yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Fred,

I've fixed this in v1.1 (the next release, probably coming out in a week or two). In the meantime, the best fix for this problem is to delete the settings file (\program files\freda\freda.fst) - or just edit it to set the autoopenlastbook option to "false". Incidentally, the memory of the last book (in fact all books opened) is kept in the bookshelf file, \program files\freda\freda.fbs. Freda does not make much use of the registry.

I'm not sure why the error was leaving the program unresponsive though - I would have expected it just to halt the program altogether. If you could PM or email (home@jim-chapman.net) the \program files\freda\logfile.txt file, I will have a look and see if there are any clues there. The fact that the problem was resolved by deleting the temp files would suggest that the problem was a corrupted temp file - but how/why it got corrupted is another question altogether. One thing that can cause problems (for v1.0, but not for v1.1, which tests for this case) is if you modify an ePub file (because Freda will have created various temp working files based upon the old version of the file, and this will be out of synch with the new epub). So for now (i.e. until v1.1 is released) the rule should be "if you modify an ePub file, change its name".

Thanks,

Jim

EDIT: by the way, Freda is written in C#. You can find the source code by following the 'source code' link in the manual. It is open source software under GPL2.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Well, I have an answer of sorts: I just set a timer so that every 30 seconds I call this code:

[DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();

[DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern uint GetWindowThreadProcessId(IntPtr hwnd, out uint lpdwProcessId);

public static bool CheckIfForeground()
{
IntPtr currentForeWindow = GetForegroundWindow();
uint foregroundProcessId;
uint foregroundThreadId;
foregroundThreadId = GetWindowThreadProcessId(currentForeWindow, out foregroundProcessId);

int fredaProcessId=Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id;

Form1.fredaIsForeground = (fredaProcessId == foregroundProcessId);

return Form1.fredaIsForeground;
}

And any time that Form1.fredaIsForeground changes from true to false, I know that Freda's gone into the background - and when it changes from false to true, I know that Freda's gone into the foreground. This is a repulsive hack, but it does look like it will do the job!

Cheers,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] blablabla2:
Suggestions for Freda 1.1

Me again,

I have a suggestion for the next version of Freda. It is the result of my efforts to create my first epub-book. What I did was to upload a new version of the book to my phone and then start Freda. Of course, Freda already "knew" the content of the updated book - wasn't the book already unpacked to the Temp folder, so that I don't have to unpack the content again...

So here's my suggestion:

Upon starting, Freda looks whether the epub file has a newer time stamp than the book folder in the Temp directory. If this is the case, the book folder is deleted and then the Zip file is unpacked.

Best,

Michael
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Thanks for the thought. I am including this check in v 1.1.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Yes can you send me the book please to home(at)jim-chapman.net - I will then check, and perhaps email you back the latest Freda test build so you can check if that works.

No I wasn't aware - it makes an interesting discussion. But I think the participants are only really scratching the surface of the subject! For example, a dictionary really ought to understand morphology (in an English-French dictionary, a search on the English word "loved" should get (1) the French word "aimer" (2) the remark that the English word is in the past tense). That thread is discussing how to build a glossary, not a dictionary. A proper spec for a dictionary file format would need to provide a mechanism for assigning lexical categories (NOUN, VERB ... ) to lexicon entries, and it would have to define (presumably in a 'morphology rules' dataset separate from the lexicon) the morphology rules applicable to the categories ("a VERB makes its 'past tense' by adding ED unless the word ends E in which case only D is added"). A quick look at SlovoEd will demonstrate what I mean.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] violentz313:
Hi im new to the ebook thing and all my ebooks are pdf so they wont read in this program. My question is what format and how should i go about converting them so i can try ur program?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
PDF and EPUB are based on rather different philosophies of how a book should be displayed electronically, so any conversion is going to be ugly in places.

That said, Calibre does a decent job of conversion for most PDFs.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] violentz313:
thanks ill try it out.. Have any suggestions on what format i should look for in the future?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] McAndrew73:
Ciao Jim.

I've been reading on FREDA for some time now, so here I am for my final opinion. :cool:

Well.....your program is simply amazing right now!!! :)

It's fast and smooth from the first page till the last one. Even if ebook is big in size.

What used to happen in other readers was that at the beginning of a book they were super fast....but gradually went slower and slower. Sometimes i had to split the book in 2.

Freda is not that fast at the beginning when opening a book but it's good and then it maintains that good speed for all the time. GREAT.

Changing page by flipping or tapping is equally good.....I like them both. Animation is nice looking and smooth.

Possibility to save presets in order to have a night/day theme is useful even if I'd prefer to find this 2 presets from the scratch. But it's not a problem to add them.

