FBInk: A small tool/library to print crap on your screen!

[NiLuJe]

Released v1.12.1!

Some corner-cases fixes when the CLI is called from a non-interactive SSH session (#32), and added the possibility of choosing the waveform update mode used when showing an image (mostly useful to enforce A2, for instance).

[NiLuJe]

Released v1.12.2!

A small maintenance release with a few minor fixes peppered across the code, as well as many changes to the fbdepth tool used by KOReader .

[NiLuJe]

Released v1.13.0!

Mainly introduces the dump/restore API . Also has a small performance boost for unprocessed image blitting to 8bpp fbs.

[NiLuJe]

Released v1.14.0!

Quite a few front-facing changes this time around...

On the CLI, the various wfm= suboptions have moved to a global -W, --waveform flag. This means that the syntax for printing images and doing screen refreshes has been altered a tiny bit. On the upside, this is now honored *everywhere*, so you can, for instance, enforce A2 updates when printing text.
Because we can, in *addition* to the existing software inversion support, you can now toggle the eInk controller's hardware inversion (i.e., "nightmode"). Really just because we can, as there's almost no performance impact for our current use-cases.
Fixed identification of *some* Kobo models when onboard isn't available.
Performance increase when printing images, especially on 4/8/16bpp fbs.
Performance increase when decoding images (especially JPG/PNGs). If you suddenly encounter broken/buggy image rendering, give me a shout.
Don't crash the CLI when passing a suboption without a value, emit a proper syntax error instead.

See the release notes for all the gory details .

[NiLuJe]

Released v1.15.0!

Remember when I said I wouldn't add image scaling? I lied. .

Besides a few bugfixes, this adds scaling & dithering support when printing images .
Dithering is cheap, scaling is not. So while this not an excuse to forget to properly preprocess, it does give you more options .

[cramoisi]

@NiLuJe : any recommendation for upgrading within KFMon ?

[NiLuJe]

@cramoisi: Not needed, KFMon ships with its own (minimal & static, so, the exact opposite of those ) FBInk CLI (in addition to itself being linked against the same). .

[BloodRagg]

When I use the -qe flag this warning still gets printed (1.11.1)
[FBInk] Couldn't find a Kobo version tag (onboard unmounted or not running on a Kobo?)!

Has this been tackled already ?

[NiLuJe]

@BloodRagg: Now it has, thanks .

[BloodRagg]

You are too fast

[BloodRagg]

Is there an option to spit out the coordinates of the printed text e.g. 0,178,20,178 ?
This way input events can be used in scripts easily

If you can do it ofcourse

Some pseudo code

#!/bin/sh
coordinates=$(fbink -x10 -y15 -newoption "Feature Request") #spits out 0,178,20,178
while read /dev/input ;do
   case event in
      coordinates) printf "pressed" ;;
   esac
done

[NiLuJe]

That's... theoretically easy enough (that's essentially the MXCFB refresh rectangle, so, the data is there), in practice, a tiny bit more annoying, because the functions already return a specific data type that's already being used for something besides error reporting (the next viable top position, either in the form of a row number or a top margin value).

Meaning this would have to be implemented manually in each fn, and it'd need to be stored somewhere to make it available to API users for feature parity.

Also, that'd be *fb* coordinates, not *input* coordinates.

[BloodRagg]

So, that mean I would still have to correct for rotation right ?

Well If you feel like it, I'm all in

[NiLuJe]

@BloodRagg: Eh, that wasn't so bad after all .

You'd have to correct for rotation, as one would expect, yes, but you'll probably also have to correct for Kobo-isms ;p.
(Namely, the mess that's known as the various input protocols across different devices, and the fact that the native touch orientation *never* matches the fb orientation anyway).

Also, while the fb orientation generally makes sense (i.e., 0,0 is the top-left), that's not the case when the Kobo boots, or is in 16bpp Landscape mode via pickel (... on most devices. On newer devices, pickel is in a saner Portrait orientation), as the Kobo is then technically in Landscape, but expects to be read in Portrait, and FBInk will fudge that to accommodate for legacy use-cases that rely on this insanely broken behavior.

[NiLuJe]

At a very, very, very, very, very quick glance, one *might* try to leverage tslib to do some of the heavy lifting.

The calibration tool appeared to manage to make sense of what my H2O spouts, for instance. (Calibration best done over USBNet w/ Nickel killed, to avoid spurious refreshes & touch responses).

Quick'n (very) dirty patch to make it very minimally behave on Kobo:

diff --git a/src/ts_setup.c b/src/ts_setup.c
index e11db0e..d52a7a3 100644
--- a/src/ts_setup.c
+++ b/src/ts_setup.c
@@ -48,6 +48,10 @@
 #define BITS_PER_LONG           (sizeof(long) * BITS_PER_BYTE)
 #define BITS_TO_LONGS(nr)       DIV_ROUND_UP(nr, BITS_PER_BYTE * sizeof(long))
 
+#ifndef EVIOCGPROP
+#define EVIOCGPROP(len)             _IOC(_IOC_READ, 'E', 0x09, len)         /* get device properties */
+#endif
+
 static int is_event_device(const struct dirent *dir)
 {
        return strncmp(EVENT_DEV_NAME, dir->d_name, 5) == 0;
@@ -78,9 +82,7 @@ static char *scan_devices(void)
                if (fd < 0)
                        continue;
 
