The One with the Thoughts of Frans

KOReader 2020.11 “Hive of Industry”

18:07 · 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.

2020-11 hives of industry-fs8

In November we’ve mostly seen the usual batch of refinements and bug fixes. The Android app will now avoid a zombie state when it’s killed by the activity manager (#6811). Besides that, we have a few new plugins: QR code display (#6844) and CoverImage (#6813), which provides a workaround for Android devices which use an image file to display a screensaver image.

Image credit: Bees and Hive

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

  • ReaderStatistics: Data collection improvements (#6778) @NiLuJe
  • Pocketbook: use raw input I/O (#6791) @ezdiy
  • Ensure the SD card is actually detected in Nickel on exit. (#6800) @NiLuJe
  • GestureDetector: add Tap interval setting, to avoid bounces (#6798) @poire-z
  • Dispatcher: allow registering actions at runtime (#6785) @yparitcher
  • Statistics: speed up Calendar view (#6807) @poire-z
  • [Kobo, Mk. 7] Enable the power LED when charging (#6810) @NiLuJe
  • android: handle onDestroy (#6811) @pazos
  • KoptInterface:getWordFromBoxes: guard against nil boxes (#6827) @pazos
  • Pocketbook: Use a single launcher (#6814) @ezdiy
  • H2O: Fix initial tap detection (#6832) @NiLuJe
  • Reader: rationalize “Back” key/action handling (#6840) @poire-z
  • Qrcode support (#6844) @jperon
  • Apply CSS tweaks for links to all elements below a elements. (#6856) @tastytea
  • Dispatcher: add Screenshot action (#6858) @yparitcher
  • coverimage plugin (#6813) @zwim
  • Android bundle update (#6870) @pazos
    • adaptative icons
    • minify + shrink
    • remove unused assets to save a few KBs
    • install apk by clicking on notification after download (doesn’t apply to F-Droid)

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

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KOReader 2020.10 “Poignant Raindrops”

22:16 · 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.

This month we’ve had more PocketBook fixes, and ToC ticks handling was simplified (#6716) and thereby made better.



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



Full changelog — closed milestone issues


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KOReader 2020.09 “Peanut Butter”

17:01 · Filed under Software

This month’s release addresses a few long-standing PocketBook platform issues to bring the experience more in line with other platforms. A big thanks to @ezdiy for the effort.


On Kobo it’s now possible to enable USB Mass Storage without (re)starting Nickel (#6552). Since most of the KoboUSBMS tweaks required touching the startup script, a full, proper Exit -> Start cycle is required (or a device reboot). With a simple KOReader restart, the old startup script would still be used, and it doesn’t know how to deal with the new changes, which at best means a crash or a shutdown.


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



Full changelog — closed milestone issues

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Linkify Addressbar Segments in Vivaldi

16:12 · Filed under Browsers

Great news! My suggestion for segmented addressbars from Opera 11 Addressbar Revisited has been picked up by Vivaldi. Presumably independently, but this is the kind of development I like to see.

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KOReader 2020.07 “Tumbleweed”

16:07 · 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.

It’s been a busy month, so I’ll get right to some of the highlights.

Ruby (furigana)

Ruby characters (also known as furigani) are now supported in the form of the <ruby> element, small typographic annotations to aid pronunciation (#6305).

Rotation handling

Usually I tend to emphasize user-visible changes, and in a way this one’s both. Rotation was refactored (#6309), which immediately and easily allowed for better Android TV support (#6327).

The following screenshots showcase the new rotation handling on Chrome OS (running Android apps) and Android TV:
chromeOS-overlay
tv

calibre

The calibre metadata search and calibre wireless connections were merged into a single plugin (#6177).

search metadata changes:

  • search directly into calibre metadata files.
  • search can be performed on more than one library (configurable from a menu)
  • device scans now find all calibre libraries under a given root
  • search options can be configured from a menu. (case sensitive, find by title, author and path)
  • removed legacy global variables.
  • option to search from the reader
  • option to generate a cache of books for faster searches.

calibre wireless connection changes:

  • keep track of books in a library (includes prunning books from calibre metadata if the file was deleted locally)
  • remove files on device from calibre
  • support password protected connections
  • FM integration: if we’re in the inbox dir it will be updated each time a book is added or deleted.
  • disconnect when requested by calibre, available on newer calibre versions (+4.17)
  • remove unused opcodes.
  • better report of client name, version and device id
  • free disk space checks for all calibre versions
  • bump supported extensions to match what KOReader can handle. Users can override this with their own list of extensions (or from calibre, by configuring the wireless device).

Hebrew translation

A big thank you to all of our translators. This month a good chunk of KOReader was localized in Hebrew. Please head over to https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/koreader/ if you want to help.

