Notices

Just installed iSilo (the ebook reader I used to use on my old Palm Vx) in GarnetVM. Suprisingly iSilos Autoscroll feature is working just fine on my N800. No tearing.

Autoscrolling is almost as smooth as on my Palm Vx. If even Garnet VM can do this - and I guess the main focus in Garnet VM development isn't exacty on smotth scrolling - it can't be that difficutl for an ebook reader running natively on Maemo.

Foreword: this is a tech demo. It's not related to fbreader source in any way (yet).

I did a quick'n'dirty Qt autoscroll test in the 'what can you fit in one page of source' and 'what's the bulkiest solution you can come up with' style. I'd like to ask you to rate the *visual scroll action* 1-5 (unreadable-perfect) on your tablet. You will need python2.5-qt4-gui (just apt-get it) for this one. If a kind soul records a video of and puts it up for the general public, I'd be grateful - I don't have a camera at hand.

If you're not a developer, have not cloned maemo to SD card or do not already have Qt installed, don't bother, skip it and hope someone posts a video.

Seriously. It just scrolls Lorem Ipsum.

EDIT: To answer some concerns - you don't need to be an uberhaxxor to run this, just 'apt-get install python2.5-qt4-gui' and 'python qthene.py' in the dir you extracted it in. It's just that qt4+pyqt4 is a big download/app if you're a 'regular' user who installs apps to the internal flash.

4 - some tearing just visible

The line-at-a-time isn't that great

50% cpu


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLdF84KZ3iQ (eventually)

/me considers dropping libliqbase.so somewhere and seeing what cpu usage and smoothness we can get

Actually, the lines are only initially drawn one at a time. The scroll itself happens on the viewport level, so it doesn't really matter how many items are there (at least not on this scale). In fact, separate line items are good as the view does not have to render/clip text that has left the viewport. And of course, this way you have no document size limit.

Yes, that's me. The scroll never 'really' sleeps, it just stops moving.

Thanks !

I'm just looking for a 'good-enough' solution here, I'm sure that with lower level stuff you could do better (neither python nor qt are speed champions). The really-really big advantage here is that LITERALLY the same script/app works on the NIT, Linux, Mac and Windows (potentially even S60) without a single platform specific line if you have pyqt. Try it !

attila77,
i had the same thing with sdl - it worked on windows and linux and on the tablet.
the fact it wasnt good enough was what spruned me towards a better solution

Evince ( 2.21.1 ), that I recently installed, DOES support portrait mode.

In the menu under "edit" you find rotation commands.
Also the escape key rotates the screen 90°.
In full screen mode you flip pages just as in the standard pdf reader.

ePDFViewer also supports rotation but renders pages slower.

Am I the only one that hates reading moving text? Even if it is smooth scrolling pixel by pixel it is not the most efficient way to read.

I'd rather have the first line of the next page written over the first line of the current page and so on. Then nothing moves and the screen is redrawn line by line.

Different people have different preferences, of course. If given the choice, I also flip by page. However, autoscroll is probably one of the easiest ways to read WITHOUT using your hands (think about holding yourself on a bus, etc). Also, there are different types of autoscrolls, some are linear, some have a movement pattern (my demo above uses something closer to a sinusoidal cycle), some even vary letter sizes in the process. It's really just about finding which is the most convenient way to flip pages given certain physical circumstances.

theres an early SDL scroller test I did hosted here: http://liquid.googlepages.com/testfiles

(also an early early liqbase )
nothing more than academic and wobbly/tearing, but attilas app reminded me of it.