-               if ((ioctl(fd, EVIOCGPROP(sizeof(propbit)), propbit) < 0) ||
-                       !(propbit[BIT_WORD(INPUT_PROP_DIRECT)] &
-                                 BIT_MASK(INPUT_PROP_DIRECT))) {
+               if (strcmp(fname, "/dev/input/event1")) {
                        close(fd);
                        continue;
                } else {
diff --git a/tests/fbutils-linux.c b/tests/fbutils-linux.c
index 660e63f..b9cd501 100644
--- a/tests/fbutils-linux.c
+++ b/tests/fbutils-linux.c
@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@
 #include "font.h"
 #include "fbutils.h"
 
+#include <fbink.h>
+
 union multiptr {
        uint8_t *p8;
        uint16_t *p16;
@@ -222,6 +224,10 @@ void put_cross(int32_t x, int32_t y, uint32_t colidx)
                line(x + 4, y - 4, x + 7, y - 7, colidx + 1);
                line(x + 4, y + 4, x + 7, y + 7, colidx + 1);
        }
+
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 }
 
 static void put_char(int32_t x, int32_t y, int32_t c, int32_t colidx)
diff --git a/tests/ts_calibrate.c b/tests/ts_calibrate.c
index 5b540f3..6655b70 100644
--- a/tests/ts_calibrate.c
+++ b/tests/ts_calibrate.c
@@ -32,6 +32,8 @@
 #include "testutils.h"
 #include "ts_calibrate.h"
 
+#include <fbink.h>
+
 #define CROSS_BOUND_DIST       50
 #define VALIDATE_BOUNDARY_MIN  10
 #define VALIDATE_LOOPS_DEFAULT 3
@@ -168,6 +170,9 @@ static int ts_validate(struct tsdev *ts, int boundary, unsigned int loops, int t
        put_string_center(xres / 2, yres / 4, textbuf, 1);
        put_string_center(xres / 2, yres / 4 + 20,
                          "Touch crosshair to validate", 2);
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 
        for (i = 0; i < loops; i++) {
                srand(time(NULL));
@@ -181,6 +186,7 @@ static int ts_validate(struct tsdev *ts, int boundary, unsigned int loops, int t
 done:
        fillrect(0, 0, xres - 1, yres - 1, 0);
        put_string_center(xres / 2, yres / 4, textbuf, 1);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 
        if (timeout == 0) {
                close_framebuffer();
@@ -197,6 +203,7 @@ done:
                put_string_center(xres / 2, yres / 4 + 20,
                                  "Validation failed", 4);
        }
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 
        if (timeout > 0) {
                sleep(timeout);
@@ -404,6 +411,9 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
                          "Touchscreen calibration utility", 1);
        put_string_center(xres / 2, yres / 4 + 20,
                          "Touch crosshair to calibrate", 2);
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 
        printf("xres = %d, yres = %d\n", xres, yres);
 
diff --git a/tests/ts_test.c b/tests/ts_test.c
index c9ced73..8eb4718 100644
--- a/tests/ts_test.c
+++ b/tests/ts_test.c
@@ -22,6 +22,8 @@
 #include "fbutils.h"
 #include "testutils.h"
 
+#include <fbink.h>
+
 static int palette[] = {
        0x000000, 0xffe080, 0xffffff, 0xe0c0a0, 0x304050, 0x80b8c0
 };
@@ -50,6 +52,10 @@ static void refresh_screen(void)
 
        for (i = 0; i < NR_BUTTONS; i++)
                button_draw(&buttons[i]);
+
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 }
 
 static void help(void)
diff --git a/tests/ts_test_mt.c b/tests/ts_test_mt.c
index 7337f1e..f0f3b68 100644
--- a/tests/ts_test_mt.c
+++ b/tests/ts_test_mt.c
@@ -55,6 +55,8 @@
 #include "fbutils.h"
 #include "testutils.h"
 
+#include <fbink.h>
+
 #ifndef ABS_MT_SLOT /* < 2.6.36 kernel headers */
 # define ABS_MT_SLOT             0x2f    /* MT slot being modified */
 #endif
@@ -87,6 +89,10 @@ static void refresh_screen(void)
 
        for (i = 0; i < NR_BUTTONS; i++)
                button_draw(&buttons[i]);
+
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 }
 
 static void help(void)
@@ -127,6 +133,10 @@ void print_slot_info(char *slot_info, size_t len, int32_t max_slots,
                 "%d touch contacts supported (%s)",
                 max_slots, user_slots ? "user" : "driver");
        put_string(2, yres - 14, slot_info, 2);
+
+       FBInkConfig fbink_cfg = { 0 };
+       fbink_init(FBFD_AUTO, &fbink_cfg);
+       fbink_refresh(FBFD_AUTO, 0, 0, 0, 0, HWD_PASSTHROUGH, &fbink_cfg);
 }
 
 #define CROSS_VISIBLE 0x00001000

Don't use FBInk like that at home, kids, this was just to get it running quickly ;p.