Touch Kobo Touch Plugin Interface

[gorzka]

I have on my KT the firmware 1.9.16. I download the last file KoboTouch.zip here and install is on my Kobo, but I can't see the tweak.

What is wrong?

[Koboyashi]

Originally Posted by gorzka

I have on my KT the firmware 1.9.16. I download the last file KoboTouch.zip here and install is on my Kobo, but I can't see the tweak.

What is wrong?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=35

[gorzka]

I have open the library, but nothing ;-(

[PeterT]

How did you do the install? Did you open the zip file and copy all the contents of it to the .kobo directory on the Touch?

[gorzka]

I open the zip file and copy the tar.gz into the.Kobo directory.

or must I copy the directory tree+file?

[voom]

I open the zip file and copy the tar.gz into the.Kobo directory

That way it should work...

What I recently have found is that if the device is booted from power off with SD-Card inserted, the plugin couldn't be activated. If I boot from power off without the sdcard, then go into library, the plugin starts. After that I can insert the sdcard and the plugin remains functional as long as I don't power off. So in order to get the plugin working, I now always boot from power off without sdcard, then insert it after activating the plugin. Sleep mode and waking from it works fine even with sdcard staying inserted.

[gorzka]

yep, that was it.
I can see Tweaks in the START button, but when I touch the Tweak button the reader freeze and after 10sec. reboot the reader.

I have found it. Do not touch the tweak button in home menu. go to the library and then you can create librarys

[voom]

The tweaks-menu is messed up in the last version, you can edit the .ini-file directly instead; after editing the .ini power off and reboot and go to library again to activate the new settings...

A new tweaks-menu is in the making by ah-

I for now use the previous to last version because I have not started to use shelves anyway and can wait for the feature becoming more solid or included by Kobo in one of the next firmwares...

[gorzka]

ok, thanks
I wait for a new version of tweaks.

[thp1017]

Originally Posted by ah-

It's meant to be like this, due to how nickel loads plugins. It might be possible to get the plugin loaded some other way, but for the moment it's ok and actually has some advantages. Image a fault in a plugin that automatically loads on start and causes nickel to crash. The only option to delete it would be to do a factory reset by holding home during boot, as USB and Wifi are controlled by nickel, and nickel would be dead.

It would be interesting to see if you could try a hybrid approach of some kind - when the plugin is first installed, make the user manually start like you do now, then provide an option in your tweaks menu to 'auto-start' ?

Another approach might be to try and write to a state file - write to the file when you start loading the plugin, before you do anything else, and again when it loads successfully. Next time you boot up the device, check that file - if the plugin didn't load properly last time, don't try and load it this time? Hopefully thereby preventing the need for the occasional factory reset...

All of this, of course, assumes that there *is* a way to have a plugin, or something similar, load automatically... I'm definitely interested in looking around, seeing what I can figure out as well, but I thought I'd see what all other people had figured out.

Also, has anyone put together any kind of package of the files needed to start developing, or is everyone setting things up manually every time?

[ah-]

It would be interesting to see if you could try a hybrid approach of some kind - when the plugin is first installed, make the user manually start like you do now, then provide an option in your tweaks menu to 'auto-start' ?

Another approach might be to try and write to a state file - write to the file when you start loading the plugin, before you do anything else, and again when it loads successfully. Next time you boot up the device, check that file - if the plugin didn't load properly last time, don't try and load it this time? Hopefully thereby preventing the need for the occasional factory reset...

All of this, of course, assumes that there *is* a way to have a plugin, or something similar, load automatically... I'm definitely interested in looking around, seeing what I can figure out as well, but I thought I'd see what all other people had figured out.

The Problem with that is that to do anything like it we need to get nickel to load our code. Nickel tries to load plugins for scanning the files on the internal storage and viewers for different file formats. It only does that when they're potentially needed, for example upon opening the library. Before that, the plugin isn't loaded at all and can't execute any code.
It might be possible to get it loaded sooner by posing as a Qt plugin, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

Also, has anyone put together any kind of package of the files needed to start developing, or is everyone setting things up manually every time?

You have to do that manually at the moment. But it's not too difficult, you mainly need three things: The koboplugins source (just clone the github repository), the codesourcery arm toolchain and the rest of the kobo development environment (see http://blog.ringerc.id.au/2011/01/pr...nment-for.html). Note that you need to change the compile flags for qt, as described on the first page of this thread.

