Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Two things.

1. An idea. Dexter could extract configurations from the Wiki page automatically. The source code of the Wiki page is quite simple to parse, IMO.

2. A problem. I could not make Dexter work with the site for Italian television RAI, because it has a different pattern for URLs. In a nutshell, if the subpage is 1, the number must not appear in the URL; if it is not 1, it must appear in the URL. Can Dexter handle this situation?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Nelonen added to wiki. Only subpages 1 and 2 can be used. Dexter doesn't seem to handle different padding for imageUrl and predictionUrl at the moment. ImageUrl is ex. 100_0001 and subPredictionUrl has ?page=100&subpage=3

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Few ideas:

1) Are you planning to put your tool to bugs.maemo.org so that found bugs could be reported there?
2) Would it be possible to populate the available providers directly in menu instead of having button in menu to go to list where to choose?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

@fgs @ruskie

Good feedback about what is needed for the url's. I will try to incorporate the needed changes. fgs: can you give the link to RAI teletext so I can take a look as well.

@jakoleh

1) Bugzilla, sure, if someone tells me how to create it.
2) Right now that would make send and I think it's doable. Why it is the way it is now, is that I thought there might be other options (set as default etc) that could be in the menu as well. Will have to think about the UI more when the application matures. Thanks for the feedback.

Prediction seems to be a hit or miss for some reason at the moment, I need to debug it more with the sites that it is not working. It worked beautifully for the two sites I chose to test with..

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Sweden:
SVT: http://www.svt.se/texttv
TV4: http://www.nyhetskanalen.se/1.633665
/P

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

How the subpage is handled with prediction, is it using the padding or some other way to know whether subpage is using 1, 2 or x numbers (1, 01, 0001)?

If it using padding then the problem lies there. Nelonen for example is using 4 numbers in images, but only one in subpages.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Yeah, padding is used for the subpage. As a workaround for Nelonen, the url part of subpage could be as 000[subpage] and then pad=1 .. that could work, except if the page has more than 9 subpages (not so often).

I guess the solution would be to have some kind of additional variable. I would like to keep it as simple and clean as possible though.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

That worked. I corrected the information to wiki.

Could it be so that if second parameter is not given then the current one is used for both?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

I'm trying to set up ORF Teletext and got it working only partially:

I think it should look something like this:

2\siteName=ORF Teletext
2\imageUrl=http://teletext.orf.at/[topicpage]/[page]_[subpage].png
2\predictionUrl=http://teletext.orf.at/[topicpage]/[page]_[subpage].htm
2\subPredictionUrl=http://teletext.orf.at/[topicpage]/[page]_[subpage].htm
2\previousPrediction="<a href=\"(\\d+)_\\d+.htm\" accesskey=\"1\">"
2\nextPrediction="<a href=\"(\\d+)_\\d+.htm\" accesskey=\"2\">"
2\previousSubPrediction="<a href=\"\\d+_(\\d+).htm\" accesskey=\"3\">"
2\nextSubPrediction="<a href=\"\\d+_(\\d+).htm\" accesskey=\"4\">"
2\pad=4

Problem:

[topicpage] isn't treated as expected.

When [page] is "101", [topicpage] gets translated to "[100]" instead of "100". - The brackets [ and ] are included in the URL. Doesn't work.
I removed [topicpage] now and replaced it with "100"; this at least allows me to test the first pages between 100 and 199. Looks good. I'm not gonna add it to the Wiki, though, as long as it cannot really be used for the full range.

Is there something I did wrong with [topicpage] or is it really a bug?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Page 100, subpage 1: http://www.televideo.rai.it/televide...e/page-100.png
Page 100, subpage 2: http://www.televideo.rai.it/televide...page-100.2.png
Notice the difference.

For page prediction I was using the text-only version at
http://www.televideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto.jsp. I don't know if it's right, I didn't understand how page prediction should work.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

It's a bug, I fixed it already. It will be working in the next version. Thanks for reporting it.

@fgs yes text only version is needed for the prediction so that it can parse the next page number from there.

