The One with the Thoughts of Frans

Author Archive

KOReaver 2023.10 “Ovis”

21:39 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

koreader-2023-10-sheep

Image credit: Bing Image Creator (Dall-E 3)

The user guide has had a big update. Included below is the full release announcement.

USER GUIDE 23.10 UPDATE

This is the biggest ever update to the guide. 2 years ago I started with the intention to make a simple how-to guide. With this release, user guide reached 60 A4 pages ! KOReader might be the best documented reader app now 🙂

Our guide is now a HTML document:
https://koreader.rocks/user_guide/

It was very tedious to recreate the PDF as a web page (especially considering that I had to learn CSS to do it).
But there are many benefits like:
– More frequent and real-time updates
– Better compatibility for smaller devices
– Ability to directly link to it in issues and discussions
– Possibility to be packed as an EPUB
– PDF sucks

Also I recently noticed that our color palette in the guide was not suitable for color blind people. Some important items were indistinguishable for color blind users so I updated the colors to provide nice contrast for them too. Also added icons and visual aids to make the text more accessible.

CHANGELOG

GUIDE CHANGES:

  • Recreated the guide in HTML
  • Updated the colors, fonts and styles to accomodate color blind users
  • Optimized all the images to make them as small as possible without degradation (Achieved ~50% reduction in size)

MAJOR CHANGES:

  • Fonts has its own section now
  • Quick Menu and Profiles has its own section now
  • Expanded Plugins section to include contrib and external plugins
  • Rewritten Highlighting, Bookmarks and Notes section
    • “Highlight icon” in the File Browser
    • Bookmarks: filter by highlight style
    • Multiple highlights and notes
  • Expanded Export section
    • Export multiple files
    • Export to clippings format
    • Export to memos format
    • See and choose export folder
  • Added Keyboard shortcuts section for non-touch devices and Linux
  • Added full list of actions that is available in Gesture Manager

ADDED INFO ABOUT:

  • Partial rendering
  • Translate current page
  • Scrolling modes
  • Creating a profile with current document settings
  • Open with: Archive viewer
  • Open with: Image viewer
  • Patch manager
  • Menu search
  • Location history
  • Setting to turn off flashing on pages with images
  • Ability to change statistics calculation time
  • Clearing PDF cache
  • Switching the style to HTML5 to fix some problems
  • Toggle status bar via gestures or Quick Menu
  • Scrollable Quick Menu
  • “Move to archive” availability in Gesture Manager
  • Custom book cover setting
  • Using “Exit screensaver” gesture as a pseudo lock screen
  • Tap on time to show date
  • Verbose logs procedure in How to report problems section

UPDATED IMAGES:

  • File Browser
  • Skim widget
  • Book map menu

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

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Run Quake 2 RTX with ray tracing on older AMD GPU

18:30 · Filed under Software

Reading some news items like this about RADV ray-tracing support in Mesa 21.3 and newer made me curious as to what it’d look like on my RX 580.

Because this wasn’t immediately obvious to me, since it’s experimental you have to use the RADV_PERFTEST=rt environment variable to enable it, i.e., something like:

RADV_PERFTEST=rt ./q2rtx

That way I can play Quake 2 RTX at over 40 fps in 640 × 480 on Mesa 22.0. Apparently the game doesn’t allow for lower resolutions, even though I believe it once defaulted to 320×200 at 256 colors. Oh well.

PS I actually wrote this draft over a year ago, intending to expand on it. But oh well, my bad. 😉

Comments

KOReader 2023.08 “Lavender”

18:34 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

koreader-2023-08

Which plant bravely withstood the drought and now the wetness? Lavender of course! You can eat them too.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

KOReader 2023.06 “Hydrangea”

9:04 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

koreader-2023-06-hydrangea-fs8

Hydrangea seems to be the common English name for what I know as the hortensia. They’re quite pretty this month, with bumblebees buzzing all around.

This will be the final release to support Android 4.0 – Android 4.2, after which support for those versions will be removed. The new minimum supported version will be Jelly Bean MR2 (API18/Android 4.3). For more information see #10614.

