903 real annotations and note taking (903, 603)

[kacir]

Originally Posted by review

It is actually quite a bit of hard work to do the reverse engineering. With no official SDK and no documentation...

Thank you review.
Great job.

I am happy, but at the same time your comment makes me sad, VERY sad.

When I purchased my PocketBook 360, one of THE most important features was that there was SDK, there was real support for developers and modding users. Support that PocketBook company demonstrated repeatedly (well, mostly for Russian speaking community, but we still reap the benefits of poterm and other programs developed by third party programmers).

I was SO proud that I can be part of great community and that we, PocketBook owners DO NOT HAVE to waste precious time of talented developers, such as review, LoneTech and sergeyvl12 for cracking protection, reverse engineering and fighting with missing documentation.


Tell me, dear PocketBook representatives how is the newest PocketBook different from Kindle, or Sony devices?

Imagine, dear PocketBook representatives what those very talented programmers could do to improve your device if they are not hindered by the need to do bloody reverse engineering and cracking and replacing missing documentation by trial end error.

[LoneTech]

The missing documentation may be the one honest point in all of this. You might recall I started tagging up some of the inkview header before; as far as I know, it may be undocumented in the first place, or possibly have only restricted documentation (it's likely from Western Graphics, whom I gather are not GIK). In the worst case, everyone at GIK are restricted by some NDA governing the documentation they have, meaning they need us to do a clean room document to get the SDK up to par. In a slightly better case, they might have been working on documentation in English already, and that's what taking time - but that's still no excuse for holding back the compiler, sources, and so on.

[review]

OK, so currently I'm doing my final tests. Did I mention that you can't expect miracles to happen overnight?

No, seriously, I haven't reprogrammed the whole system (without the sourcecode). What I've done is a "hack". Some kind of a workaround. More than that is not generally possible without the sourcecode. Sure the sources of pdfviewer are available but then, you won't be able to make annotations in books you've purchased, which are DRM protected.

What I do is, I "hijack" some functions and combine them.

So don't expect too much.

I'm sure that there will be a few people who won't be satisfied with this workaround. But, hey, it's better than nothing, isn't it? And noone says that this "hack" will be the official annotations software.

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

I'm sure that there will be a few people who won't be satisfied with this workaround. But, hey, it's better than nothing, isn't it? And noone says that this "hack" will be the official annotations software.

review, we'll shoot on sight anyone who complains and who does not shower the three of you with karma
what is in that video is worth a million, do not dare say it is not much

[review]

So, here we go. First, a disclaimer: this is no official upgrade and in no way connected to pocketbook. This program shouldn't harm your computer but systems are different. If it doesn't work as intended I'm not responsible at all. So, if you download this app and use it you agree with this statement above.

Now, after the legal stuff the fun part. How to get it work on your device. Please read carefully. It is important that you understand what today. If anything is not clear please ask first.

The idea is pretty simple. The technical implementation was a bit a challenge. So I'm for the moment skipping the challenges and just explain the idea:

In order that this hack works in all programs (epub, protected epub, djvu, pdf, protected pdf ...) we have to use a very fundamental implementation. So I use the following approach:

1) the user takes a screenshot
2) my program imports this screenshot to scribble
3) scribble loads this screenshot and can draw on this screenshot.

The nice thing about this is that the step 1 can be repeated a few times before we go to step 2 and 3. So if you have for example a 5 pages academic paper you can repeat (1) five times and then go to step 2. The advantage is that you can use in scribble the next and back button very quickly.

So that was the theory. Now, here comes what you have to do for INSTALLATION
1) I strongly suggest that you change the double tap of the power button to "take a screenshot"
2) then I strongly suggest that you change the single tap of the power button to "last opened books"
3) unzip the attached file and upload it to the device (the place doesn`t really matter)

here are the steps for ANNOTATIONS:
1) before you run my app open the book you want to make annotations in
2) close the book (1 and 2 are there so that this book is in the last opened book list)
3) start my app annot-0.0.2
4) you will see scribble. we don`t do anything here but single press the power button (make sure you did step (2)) you will get the last opened books
5) open the book you want to annotate
6) when you come to the page you want to annotate, double press the power button
7) a message will pop up that says that a screenshot has been taken.
8) now you have two options: either go straight into annotation mode or continue to collect pages. For the later go back to (6)
9) once you decide to go into annotation mode press for a short time the back button (next to the fourway button)
10) scribble will open. go to the next scribble note until the page is there you want to make notes on.
11) to go back to the book DO NOT close scribble!! single press the power button and open the book from the last opened book list
12) if you want to quit the whole program just close the scribble application with a short back click.

I`m sure there are a lot of bugs and I`m happy to improve the version once we identify some bugs.