The url scheme of RAI is quite hard, since it also has that "." before the subpage, which is conditional. Can someone figure out an easy way to tell Dexter how it should handle a url like that? Will have to think about that..

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Can somebody help me to add mtv3 to dexter. I only need yle and mtv3. I just cant edit confic file in xterm. Can someone give me simple advice.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Tried swiss teletext; they offer a new challenge. ;)

EDIT: forgot to include the URL: http://www.teletext.ch/

First, it'd be nice to parse because they have 6 channels in 3 languages on one site, all following the same scheme.

The downside:
The image URLs are irregular.
From what I see, they usually end in
for pages that do not have sub-pages and in
for pages that have subpages (01-99).

Sometimes though, even pages that do not have sub-pages are
instead of
I couldn't detect a pattern.

So when you browse subpages, it's clear what you need to fetch. When you go to a main page, it could end in either "-00.gif" (which it usually does) or "-01.gif". You just don't know.

You might change your logic so that people can add a SubImageUrl in addition to the imageUrl. (If not set, it'll have the same value as imageUrl.) The application would then use imageUrl to address main pages, subImageUrl to cycle through subpages and would use subImageUrl for subpage #1 as a fallback in case imageUrl fails. That would do for swiss teletext (imageurl=.../[page]-00.gif and subimageurl=../[page]+[subpage].gif, [page]-01 being the fallback if [page]-00 fails.). Maybe other services also have different URL schemes for main pages and subpages.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

no, editing it in xterm is no joy. i did on my GNU/linux desktop computer, but if you run windows on your desktop, you may run into new problems with text files...

i'd recommend you install leafpad from the application manager. leafpad is a good and simple graphical text editor.
open xterm then, go to the directory the file is in (/home/user/.config/Dexter/) and type
let me know if it works for you.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Can you do this?
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...4&postcount=30

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Not working.... I hope some update will bring MTV3 to Dexter.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Here is the conf file for the dutch NOS teletext

WARNING! This is still work in progress

to change this put it in the n900 memory and do as follows:
1. install rootsh (to become root)
2. install dexter from repository
3. extract and copy file in this attachment to the n900 sd memorycard from pc
4. reboot n900
5. open xterminal
6. typ "sudo gainroot" [enter]
7. typ "cp /media/mmc1/dexter.conf /home/user/.config/Dexter/dexter.conf" [enter]

Now open dexter and you can use the dutch teletext

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

all your values except imageUrl still point to the Yle site.
It even shows up as Yle in the list.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

i know but it does work though. im still working on the rest of the links. sorry that i didnt mention that. its still work in progress.

Its kind of a spaghetti in the file where i get them off. its a program designed for linux to show the dutch teletext im getting the links from. and im still kinda new to this scripting editing stuff, but im eager to learn and try some stuff like this.

Does anyone know this i tried the code to test it but for some reason "cd /media/mmc2/" wont work. Im sure it work before! am i missing something? For now i changed the tutorial to sd card with mmc1 just to be sure it works.

**update** i have updated the file and made all links. the only thing i cant fix are the sub pages to work. next and previous works too but the apps loads them very slow. there is set some kind of delay

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Just headsup - I am in the middle of upgrading my development pc so that's why I have been and probably will be for some time a little bit offline. I'll let you know once I have everything setup again.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

added NOS-information to the wiki and fixed missing prediction information (next/previous buttons) while i was at it.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Dexter 0.2-3 is making it's way to Extras-devel right now. The biggest changes are in the markup for the config file. If you update to this version, you need to go and edit your existing config file or it probably won't work!

• [x:subpage] replaces padding! x is the amount of padding wanted and therefore it can vary from place to place, unlike padding setting. Hopefully this will make a lot more sites compatible. [2:subpage] for subpage 2 would return 02 and so on.

• subImageUrl to make it possible to use those sites that have different url for main pages and subpages. This is optional - if not set, imageUrl will be used. If subImageUrl doesn't work, it will fallback to imageUrl (thanks benny).

• startPage setting to set which page is loaded at first. 100 is the default usually, but for example nelonen was missing it and starting from 101 so I decided it would be good to be able to set it as well. Sometimes the user might also want to look for sports only and set the default to be 201 or something.

