yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
A major update to Freda is on the way, adding:

A new more sophisticated EPUB/HTML/CSS parser, which renders page layouts (including tables) more faithfully, and uses the font sizes and faces (including embedded fonts) as specified by the EPUB file.

Because it's experimental at this stage, this needs to be switched on in the settings screen ('use advanced rendering'='yes')

You can also choose whether Freda does or does not follow the EPUB/CSS fonts, margins and colours.

(For the Windows version) Keyboard controls and shortcuts (which can be customised), which allow keyboard-only operation of the app. I'm hoping this will improve the app's accessibility. In that vein, I also added a setting that can make Freda automatically read aloud the selected text, whenever the selection is changed.

Many small fixes, including an update to the 'dictionary lookup' feature, because of the discontinuation of the on-line dictionary service that I had been using.

Because this is a rather major update, I would like to beta-test it if possible. And I was hoping I might find some volunteers to help out here. If you would like to help beta-test these changes, please contact me (email to jim@turnipsoft.co.uk would be best, but replies to this post, or PMs in-forum will also work). For Windows beta-testers, I would need you to tell me the email address that you used for your Windows sign-up; for Android users, I will probably just email out an APK file, unless that turns out to be a really unpopular option.

Thanks all!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] lohtse:
Is this an update for wm6.5 as well??
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I am afraid not. Freda for WM6.5 won't be getting any more updates (I no longer even have the development tools to build updates for it). Sorry.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] NO_ob:
Freda6

Do you still have the cab files for Freda6? the dropbox links on your website are dead, Thankyou
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Landscape Mode

Yes it is possible. If you switch your phone into landscape mode, Freda will display your books in landscape mode. But the method to switch a phone to landscape mode is different for every type of phone.

If you have an HTC phone with a gravity sensor, I'd recommend using the G-Sensor program (just search on Google or xda-developers).

Cheers,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bluenote73:
Awesome work Jim, I can't wait to try this. From what I can see on your page it looks really really good.

thanks!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] whitedrag0n:
Wicked just what i need pity i have all my books in lit format. Used calibre to convert to EPUB works a treat.

Would be nice to have cover flow like Stanza which runs on the iphone.

Cheers
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I'll take a look at it. But it might be problematic: the graphics processor on the iphone is significantly more powerful (also easier to program!) than the ones you get on Windows Mobile phones. So it may be tough to get acceptable appearance and performance.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mcfly56:
Respect for your efforts Jim, but Alreader is a great piece of software. Tiny program, small footprint, always opens at the point you left it. You can rotate the app without rotating the screen. It opens instantly and paginates in a second.

I accept the poster was a bit cheeky hijacking your thread, but freda has a long way to go before it matches Alreader.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I'd be keen to get to the bottom of this, because I'm seeing these reports that Freda isn't always re-opening books at the place you left - but I'm not managing to reproduce this problem. So if anyone could send me an epub plus a series of actions that repeatably shows this problem, I'd be glad to work at it.

As for the other points, I'd just mention that it is actually a bit of a challenge to open EPUBs instantaneously (or even quickly) because the internal structure of an EPUB file is a ZIP archive, and you can't necessarily assume that the files are in the archive in the order that you want to open them (e.g. Container file at the front and all the chapters in chapter order). So to be sure of opening an EPUB file correctly, you have to unzip all of it before doing anything else. I'll be doing some work on heuristics and speed-ups in this area, but it is a problem that any EPUB-opening program has to face. Alreader doesn't open EPUBS, and that's maybe one of the reasons why it's so fast ;)

I'm not really sure about the screen rotation point either - there are plenty of add-ons out there (e.g. G-Sensor) that you can use for this, and I'm not convinced that I'm adding anything useful by building this feature into Freda. If there's much demand, I can do it easily enough (the only cost is a small increase in GUI clutter after all). Or, being as it's an open source app, anyone else can modify it too.

Cheers,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bluenote73:
I got a chance to try this a little last night, and I really liked it. This version over the last version has come leaps and bounds with fit and finish and rubber to the road usability. Rotation would be OK, (I'm not a sensor user, especially reading in bed when most rotation apps will start rotating on me when I don't want them to), but its only a slight hassle to press the Home key, switch rotation, switch back.

If you do throw rotation in I'd like the option to set a default orientation, myself.

So over all, really impressive. I think this version has now basically out done the incumbent reader I use and will become my primary reader. I'm going to have to try it out just a little more to be certain of that fact though. There's some kind of little niggling interface issue for me with page turning/clicking/menu , but I haven't really identified what it is specifically, so maybe its just a situation of, I have to get used to it.

Anyways, just wanted to say this is really good work and I'm amazed such a functional app has come so far so quickly.

