Firmware translations for Pocketbook

[Bookster]

Originally Posted by Logseman

By the way, there is a way to make virtual keyboards in those languages too, but I haven't been able to elaborate one.

The only thing I miss for Italian is the accented vowels (which, I believe, are needed for Spanish and surely French too- above all French!), but you can always be very incorrect and use and apostrophe where the accent would be (it's there to signal an accent at the end of the word).

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Bookster

The only thing I miss for Italian is the accented vowels (which, I believe, are needed for Spanish and surely French too- above all French!), but you can always be very incorrect and use and apostrophe where the accent would be (it's there to signal an accent at the end of the word).

You have to save the text in UTF-8 to be able to use those.

[Bookster]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

You have to save the text in UTF-8 to be able to use those.

I do see them; no problem, really- it was a question, like Logseman said, of having a keyboard layout with those ones- which is kind of difficult, I suppose

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Bookster

I do see them; no problem, really- it was a question, like Logseman said, of having a keyboard layout with those ones- which is kind of difficult, I suppose

It is very simple.
I will post how to later. I have to "break into" the reader again and pull out examples of existing languages.

[Bookster]

Originally Posted by kacir

It is very simple.
I will post how to later. I have to "break into" the reader again and pull out examples of existing languages.

Wow, thank you!

[kacir]

I have promised to extract existing keyboard files from my PocketBook 360, so you could create Spanish, French, Vietnamese, whatever keyboard you wish.

BEWARE.
if you create keyboard using this file for PocketBook 302 it will behave very strange. This is ONLY for PB 360 and PB 301.
You can, I am pretty sure, extract files from PocketBook 302 the following way.

I switched on my PocketBook 360, went to the main menu, went to applications and started Poterm application. Poterm is a third party application that was created as a result of competition that was organized and sponsored with prizes by the PocketBook company.

/bin/ash: can't access tty; job control turned off


BusyBox v1.12.2 (2009-01-04 17:45:10 EET) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

So, here we are in an actual terminal.

$ df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                    8192      6156      2036  75% /
/dev/root                 8192      6156      2036  75% /
none                     24576        20     24556   0% /tmp
none                      4096        12      4084   0% /var
none                      4096         0      4096   0% /dev
tmpfs                    31684         0     31684   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mtdblock5           32768     32768         0 100% /ebrmain
/dev/mtdblock6          477896    453008     24888  95% /mnt/ext1

I have issued Unix command df to find out where partitions are mounted. I have noted /mnt/ext1 directory. This is the partition where the "main memory" - part visible after you connect the reader to PC - is mounted.

$ pwd
/

I have issued command pwd - Print Working Directory to make sure where I am located at the moment.
/ tells me I am at the top directory in the filesystem - so called root.

$ ls
bin
dev
ebrmain
etc
lib
linuxrc
lost+found
mnt
proc
sbin
sys
tmp
usr
var

I have issued command ls - this is equivalent of Dos command dir. It lists all the files and directories in a current directory (which is at the moment / - the "root" of the directory tree - as I have found out using the pwd command)

$ cd ebrmain
$ ls
bin
config
fonts
fsimage.tar.gz
language
lib
logo
lost+found
pocketbook
share
themes

I have changed current directory to ebrmain, because I know from previous visits that this is the directory where configuration files for PocketBook are located. You could say I "went inside the directory" so my current directory is /ebrmain/
Then I have listed contents of the directory

$ cd config
$ ls
device.cfg
extensions.cfg

I dived into the /ebrmain/config/ directory where I have "stolen" extensions.cfg file on my previous visit and I see that there in no keyboard configuration file here.

$ cd ../language
$ ls
by.txt
cz.txt
de.txt
ee.txt
en.txt
es.txt
fr.txt
he.txt
keyboard
lt.txt
lv.txt
ru.txt
ua.txt

I have changed to the previous directory .. and to the language directory, so now I am at /ebrmain/language/ directory.
I see there is keyboard directory here (well, technically it can also be a file, because I have used the ls command and not ls -l to save some typing)

$ cd keyboard
$ ls
DE.kbd
EN-HE-RU.kbd
EN-RU-UA.kbd
EN-RU.kbd
EN.kbd
ES.kbd
FR.kbd

I go inside the keyboard directory, and indeed, this is what I am looking for today.

$ cp * /mnt/ext1/
$ exit

I copy all the files (represented by *) in the current directory /ebrmain/language/keyboard/ to the /mnt/ext1/ directory that I have located with the first command df and then I end my session by typing the exit command.

Then I have connected the reader to my computer and in the "main memory" I have found keyboard configuration files.
I have also copied poterm.log from the /games/ directory (where Poterm.bin sits) so I could provide you with a listing of my session.

