Font, ScreenSaver & USBNetwork Hacks for Kindle 2.x, 3.x & 4.x

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star: Huh. That's still weird, but glad you got it working anyway .

But just to be clear, you essentially installed each font file one by one *right on top* of the 'broken' big 125 package, or did you reinstall the hack/switch the fonts somehow in between? And were your doing full restarts or using the autoreboot feature each time?

Anyway, I'd very much like to take a look at your logs (;dumpMessages), see if something pops out, because that's reaaally weird... ^^

[montalex]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@montalex: Still no idea why it would affect Duokan, especially on the USB front... I assume you'd done a full restart after applying the updates?

NiLuJe: I just had the USB failure from Duokan again. I tried a second time, and it was fine. I think it was a case of clickitis -- I didn't take long enough after going to the home page before plugging USB in. So, nevermind that one.

I haven't touched the USB network hack. That's completely beyond me.

Thanks again!

Montalex

[NiLuJe]

@montalex: I don't know how duokan handles USB mounting & stuff, but even on a vanilla Kindle, it seems to be far more fragile on the K3 that it was on the K2 (or maybe that's just me & my crappy laptop ^^), so I'm not entirely surprised that there's some weird issues like that with intrusive custom stuff like duokan & usbnet.

[Dusty Star]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Dusty Star: Huh. That's still weird, but glad you got it working anyway .

But just to be clear, you essentially installed each font file one by one *right on top* of the 'broken' big 125 package, or did you reinstall the hack/switch the fonts somehow in between? And were your doing full restarts or using the autoreboot feature each time?

Anyway, I'd very much like to take a look at your logs (;dumpMessages), see if something pops out, because that's reaaally weird... ^^

@NiLuJe: Before I started today, I had reinstalled the backup fonts after all the blank screen issues...I believe I even used the uninstall hack bin at the time. Can't remember now.

Today, I installed the update bin 4.0 for K3g. Then home/menu/settings/menu/update.

Connecting USB again to laptop, I copied one at a time, (such as Serif_Regular) of the 12 fonts that were in the Big 125% folder, and paste over the (rewrite) the current font, eject, then unplugged USB cable, then a FULL restart from home/menu/settings/menu/restart.

I then checked the various options on Kindle, to see what changed, then went copied another different font from the folder and followed same process as above. I did not drop in the blank file renamed 'reboot' anytime during this process.

However, since I post the last post to you, I was checking the web browser, which I rarely use by the way...but wanted to check it out...the bookmarks page is wonderful...large bold text...however no text within the browser on any site. So obviously I need to add more fonts from the folder? Its really no big deal if I can't use the browser at this point...I'm just pleased I can read books, other menu options and the home page with ease.

I don't have a clue how to find/copy and give you the dump log.

Who knows, perhaps the way I installed the fonts would have worked on the previous attempts before installing this latest bin update. Never know now.

Dusty Star

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star: Okay, so you started from a 'working' setup, not the broken fonts, that makes much more sense, thanks .

As for the browser, unless you enabled the browser fonts feature, it should be using the Kindle's default fonts (ie. Caecilia_LT_*.ttf & co) , so, unless you removed them as well, there shouldn't be any issue...

For the logs, just type
;dumpMessages
in the search bar on the home screen. That'll create a .txt files with a name starting with all_logs_ in the documents folder. You can then zip it & attach it here .

[Dusty Star]

Let's see if I did this correctly

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star: Yep, that's it, you can remove the attachment if you're concerned about what might lurk in those logs .

EDIT: Okay, found out both why it suddenly works, and why the browser is broken.

I seem to have slightly messed up the FT override codepath, and that ends up always using the autohint FT override when it shouldn't use *any* override.

Just to make sure: You didn't create the blank 'autohint' and/or 'bci' files, did you? (Most likely not, sounds like a bug on my end, but let's be sure about this ^^).

And then, indeed, when using an FT override (at least autohint, haven't tried anything else yet), that breaks font rendering in the K3 browser.

So, first things first, fix my broken override checks.

And then try to see if I can get it to work in the browser (I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, but, hey, who knows?! ).

[Dusty Star]

"Just to make sure: You didn't create the blank 'autohint' and/or 'bci' files, did you? (Most likely not, sounds like a bug on my end, but let's be sure about this ^^)."

Actually I did...(per following instructions) and both autohint and bci are still there

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star:

Oh, okay.

Well, at least that means my checks aren't utterly broken .

And, that the blank fonts issue is really fixed by an FT override .

What instructions exactly are you referring to, because if you created *both* files, I must have been confusing/unclear somewhere ^^.

I'll look into the browser issue, but I doubt I'll be able to make it work in conjunction with the FT override tweak, too much components involved.

[Dusty Star]

From page 1:
v4.0.N: You can now control a bit more the settings used by the rendering engine. For example, if you want to make sure it'll be using FreeType's autohinter (like FW 2.x) instead of native hinting on FW 3.x, drop a blank autohint file in the linkfonts folder. The same applies on FW 2.x if you want to make sure the renderer uses native hinting (like FW 3.x) instead of the autohinter on FW 2.x, drop a blank bci file in the linkfonts folder.
You will have to do a full Restart of your Kindle for the changes to be taken into account (a framework restart won't be enough).
(Note that both settings are always available (ie. you can use bci on FW 3.x, and autohint on FW 2.x), in which case while the rendering should be mostly similar to your Kindle's defaults.

Should I remove both or one or/other? Or just leave it be?
I was confused and still am, when I read the above.

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star: Yeah, I wrote that before the full post (err, actually, probably even before writing the code ), I'll reword that and/or refer to the full post.

In your case, if you remove both, and restart your Kindle, you're likely to encounter the same issue as before the update (ie. blank fonts everywhere).

So, if you can live with big fonts & no browser, just remove the 'bci' one. (technically, it doesn't hurt a bit to leave it, it just generates a warning message in the logs).

If you *really* need the browser to work, we're back to square one if I don't find a way to make the browser work with this tweak enabled.

[Dusty Star]

If you *really* need the browser to work, we're back to square one if I don't find a way to make it work with this tweak enabled.

At this point...the browser is not being used. I'm happy as it stands. Unless others come across this issue with no text in browser, I don't think you should worry about it.

It's late here...I need to get to bed: 1:00 AM

Thank you for your time and working with me...truly appreciate all you have done for me. I am very pleased, thrilled and happy.

Good night now,
Dusty Star

[NiLuJe]

@Dusty Star: Well thanks for your tests & detailed answers, that helped a lot .

[FreeLSD]

Hi,

I received my Kindle 3 WiFi (B008) with firmware 3.0.2 yesterday and had the SS hack installed on it a few hours later. I now notice that images are not rendering correctly:

eg. https://skitch.com/todor/rygx5/dsc03151 and https://skitch.com/todor/rygx6/dsc03152

A video of the Home-to-Screensaver transition is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxzH6zXk2CI

I am 100% certain that this was not an issue when I first booted the device as I used the browser as well as put the device in&out of sleep to see all the default screensavers. I attempted a jailbreak+SS uninstall, restore to factory defaults as well as upgrading to firmware 3.0.3 without any luck.

Could this be as a result of the SS hack or is it likely to be a hardware fault? (eg. any ideas on how to fix it or should I be sending it back to Amazon? )

[NiLuJe]

@FreeLSD: Yeah, it's most likely a vanilla software/hardware fault. At the core, the SS hack consists of a single thing: using a specific folder in place of another one, so there's pretty much no chance of messing something up like this.