Finally I add that the combination Calibre-->Epub--->FREDA is wonderful.

So, really really thanks for the great work you have done.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] hsmcd:
Really amazing app. What's more it's free!! Appreciate so much for all the effort in making such nice app without any charges.

Like this ebook reader very much. Looking forward for your future app :D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I'd recommend EPUB. I do think this is the emerging standard (most book-sellers except Amazon, and most ebook-readers except Kindle, are converging on it). I admit that Amazon is a pretty major exception - but if you're looking at a thread about reading ebooks on a WinMo device, you have probably already decided that you don't buy in to the whole Amazon/Kindle thing.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] MDA_newbie:
Thank you for the nice application. I would like to see the marking text tool as well as the ability to add notes like in mobipocket in the future. It would also be very nice to actually save those marked text and notes and the ability to transfer it to my pc. I really like the way of navigation in your program.

This application could definitely replace mobipocket. However I am not really familair with the epub format. Does anyone here have the experience to (easily) convert pubmed (fulltext) article to the epub format.

Thanx in advance.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Version 1.1 (under construction now) will include a 'bookmarks' feature letting you select a word, create a bookmark on that word, and add some note text against the bookmark. That might do what you need. The bookmark info is stored in a file whose name is XXX.fbm, where XXX is the name of the corresponding book. So it would be easy enough to copy that file onto a PC (internally the file content is XML-like, so decoding it would not be too difficult either).

I have no experience of pubmed format - but from a quick look, it appears just to be XHTML. So you would be able to read a pubmed article on Freda by renaming it to a filename ending .htm and opening it in the Freda Library screen. This would not be very satisfactory for two reasons:

1) diagrams would not be visible

2) none of the special pubmed tags would be understood

I think in principle that the right way to do it properly is to:

1) rename the pubmed file to end in .htm

2) put it into a folder on your PC along with all its associated images (GIF/JPB/PNG files)

3) run Calibre , point it at that folder and tell it to convert the folder contents into an EPUB

4) open the EPUB in Freda

For best results, in step (2) you'd also want to add a CSS file that defines suitable formatting for the content of all the pubmed-specific tags.

As I say, I haven't tried it - and it may be that someone else has already done all this work and I just don't know about it! But a quick Google-search on the obvious keywords did not turn anything up.

Thanks for using Freda

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] MDA_newbie:
Thank you for your reply. I looking forward to version 1.1. Thank you for your suggestion regard to the pubmed articles. I will try and leave a little review for other PhD students who are doing there PhD their on windows mobile :).

Edit:

Just want giving you some ideas for pimping up you lay-out and animation :): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8avvF9yrg&NR=1. It does not really have high priority, as the functionallity of the software is more important. I also do not know if the current graphic drivers of the HTC phones are able to do these animation fluently.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Faenad:
A simpler pimping up would be to have the possibility of adding a tiled graphic as a background, like in AIreader or µBook. Is there a way to do it in the current build?

Also, is there a way to tweak line height and line spacing? It's a neat option to have to improve the rendering of some fonts.

Thanks for the effort you are putting in this. The reader is already very neat, and I love your swipe page turn implementation.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] ajhvdb:
Offtopic: How did they create this? I think it's a screenshot and then a transformation.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] ajhvdb:
Just thinking outloud;

A selection of a sentence or paragraph looks more functional but maybe thats not possible.

I've read somewhere that in windows every file has a notes/extra properties part in which you could add those links? or can't you add those links add the end of the file as a kind of garbage for other readers but not for your reader.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] godsellerhk:
Ebook readers must have!!

The software works greatly! Love it so much.

thanks for your effort!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] godsellerhk:
Chinese Character problem

Hi Jim,

When I read txt, ePub files with chinese character (unicode) , the last character always cut into half and disappear on the right most. English is fine all the times.

I tried change font size, different fonts, and all settings in Book Properties (like use 30% or 20% margin) but still unsuccessful.

Here's some sample chiense ePub (Chinese Newspaper from Yahoo, in ePub format).

http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/112

Is there any settings that can avoid such problem? :confused:

Thanks so much! :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Unfortunately I don't have Chinese fonts set up on my phone so I have not managed to test this. But can you try an experiment for me - on the Options->Application Settings menu, go to the Appearance tab, and set 'External Leading' to some large value (20 perhaps). That should have the effect of leaving blank space round the edge of the text, and that might make the rightmost part of the last character visible.

Please let me know what happens.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] godsellerhk:
Thanks Jim!

The "External Leading" solved the problem. It's the best to set the value at 24 or 25.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I will be adding this in v1.1 (ready in a week or so).