As a final note: DO NOT press the home button. That is a system call. And the system doesn't know of my program running so you end up with a mess on the screen.
IF this happens by mistake: just turn of the device (long press on power) and turn it on again. That will clear up everything.

I will take a break now for a few hours. So feel free to comment, but I won't be able to reply until later.

Have fun!

EDIT: Users of 2.0.4 (December 2010) please scroll down, there is a modified version for those firmwares available. The version here is for 2.0.4 (January 2011).

[review]

I'm back. So are there so far any questions? I think it needs a bit of practice but once one get the hang of it it is quite useful. In principle it is very easy to make real annotations in the pdf as it has been pointed out in many ways so far but from what is available at this point in time this is the best I could do.

[paola]

Hi review,
I have tried, but nothing happens: when I launch your application, the screen goes white for asecond or two (with the hourglass appearing), and then I get back to the directory of the app. I put it in the "games" directory as I haven't updated the firmware yet (I have still the "old" 2.0.4: as I am no techie, I was afraid of creating more issues), is this the problem do you reckon?
I do have the image files, though, but I cannot select scribble to open it.

[review]

hi paola,
let's see. I'm soooo sorry. Yeah, my app looks in the application folder for scribble. Just wait a minute. The new version for the 2.0.3 firmware follows soon. Sorry again. Totally forgot about that.

[review]

--- see later post.

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

again, sorry about that. Try the attached file and please report how it goes. Thank you.

hey review, no problem at all! thanks, I will try this right away - just one more question: I presume I now have to re-take the pictures of the pages I want to annotate, right? Is there a way to go back to the annotated pictures to take more annotations in a different session?
Thanks again!

EDIT: same problem, but I guess it must be because I have neither the new 2.0.4, nor teh old 2.0.3, but just the old 2.0.4. Maybe I should update to the 20 January version of he 2.0.4 version.

[review]

Originally Posted by paolamanzini

hey review, no problem at all! thanks, I will try this right away - just one more question: I presume I now have to re-take the pictures of the pages I want to annotate, right?

Yeah, all screenshots that are taken outside of the annotation-mode are not automatically imported to scribble. You could do this by hand. Have you done many screenshots already? I could provide you a program which just would import all screenshots to scribble right away. Let me know if you're interested.

Originally Posted by paolamanzini

Is there a way to go back to the annotated pictures to take more annotations in a different session?

Yes. You can open all old sessions straight away with scribble or in a new session you can just go back.

Originally Posted by paolamanzini

Thanks again!

It is a real pleasure, if people appreciate the work put into. So thank you for your kind words.

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

Yeah, all screenshots that are taken outside of the annotation-mode are not automatically imported to scribble. You could do this by hand. Have you done many screenshots already? I could provide you a program which just would import all screenshots to scribble right away. Let me know if you're interested.

yes, of course I already took 20 pages (a whole paper I have to referee).

I edited my previous message while you were answering, so you won't have seen it, but the "b" version does not work either, possibly because I am not on 2.0.3 either (but on the december version of the 2.0.4, while the newest 2.0.4 version dates back to last week): shall I update to the new freeware version, then?

[LoneTech]

Shell script within C program. A little kludgy but a very neat hack! The problem for us with the firmware that does not automatically erase /games is that the scribble path is hardcoded. Placing a copy of scribble.app in /applications should work, or I could mangle the path itself.. or reinvent the wheel, now I have an idea how the hack works. Well done!

Personally I solved the path issue with "ln -s games /mnt/ext1/applications" in poterm.

[review]

Originally Posted by paolamanzini

problem, but I guess it must be because I have neither the new 2.0.4, nor teh old 2.0.3, but just the old 2.0.4. Maybe I should update to the 20 January version of he 2.0.4 version.

sorry, it was a typing mistake. I ment the earlier version of 2.0.4 (not 2.0.3). Ok, I will have another look into the sourcecode of my program. Those version shouldn't however differ very much. Could you please confirm that you started the version ending with -b? Sorry to ask funny question but I need to be sure that the fault lies in the program.

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

sorry, it was a typing mistake. I ment the earlier version of 2.0.4 (not 2.0.3). Ok, I will have another look into the sourcecode of my program. Those version shouldn't however differ very much. Could you please confirm that you started the version ending with -b? Sorry to ask funny question but I need to be sure that the fault lies in the program.

no question is funny if you are talking to a low tech person
So the first time I tried with the first file you uploaded. The second time I tried the -b version. I have just tried it again (I have ti in the "games" directory, where I also have scribble and the original annot-0.0.2.app file: perhaps having the two together there is the mistake?), and it has the same behaviour: white screen with hourglass, then after a second back to the lsit of applications.