Current way to write Kindle application (e.g. locally display data from network)?

[void]

Hey everyone,

I hope I have not missed any stickies or wiki information regarding basic newbie questions:

I am trying to figure out the involvement required to get a Kindle Paperwhite 2 (2013) to locally render and display data from the web, e.g. a calendar and the current time, a todo/shopping-list. Another application would be API communications with a VOIP Router (AVM Fritz!Box 7390) to list missed calls, and maybe even play its "answering machine" recordings.

I have seen screensaver hacks fetching a remote image (pre-rendered weather data image from server, see links at bottom of this post) in regular intervals and I have read wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking but as a newbie I am confused what currently is possible and which approach I should consider. Displaying static images does not allow for interaction and I would rather not set up a server to generate the images.

I figure that running any such application requires either using a screensaver hack or the starter menu hack? Or could the default GUI simply be stopped and the custom program take control of the device (screen)?

I am asking because I don't necessarily require the original E-Reader functionality. I don't need a screen-saver either (I guess it has nothing to do with the technology requiring it, but is probably more a matter of privacy, i.e. "closing the book"). I just need an "always-on" application, although returning to the "OS" by choice is acceptable.

I suppose Web-API interaction (Google, FritzBox) could require functions outside the scope of JavaScript/HTML capabilities (I am not up to date) so some other programming language might be needed. I would prefer an interpreted language such as Python, as speed probably does not matter and I don't know Java and would like to avoid cross-compiling.

For the display I have read there is an original application that can be used to show image files, and also that this application has been recreated, so that direct display access is possible - is this correct? Are there other language bindings for this (e.g. python)?
Or is the preferred way to access the display via OS functions (X server)? I think I have seen mention of GTK working.

Has someone taken the trouble to write a tutorial on programming simple Kindle apps that could be extended to what I have in mind?
On the other hand, it may not be as simple as I think and the server-side pre-rendering of above-mentioned weather-data hack has its reasons.. (what are they?)

Maybe someone with experience could provide some hints as to how he/she would approach this?

http://hackaday.com/category/kindle-hacks/
http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/201...ather-display/
https://github.com/pjimenezmateo/kindle-wallpaper

[NiLuJe]

On FW 5.x, if you want active and free GUI interaction, you can either go the X way, with GTK (cf. what bad & twobob did, quite a few different stuff was ported), or the fb way (KOreader and the CR ports are pretty good example of that).

That imply C and/or C++ code and x-compiling (or slowly native compiling in a chroot, if you're twobob ;p), which many prefer to eschew, in favour of the more constrained but easier to approach other possibilities.

For example, there's also the WAF stuff for little web apps (cf. Komic, and the Native Menu).

And, indeed, the piggybacking on the screen-saver framework or just eips (which I guess is the tool you were thinking of, and has been shipped on Kindle FW for pretty much ever) to show static stuff, which can indeed be much faster and easier to achieve depending on your needs.

EDIT: And I completely forgot to mention Kindlets, which is the 'official' (java) framework for Kindle apps, which we can make a tiny bit more useful through the use of the Kindlet jailbreak. (cf. much of what ixtab has done, Collections Manager, KUAL, JBpatch, ...).

[knc1]

Hmm....
Your info box claims: PW2 and K5-Touch - -

... and maybe even play its "answering machine" recordings.

That will be tricky to do on a PW2 - that model of Kindle doesn't have any speakers.

[void]

Thanks for the overview. I'll think about it.

Originally Posted by knc1

... PW2 - that model of Kindle doesn't have any speakers.

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know.