Clara Display time when reading

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

Updated it. Will now re-load the .addons/miniclock/miniclock.cfg from time to time so you no longer have to reboot. Clock should also show up a bit more reliably (new repeat setting)

Thanks so much for doing this patch. I'll have to try the other fonts and see if one doesn't match a bit better, that's the only thing that bothers me somewhat. But for the convenience of having the time displayed there, it's great.

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Just a question: which are the maximum row and column? Because I would like to move it to the lower right corner... sorry for my ignorance...

Anyone using this on a Glo HD, the positions I used are 867 and 1405. The positioning will probably be slightly different depending on if you patch or not (I patch) and if you use epub or kepub (epub in my case). I also dropped the day and date and changed it to a 12 hour clock with am/pm by changing the format to %l:%M%P (that's a lower case L in the format).

[LucyOne]

That looks really cool. I'd love to have the time displayed on my screen.
Could someone give me step-by-step instructions on how to get this running on my Clara? Do I need to install FBInk first?

[frostschutz]

no, fbink is included... so just drop the KoboRoot.tgz onto the Kobo

[LucyOne]

Thanks! I had to rename the .tgz, but it works fine.
Are the available fonts displayed somewhere with their names? It would be really good to have a matching font... maybe access the Kobo fonts?

[jackie_w]

@frostschutz,

Nice addition to the Kobo bag of tweaks

I was wondering whether it is possible to add an option to make the background colour transparent, so that it integrates better with the Nightmode hack.

[frostschutz]

not really possible without that causing flashing or visual fragments

you can change the color but if you turn night mode on/off then it will be wrong for one

not sure if I could/should query nightmode's current on/off state

you can make the font size smaller...

size is 0 (autodetect), 1 (8 pixels), 2 (16 pixels), 3 (24 pixels), ...

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

not really possible without that causing flashing or visual fragments

you can change the color but if you turn night mode on/off then it will be wrong for one

not sure if I could/should query nightmode's current on/off state

Ah, well. It was worth asking. My ClaraHD spends much of its life white-on-black, so I'll be OK most of the time with a black background.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

you can make the font size smaller...

size is 0 (autodetect), 1 (8 pixels), 2 (16 pixels), 3 (24 pixels), ...

Yes, I've been playing with that this afternoon. Thanks for the explanation of what the font sizes actually mean.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

you can make the font size smaller...

size is 0 (autodetect), 1 (8 pixels), 2 (16 pixels), 3 (24 pixels), ...

I had settled on UNSCII for now, but with changing the font sizes, I might be able to get closer with others and will have to do a bit of retesting. For now, this is with UNSCII with font size at 3.

[Terisa de morgan]

I'm creating the tgz, dropping it into .kobo, the device restarts (Clara), but no clock appears. Any idea what can I check?

Edit: I have the directory .addons in the Kobo root directory

Forget it: the offset was wrong and, although I had changed it, it wasn't update. Editing the file and restarting the device has made the trick.

[frostschutz]

Are you on Mac or Windows? Don't create a tgz. Use the one inside the zip as-is.
This requires unpacking the zip, without unpacking the tgz inside the zip.
I'd attach tgz directly but the forum software won't let me. (Invalid file)

the offset was wrong and, although I had changed it, it wasn't update.

Yeah, it doesn't check the config file all the time... it will update, after a while - guess I should just check timestamp or whatever, but I was lazy ^^'

[Terisa de morgan]

Thank you very much, frostschutz. I have it working now. Only my OCD bothering me because the line it's a but under the number of page... but as restarting the ereader is a bit tricky with Clara, I'll leave it as is for now.

Ah, and I'm in Windows, but the tgz is created with cygwin

[NiLuJe]

@all:

Hi everyone! Just caught this thread pretty much by chance (I don't check the main Kobo forum as often as the dev one).

So, a few answers, in no particular order:

* You can automagically start on the bottom row by using relative positioning instead of absolute offsets (i.e., -x/-y instead of -X/-Y), in which case negative values will start counting backwards (as in, from the other edge).

TL;DR: fbink -y -1 "Hello" will print on the bottom of the screen, without having to know the exact resolution of the device.
It might not be the *very* bottom, because there's a bit of trickery involved to handle weird font height/resolution combos.
If that bothers you too much, add a -V to the command, that'll bypass that bit of trickery.

(Or do *both*, absolute offsets will be appended to whatever the relative one resolves to (and they also honor negative values)).

There's another solution to do this automagically with absolute offsets, but it requires a bit of shell maths, via the bunch of info dumped via fbink -qe, which includes screen/viewport/font resolution, and is designed to be consumed by eval

Obviously, that kind of pixel-perfect tweaking is easier if you can run fbink in a shell manually, and follow stuff "live". In which case the -v flag might make you run away screaming, but it'll include all the gory details you'd ever want to know about what's being done ;p.

* You can get a "transparent" background by adding a -O to the command.

* Yeah, no arbitrary vector fonts for now, only the bundled old-school bitmap ones .

* Shameless plug: You can help me get it working properly on the Forma by taking a look at this post.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

* Shameless plug: You can help me get it working properly on the Forma by taking a look at this post.

Forma I have, shell access no (and I'm not very ready for tinkering in that side). Ah! And thanks for the -O command

[NiLuJe]

@Terisa de morgan:

Random lightbulb moment: in your case, using -o (instead of -O) should also do the job, and will work whether nightmode is enabled or not (because it's both backgroundless, like -O, but with the added fact that foreground color is then dynamic, based on the inverse of what's on the screen, pixel per pixel [this obviously means it ignores whatever -C/-B are set to]).

That'll work if the script never tries to print the same thing twice over itself, because then that'd just make it erase itself, since the inverse of the inverse of the background is the background again .

EDIT: c.f., the snapshots, printing the text "Invisible Ink" over the eInk logo in this mode would basically toggle between these two .

[Terisa de morgan]

Thank you, I'll test it (mainly in Forma, that I still have to patch as my Clara is ready from the day the FW appeared )