Feature Request - Smarter Frontlight for Dark Mode

[starslab]

While I love KOReader, especially compared to Amazon's braindead Kindle software, I've got one pet peeve with it.

When reading in a dark room, in Dark Mode, with the Frontlight active, every time I change the page (or do anything else that causes a redraw) KOReader blasts me with an all-white display for a fraction of a second before it draws the requested content and the display is mostly dark again.

I understand the flashing is a required characteristic of how e-ink displays work, so I'm not complaining about that, but if KOReader could turn *off* the frontlight before it flashes the screen, and then turn it on again after it's done, that would be awesome. Some people might prefer the current behavior, so if you implement this perhaps it should be an option somewhere?

[NiLuJe]

Nope, tried it, doesn't work as well as one would think it would ;o).

(It mainly has to deal with the fact that this would better be handled in kernel for more accurate timings to begin with (something that lab126 has actually tried, but has never been used in production, which should tell you something ); but mostly because of the latency involved in toggling the frontlight, which is subpar at best for this sort of usage).

[Jellby]

Perhaps it doesn't need to be super fast? Something like dim light, wait, turn page, wait, turn up light again. I guess one could design some kind of "macro" for that.

(Just throwing ideas, since I personally don't use dark mode or frontlight...)

[NiLuJe]

I found the delay super-annoying in practice (both as a user, and as a dev trying to come up with something around it ;p).

Then again, I hate nightmode with a fiery passion to begin with, so it would have been a hard sell no matter what ;o).