Console Attack; Fix Or Figure Out Fbreader, Here Are The Bins :)


skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
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www.codejedi.com
hey guys,

I'm on a 4 week stretch of not-much-free-time, but thought I'd do (another) quick build of FBreader. (It annoys me for a number of reasons, most of which is that it doesn't really document itself, so you need to delve into the code to figure out what they want for you to do; the bloody thing will silently error out if you look at it funny, never noting why it exitted or crashed. Bloody annoying, since I don't want to invest the time to get into the code :)

After setting this up in a likely good way, when I run it (by itself, or against a PDF or .txt file) it just sits happiyl with a blank white screen. Perhaps this is correct, but I would assume it should show some UI -- menus, or a toolbox, or _something_ to know its running, other than the ability to resize or kill it :)

Then again, I've never used FBReader once and no time to run it (I got a 30min scrap of time tonight, and thats it for the day); since it'll be a day or two before I get time again, I thought I'd throw it up here .. maybe these binaries can be sorted out by someone; if you can get it running usefully, let me know the steps and I'll make up a PND file or installer for it.

Its probably something trivial, but since it doesn't emit any logging, a PITA to figure out. If I had a couple hours to trace the code.... but I do not :)

Help out your fellow man, get hacking!

Files, get them here:
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/fbreader/hacks/

1) extract data.tar.gz as root, into /; ie, something akin to:
cd /
sudo bash <- enter password
tar zxvf /path/to/data.tar.gz

-- this is a random ipk bit pulled from Angstrom repo; using the ipk means pulling in dependandcies we dont' care about (it wants various bits we don't need, since I compiled without them, etc.)

2) copy the libzlcore* and libzltext* bits into /usr/lib -- again as root; this just replaces the bitsw from (1) that are for some other architecture

3) again as root, mkdir /usr/lib/zlibrary/ui <- wtf path :/

4) again as root, copy in zlui-gtk.so to /usr/lib/zlibrary/ui

Now you can run FBReader binary I supplied; copy it as root to /usr/bin if you like, to override the one from (1), or run it from place, etc.

(1) sets up a .desktop, so it shows up in the Accessories menu in xfce IIRC. (Won't show up in mmenu by default, since its not a pnd file.)

If you set it up right, when run "FBreader" (or /path/to/FBReader if you didn't install it to /usr/bin say), it'll come up with the white screen I mentioned.

If it just immediately exits with no commentary (haha, bastards :/), then it means you didn't put zlui-gtk.so in the right place.

If you run it, and you get link errors on the terminal, its probably because you forgot step (2)

--

Its possible maybe we need to edit some xml files or configuration; maybe the data.tar.gz I yanked from Angstrom repo is invalid for our needs.

In the past when I built it a few months ago, it was able to view a .txt file, but no UI/controls still .. just a screen with the text and a scrollbar, nto exactly friendly.

But like I Said, no time to dig into the code, so just throwing this out there :)

jeff
 
Maybe you could try Gutenberg ebook reader?

Could someone get the FBreader build for N900 and use that for Pandora?
FBreader crashes a lot on my N900 (Hence why I use gutenberg).
 
FBreader has a row of icons across the top of the screen that allow you manage your books, pick out new books etc (on a PC), here's some screenshots for different platforms...

screenshots

maybe you forgot the image files, or maybe there's a missing dependency, an image lib or something.
 
PDF?

I'm sorry to say it, but FBReader not supports PDF format.

There are some alternatives here:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_software#Linux
 
More to point, folks feel free to screw around with it, maybe you can get it to work. (ie: noting I did try it on .txt files and such too.)

Looks like its just not drawing the UI buttons, so perhaps is not finding them, or bad permissions or something (ie: as it doesn't log anythign to stdout, its a shooting-in-the-dark problem until someone has time to look in the code.)

Anyway, some folks requested it often, so I just did the build, but no time to hack around on it much :(

jeffphone
 
skeezix said:
More to point, folks feel free to screw around with it, maybe you can get it to work. (ie: noting I did try it on .txt files and such too.)

Looks like its just not drawing the UI buttons, so perhaps is not finding them, or bad permissions or something (ie: as it doesn't log anythign to stdout, its a shooting-in-the-dark problem until someone has time to look in the code.)

Anyway, some folks requested it often, so I just did the build, but no time to hack around on it much :(

jeffphone

Maybe someone could try untaring the control.tar.gz from the angstrom package and see what the normal installer script does... maybe it sets permissions or something else? Tried running it as root? I noticed you untar the data.tar.gz as root
 
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kingoddball said:
Maybe you could try Gutenberg ebook reader?

Could someone get the FBreader build for N900 and use that for Pandora?
FBreader crashes a lot on my N900 (Hence why I use gutenberg).

Did you try it lately? I've got my N900 for just a couple of weeks and I've had no crashes at all with FBReader, works like a charm for me.
 
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