Cory
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I will take a look at this. Actually, my main concern is that I

really

don't want to have more than 7 items on the main menu (firstly because it'd make the GUI hard to take in at a glance, and secondly because I personally use an HTC Touch Pro 2 device which 're-skins' the regular Windows menu with a touch-friendly alternative ... but one that means that as soon as you have 8 items on a menu, it gets significantly more fiddly to use). And I know that I will need to find menu space - somehow - for annotations, bookmarks and dictionary look-up. No doubt there is an elegant and obviously-correct menu structure for all this, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Thankyou. But I should give credit where credit is due:

- Without the SharpZipLib and Majestic-12 HTMLParser libraries, I'd have had quite a bit more work to do to; they are both great tools and I am really grateful to their authors (IC#code and Alex Chudnovsky respectively) for making these tools freely available.

- Likewise, Bonesoft's CSS Parser sample code has been a considerable help to me.

- I know that Microsoft is a popular target for abuse (and I've done enough of it myself over the years!) ... but honestly I have to say that Windows Mobile/.NETCF is a great platform to develop for. The SDK tools are outstanding, the documentation is compendious and accurate, and the development community large (and full of helpful, patient people!). I first programmed Windows back in the dark days of Windows 2.1 (showing my age there!) and the Windows Mobile developer experience is about as far removed from that as it is possible to be. It's amazing where twenty years of continuous improvement can get you :)

So thanks for the kind remark, and thanks also to all those who made it possible. Long may it continue.

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] TheRem:
i'm in Full Screen Mode but it's not Full Screen. :(
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Nasty! Can you (1) send me the /program files/freda/logfile.txt file (2) let me know what other apps were running at the time (3) if you followed a particular sequence of actions to get to that situation, tell me what it was.

It looks like two applications have managed to get 'focus' at the same time ... so I need to look at how Freda decides whether it had focus, and how it keeps focus.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] bluenote73:
Hey Jim

Loving freda, it's my primary reader now. I have a couple of suggestions for your consideration --

- I find the page turn by tap to be a little too stingy for my liking, I'm not sure if this is because I'm on a diamond with a relatively high resolution, or if its my fat fingers or if I'm just clumsy.

- I also seem to trigger the menu when I don't mean to. I think this is related to the above (kind of) I like the touch-hold menu trigger though.

- "Close Book" (hold down for menu again) "Exit" is sort of clunky. But I know what you've said about keeping the menu option list less than 7 - 8 (and I agree). I don't really have a good suggestion of how to solve this.

- profiles - if this was a "live" menu option for loading/switch profiles I think that would be quite a bit more usable than going to another load screen? You know what I mean? Like say, the windows program menu where certain options open out?

- sometimes I feel like I have to go back to windowed mode to use the X to get out, but then when I open my book next time, but if I remember right, this causes a repagination, and then I think a couple more the next time I open up freda. Basically there seems like there's a little more repagination than is really comfortable.

- I have experienced the incorrect page on re-load, but I thought it was just me. I haven't recreated it, but if I had to guess, its either to do with X-ing out of the program, and/or some combination of repaginating/exiting (like with full screen to windowed etc).

Thanks for your work on this Jim. I feel like I'm critiscizing here with those suggestions above, but really its not meant like that and hopefully it does come across that I'm also enthusiastic about this and trying to help. :)

thanks again

Cory
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Maybe a few words on how the UI gestures work could be helpful.

Freda's definition of a swipe is:

If, between when you put your finger down and when you lift it, you move by more than 5% of screen height (or width) it's a swipe.

If it's not a finger-swipe, it will be interpreted as a tap (either tap-middle or tap-edge, depending on where you touched the screen, or if your finger is in contact with the screen for more than 0.5 seconds, it's a long tap).​

I am using Freda at the moment with control settings:

Tap at edge: Changes page

Tap middle: Is Ignored

Long Tap: Opens Menu

Soft Keys: Change Page

Swipe to change page [ticked] Direction: Up/Down​

With those settings, I get a user experience that I can live with. To change page I can either tap the border of the screen or swipe in the middle area of the screen; to get the menu, I just hold my finger still on the screen.

As long as the 'swipe' is more-or-less vertical (actually Freda's definition is just "more vertical movement than horizontal movement") and reasonably long (2 cm is enough), it works.

Do let me know if you have any thoughts on how the UI could be improved. One possibility is to make the definition of 'what % of the screen is the edge' into a user-configurable option. Though I am wary of piling options on top of options!

I agree this is clumsy. I am thinking about it ...

Yes I think you could be right. I'll build that feature and see what it feels like in practice.

I'm looking into both of these. So watch this space (but not too closely for the next week or two, as I doubt that I'll have much time free for software development over the Christmas period.