I hope that's all, if you need more assistance I'd be happy to help.

[ah-]

Since I was looking at it anyways, I finished some stuff and I'm happy to announce a new version!

The biggest change is that now there's a much better GUI for controlling all the options, so manually editing any config files should be unnecessary. It's mostly using the same widgets as nickel so everything should look and behave similar to the native settings dialogue.

Installation is the same as always, download Kobo.tgz.zip, extract the zip, copy Kobo.tgz to the .kobo Folder on the device and eject the reader.

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by ah-

Since I was looking at it anyways, I finished some stuff and I'm happy to announce a new version!

The biggest change is that now there's a much better GUI for controlling all the options, so manually editing any config files should be unnecessary. It's mostly using the same widgets as nickel so everything should look and behave similar to the native settings dialogue.

Installation is the same as always, download Kobo.tgz.zip, extract the zip, copy Kobo.tgz to the .kobo Folder on the device and eject the reader.

Nice, I just wish I was on the release version so I could try it out.

[Koboyashi]

Originally Posted by ah-

Since I was looking at it anyways, I finished some stuff and I'm happy to announce a new version!

Thank you . Looks very nice. Well, I have some questions:

• What's the difference between Airplane, Toggle WiFi and WiFi on/off?
• What exactly happens while/after uninstalling the plugin?

And here comes my wishlist :

• Please establish plugin versioning.
• Add at least one blank line resp. a little space under every checkbox on the "Miscellaneous" page. At the moment, the design of this page is a little confusing.
• Add language support. This could be realized by an INI file with entries like "Library=Bücherei" and so on, for each string. So the user may edit this file manually to suit the plugin for his own language.
• Improve the consistency between entries in the home menu and tweaks page.
• Create a complete INI file with all sections and entries (set to default). Currently one has to toggle each home menu option twice to create first a corresponding entry itself and then to set the desired entry value.
• Place a note that the device will reboot to uninstall the plugin.
• Remove the plugin INI file(s) while uninstalling.

[ah-]

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

Thank you . Looks very nice. Well, I have some questions:

• What's the difference between Airplane, Toggle WiFi and WiFi on/off?
• What exactly happens while/after uninstalling the plugin?

Toggle WiFi and WiFi on/off are the same thing, but I have to admit I'm not 100% what it does since I didn't implement this. From looking at the code I'd guess clicking on WiFi on/off connect immediately without having to open the browser.

Uninstalling deletes the plugin shared library (libtweaks.so) and reboots using busybox reboot.

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

And here comes my wishlist :

• Please establish plugin versioning.

What exactly do you mean by this? The only versioning scheme that would make sense at the moment would be to include the git revision somewhere or to use the date as a version.

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

• Add at least one blank line resp. a little space under every checkbox on the "Miscellaneous" page. At the moment, the design of this page is a little confusing.

Yes, the design is not perfect yet. It's the same with a few other elements, the header text isn't exactly where it should be etc.

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

• Add language support. This could be realized by an INI file with entries like "Library=Bücherei" and so on, for each string. So the user may edit this file manually to suit the plugin for his own language.

We already have translations available using Qt Linguist, but they haven't been updated for the new GUI. I think at the moment you have to manually chose the language but that should improve in the future.

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

• Improve the consistency between entries in the home menu and tweaks page.

After pressing the home button your settings should take effect, I'll remove the back arrow from the main settings page in the future. Or do you mean that the order is different/some things are named differently?

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

• At first plugin run, create a complete INI file with all sections and entries (set to default). At the moment, one has to toggle each home menu option twice to create first a corresponding entry itself and then to set the desired entry value.
• Place a note that the device will reboot to uninstall the plugin.
• Remove the plugin INI file(s) while uninstalling.

There's a warning right above the uninstall button . But you're right, having a confirmation dialog would be a good thing. But that's quite a bit of work since I'd have to write the missing headers for potentially a lot of stuff. Maybe in the future.

Also about the INI, I'm not sure what to do with it. Creating the ini file automatically creates versioning problems when the options change in the future and the ini gets out of sync. Also I'd prefer if it were unnecessary to edit any config files by hand.

Thanks for your input, I created issues on github for most of your points so hopefully they'll be implemented in the future.