Epub Reader - Must Be Possible Surely?


^ The big difference when you look at Pandora's firmware/OS is, that there are rarely closed parts in the OS, except drivers, and it's a device for the community from the start. Nokia _pretended_ to care about the community, but in fact they didn't. I can't blame a big corporation for dropping support, but telling one thing and doing the other is something I can't stand.
 
I went the WebOS/Palm Pre Plus route instead of the Nokia route as far as a linux smartphone. Now that HP has bought Palm, I'm really really hoping they do an ARM tablet using WebOS.

That said, I also intend to use my Pandora as an eBook reader, but since I didn't order until late 2009, I expect I will have a few more months for the software to settle itself out before I will need to use it on my Pandora. If it hasn't been ported by then, I'll port it myself.

Back to the start of the conversation, if the Pandora supported multitouch, WebOS would be interesting running on it. It's a truly excellent/great interface for handheld devices like smartphones, tablets, and Pandora-like UMPCs.
 
By WebKit I assume you mean WebOS since WebKit is just a rendering engine for browsers. Sure Webkit is a great engine and WebOS looks nice and all but the idea of writing everything in javascript makes me break out in a cold sweat.
 
femngi said:
By WebKit I assume you mean WebOS since WebKit is just a rendering engine for browsers. Sure Webkit is a great engine and WebOS looks nice and all but the idea of writing everything in javascript makes me break out in a cold sweat.
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Yes, sorry, I meant WebOS.

Javascript is not your only option for development in WebOS. On a fundamental level, WebOS is ARM linux, much as Pandora is. There is a GUI layer on top, of course. But directly to your point, you can program WebOS using C/C++ as well.
 
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TheDarkSpectrum48K said:
Right ... tried it now at lunch over my mifi ...

It installs fine (and can be seen in the extentions folder) but then asks you to restart firefox thats when it dissapears

maybe something to do with being wrapped in a pnd? over my head im afraid .... :(
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There seems to be some problems with the firefox PND. It duplicates files across appdata and NAND and I guess it's installing to NAND and reading from appdata. Or vica versa.

Weird thing is it's inconsistent. Addons were working on my Firefox, then I had to reflash. I deleted my appdata and started again and now I can't install addons (I have the same problem as you, dissapears after restarting). I dont know who made the PND, so I don't know who to feed this back to.
 
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ED made that PND, as far as I know, Pleng.

I can't comment on it myself, as it simply refused to even start up, on my Pandora. :( (I do wish it was still one of the built-in browsers, I must admit. :p)
 
that's very strange. Have you done anything funny with persmissions? Like I say it places a lot of stuff on the NAND so if you have any funny restrictions it might not work.

Did you get the 'first run' dialogue?

It's a shame that it's not working properly with extensions (and indeed it doesn't seem to be recalling sessions anymore either) as runs wonderfully.
 
mali said:
^ The N900 _is_ a nice piece of kit, no doubt. Don't listen to me, I'm just a frustrated N800 user ;)
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^
What he said...

... times one gazillion. Nokia appears to be very good at taking advantage of an open source community, only to make a quick sale. Stay away.
 
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Yeah Nokia suck.

I paid out for an N800 too because they promised open source + continuing support, but refused to pay out for anything else from them after they failed to deliver.

Anyone want to buy an N800? they really are the best machines, well worth the money.. honest :unsure:
 
^ It's still an awesome ebook reader, though. I use it almost daily and there is still development from the community :)
 
femngi said:
Anyway, I think the problem with support is one systematic to the industry, especially with Android phones. Manufacturers still view the OS as 'firmware' and therefore static. This is partly why I get nervous when OP insist on calling their OS firmware.
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It depends upon whom you're dealing with. I've got a Nexus One and I got it because it was far less likely to be a problem than the other options. So far I've been happy, if a bit annoyed that certain things still require a rooted phone. That being said, the platform has just about gotten to the point where there isn't a lot that needs to be done. Well, the platform as of 2.2 that is, anybody that's using previous versions is still not there.

But I think the problem to which you refer is more to do with the proprietary UI crap that carriers insist on putting on their phones to make them unique. That takes a few months to develop, then a bit to test, and by that point you're something like six, seven months behind. It won't be a problem when Android is more or less completely matured, but right now there's definitely growing pains.