So.
Unpack the archive, have a look at the configuration files, start reader, choose a new keyboard and compare the keyboard layout with the configuration file. I think that it should be obvious how to modify the file to obtain different keyboard.
You have to use a good text editor that can handle UTF8 encoding. (probably something better than Notepad on Windows). I personally am using Vim text editor for most of my editing on most of my systems.

You place your keyboard file in /language/keyboard/ directory in the main memory (the partition you see when you connect the reader to your computer). You might have to create the keyboard directory.


PocketBook is different from the vast majority of reading devices out there, because with PocketBook it is obvious that developers designed the system in a way that would be very, *very* friendly to a potential tinkerer, hacker, programmer, poweruser or just anybody that wants to improve the device. Thank you Guys in Kiev (TM)!

[omk3]

Originally Posted by omk3

Would you be interested in a greek translation? Or is there one already? I don't actually have a pocketbook, but my mother has one and I admit I fell in love with it, so I would be glad to help out

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Of course we are interested

Okay then, here is my Greek translation of the firmware. I sent it to my mother, all the way to Greece, and she reports that it works fine. She even asked me to translate the subfolders in the Books folder, so I added the following entries:
Books=Βιβλία
Photo=Εικόνες
User_Manual_PB360_english_=Εγχειρίδιο χρήσης στα αγγλικά
English=Αγγλικά
German=Γερμανικά

Now, if only I had a pocketbook, to be able to thoroughly check my translation myself...

Next step, a greek keyboard. (Thanks for the files, kacir!) I'm still a little confused as to how to edit the files, but that's probably because I don't have a pocketbook at hand to directly compare.

[Logseman]

I'll try it out for you, omk

It works like a charm! No funny signs anywhere, and even the apps are translated ^^

[omk3]

Thanks Logseman! I had my mother test it too, it's just that I'd like to see some of the phrases in context, to be sure they make absolute sense, in terms of gender or things like that. Oh well, one of these days I'll have to convince myself that it's not too much of an extravagance to buy myself a second reader...

[omk3]

Ok, I think I will need some help with the keyboard. I look at the english keyboard layout, and it looks like this:

EN: English
_@$%:;!?"()
`1234567890
qwertyuio
asdfghjkl
zxcvbnmp'
=+-~ .,*/
_@$%:;!?"()
`1234567890
QWERTYUIO
ASDFGHJKL
ZXCVBNMP'
=+-~ .,*/
--
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 cn
q w e r t y u i o p bs
a s d f g h j k l ; '
z x c v b n m . , - +
sh [ ] sp:4 ? / ok:2
--
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) cn
Q W E R T Y U I O P bs
A S D F G H J K L : "
Z X C V B N M < > _ =
sh { } sp:4 ` \ ok:2
--

Now I've seen some layouts without the latter two sections. What are they for?
And what do cn, bs, sh, sp:4 and ok:2 mean? Also, is the maximum characters per line 11, or can the two top lines and the one bottom line take more characters than that?

Sorry if all these are too obvious to ask about, but as I don't have a pocketbook to experiment on, I thought it wiser to ask.

Thanks

[Logseman]

I'm not too sure about CN, but BS means the Backspace key, SH should mean Shift, and SP should mean Spacebar.

[fjtorres]

CN looks to be the cancel button.

[omk3]

Thanks Logseman and fjtorres. I've been going through screenshots posted here and I can't find a keyboard that corresponds to the latter two layouts, only the first two. Do you know what they are for, and if so, could you post a screenshot? I'm not sure I can fit all the needed greek characters in there...

[omk3]

Ok, since no one seems to know or care to explain what these are for:

--
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 cn
q w e r t y u i o p bs
a s d f g h j k l ; '
z x c v b n m . , - +
sh [ ] sp:4 ? / ok:2
--
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) cn
Q W E R T Y U I O P bs
A S D F G H J K L : "
Z X C V B N M < > _ =
sh { } sp:4 ` \ ok:2
--

...I decided to just ignore them

So here is my English-Greek keyboard layout.

My very own personal beta-tester reports it works fine. Enjoy!
(I hope there must be at least a few more greek-speaking pocketbook users out there...)

*note: This is a Modern Greek keyboard, so don't expect any weird accents.

*note2: zipped it because otherwise I get an "invalid file" error when uploading

[polossatik]

I'm thinking about getting one of these, so decide to have look at the translation stuff here to translate it to Dutch (ill provide the translation later)

one question I have is that will these be included by default in new firmware?

Also I noticed some typo's in the English:

@Books_empty=Copy your books into device memory or to SD care, and they will appear here
(the next few lines in the en file may also need some re-writing , preferable by a native English speaker)

@3years=3 tears

there is a line without @. is this intended?

@border_large=large
auto=auto

@Hint_dictionary=Hold \25 - list; hold \21 - erase; hold \23 - clear; MENU - choose dic
-> dic? is there a size limit in the menu?