You can tweak line spacing on Options->Application Settings, 'Appearance tab. But it doesn't change the line height (the font is rendered just the same, whatever line spacing you use).

Thanks for using Freda, and thankyou for your feedback.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Faenad:
Great! Will wait for 1.1 then :)

As a side-note, you should perhaps mention in the font tab or on your website how to adds new fonts. It's very easy but most people don't know about it (just copy the font file in the Windows/fonts folder). Tahoma is fine but there are far better fonts outta here.

Also, another easy pimping up should be the program icon. It's look very pixelated on my HD2 (480x800 screen).
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Faenad:
Just tried that, is there a way to enter custom value? 0.9 is too tight and 1 too spaced for the font I loaded.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bluenote73:
Hey jim

Loving freda. Only suggestion i have is something greater than 10% , or an option? because i have trouble triggering the tap-turn on my 640 x 480 diamond, normally in landscape. It seems more to the edge than 10% would define, at least for me.

thanks for your work on this
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] czar.nik:
absolutely awesome piece of software!

Now i finally have a way to read all the ebooks I've been amassing!

One question though.... is there a way to bookmark pages of the book?

Or perhaps for freda to remember where i last read to?

I may be missing something blatantly obvious but its just annoying that I have to keep a mental note of how far I've read........
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Custom values would be a bit painful to implement - but I can certainly add some more options - maybe 0.95 and 0.98 as well.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Bookmarks and annotations will be implemented in version 1.1 (to be released in a week or so).

That should be working already. If it isn't, there is a bug of some sort. Can you send me the log file (\program files\freda\logfile.txt) and I will investigate (please send to home(at)jim-chapman.net)

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
OK I will add it for v1.1

Cheers,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] filar:
One more vote for this

I too vote for this. I get the menu popping up all the time when I just want to turn the page (too large fingers, I am afraid)... I think 30% would be nice.

Jim: I sent you an e-mail with two suggestions (regarding paragraph breaks and reduced line height on separator line between paragraphs) -- did you receive it?

Regards,

Fred Larsen
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I answered on 11 Jan. Maybe some problem with the email address I used? Anyhow I have now PM'd the same answer to you.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xenept:
This is a great app.

Only niggle I have is that I am a slow reader so by the time I've read 3/4's of a page, my backlight kicks in and then my HD2 turns off.

Yes, I know I can extend this in the HD2's settings, but it would be nice to extend it in the app although I know you are trying to avoid customising the app to be too phone centric.

Great piece of work.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
For the v1.1 build (in development, hopefully for release some time soon) I have added an option to tell Freda to prevent the device going into low power mode (so it won't ever turn down the backlight or turn off, as long as Freda is the foreground application). Obviously it comes with a major health warning: 'this feature can seriously discharge your battery' ;)

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] AGxM:
Loving this application Jim - thanks for all your work on it
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xenept:
That's really great news. Can you also add a hardware module that allows slow readers like me to read faster? :D
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] filar:
ePub readers

Hi Jim,

I just noticed the site www.epubbooks.com, and noticed that in the list of ebook reader software there are no WM readers listed (except mobipocket). Perhaps it would be an idea to make them aware of the existence of Freda, so they can put it on the list? Too bad if people miss this great application just because they are not aware of it.

http://www.epubbooks.com/ebook-readers

Fred
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] McAndrew73:
This will be really really amazing!

:)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bluenote73:
It might be gilding the lily, but its only the great strides you are taking with this app that makes me think it. As far as I know it's a feature not heretofore done on PPC. What do you think of text to speech Jim? Using MS voice command or some such?

Am I silly for mentioning it? :)

Cory
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
As far as I can tell, the Microsoft Speech APIs aren't available on .Net Compact Framework, and Voice Command doesn't expose any APIs.

Which means it would be tricky to implement that way.

There is, I believe, an open source voice synthesiser, FLite, which can be built for WinCE (and, therefore, for Windows Mobile). So that route might work. It's not going to be in version 1.1 (I've now stopped adding features to 1.1, so I can get it built, tested and released).

I guess it makes sense to implement this feature alongside RSVP, because they do (kind of) the same thing - working through the text, progressively calling some API for each chunk of text - either displaying words sequentially on the screen, or feeding them into a voice synthesiser.

I'll be looking at it some more in due course.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] dan138zig:
good job, man. love the finger accessibility. but any chance of making it compatible with pdf? i can't find a single pdf app that support finger dragging. thanks.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] czar.nik:
Ok i'll be sure to send you the logfile at some point in the next few days.

It is only one book that I've tried that won't save my place....

with regards to the feature of saving your last read place, is there anything you have to do for it to do that? e.g. perhaps not close the app by the X button but by selecting quit from the program menu?