That being said, I hope to ditch my Nexus One for my Pandora, for the purposes of reading ebooks on the go.
 
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skeezix said:
Nokia bought QT. So far not a disaster.... Yet
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Could that perchance be because QT is a mature environment, backed by an existing, powerful and vocal community that wouldn't hesitate a Planck-time to fork like starving derwishes the moment Nokia tried a - well, a Nokia move on their baby?
 
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I did a quick build of FBreader again, to renew why I dislike it so much :) (I'd deleted my previous attempt out of irritation.. wow :p)

Build is easy enough to do, though a little odd; installing it is really irritating though, since it depends on a bunch of files no one knows about, but more to point -- you need to stick one of the shared libs it builds into a really odd place (/usr/lib/zlibrary/ui/zlui-gtk.so), and it is not noted or documented anywhere; to wit, when you run FBreader, it makes no logging whatsoever -- it just silently exits, without a note of why, or what it was doing (ie: that it was looking in /usr/lib/zlibrary/ui for zlui-gtk.so; I had to hack in some logging to figure that out.) How can a project go for so long, without sensible basic logging being added? *boggle*) (oh, and 'make packages' doesn't work, of course, like it says in the README, but thats okay.) ie: It looks for a ui, and loads it, and runs it -- if no ui found, it just exits. The sensible thing for the coders to do would say "of the 5 or 10 UIs we know about, we didn't find any, so put one in /foo/bar" :/)

Anyway, putting things in all the right places and running it ... on a PDF or plain .txt file, I just get a white screen; no UI controls or anything. Just blank.

It could well be missing something, but since it doesn't log anything, who knows? (and its all dynamicly loaded .. so if it doesn't find something to do, it just doesn't do it; so it could well not be finding something its needing, but who would ever know?) I'm doing the same things as Debian and Redhat and such are doing in their ports.

So easy build, but doesn't seem to do anything; _now_ I remember why being so annoyed with it -- its a well done piece of software that seems deliberately goofy :) (ie: in that, you have to delve into it to figure it out, you can't 'just work'.) bah :)

Anyone interested?

Wait, let me start another thread for this, so folks can help out attacking it if they like..
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54557-console-attack%3B-fix-or-figure-out-fbreader-here-are-the-bins/

jeff
 
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skeezix said:
I did a quick build of FBreader again, to renew why I dislike it so much :) (I'd deleted my previous attempt out of irritation.. wow :p )

Build is easy enough to do, though a little odd; installing it is really irritating though, since it depends on a bunch of files no one knows about, but more to point -- you need to stick one of the shared libs it builds into a really odd place (/usr/lib/zlibrary/ui/zlui-gtk.so), and it is not noted or documented anywhere; to wit, when you run FBreader, it makes no logging whatsoever -- it just silently exits, without a note of why, or what it was doing (ie: that it was looking in /usr/lib/zlibrary/ui for zlui-gtk.so; I had to hack in some logging to figure that out.) How can a project go for so long, without sensible basic logging being added? *boggle*) (oh, and 'make packages' doesn't work, of course, like it says in the README, but thats okay.) ie: It looks for a ui, and loads it, and runs it -- if no ui found, it just exits. The sensible thing for the coders to do would say "of the 5 or 10 UIs we know about, we didn't find any, so put one in /foo/bar" :/)

Anyway, putting things in all the right places and running it ... on a PDF or plain .txt file, I just get a white screen; no UI controls or anything. Just blank.

It could well be missing something, but since it doesn't log anything, who knows? (and its all dynamicly loaded .. so if it doesn't find something to do, it just doesn't do it; so it could well not be finding something its needing, but who would ever know?) I'm doing the same things as Debian and Redhat and such are doing in their ports.

So easy build, but doesn't seem to do anything; _now_ I remember why being so annoyed with it -- its a well done piece of software that seems deliberately goofy :) (ie: in that, you have to delve into it to figure it out, you can't 'just work'.) bah :)

Anyone interested?

Wait, let me start another thread for this, so folks can help out attacking it if they like..
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54557-console-attack%3B-fix-or-figure-out-fbreader-here-are-the-bins/

jeff
Click to expand...

Jeff ... I wanted to say a huge thank you for getting this off the ground!!!
 