Don't worry; I'm asking for feedback, and I will take feedback in the helpful spirit that it was intended in.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] TheRem:
there are no other running program except for ActiveSync

i also did a soft-reset and i run Freda but it's still not showing in full-screen.

here's my logfile...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] hx4700 user:
I cannot find anything that will read lit files other than MS reader, and I am with whitedragon that virtually all of my books are lit format. Can it be done in Freda?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Adding a bunch of different book formats to Freda isn't my top priority just now - because each time I add a format it will add significantly to the size and complexity of the program (which will make it slower to load, heavier in memory usage, and less stable).

Besides, I think that EPUB will take over as the format of choice in the next year or two - so all the other formats will become obsolete. I implemented HTML because that was needed anyway (internally, EPUB is just HTML plus some other data). And I implemented TXT because I personally happen to have a couple of thousand TXT ebooks and I didn't fancy trying to find and download EPUB versions of them all.

But for other formats such as MOBI and LIT my recommendation is that you download calibre onto your PC and use it to convert your files into EPUB format.

Thanks for your interest in Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] myself11:
Congratulations for developing such a great app!

It would be awesome if Freda could read .pdf, but I understand that's not a priority for you.

Landscape mode doesn't work on my HD2, I don't know why, but I'll install the G-Sensor program.

I would like to make a (small :p) donation. Do you have paypal?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
PDF is a particularly troublesome format because it isn't re-flowable (it specifies the exact position on the page for every word and picture element). So there will be problems displaying a PDF book on a screen size/shape other than the one it was authored for. The developers of Calibre have put a lot of work into building a converter that does a reasonable job at making an EPUB from a PDF (and many other formats too); I recommend you to use that. The next version of Freda (some weeks away I suspect) will have seamless Calibre integration, so Calibre will be able to export EPUBs directly into Freda's library. For the time being, you'll just have to copy the EPUB file into Freda's folder on your mobile.

All donations, however small (or large!) are gratefully received. I do have Paypal - my email address for the account is home@jim-chapman.net . The account, for reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, is in the name "Kennington Association"

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] NessusPL:
First of all, thanks for a really quality and usufull app.

I find it the best ebook reader for my HD2 and it is really a please to read ebooks with it.

Here are some problems I encountered so far:

* if ebook file name contains a few dots it its name (ASP.NET 3.5 book.epub) Freda refuses to open it.

* most of the time there's something wrong with rendering images. Sometimes they are displayed correctly (first few in a chapter) but remaining ones don't (question marks instead of images). I am not 100% but I recall one time that after opening one ebook I saw page cover image and then after scrolling back and forth a few pages it also turned into question mark.

* I am using PDF -> Mobipocket creator -> Calibre to create epub files. I am using default options in Calibre (the most suspicious is to split book into 260 kb parts) and Freda does not show page numbers (Page # not available at the bottom).

I also found Goto options for books I converted that way unusable. Maybe option to go to xx % of a book would be easy to do.

Maybe there are set of options you could recommend for Calibre?

Agains as I wrote - I really appriciate your work on Freda. This is the most frequently used app on my phone.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Excellent! Another satisfied customer. Thankyou for your kind words.

Yes, I've noticed this issue. It's slightly tricky to fix, because for file-handling stuff (creating directories, getting file extensions ... ) Freda just relies on the underlying Windows Mobile operating system. And that operating system actually thinks that file names with extra dots in them are invalid ... though it doesn't go so far as to prevent you from creating such file-names. I will be implementing some kind of work-around for the next (1.1) Freda release, but it may just consist of something clunky (for instance, renaming the file for you).

Both of these are memory problems. The first one is happening because your phone is running out of video memory, and the second is caused by lack of regular system memory. I've already done my best to make Freda as memory-efficient as possible (that 'Page # not available' means that Freda can't load the whole book into memory, and so instead it's loading only the part you are reading at the moment). WinMo's memory architecture is somewhat bizarre and it's quite capable of getting into a state where it can't allocate any more memory to a program, even though there still seems to be plenty of space on the machine (it's to do with how DLLs are loaded ... don't ask!). Work-arounds you can try: don't run other programs at the same time as Freda; if you need to run other programs, start Freda first; try using some memory-cleaning tools; if you're creating the books in Calibre, make the image files smaller.

In Windows Mobile 7, the memory model will be completely different, and these problems will go away. But that is for the future ...

For version 1.1 I am going to rework the 'go to' stuff, so it uses the 'Table of Contents' structure in the epub file - so that should work better for you. In terms of Calibre options, I have no special recommendations to offer; the defaults for epub aren't causing me any particular problems.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] filar:
Wow! My new favorite e-book reader!

