WhizzBang
Grotesque Peasant
It does look good and is another welcome feature. the first one (the blue pattern) looks the best to me as it is pleasant but less distracting than a photo.
New Text Reader - Greader2x
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starpause
Member
Coder posted on Mar 11 2007 at 02:43 PM said:
image links worked fine for me. i'm more excited about things that make the text easier to read like being able to configure leading and tracking (makes the ability to load any font more useful ... if you can make any font comfortable to read ... right now most fonts i try have the characters too close to each other and the lines too far apart). either way, great to see any work done on the app!
also glad to see .zip support on the todo list, makes a big difference on size of texts!
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Coder
Still Fresh
starpause posted on Mar 12 2007 at 08:58 AM said:
I've been thinking about that, (as well as about justified text), I can see an easy way to alter the line spacing, but the character spacing will take a bit more work.
starpause posted on Mar 12 2007 at 08:58 AM said:
On zip support, I'm in two minds as to how to implement it. I'd like to treat zips as directories, to that they appear like directories in the file selector, and when you choose one it'll display all the files in the zip as if they were in a directory. That way will add an extra keypress or two for those people who store each text file in a separate zip, but it means you can use zip files to organise your collection.
P.S. I've just finished adding support for collapsing paragraphs in Gutenburg texts, configurable of course.
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starpause
Member
Coder posted on Mar 12 2007 at 06:01 AM said:
Very cool, thanks for looking into it. I think leading and tracking are primary. i think those two things are more important than justification if you're trying to make any ttf readable.
I think the method you described for .zip files is perfect, it lets you do more rather than less. On the other hand, if there's only one text file in a .zip, maybe you can open it automatically instead of displaying it as a directory.
Big up on paragraph collapsing! I wrote a command line C program for doing just that to text files, I was getting by with it but having it built into the reader will be so nice. Some texts have complex whitespace tho--where lyrics or poems are indented from the body of the text. It will be interesting to see how your solution deals with those.
Looking forward to the next version of the application--and hope the donation comments weren't didn't cause any offense, you're doing great work!
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Coder
Still Fresh
starpause posted on Mar 13 2007 at 05:09 AM said:
The problem with tracking is that it will interfere with the word wrapping code, I'll keep it in mind until I figure out a way of doing it without messing up everything else.
starpause posted on Mar 13 2007 at 05:09 AM said:
It should deal with simple stuff like that, the algorythm is to replace a single CR/LF with a space if the next character is not whitespace. However it can play havoc with some documents, for example the lists of config options in the readme don't have whitespace and so get stuck into one line.
I think it's something that will need to be set only for some documents.
I've tackled this problem before and have never found a satisfactory way of handling all documents.
starpause posted on Mar 13 2007 at 05:09 AM said:
What donation comments? I know someone asked a while ago whether I was taking donations, and I replied that I had no way to do so. That doesn't mean I don't like money, just that the normal ways of taking donations won't work in my situation.
If anyone feels strongly enough that they want to give their money away, they can let me know and I'll do my best to find a way to take advantage of their generosity
On the other hand, I didn't do this in order to get donations, so won't be upset if none appear.
As for the next version, I think I'll put it up on the site in a day or so, once I've had time to check for bugs. There's been enough added to make a version worthwhile. After that, I'm going to have to spend some time cleaning the code up and splitting it up into separate source files. At the moment the majority is in one source file and it's getting a bit unwieldy.
P.S. Starpause, did you recieve my emails? I haven't had a reply yet so was beginning to wonder.
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hitbyambulance
Active Member
it's good to see a text viewer program that's being actively worked on! lugging a library 940pp hardback translation of Don Quixote for the past few months has been gettin old - and Moby Dick and Ulysses are the next books in my queue....
Coder
Still Fresh
Playdough posted on Mar 13 2007 at 10:50 AM said:
Yes. It's on the todo list.
I've yet to figure out which libraries are needed to get rotozoom to work. But then, when I started this I didn't have a clue about any of the SDL libraries and only a passing knowledge of c++.
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starpause
Member
yo hitbyambulance! it's great, a new eReader thread and all the book nerds come out of the woodwork
playdough: i agree, a solid start and Coder being so open to community suggestions has Greader lined up for greatness! I also think Coder has a good plan for keeping the project alive if he can't keep at it.
playdough: i agree, a solid start and Coder being so open to community suggestions has Greader lined up for greatness! I also think Coder has a good plan for keeping the project alive if he can't keep at it.
hitbyambulance
Active Member
starpause: it's strange to me that a full-featured, complete reader that can also properly format Gutenberg texts does not yet exist for the GP2X. given that there are thousands of old novels, treatises, philosophies, essays, dialogues, plays, et al. available from PG, this is something i really want to see!
last year, Xafier solicited suggestions for a text reader that he was planning to do for a senior project. a lot of people offered ideas for features in these two threads:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=28261
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=28440
the problem is, the reader never materialized. i think that if this program could incorporate some of the good things suggested (aside from such sillyness stuff like being able to read .DOC files), it will be ULTIMATE.
here's what i posted:
last year, Xafier solicited suggestions for a text reader that he was planning to do for a senior project. a lot of people offered ideas for features in these two threads:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=28261
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=28440
the problem is, the reader never materialized. i think that if this program could incorporate some of the good things suggested (aside from such sillyness stuff like being able to read .DOC files), it will be ULTIMATE.
here's what i posted:
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starpause
Member
hitbyambulance posted on Mar 14 2007 at 04:00 AM said:
I agree. it's sad that so many people have seen the problem, started a project, kept the code to themselves and the thing died when they lost interest or time. That said, the author of vtex was nice and answered all the questions I had when I got in touch with him, and deathterrapin who did Cbook was also nice and shared his source with me (in a half-working state as he was moving from bitmap fonts to ttf).
I can't help but wonder if an opensource book reader project that any of these authors could have contributed to along the way would have left us with a fuller feature set and tighter, working ebook app by now. Something on sourceforge or maybe in the open2x svn if those guys were down with including the project.
Your feature list is pretty heavy and arguable features some silly stuff (multiple buffers open and multiple bookmarks might be nice for manuals/reference material but i truly believe for those you'd be better off with an html in a lightweight browser like links where you can just hypertext between documents and sections.)
and THAT said Greader's getting there. I like your idea of maximum screen space for text: a super thin line/scroll bar is much hotter than taking up an entire line of text to display a percentage.
The highlight bar makes sense if dictionary is implemented but there are plenty of features to fill out before something crazy deluxe like a dictionary gets thrown in. But I've thought about this before and the highlight bar could go across a line of text and the word you'd look up would be un-highlited.
bla bla h lah
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