Librerator - multi-format e-reader, fork of KPV

[MarjaE]

Gah... system just ate my post.

I managed to install Librerator. I had been unable to install kindlepdfreader. I am having a lot of trouble with the keys. I have proprioceptive problems, and two-handed key combinations are almost as hard as touch devices.

Is there any way to avoid the key combinations?

Is there any way to organize files?

I was able to create a folder, but not to move files into it. I would be happy to be able to use Kindle collections.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Gah... system just ate my post.

I managed to install Librerator. I had been unable to install kindlepdfreader. I am having a lot of trouble with the keys. I have proprioceptive problems, and two-handed key combinations are almost as hard as touch devices.

Is there any way to avoid the key combinations?

Is there any way to organize files?

I was able to create a folder, but not to move files into it. I would be happy to be able to use Kindle collections.

proprioceptive problems : the ability to tell where your body parts are at (like - where did I put that thumb? without looking for it).

The members here have been willing to help people with unusual problems, but I don't recall any posts on this subject.

But don't give up on us -
This application is open source and the source is publicly posted.
It is at least **possible** to alter this application's behavior.
(without learning Chinese first)

If I understand this correctly -
What you would like is a set of "single press, hot keys" for the common actions.

Could you give us a list to the things you would like to see turned into single key commands?

Another suggestion (not for this model Kindle) -
For the original Kindle Touch (a.k.a: KT and K5 here) -
TwoBob built speaker independent voice recognition.

I.E: You just tell your Kindle what to do (turn page, run a menu item, etc., etc. - the system can be built to recognize user's choice of words and phrases).

It you don't mind talking to your Kindle - this might be another choice.
(I don't think VR can be done on a DX - not enough horsepower - GM might have an opinion on that - getting fast response out of a Kindle is one of his "things")

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

[...] If you don't mind talking to your Kindle - this might be another choice. (I don't think VR can be done on a DX - not enough horsepower - GM might have an opinion on that - getting fast response out of a Kindle is one of his "things")

Of course Voice Recognition can be done on a DX. It has an ARM. That is WAY more powerful than the stuff we had when I was a kid (i.e. relays and vacuum tubes). And even THEN, folks did "voice feature extraction" (early form of voice recognition) with vibrating glass fibers cut to various lengths and a simple analog "perceptron" circuit to "recognize" phonemes and such from the fluctuating light focused on photocells (after passing through a "light mask" gate). People got more "physical" back in the day, before ASICs and "really fast" software (with multicore pipelining and multilevel cache and such) were all the rage. It is mostly about imagination (and necessity) -- folks are trained to give up much too early, before their favorite TV program starts...

I have a long history of doing things even the "experts" claimed was "impossible" (even after they saw my code actually working) on the constrained hardware it was running on. "Clark's Third Law" in action. In fact, to me, "impossible" was just a challenge to think "outside the box" where there always seemed to be plenty of "obvious" solutions just laying around out in the open where others did not bother looking...

If not obvious, any old ARM processor (like the one in a DX) beats an Arduino all to hell and back, and yet even that can do this: AN ARDUINO WITH BETTER SPEECH RECOGNITION THAN SIRI

And an Arduino has tiny firmware storage capacity and a miniscule amount of RAM (compared to a DX). So, Voice Recognition on a DX, hell yeah!



The problem for me is TIME. I need to start doing things that pay "real money", to keep pesky "bill collectors" from bothering me...

[geekmaster]

For something like page turning, voice recognition does NOT need to be sophisticated enough for accurate voice dictation. Just enough to guess (with relative accuracy) which of a limited number of "commands" were spoken.

Way back before microprocessors, TI had a chip (sold inexpensively at Radio Shack electronics stores) that recognized digits 0 - 9, and a few other commands as well. A small chip with an output pin for each spoken command, as I recall -- you could speak to it and it would light LEDs, or something like that. And nowhere NEAR the power of an Arduino, let alone a Kindle DX.

So for a canned set of input commands like "page turns" and such, relatively simple software voice recognition, piece of cake (especially if you borrow somebody else's code, eh?)...

[knc1]

I was wrong - twobob did make a build for "all Kindles" (with audio hardware).
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=209061

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

I was wrong - twobob did make a build for "all Kindles" (with audio hardware).
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=209061

Thankfully, your ROBOTS.TXT did not prevent archive.org from saving your site from extinction:
Vague. Voice Activated GUi Extension. (Kindle Touch version)

Sadly, unlike the amazon firmwares, your downloads were not archived...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Thankfully, your ROBOTS.TXT did not prevent archive.org from saving your site from extinction:
Vague. Voice Activated GUi Extension. (Kindle Touch version)

Sadly, unlike the amazon firmwares, your downloads were not archived...

They are too large to attach.
My ADSL line is 'rained out'.
I'll transfer them to one of my cloud accounts tomorrow (if it stops raining)
It looks like I only have builds for K3, K4 and K5 on the site. (or maybe they are flite and tts files - I am only guessing from the names.)

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

They are too large to attach.
My ADSL line is 'rained out'.
I'll move them to one of my cloud accounts tomorrow (if it stops raining)
It looks like I only have builds for K3, K4 and K5 on the site. (maybe)

What, no K1 build?

[knc1]

Good for 1 day (check date/time of this post):
https://objects-us-west-1.dream.io/c...res=1464828656

I'll figure out something else, later.