I'm looking forward to using freda but I'm too scared to atm coz i dont really want to remember which page I was up to. That would get annoying lol
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
With version 1.0, I'd recommend exiting by selecting quit from the program menu. v1.1 (when released, soon) is more tolerant.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] czar.nik:
any word on when the new version will be out?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
In fact, reading PDFs on small screens is always going to be a problem because the PDF format is not reflowable - i.e. it assumes you're displaying a document on the same size and shape of paper (or screen) as used by the original author. Since PDF documents are generally created to be read on A4 size paper, they don't work too well on mobile phone screens.

A program for reflowing PDFs has to work through the document (which is basically just a list of character strings and absolute coordinates) and guess which words need to be strung together to make sentences, which words are headings, where paragraph breaks are wanted, etc. It's a big ugly mess of heuristics, and I really don't want to build it into Freda.

I'd suggest you use calibre to convert your PDF file into EPUB. Calibre includes all these heuristics (and much else besides) and it normally does a decent job of the conversion.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
'soon' ;)

If I get enough spare time this weekend, I might have a version I can distribute to my beta-testers on/before Monday. Building the packages, rewriting the manual and such things will probably take another week after that.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] pupakota:
sorry for asking i do not have a time to read whole topic, but which filetypes it reads, guys?

only??
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
If it could read any others, I would have added them to the first post. :)

If you want to read other formats, I recommend using Calibre to convert them to EPUB.

Thanks for your interest in Freda

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] pupakota:
Jim, converting anything is not option for me, unfortunately.

My idea is to have PDA with maximal amount of READABLE filetypes.

In case of ebooks it is reason to use alreader as ebookreader(doc, txt, rtf, palm pdb lvl1, html and few others).

I found your soft being quite nice, that is why i am asking for that...

I wish You best, it is rare that someone is making that type of software novadays...good luck, man.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] uniqueboy:
This is probably a really stupid idea.......but I have a drawer next to my bed with a phone holder stuck on it, so what I hear you say, the point is that I read with the drawer pulled open bringing the phone in to the range of my vision and it would be nice if there was a way to turn the pages without touching the phone as I am so cozy in my bed. I once saw a music stand with a pressure sensitive page turner built in. This thing was wind up mechanical and very sensitive and to turn pages whilst playing the piano all you had to do was blow against it and it would flip a page, ingenious Victorians. So I would like to blow at my phone and it would turn a page. I said it was probably a stupid idea....But think about it, it is possible, when you blow into a mic you get a white noise, that could be detected and page turned. It would require a threshold and the option to enable/disable it. Stephen Hawking could even read a book on his phone.:)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] pupakota:
just remove this(yes, i know, you cannot).

Jim, do not be angry...sry for post.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] czar.nik:
I'd be quite happy to beta test the program for you?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Version 1.1 - release candidate version available for testing

Hi all,

Freda version 1.1 is now in a fit state for testing - so if anyone would like to volunteer to help with that, I would be eternally grateful :)

Please PM me (or email home@jim-chapman.net) and I will send you the CAB file. If you tell me whether you're running WM5 or WM6, I'll send you the right CAB file for your platform.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] xenept:
Just dropped you an email.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mmp17:
Bug.

Epubs from gutenberg.org cause an error and don't open. I'm running stock wm6.5 on a verizon tp2. Here is a link to a file that I tried to download http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30387
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] fingerstoo:
It does say on both ePub downloads, "experimental", hence it may not work?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Gutenberg ebook not working

Indeed - the epub file is broken. In the metadata and manifest, it specifies a cover image that is not a valid image type (actually it's an html file). That breaks Freda. Which is not the right thing for Freda to do - it should handle the case of an invalid cover image without crashing. I will fix it for v1.1 (in testing at the moment).

Thanks for the info.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bedoig:
I just stumbled across this program in another thread, and I can't believe I'm just now finding out about this. Thank you so much for your work on this Jim!

I've been looking for a decent reader for a long time. MS Reader and all the others (I've tried almost all of them) are really showing their age. I was so sick of controls meant to be used only with a stylus, lack of options for fonts, backgrounds, etc, that I was carrying around my iPod just to use Stanza (which is a great reader with a lot of similarities to your program). Freda is a dream come true for reading on my TP2.

Now to read through the thread so that I can hopefully offer some helpful feedback.

Thanks!!!

Brian
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stuntdouble:
+1

Nice bit of software this. Works nicely. Well done, good job.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] desperation52:
my phone is currently being repaired.. so I did not have the chance to download and test this for myself.

Can this read .docx files as well as chinese fonts? I am asking this because quite a few of my ebooks are in chinese docx format.

Actually most of my library are in docx format.