attila77 | # 21 | 2009-03-22, 02:57 | Report

Comparing shoot'emups with fbreader is apples and oranges. Let me put it another way. Would you rewrite fbreader from scratch just to have autoscrolling ?

fms | # 22 | 2009-03-22, 03:35 | Report

I do not see why this is the reason for scrolling being impossible in fbreader while being possible in a shoot'em'up. In other words, both apples and oranges have seeds.

Could you elaborate on why the autoscroll feature would require a complete rewrite of fbreader? I would like to hear a technical explanation, if at all possible. Thanks.

GeneralAntilles | # 23 | 2009-03-22, 03:56 | Report

You missed the first part of my little equation.

I said the current hardware combined with FBReader (i.e., FBReader's architecture; i.e., libzlibrary)

You, apparently, missed the first paragraph, too.

I'm not saying it's not possible (I'm not familiar enough with libzlibrary to say whether optimizations would be feasible or worthwhile), but I definitely don't see the developer doing it, and it seems unlikely that anybody else would (or would you like to volunteer to prove me "wrong"?).

If somebody wanted to work on drop-in replacement renderer for libzlibrary, that might work, but in the end I suspect it'd be a lot easier to implement the UI and functionality niceties that FBReader has on something that's designed to run well (not just run on everything) like liqreader. . . .

geneven | # 24 | 2009-03-22, 05:01 | Report

Autoscrolling is kinda fun, but it is hardly the must feature depicted above, it seems to me. To use it, you need to develop a new skill: "synchronized thinking".

With synchronized thinking, you can understand a difficult concept at EXACTLY the same speed as an easy one! That's right, "see Spot run" and "e=mc2" can be read with exactly the same speed of thought! Whereas people who mechanically turn pages are admitting that for them, some thoughts take longer than others.

Unfortunately, I haven't mastered synchronized thinking...

attila77 | # 25 | 2009-03-22, 11:57 | Report

AFAIK They use completely different video access. Mplayer and most of the games you talk about render through XV (so, no GTK, no universal RGB pixel drawing, no nothing). FBreader, on the other hand, uses regular X with GTK, and in *that* mode, video operations like scrolling are painfully slow (lcuk can tell a story or two on this).

So you'd have to do a serious rewrite to adapt everything to XV style operations, redo the whole interface, adapt font rendering to YUV, etc, at which point you're closer to a rewrite than a patch and it would be very maemo/linux specific.

I'd ask for any better informed person to say if I'm wrong here, as quite some time has passed since I've looked at fbreader innards.

You might also find this thread useful:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=27206

fms | # 26 | 2009-03-22, 13:10 | Report

I use GTK rendering when running emulators in windowed mode on the NIT. Yes, the display updates are somewhat slow but they work. And I update the display much, much more often than required by autoscrolling.

This is obviously wrong. If you do want to do this at the low level, ask system for the /dev/fb0 device and render using hardware blitter. This is somewhat system-unfriendly but will work in windowed mode, as long as you do not ask the hardware to scale.

But, again, GTK should be enough for some light scrolling. After all, even that goddamn RSS widget scrolls (and has to be disabled to save battery).

Now, Lcuk uses YUV because the current version of XV extension does not let him use other modes. And he uses XV to stay compatible with the desktop that does support /dev/fb0 but does not support NIT-specific hardware blitting.

attila77 | # 27 | 2009-03-22, 15:04 | Report

How smooth are talking about here ? At portrait 1 minute / page (not a stellar reading speed) if you update by the pixel, that's roughly 15fps (not too battery friendly either), easily more if you use a larger font (=read quicker).

fms | # 28 | 2009-03-23, 11:22 | Report

I manage something like 18-22fps.

chrisak | # 29 | 2009-03-23, 11:38 | Report

I was excited about this program reading archive files, zip etc but guess I misunderstood. I've some ebooks that consist of like 100 individual html files (each chapter) .... was thinking I could zip them up and view them as one book but guess not? 4 books, 2 split by chapter annd 2 as 1 long html file. I tried out this new fbreader cuz browser choked on the large files; ironically I ended up really liking this fbreader but now have to use both.

maacruz | # 30 | 2009-03-23, 15:26 | Report

Obviously it depends on what you are reading. Romantic novels doesn't seem to have concepts too though.
Physic texts, on the other hand....