[geekmaster]

Downloaded. I am tempted to emulate the opto-mechanical voice recognizer I was so fascinated with in my youth, in software. It used a bunch of glass fibers with one end glued to a glass microscope slide, all cut to different lengths to resonate at different frequencies in the voice band. Training consisted of placing photographic film under the glass slide and speaking a digit (zero to nine) to it so the free ends were exposed to light as they vibrated. Or something similar to that -- those memories are fuzzy now (maybe the light source and film positions were swapped from what I recall). The developed film negative contained a mask that blocked the recognized digit while the OTHER digit masks (with their own mask and fibers and light source) vibrated. The total light output triggered detection, with the LEAST light being the digit spoken. Or something like that. These days we could replace the fiber and film mask detectors with FFT pattern matching, and perhaps simple time-delay neural-network (TDNN) feeding a simple Markov chain detector, for more complex sound groups (i.e. multi-word commands). Of course, the chosen spoken commands must be different enough to avoid command collisions. The stuff I just described was from the 1950's -- Googles voice recognition (and CMU's for that matter) are six decades beyond that. But still, for page turn commands, the spoken equivalent of Palm Pilot "graffiti" handwriting recogition (i.e. "specially adapted, almost but not quite text characters') would be great for handicapped enhanced page turning, and more. But extrememly simple.

EDIT: It appears that there are modern equivalents to that "pre-computer" opto-mechanical voice command recognizer that I attempted to describe above.

Or perhaps emulate that early TI chip from the "Speak and Spell" days (they had inexpensive chips for both text-to-speech and for spoken-command-recognition back in the late 1970's, or maybe 1980's?). Anyway, those things did not need a database. Just simple pattern recognition, though they only accurately recognized a limited number of spoken commands that were sufficiently different enough to be detected by such a simple device.

All it takes for vocal operation of the page turn keys for apps like "Librerator" (or other KPV forks) would be a small and simple vocal command detector such as I described -- no need for something as advanced as the CMU app.

[knc1]

Keep in mind that twobob did this VR project several years ago - -
It probably wouldn't hurt to use updated sources.

Some words on how it works:
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/

Of interest, Vague is still acknowledged (as a mobile application):
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/sphinxinaction
(Hmm, I guess I should do something about making that link work again.)

[Kai771]

@MarjaE

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Gah... system just ate my post.

I managed to install Librerator. I had been unable to install kindlepdfreader. I am having a lot of trouble with the keys. I have proprioceptive problems, and two-handed key combinations are almost as hard as touch devices.

Is there any way to avoid the key combinations?

Is there any way to organize files?

I was able to create a folder, but not to move files into it. I would be happy to be able to use Kindle collections.

I am not sure to which key combinations you're referring.

If you are talking about Shift-L-L to start Librerator using Launchpad, the solution is simple: use KUAL instead. With KUAL, no key combination necessary to start Librerator - use cursor keys to select Kindle Launcher, press five-way middle button. Again cursor keys to select Librerator - Start in documents, again five-way middle to start it. No combinations, always one key at the time, without time limit.

If you are talking about options in Librerator, all is accessible through menus: press Menu key, and then use cursor keys to select the option you want. No key combinations necessary.

To move a file, do the following:
1. select a file (position cursor on it)
2. press Menu, then select Cut
3. navigate to the folder where you want the file to be
4. press Menu, then select Paste

Although possible to copy/move files from the Librerator, you can only do one file at a time, which is not very convenient. Much more convenient is to connect your Kindle to the PC (or Mac) and use the computer's file manager to organize them in folders any way you like.

Librerator does not support native Kindle collections.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Kai771

[knc1]

@Kai771: Thanks for the continued support.

@GM (others): I think we should wait for MarjaE to reply to the request for more details of what they want changed.

Note:
Vague is still not all that popular -
Discounting my download to test the link and GM's download for reference purposes -
there has been a total of one other download.

twobob was underwhelmed by the response when he did it to begin with also -
the only people that seemed to be impressed was CMU (who generously helped twobob with the port to a Kindle).

Note 2:
The system now also supports Arabic speakers -
I mention this just in case any of the requests for an Arabic keyboard want to consider a voice activated keyboard.

Note 3:
It would be nice to play with this, to see if the OTG dongle support recently added to the silent Kindles could be made to support the microphone input.

But without any interest from users, it would probably be a waste of time to re-build an updated version of twobob's project.

[geekmaster]

While searching for how to do microphone input, I see that there is also an older thread for voice control (KindleControl), on kindles with keyboards:

Voice Control for Accessibility (simulating key presses)

Though in that case the goal was to do voice recognition on a host PC and remotely control keypresses...

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

[...]
Note 3:
It would be nice to play with this, to see if the OTG dongle support recently added to the silent Kindles could be made to support the microphone input. [...]

I see that my PW3 does have an "arecord" program, so it CAN record from an alsa audio input device. My sound dongle (with both microphone and headphone jacks) SHOULD work for audio input. But I used usbnet to test for arecord...

I need wifi SSH, or a KUAL extension, to record and playback some audio when USB is dedicated to sound.

EDIT: Okay, I did a test. Not successful. Details posted here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...67#post3327967
Voice commands are not an option until we get that working...

EDIT2: However, both arecord and aplay (built in commands on the PW3) reported "no sound card", so perhaps we CAN get the USB microphone to work by whatever method twobob used to make his Balsamic demo play sound from my USB sound dongle.