Text Editors on Kobo

[CandylandVibe]

Is it possible to make and edit your own text files on any Kobo? I was thinking it'd be relatively easy to have a simple text editor, considering you can run python on it and there are many ways to make your own text editors.

Considering the Kobo has, at most, a 40% keyboard, it'd be harder to port something like emacs which needs a lot of keys for macros and multiple buttons held at once. My line of thinking is that porting a vi-based text editor would be easier to port, as modal text editors at max only need two keys held at once. Would probably still need a custom keyboard GUI, though.

[Quoth]

A BT keyboard works on the Sage and Elipsa, but only when the touch Keyboard might work, so not in the Notebooks, only epub Annotation.

You could make ebooks with headings, subjects, days of the week etc and annotate them.

I have a decent text editor on an Android eink (Boyue Mars, now Meebook P78) using a good BT keyboard, Jota. It's not great. Handwriting recognition on the Sage is better (I use a 3rd party "Adrawpen" model for a Microsoft Surface as it's cheaper than the kobo pen. Performs identically to the Kobo pen that came with my Elipsa).

The problem is scrolling and eink. I've never found a Wordprocessor or text editor that pages. They all treat screens like 1928 teletypes, endless paper roll. Books were invented over 2000 years ago (Codex vs Scroll).

Something more like Jota, Nano or Joe would be better than vi or emacs. But really the Advanced Notebook on Sage (will only use BT keyboard to navigate!) with handwriting recognition, export to docx or txt is far better.

I also have Jota on 10" LCD tablet and all my phones. I don't use it since getting the Sage unless I'm in a shop or such with only the phone.

[rtiangha]

It would be nice to have a text editor (and terminal emulator!) that could run native in nickel. As it stands, recent versions of koreader have both a decent text editor and terminal emulator and I've been using both whenever I need to make any on device edits. Dealing with the slow refresh rate is a pain, but unavoidable.

[Alastair_S]

The Vlasovsoft package contains a text editor (plus a terminal emulator and calculator) alongside the games. As far as I am aware only the chess program is shareware, so if you do not want the chess program you can delete it and not worry about registering the package.

The latest version is available at http://pbchess.vlasovsoft.net/en/index.html but I cannot get this text editor to see 'hidden' directories, which is a problem for me as I use the editor to edit "Kobo eReader.conf". This version (2020.12.02) https://web.archive.org/web/20210423.../en/index.html available through the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" does allow the text editor to see 'hidden' directories.

Incidentally, I use NickelMenu to launch Vlasovsoft.

[badrihippo]

Originally Posted by Alastair_S

Incidentally, I use NickelMenu to launch Vlasovsoft.

Could you share what config you use to launch Vlasovsoft? I'm new to NickelMenu configs so want to make sure I don't mess up somewhere.

Thanks in advance!

[badrihippo]

Never mind, I got the config from the Vlasovsoft ZIP file! For reference, here it is:

menu_item :main   :Vlasovsoft          :cmd_spawn      :quiet:sh /mnt/onboard/.adds/vlasovsoft/launcher.sh

(It gets installed automatically, but I already had the Vlasovsoft files from an earlier installation so I had to manually add the entry to NickelMenu)

[DevonHess]

If you have Koreader installed, you can just launch Vim from the terminal.
I don't think editing text on a Kobo is a particularly good idea, so I haven't used it extensively, but it seems to work fine.

[elinkser]

If you already opened KOReader, the filemanager lets you open a file in a "GUI" text editor, as rtiangha was referring to above, for a more intuitive experience than Vi! Edit:On reading properly this time, OP said "macros" and "emacs", so that was a whoosh on my part.Vi it is!


And I just tried the vlasovsoft editor, from the home page, as Alastair_S suggested above, and it also worked on my Clara HD. A shame that the Konsole terminal didn't work - I just got an empty screen.


And some people have got the USB host mode working with Clara HD, with powered microUSB connector since the Clara does not itself power the hub, but getting a USB keyboard up and running is a work in progress. UPDATE : now working great on my Clara HD but requiring setup of Xorg chroot, as mentioned in following link.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=340418


*Using the USB keyboard on the Clara HD required setup using linux command line, buying a special micro-usb adapter that you would have to attach to a USB power source, and switching to a special container app which may have ghosting and refresh issues, and is not as finely optimized in user experience as say KOReader, Plato, etc, plus you have to power off to leave.

So unless that sounds like part of the fun to you, I would follow Quoth advice and choose my ereader accordingly!




*** USB KEYBOARD NOW USABLE IN KOREADER AS OF OCP-KOReader-v2023.06 ! ***
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=941

You can also mirror your phone keyboard using the Linux script utility inside a chroot, and using Fbpad framebuffer terminal otherwise.

[Alastair_S]

Originally Posted by elinkser

And I just tried the vlasovsoft editor, as suggested above, and it also worked. A shame that the Konsole terminal didn't work - I just got an empty screen.

"Konsole" is not particularly intuitive. There are two boxes, if you touch the smaller lower box a keyboard will pop up and you will discover that the lower box is an input box. The console is pretty basic, there is no name completion (at least none that I have discovered) nor is there any apparent command history.

[elinkser]

Oh I see. Thanks for the tip!

Missing command history etc, missing keys like Ctl and "|", running vi did not work - so not as complete a terminal as in KOReader, but nice to know it works.


Since there are friendly aspects to the keyboard in the vlasovsoft notepad, e.g. in the layout and shift key operation, that some will prefer, it's still handy to have at least some commandline
ability, without having to leave the app.