• [topicpage] should now work

• .. probably something small that I don't even remember right now!

I have tested finnish sites (Yle, Mtv3, Nelonen) and they all seem to work now 100%. I also tried quickly RAI to see if the subImageUrl worked and it did. Now it's your turn to go ahead and try all the sites and report them to the Wiki. If problems, report back here.

One small thing I noticed - when making those prediction regular expressions, be careful to escape with \ characters that need to be escaped for regular expressions. I had one prediction not working and the problem turned out to be that question mark (?) is one of them. Instead of ? I put \\? and it started working.

I am hoping we have these configurations modifications soon done so I can start working on some feature enhancements.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Cool. Edited NOS and added ORF (Austria), which works fine now. Very happy!

I think that was a misunderstanding - at least for Swiss Teletext, it should be just the other way round. See, I have:

imageUrl=http://www.teletext.ch/pics/SF1/[page]-00.gif
subImageUrl=http://www.teletext.ch/pics/SF1/[page]-[2:subpage].gif

This is the usual pattern. You go to [page]-00.gif, which doesn't have a sub-page. Only sometimes there is no [page]-00.gif. The next thing you'd have to do then is check for [page]-01.gif - because that's either the first sub-page or the page is "irregular".

So with the current setting ("If subImageUrl doesn't work, it will fallback to imageUrl"), I never get Dexter to try [page]-01.gif if [page]-00.gif fails. It should be "If imageUrl doesn't work, it will fallback to subImageUrl for sub-page #1".

I thought for a moment that I could simply ignore all this and switch the lines like this:

subImageUrl=http://www.teletext.ch/pics/SF1/[page]-00.gif
imageUrl=http://www.teletext.ch/pics/SF1/[page]-[2:subpage].gif

That wouldn't work though, would it? You couldn't go to sub.page -02, -03... etc then, if I understood it correctly.

Anyway, an updated config how SF1 could maybe work is on the talk page now.


EDIT: ... just thought: maybe it's a good idea to not change the direction of the fallback, but just add the other fallback. so if imageUrl fails, you try subImageUrl - and when subImageUrl fails, you try imageUrl. - Just to make it more error tolerant. That wouldn't break anything, right?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

The page 100 has existed in the past. Nelonen teksti tv has many major problem when we are talking about sync between content and the images so it didn't surprise me that there is no page 100 available.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Thank you very much! Dexter now loads correctly the RAI text-tv.

Unfortunately I could not add a working configuration to the Wiki, because I discovered a bug in RAI's HTML code that prevents subpage prediction from working correctly.

The problem is that the links for previous and next subpage are not distinguishable by a regular expression, because they have the 'alt' attribute wrongly set to the same value (both are 'Next subpage' while one should be 'Previous subpage'). This occurs on text-only version; full graphic version has links with images and they have all the same structure, so they are not usable.

I sent an email to RAI text-tv service address, I hope they will fix the code. I will let you know

BTW, page prediction works.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Good to hear the changes made things better. One thing I forgot to mention is that the dependency on having Yle in config is gone - the first site is loaded by default instead of Yle.

@Benny1967 I think that fallback could be added the other way around as well without breaking things too much.

Now that the config stuff is in good condition, it would be nice to gather a list of feature todo's. I have some in my mind but you can add your own and we could brainstorm about them.

My ideas (in myprobable order of implementation):

• Busy indicator when loading page
• Image to display when an error occurs (page not found etc).
• Optimize layout usage. Right now there is some room between page number and image. Also, the buttons are resized when the image first appears. I'm not familiar how to adjust Qt layout though, probably just need to test it out. Any suggestions here how to do the layout better?
• Some way to navigate in full screen mode. Onscreen buttons on the sides and volume keys have been suggested. Haven't decided what would be the best solution. Ideas?
• Eventually have all the sites collected to a one list grouped by country, have a menu action to select which ones you want to use. Then the switch site action would only list those that you have selected beforehand. This way a normal user would not need to touch config file ever. This is probably needed for Dexter ever to get out of extras-devel.
• Timer to reload current page
• Favorite page shortcuts to menu?