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

  • Fix bottom menu item titles truncation (#6273) @poire-z
  • Add chapter title when exporting notes in Evernote (JSON/HTML, remote) (#6146) @Galunid
  • [chore] Rename ‘More plugins’ to ‘More tools’ (#6279) @Frenzie
  • [chore] Device abstraction (#6280) @pazos
  • Unified calibre plugin (#6177) @pazos
  • [chore, UX] Move some ‘permanent’ settings inside more_tools (#6282) @pazos
  • [Android] Add support for custom startup scripts (#6275) @zwim
    This is only available on the rocks flavor of Android, which is provided here on GitHub. In the fdroid flavor it’s been disabled. See the wiki for more information.
  • [plugin] Dispatcher: for profiles & gestures (#6106) @yparitcher
  • Don’t rotate BookStatus & ReadingProgress in screensavers. (#6286) @NiLuJe
  • Translator: Add definition of the word to the translation (#6295) @Galunid
  • bump crengine: add support for elements (#6305) @poire-z
  • Add the possibility run shell scripts from filemanager on android (#6288) @zwim
  • Add PocketBook 614W (Basic 3) definition (#6312) @roshavagarga
  • [feat] FocusManager: wrap around horizontally (#6315) @Frenzie
  • [UX] Add left to close to ConfigDialog for hasFewKeys (#6318) @Frenzie
  • [plugin] Wallabag: Make remove from history consistent with deletion (#6320) @Frenzie
  • [UX] Move double tap to gesture manager (#6322) @Frenzie
  • [i18n] Add support for fledgling Hebrew translation (#6333) @Frenzie
  • [feat] Add text/html to OPDSBrowser (#6335) @Frenzie
  • Landscape FM / Refactor rotation (#6309) @yparitcher
  • bump crengine: memory fixes, speedup, bg image enhancements (#6350) @poire-z
  • android: support for native surface rotation (#6359) @pazos
  • Allow locking the gyro to the current screen mode (#6347) @NiLuJe
  • Add macOS target (#6361) @JasonInOttawa
  • ReaderGesture: cleanup (#6292) @yparitcher
  • Dispatcher: use sections (#6364) @yparitcher
  • Perception expander: disable margin increase when set to 0 (#6377) @yparitcher
  • Initial handling of the upcoming Kobo Nia (#6380) @NiLuJe NB This may not work properly on a real Nia once it’s released.
  • [UX] German keyboard layout qwertz (#6385) @zwim
  • SetNightMode event & Night Mode refresh rate (#6386) @yparitcher
  • Implement numeric collator (natural sorting) in file manager (#6378) @Galunid
  • Remarkable button-listen when resuming from suspendsuspend fix (#6396) @tcrs

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

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KOReader 2020.06 “Mosaic”

17:24 · 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.




This month we’ve seen quite a number of small improvements in various areas, such as support for book-specific style tweaks (#6244), support for ::before/after (#6236), an offline add link to Wallabag queue (#6170), as well as some Android fixes. Enjoy!


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



Full changelog — closed milestone issues

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Fix Firefox Adressbar Autofill Broken

12:36 · Filed under Software

After updating to the latest Firefox ESR 68.8, for some reason my Firefox stopped autofilling the addressbar.

Our first stop lies in Help → Troubleshooting information → Places Database (which will take you to about:support).

Click verify integrity, it will probably detect an issue, and then it claims it will replace it on the next startup.

> Task: checkIntegrity
– Unable to fix corruption, places.sqlite will be replaced on next startup

But oddly enough, nothing of the sort happened! Not to worry, right at the top there’s the profile directory, which indicates where the places.sqlite file can be found. Rename it to something like .bck or .old, or just outright delete it if you don’t care, and success! Everything will be working again.

> Task: checkIntegrity
+ The places.sqlite database is sane
+ The favicons.sqlite database is sane

Unfortunately you’ll have to repopulate the autofill if you take this approach.

Geekery

But I didn’t want to admit defeat. Surely it can’t be too hard to salvage our old database. As an aside, but not strictly relevant to what I did here, I think it’s always useful to have sqlitebrowser installed. That way you can browse the data and run SQL commands on it. For example, if you open places.sqlite and run PRAGMA integrity_check on it… Oh dear, it says the same thing as Firefox: database disk image is malformed.

But we have a trick up our sleeve: command line SQLite. My initial plan was to play around with export and import to determine where the error was located since SQLite didn’t want to say, but that seemed a bit tedious. Essentially to try it table by table, and once I’d identified the table, basically to keep cutting it in half. But as luck would have it, SQLite 2.29 and higher has a built-in error correction feature. Docs here.

sqlite3 places.sqlite ".recover" | sqlite3 places_fixed.sqlite
Error: near line 378367: NOT NULL constraint failed: moz_origins.host

All that was left was to give it a try and all was well with the world again — or at least with Firefox. The SQLite error recovery command found the error and fixed it up all by itself. So now I still have all of my location history. Useful? Maybe not in this particular case, but good to know if anything like this should happen in the future on some more important data.

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KOReader 2020.05 “May Storm”

13:42 · 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.

Good news for Kobo users! There’s a new launcher for apps and scripts called NickelMenu, and it’s supported starting with this version of KOReader.

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

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

CommentsTags: ,

KOReader 2020.04 “Eating Ghosts”

12:01 · 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-2020 04-coronavirus-evillll

By staying inside and reading, humans have become resistant.

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

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

CommentsTags: ,

KDE Compact Window Switcher Missing?

21:50 · Filed under Software

Let’s face it, all of KDE’s task switchers other than Compact are awful in varying degrees. Unfortunately I found it to be missing. Luckily the solution is simple on Debian/Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install kwin-addons

And there you have it. Happy window switching!

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