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TheDarkSpectrum48K said:
skeezix said:
I did a quick build of FBreader again, to renew why I dislike it so much :) (I'd deleted my previous attempt out of irritation.. wow :p )

Build is easy enough to do, though a little odd; installing it is really irritating though, since it depends on a bunch of files no one knows about, but more to point -- you need to stick one of the shared libs it builds into a really odd place (/usr/lib/zlibrary/ui/zlui-gtk.so), and it is not noted or documented anywhere; to wit, when you run FBreader, it makes no logging whatsoever -- it just silently exits, without a note of why, or what it was doing (ie: that it was looking in /usr/lib/zlibrary/ui for zlui-gtk.so; I had to hack in some logging to figure that out.) How can a project go for so long, without sensible basic logging being added? *boggle*) (oh, and 'make packages' doesn't work, of course, like it says in the README, but thats okay.) ie: It looks for a ui, and loads it, and runs it -- if no ui found, it just exits. The sensible thing for the coders to do would say "of the 5 or 10 UIs we know about, we didn't find any, so put one in /foo/bar" :/)

Anyway, putting things in all the right places and running it ... on a PDF or plain .txt file, I just get a white screen; no UI controls or anything. Just blank.

It could well be missing something, but since it doesn't log anything, who knows? (and its all dynamicly loaded .. so if it doesn't find something to do, it just doesn't do it; so it could well not be finding something its needing, but who would ever know?) I'm doing the same things as Debian and Redhat and such are doing in their ports.

So easy build, but doesn't seem to do anything; _now_ I remember why being so annoyed with it -- its a well done piece of software that seems deliberately goofy :) (ie: in that, you have to delve into it to figure it out, you can't 'just work'.) bah :)

Anyone interested?

Wait, let me start another thread for this, so folks can help out attacking it if they like..
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54557-console-attack%3B-fix-or-figure-out-fbreader-here-are-the-bins/

jeff
Click to expand...

Jeff ... I wanted to say a huge thank you for getting this off the ground!!!
Click to expand...

Yeah same here! No rush, I'm probably in the 3800-4000 group. :lol:
 
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We'll get it sorted out eventually; I read a _lot_ of ebooks. (I have often gone on at great lengths about how sad the whole ebook/drm/availabilty thing is a total mess. ebooks tend to be expensive, locked down to a device so the book will eventually someday be unreadable, and at least for me .. the books I want are rarely availabnle. Still, I read a lot of damned ebooks anyway :)

jeff
 
It's late and I don't want to dig through this thread seeing if this has been asked but why not rip the reader out of calibre? I haven't looked that far into it but I notice that it is just called 'E-book Viewer' and you can open epub(and just about every other ebook format, including naked HTML) with it without starting up calibre. It loads faster than calibre so I think it is a separate program.

I'm not sure if this helps any, but I'm loving calibre, with this and the price drop in the B&N Nook and this I think I'll get the wifi $150 version. I HATE FBreader, it has kept me from even considering an e-ink reader as I use Linux and would want to organize my books on my PC.

I'll still use my Pandora to read with now and then though.

@ skeezix

Have you ever gone here? Why not just digitize dead tree versions of books? That way you have a digital copy to go everywhere and a hard backup. I'm going to build one of these and digitize my library someday, no way I can buy them all again. It is also pretty easy once you get it set up, not as fast as a professional digitizer, but a heck of a lot cheaper(about $99,900 less)!
 
Pleng said:
that's very strange. Have you done anything funny with persmissions? Like I say it places a lot of stuff on the NAND so if you have any funny restrictions it might not work.

Did you get the 'first run' dialogue?

It's a shame that it's not working properly with extensions (and indeed it doesn't seem to be recalling sessions anymore either) as runs wonderfully.
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Whoops, pardon me - I forgot to respond to this!

Oddly, it works under Minimenu, but not Xfce (I never got the first-run stuff under Xfce). No funny business with permissions or anything else. I'll have to mess with it some more later. I haven't gotten on with Midori or Fennec, and Arora, whilst for me the best of the bunch, doesn't quite suit my needs fully. :p

[/off-topic]
 
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Prometheus, that sounds even weirder. Anyhow, check out my thread in 'software hacking' regarding Firefox profiles. After a reflash I lost my profile saving abilities and after a process of deduction I came to the conclusion that it relies on a working PND of Fennec residing on the same SD card
 
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