Image credit: amilo (source)

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

KOReader 2023.05 “Azalea”

22:01 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

koreader-2023-05-azalea

This is neat. The FSF published an interview with me about KOReader. You can read it here.

Like any human I’m a bag of contradictions. I often studiously upload the correct cover to LibraryThing, yet in KOReader I’m perfectly satisfied with auto-generated covers if the metadata doesn’t specify any. But if you’re not, and you don’t want to edit the file itself, you can now set custom covers right within KOReader (#10329). A custom cover can be added or removed in the program through the book information page, or you can put a cover image in the .sdr folder manually.

Of course there are many other improvements. Enjoy!

Image credit: adapted from Bilder ur Nordens flora.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

My Interview with the Free Software Foundation

21:27 · Filed under Software

The FSF just published an interview with me about KOReader. Go check it out here! 😉

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KOReader 2023.04 “Solar Panel”

20:53 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

koreader-2023-04-fs8

It’s been another busy month squashing many bugs. Our Mac users will be happy to hear that I told macOS we’ve supported HiDPI since long before anyone came up with such terminology (#10341), and that the program can now natively build on M1 devices (#10291).

Solar panel credit: https://openclipart.org/detail/294030/solar-energy by gnokii

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

A fantasy creature called a JavaScript lounging on a bed being stroked by an Icelander in a romantic ominous painting style

19:21 · Filed under Drawing

Myrkraverk inspired me to prompt DALL-E for “A fantasy creature called a JavaScript lounging on a bed being stroked by an Icelander in a romantic ominous painting style.” The results are quite decent.




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KOReader 2023.03 “Cherry Blossom”

17:37 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.


koreader-logo-2023-03

Android users on aarch64 are advised not to use the built-in updater until after installing this release (#10068). On systems supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit the 32-bit version will be installed; on systems only supporting 64-bit the upgrade should normally refuse to install.

For advanced users, there’s a new patch manager to easily enable or disable patches (#9970). See here for more information about how to set it up. Be cautious and don’t play with it if you’re not prepared to have to intervene from outside to fix things.

A big under the hood change is partial rerendering (#10124), which enables seeing the results of changed display settings much more quickly:

With EPUB documents (having multiple fragments), text appearance adjustments can be made quicker by only rendering the current chapter.
After such partial renderings, the book and KOReader are in a degraded state: you can turn pages, but some info and features may be broken or disabled (ie. footer info, ToC, statistics…).
To get back to a sane state, a full rendering will happen in the background, get cached, and the document will be seamlessly reloaded after a brief period of inactivity.
An icon in the top left (that you will soon be ignoring) indicates at what step this process is:
Document is partially rendered. Page count, footer info and many things are innacurate. Reading statistics accounting is disabled. You can turn pages, jump links, notice how the new settings look, change settings again…
A full rendering is happening in the background. You can still turn pages, jump links, change settings…
The full rendering is done, but not yet applied: KOReader is waiting for you to be idle to reload. You can still turn pages, jump links, change settings…
You’ve been idle, KOReader is blocked and reloading the document, which should be quick.
When these icons are gone, you are again in a fully sane and working state.
This feature can be disabled per book with tap, or globally with long-press, on Gear > Document > [x] Enable partial renderings.

Cherry blossom credit: https://openclipart.org/detail/254453/cherry-blossoms

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

KOReader 2023.01 “Winter Ivy”

22:55 · Filed under Software

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.


koreader-logo-2023-01-fs8

A slightly belated happy new year everyone! It’s a pretty big release, see the technical changelog underneath for details.

A big thanks to @offset-torque for updating the user guide once again, available here. Full changes here.

Ivy from https://www.openclipart.org/detail/307775/ivy-leaves-frame-5

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Installation instructions: Android • Cervantes • ChromeOS • Kindle • Kobo • PocketBook • ReMarkable • Desktop Linux • MacOS

CommentsTags: ,

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