That's it for me right now, go nuts and add your own! :)

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

I have a problem after update: I can start Dexter but I can not see TextTV data (Yle or MTV3). I can only see page number (and change it). I am online (web working). I have tried to uninstall/re-install Dexter. Any hints?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

@JKO65: That is most likely due to the changes to the config file parameters. You can either 1) delete your config file from ~/.config/Dexter/dexter.conf and start Dexter - it will regenerate Yle site with the correct values for the new version 2) Edit config file and change the values yourself (Wiki has working examples for Yle and Mtv3)

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Ah... my favorite part in software development: wish list! enhancement requests! *LOL*

OK, in no particular order and some of them considerably less important than others... but i'll list them anyway:

• in both portrait and landscape mode, add new standard button to toggle image size upper half double height / lower half double height / full page normal size (usual feature on teletext TV sets)
• Add feature to read parameters from command line, so you can start application with --show site,page,subpage from command line. (Useful for putting a shortcut on desktop that takes me right to the train schedule) - oh, and there could also be a command line switch for --displaymode full|keypad or such...
• change config fies so that each site has its own config file in the Dexter directory. Easier to manipulate this way. (Dexter would look for *.config files in the directory; if you don't want a site any more, you can just re-name the file from orf.config to orf.old; also, you can easily drop in new sites.)
• Add setting which site/page to show when application starts.
• Add bookmark features that work across sites (so i'd have page 834 from ORF as bookmark and page 102 from SF1 and page 200 from NOS etc.)
• in landscape mode, have a button that makes numeric buttons disappear and displays image in larger size. buttons like forward/back, the suggested full/upper double/lower double and reload should remain visible.
• in portrait mode, have a button that hides the numeric keyboard and stretches picture in height (x2). (the toggle.button mentioned earlier should still be there also in portrait - sometimes you might want to enlarge text and still have the numeric keys present.)
• offer the possibility to have some pages ("News", "Sports", "TV",...) as part of the config... like pre-configured bookmarks. don't know how that would work in the UI then. :)

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Great! That helped. I like this App. Fast and kind of retro feeling ...

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

I'm pretty newbie with maemo. So, I'm wondering what is the way to update the dexter.conf?

-What editor I could use?
-if sudo is needed, what would be the password as default?

I combiled following from wiki in order to get MTV3 and nelonen available here in finland.

Thanks !

"
2\siteName=Mtv3
2\imageUrl=http://www.mtv3tekstikanava.fi/new2008/images/[page]-[2:subpage].gif
2\predictionUrl=http://www.mtv3tekstikanava.fi/new2008/[page]-01.htm
2\subPredictionUrl=http://www.mtv3tekstikanava.fi/new2008/[page]-[2:subpage].htm
2\previousPrediction="<a href=\"(\\d+)-01.htm\"><< Edellinen sivu</a>"
2\nextPrediction="<a href=\"(\\d+)-01.htm\">Seuraava sivu >></a>"
2\previousSubPrediction="<a href=\"\\d+-(\\d+).htm\"><< alasivu</a>"
2\nextSubPrediction="<a href=\"\\d+-(\\d+).htm\">alasivu >></a>"
2\startPage=100
3\siteName=Nelonen
3\imageUrl=http://www.nelonen.fi/teksti4/pages/[page]_[4:subpage].gif
3\predictionUrl=http://www.nelonen.fi/teksti4/?page=[page]
3\subPredictionUrl=http://www.nelonen.fi/teksti4/?page=[page]&subpage=[subpage]
3\previousPrediction="<a href=\".page=(\\d+)\"><img src=\"images/alalaita_edellinen.gif\".+></a>"
3\nextPrediction="<a href=\".page=(\\d+)\"><img src=\"images/alalaita_seuraava.gif\".+></a>"
3\previousSubPrediction="<a href=\".page=\\d+&subpage=(\\d+)\"><img src=\"images/alalaita_edellinen_ala.gif\".+></a>"
3\nextSubPrediction="<a href=\".page=\\d+&subpage=(\\d+)\"><img src=\"images/alalaita_seuraava_ala.gif\".+></a>"
3\startPage=101
"

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Hello, that's really a great program.
I was trying to configure it for Rai tv teletext.
I have some problems with previous/next predictions:

prediction link is like

with several \r \n \t between <a> and <span>.
Should I escape those special characters? and what about &?

