yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Thanks for the report. I'll be interested to hear reports from other users (forum posts, emails to jim@turnipsoft.co.uk, or (preferably) emails generated from the 'support' tab on the app, as that way I'll receive a log file that I can use to investigate the issues). The only reasons I can see for the slow opening of books are:

1) you're on a slow network (generally, I'd recommend downloading books over WiFi or at least 3G+/HSDPA whenever possible)

2) your phone memory is sufficiently full that some of Freda's working files are now being stored on the MicroSD card rather than in device memory. This might be an issue particularly if you replaced the device's card with one of your own, maybe not compliant with Microsoft's (unpublished) memory card spec.

Well, I get a lot of feedback (some in public forums, some in private emails) and I'm being asked for all manner of enhancements to Freda; I have to prioritise (the program is a spare time project for me, and not something I'm making a meaningful amount of money from). Slow pagination does get the occasional comment, but I'm not seeing an overwhelming demand for me to do something about it (whereas I got a lot of requests for integration with cloud storage and web sites, and I did see complaints about lagginess/jitteriness in the UI). After all, for the 'actually reading a book' use case, it means (in my experience):

- it takes about 30 seconds before you can start reading the first time you open a certain book, and then a few minutes before the page number navigation works.

- on subsequently opening that book, you have to wait 5 seconds before you can start reading, and maybe one minute before page number navigation works.

That sort of performance seems to be acceptable, although not very impressive. If you're getting radically worse performance than that on normal-sized books (i.e. not the Bible, and not 'War and Peace') then there's something screwy in your configuration, and I'd be interested in looking over your log file.

Yes, I agree that Freda's line-breaking logic is pretty feeble. Some fairly simple changes would make the appearance quite a lot better. It is on my 'to do' list.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
Both assumptions are wrong. Download is OK (BTW, I have very fast WiFi network). And yes, I do have 16 Gb class 4 by Kingston card installed but:

- free space on the phone still 19.83 Gb

- I've already tested WP7 commercial product (what I'm working for business), it accessing isf to cache hundred megabytes (!) of streaming media - very fast and accurate, no delay at all.

However, why do you unpack epubs to isf?! Device have 512 Mb RAM (!). Use MemoryStream.

I'm 99.9% sure it's something in Freda's design. If you want, you may send me a sources and I'll try to debug on Focus.

I also spent (and continue spending) a lot of time for freeware projects; freeware is not for money ;) BTW (as for me) the main priority should be - make software useful at least. Freda (in current state) doesn't meet that requirement.

Simple question - why? 5 seconds for 1 Ghz arm9 CPU it's A LOT OF TIME, a minute - close to infinity.

Have you ever tried HaaliReader on WM PDA/handset? Or 0.99 cents WP7 ABookReader (it's also extremely buggy but working significantly faster).

Sorry, Jim, but Freda needs a complete redesign and refactoring. In the current stage your software doesn't meet any minimal requirements for e-reader. As for me, I'll pay up to $4.99 for real good app with OPDS access. But I afraid I should write my own :-(
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] buffalosolja42:
If I manage my books from a computer that is connected to the net

will I lose my book I am currently reading if that computer goes down or does accessing your calibre library from the PC save the current book to your device?
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] dvanderb:
I tried out the latest version and used the DropBox support to open an epub. This worked fine and I even read a few pages(I let it fully load until it showed page numbers). Now when I open that epub from the list of books it opens up to the last page I was reading and then crashes back to the start menu. Anyone else seeing this?
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Because epub archives have a file system structure inside them (including references like "../../OPF/chapter1.xhtml" and the like). Interpreting those without unpacking the archive into a file system is complicated. Not impossible, just complicated.

or you could FedEx your phone to me, and I'll debug on it ;-) Else, why not send me your log file, as I suggested before?

I suggest you read such works as Lawrence Lessig's book "Free Culture", and ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" for a proper analysis of the economic basis of 'free' creative material. I feel your statement is too simplistic. Linus Thorvalds has, after all, got rich off linux!

For some people it does. As the saying goes, "you can't please all the people all the time".

Freda's performance is memory-bound not CPU-bound. Making it faster will mainly involve optimisations that decrease the number of calls to the OS's memory allocation functions. Quite doable, but not a trivial exercise (particularly when working in a garbage-collected 'managed code' environment).

Yes. You pay your money and you take your choice. or in Freda's case, you don't pay.