I just installed this great free app. It is really good. Thank you. I am now using it on my HTC HD2.

I have a few suggestions to make it even better:

1. I always read in landscape mode, and it would be great if I could configure it to always start in landscape mode (like uBook). It could be a checkbox "Use Landscape Mode" in Options -> Application Settings -> Appearance. Or an "Preferred Orientation" pulldown list.

2. Could the application set the backlight level when getting focus and reset it when losing focus? At least in fullscreen mode. For example, when reading in the dark I would like to have the backlight set to 1 level below the auto level. Auto level gives 20% but 10% would suffice in the dark. So a setting "Reduce backlight with " <dropdown list with 10%, 20%, ...> could fix this. Or having an optional configurable backlight level saved with each profile so that the backlight changes when changing profile.

3. I have to change the timeouts for reduced backlight and power off when reading (usually increase it from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to allow for distractions while reading). If Freda could change these settings when getting focus in fullscreen mode, and resetting them when losing focus, it would be ideal. In options, there could be settings like "Set Backlight Timeout to" <edit box or dropdown list with 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m and 10m>, and "Set Power Off Timeout to" <edit box or dropdown list>.

4. Related to 3): The light sensor could be used for automatically swiching modes? When it gets dark it could suggest going to Night mode and vica versa? The confirmation could be optional.

5. It is nice to know how how far I have read, and this is fine with the page number at the bottom of the page. But on the other hand I would like to use the whole screen for text and not waste the last line or two for the page number -- could a small (popup) window show the page number only for a few seconds while actually changing the page? Could be controlled by a checkbox "Briefly Show Page Number" in the options, near to where we turn the page number on or off.

6. Improvement of "Go To Page", plus dictionary lookup. But these have been mentioned already.

Having some of these options in place would make it very easy to quickly start reading without changing any phone settings, and also avoiding to have to change the settings back afterwards (backlight level + timeouts).

I may be able to help implement some of these changes, though I am new to Windows Mobile programming. I have an MSDN account so I have access to all development tools, but usually develop in C++/Java for Windows (Visual Studio / Netbeans) or Linux.

Regards,

Fred Larsen, Norway
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Fred,

Thankyou for the feedback - and I particularly appreciate the clear and detailed descriptions of your ideas. I'm already working to implement some of these points. Actually the general difficulty I am having with all of these settings is the logic "Apply setting X, and when the user leaves the application, revert to the prior setting". The problem is that the Windows Mobile application model actually makes it rather hard to figure out when the user has 'left' your application. The .Net Compact Framework can tell you whether or not your main form has input focus (but actually the main form can be on-screen and at the top of the z-order while not having input focus). And of course I have a number of other forms that belong to the application (and .NetCF lacks a function to tell me "do any of the application's child forms have input focus"). So I probably need to do a bit of bare-metal programming of the WinCE APIs - and my Googling thus far has not found the patterns I need to use. I've found some pieces of sample code, but they rely on third party libraries that I would prefer not to use.

My other concern is that I want to write something that works for as many different WinMo devices as possible, so I want to avoid creating too many dependencies on WM6 and .NetCF3.5 - which slightly limits my options as regards backlight settings.

Anyhow, I am working on it. But if you could find some suitably unencumbered sample code for dealing with my 'is the application in focus' question, that would be helpful.

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] filar:
How to determine focus

Hi Jim,

I can see that there may be problems with using input focus. What about checking if the main window is at the top of the Z-order? If it listens to WM_* window messages it may react to relevant messages and call GetTopWindow(0) to see if the topmost window handle is equal to the handle of the program's main window or an active child window? By only doing this when certain window messages are received it should not require much resources.

I found a couple of links that perhaps may lead to something:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/Is_My_Application_on_Top_.aspx

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/798295/how-can-i-use-getnextwindow-in-c

Perhaps I'm on the wrong track, and perhaps this won't work in Windows Mobile, but at least it is an idea.

By the way, are you using VB, C# or C++?

Regards,

Fred
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] filar:
Problem with corrupted book and "open last book at startup"

I converted some books with Calibre and put the epubs on the device and opened one in Freda. Unfortunately it crashes when opening the epub file (may have been a bad source file or an error in Calibre), but what is worse is that as I have selected to open the last used book at startup, this happens every time and it just hangs. I looked in the registry to see if I could erase the memory of the last book, but I could not find it. Do you have any hints? The message is "Sorry: The selected book cannot be opened. Tap OK to continue.". After this message I just get the startup screen but it does not show a menu or react to anything.

Regards,

Fred Larsen

EDIT: I found a solution. I removed all files from Program Files\Freda\Temp and killed and restarted the program. But the problem should not leave the program unresponsive anyhow? Perhaps the exception handler can be improved?