Thanks

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Added 3sat (Austria/Germany/Switzerland) to the Wiki.

Running into problems with
http://www.sat1.at/service/teletext/
http://www.sat1.ch/service/teletext/

Never finds the regex for the prediction urls. dont know what it is, but the whole thing is full of "?" and "+" and whatnot in the URLs and in the HTML, maybe I really don't know how to properly escape it. Maybe someone else has more luck.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Can you send your current settings for that?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Is the span needed?

<a alt=\"Pagina Precedente\" href=\"solotesto.jsp.pagina=(\d+).sottopagina=\d+\ ">

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Thx for offering help - it really must have been too late for me yesterday evening... first i made some (as I see today: obvious) mistakes, then I didn't post the lines I needed help on... my dear. :)

Anyway, both sat1.at and sat1.ch are in the wiki now.

The one thing that would need testing is the original German sat1 site. Problem is: They use some weird 303 redirect, probably based on my IP address; whenever I try to get something from sat1.de, they redirect my browser to sat1.at.

If they follow the same URL scheme, it could be:
x\siteName=sat.1 Deutschland
x\imageUrl=http://www.sat1.de/service/teletext/cache_de/[page]_[2:subpage].png
x\predictionUrl=http://www.sat1.de/service/teletext/index.php?pagnr=[page]_[2:subpage]
x\subPredictionUrl=http://www.sat1.de/service/teletext/index.php?pagnr=[page]_[2:subpage]
x\previousPrediction="pagnr=(\\d+)_\\d+&trynext=-1\" class=\"teletext_numberBtn\">-</a>"
x\nextPrediction="pagnr=(\\d+)_\\d+&trynext=1\" class=\"teletext_numberBtn\">\\+</a>"
x\previousSubPrediction="pagnr=\\d+_(\\d+)\" class=\"teletext_numberBtn\">&lt;</a>"
x\nextSubPrediction="pagnr=\\d+_(\\d+)\" class=\"teletext_numberBtn\">&gt;</a>"
x\startPage=100

Maybe someone outside Austria/Switzerland (probably same redirect to sat1.ch) can test?

Oh, BTW, sat.1 introduces a new "feature" that you simply can't workaround with the current logic:
The link their previous/next-buttons point to is always page+1 (or page-1, respectively), not matter if this page exists or not. They even load a URL that refers to a non-existent page, but display the next existing page in it. Doesn't make sense to you? See page 484:

http://www.sat1.at/service/teletext/...p?pagnr=484_01

The link on the [+]-button takes you to 485, which doesn't exist. However, the browser loads
http://www.sat1.at/service/teletext/...5_01&trynext=1

and the image embedded within this "virtual" page 485 is page 499
http://www.sat1.at/service/teletext/cache_at/499_01.png

Also, the [+] button now points to 500, not to 486.

That's strange. Most complicated. I wonder how to best represent this in the UI? Do away with the previous/next buttons altogether, knowing they'll not work reliably? Not a good idea probably as long as they work at least sometimes. They're a good feature. Any other ideas?

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

That happens

German site is working the same as at.


Yes that is correct. When you go to page 485 you will see no change. If you then click next it will go to page 400. This happens because you are using predictionurl without &trynext=1 at the end. In the internet when you click next in page 484 you have that &trynext=1 at the end.

You would need two prediction urls. One for going down (&trynext=-1 at the end) and another one with (&trynext=1) at the end. Not so convenient.

For this site to work we would need to go through all the next images and when the image is not redirected to http://www.sat1.at/images/blind.gif then we would show that image.

For time being, just write information to wiki informing how this thing works.

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Stop being pragmatic! ;)

... and thx for testing .de

Re: Dexter - Text-TV Reader
 

Can somebody help me? I manage to edit the confic file (mtv3 and yle), but I can only see yle in Dexter settings. Where is mtv3?