This was back around the original announcement of the DR800.

I suspect that's another DR1000 vs DR800 business decision. Whether they are open to revisiting that, I don't know. They did listen to feedback and changed their decision regarding zoom. But I still would understand if they wanted some separation between the two devices other than screen size.

[Marc Mertens]

Hi Mathijs,

nice that someone from Irex is posting some clarifications. As I'm mostly interested in the power save features (compared with my bebook I must say that my dr1000 is letting me down on this), can you elaborate on 'Minor improvements to Power Management have been made'. Does this mean we have the same performance as the DR800 and what are the actual improvements that we can expect.

Thanks a lot in advance

Marc Mertens

[Matthijs]

Originally Posted by Marc Mertens

[...] can you elaborate on 'Minor improvements to Power Management have been made'. Does this mean we have the same performance as the DR800 and what are the actual improvements that we can expect.

No, it's not in the same league as the DR800 power management.
We haven't done any definite measurements yet, but I wouldn't get too excited about it. Minor really means minor: a very small improvement.

[Gwaihir]

Matthijs, thanks for answering questions out here. That's great!

You have also taken away several of my fears and frustrations already . I still have questions though..

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I assume they're just talking about putting shortcuts in a "Shortcuts" folder, or something like that, instead of on the home screen.

Indeed, but why not have them on the home screen? I find it extremely useful to make shortcuts there on the "desktop" for the five or so documents I actively use at any given time. Is there any specific phylosophy that prohibits this?

Zoom: selection zoom is indeed an acceptable workaround that will do well enough for a while. Good to hear that's still around.

Metadata in the file browser: somehow I have a lot of files with screwed up metadata. So, a fallback won't help me. I'd rarther switch this feature of completely.

I'm looking for a metadata editor still. The one lead I found, right here on this forum, comes with the warning that it screws up PDFs above version 1.4. . So, Matthijs (or others), if you know of a good one, please do mention it .

Originally Posted by Shaggy

"Notes" is talking about taking notes on what used to be called templates, and now is it's own note taking application. "Scribbles" are what you are talking about where you can write on an existing PDF file. That is still being supported.

So that's the new distinction? In those terms all the DR1000 currently does are scribbles: either on a "book" or on a "template".

Anyway, this is great news, the templates were a none solution anyway:

Originally Posted by Matthijs

As I said above, you can still open and use your old Notes. You just cannot start a new note document like you could previously, because the template functionality is gone.

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I don't think they are allowed to legally. Once they put Adobe on the devices it would be a violation of the Mobipocket license to continue to develop a firmware that supports it.

That can't be right. Doesn't another vendor (BeBook?) develop and support two firmwares simultaneously? AFAIK they just can't be in the same firmware due to those licensing restrictions.

And know for the $$$$ question: do those "minor power improvements" include squashing that darn bug that makes the DR1000S drain itself completely at times?

[Gertjan]

Originally Posted by Gwaihir

I find it extremely useful to make shortcuts there on the "desktop" for the five or so documents I actively use at any given time. Is there any specific phylosophy that prohibits this?

The desktop is supposed to be very intuitive. A dynamic/changing - and possibly multi-page - desktop is considered not to fit this philosophy.

Metadata in the file browser: somehow I have a lot of files with screwed up metadata. So, a fallback won't help me. I'd rarther switch this feature of completely.

The Folder/SD Card view will show the original folder structure and file names on disk.

So that's the new distinction? In those terms all the DR1000 currently does are scribbles: either on a "book" or on a "template".

Correct. The Notepad is a new application though it stores the strokes in the same format as scribbles.

And know for the $$$$ question: do those "minor power improvements" include squashing that darn bug that makes the DR1000S drain itself completely at times?

The intermittent nature of this issue makes it hard to be completely sure, but we've certainly taken away some probable causes.

[pthwaite]

Gertjan,

Quote:
So that's the new distinction? In those terms all the DR1000 currently does are scribbles: either on a "book" or on a "template".
Correct. The Notepad is a new application though it stores the strokes in the same format as scribbles.

If the new Notepad stores the strokes in the same format as the scribbles, would that mean they are stored in the metadata.db file?
If so, would you suppose that xournal, which can (for the DR1000) allow me to annotate my pdfs and merge these with those pdfs, still work do you think?

Howard

[Gertjan]

Originally Posted by pthwaite

If the new Notepad stores the strokes in the same format as the scribbles, would that mean they are stored in the metadata.db file?

Not in metadata.db itself, but in a separate ".note" file with similar format.

If so, would you suppose that xournal, which can (for the DR1000) allow me to annotate my pdfs and merge these with those pdfs, still work do you think?

There are no fundamental changes in the way scribbling works, but I haven't played with xournal enough to know what it does exactly.

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Gertjan

There are no fundamental changes in the way scribbling works, but I haven't played with xournal enough to know what it does exactly.

Xournal reads the annotations from metadata.db, converts/scales to xournal internal coordinates and merges/appends to the pdf file. So that should also be possible with the new .note file, if enough information on the format is published. (Merging is not needed ofcourse, but Xournal can export to a new pdf-file.)
Will the note-taking app be published as open source?

[pthwaite]

MackXX/Gertjan,
Well that sounds more useful. I must admit I only use Xournal just now for all my notes & pdf document marking etc, so it would be nice to get it to work with the proposed new firmware

Howard

[tjdean256]

Originally Posted by pthwaite

MackXX/Gertjan,
Well that sounds more useful. I must admit I only use Xournal just now for all my notes & pdf document marking etc, so it would be nice to get it to work with the proposed new firmware

Howard

Ditto

[junkyardwillie]

Am I the only one that finds it odd that this third-party (Mackx's Xournal) app works better than any note taking app the actual company can put together? Why is that? Note taking is such a critical feature whether it be for scribbling on PDFs and being able to export them for the rest of the population that doesn't have a 1000S (we have to admit these devices are expensive to most people) or writing notes that are able to be exported legibly. I always found the native note taking apps' export function to look like an Etcha-sketch which I thought was because of the readers hand writing recognition until Mackx released Xournal and the clarity of the scribbles went up 10-fold. I would think that other than battery life, this would be a top priority for a release but I guess not. It would be like if the iPhone didn't have a good web browser, it almost defeats the purpose of the device.

Reflow is nice but when the device is already 9.7" you don't really need to reflow, you do need to be able to write and export notes easily and a better battery life would be great but most people live within areas that have electricity so recharging overnight isn't a huge issue. It seems like this update makes the device a big Kindle for reading novels rather than a business-focused device to read documents. I guess I'll have to wait and see what the release is like when it comes maybe I'll be surprised. Its good to see that the developers on here though to get feedback, it shows that they actually do care about their customers which is cool.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Gwaihir

That can't be right. Doesn't another vendor (BeBook?) develop and support two firmwares simultaneously? AFAIK they just can't be in the same firmware due to those licensing restrictions.

I believe several other vendors that support multiple formats are using third party Mobipocket libraries, like FBReader does, not the official one.

[Matthijs]

Originally Posted by Mackx

Will the note-taking app be published as open source?

Yes, it will.

[Ride]

In the new firmware does anyone know if the new .note file still compatible with MyScript Notes for handwriting recognition and the like? Is it the same file that was exported by the Companion Software? I guessing that notes are not being stored in the metadata databases any more since the Companion Software is no longer supported.

Ride