Good luck on your mission!
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
There's no need to let it 'fully load' before you start reading. Not that it does any harm, but it does no good either.

As for the 'crashing' problem - it may be because of a problem with the 'advert control' (it's a third -party control, and it is buggy). The best answer is to, when starting the program, wait for a few seconds before first opening a book.

Anyway, if you could send me your log file (use the 'email' button on the support tab) and I will check it out.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
It saves it to your device. To make sure it remains on your device permanently, you can use the 'pin' button on the bookshelf screen.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
Fortunately, I can prove my rightness without FedEx :) Here is the sources (I'm not so suspicious): http://senssoft.com/ZipTest.zip and the XAP: http://senssoft.com/ZipTest.xap

It's just a simple sketch; more "idea demonstration" then production e-reader. BTW, you can compare the app performance and stability by yourself. And anybody can...

I've disabled (by default) the hyphenation script. It works great but very slow (as a Freda ;-P ) on WP7. However hyphenated texts looks MUCH-MUCH better, you can try...

My code is not optimized, of course; have a lack of OPDS service and epub parser (however it's not a "rocket science"; is about 3-4 days of coding). But it have a lot of possibilities to improve, and demonstrates how to implement a "right" e-reader for WP7.

Unfortunately, I can't write all apps what I need by myself :-( I'd like to cooperate with you, but it seems that you don't like to listen to others (even with 20 yrs experience developer!)

Jim, you are wrong. It's not a file system or memory related performance issue. It's bad design (at least a viewer part). WP7 (from the ordinary developer view, not a manufacturer dev-guru) is completely different than win32 CE. So, the old ideas will not work so good.

Think about using WebBrowser with embedded javascript(s). You can build a really nice, flexible and fast e-reader. If you wanna discuss or speak about it - you are welcome, drop me a PM.

P.S.

I've meet Thorvalds once, few years after he moved to US, to "Transmeta". AFAIK, he wasn't so rich, just an usual SFBA salary. As for free software, my open source project http://code.google.com/p/fictionbookeditor/ with 3K real customers in 2010 gave me... $50 as donation ($30 from that amount was donated personally to me) :-) It's about a little bit more than my half-an-hour usual rate :-) And I've spent more than 100 hours for that project! So, where is the business? ;-)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
As it happens, I did finally spend some time looking at performance bottlenecks during the weekend. A few simple code changes have improved performance by about 50%. They consisted of reducing the number of times the program opens IsolatedStorage (i.e. the file system). With that fixed, my bottleneck code is now the stuff that interprets CSS styles and applies them to text elements; that code is slow because it's optimised to reduce memory-consumption (so it packs bools into bitmaps). I'll take a look at the memory/speed tradeoff some time soon (WP7 does make more memory available to apps than WM6, but there is a WP7 limit at 90MB which Freda runs close to sometimes).

Hey, I'm listening aren't I?! I'm just not agreeing with you ... and not only because of my 30 years experience as a programmer ;-) [I sold my first computer game back in 1981; it feels a long time ago now!]

I did think about it. The main difficulties are:

1) EPUB chapters can be very large - actually big enough to be potentially problematic for the standard WebBrowser control.

2) The app has very limited access to the contents and behaviour of the WebBrowser control in WP7, which means problems with: scrolling and page-turning effects, applying style sheets, embedding images, searching/highlighting text and navigating within/between chapters.

These problems are, no doubt, soluble ... but they were discouraging enough that I decided to stick for now with my original decision to do all the rendering in my own code.

Yes, I too have no real expectation of getting rich by writing free software! (sigh) But it can be useful as a way to build reputation and credibility, and some 'free' apps can generate fairly significant revenue from selling advertising space. That said, my main motivation for writing Freda (first for WM6, then for WP7) was that I wanted a program to read my epub/txt book collection, and I did not much like any of the programs that were available.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
I don't think the file system is a real bottleneck (have u tried my code?) Packing bools into bitmaps... Hmm... That's what I call the "really old methods"! I've used that technique in some firmwares many years ago (good old 51 etc.). I don't think the WP7 really needs that kind of optimization ;)

OK, will check new version of Freda. If you want, send me xap before publishing on market, I'll check it on my Focus. And tell me please how I can send you a damn log file if Freda get stuck opening filbusta's epub! On the second run?

1) You may split large html's (but I'm not sure they are exists; do you have an real example?) once on unpacking process. As for my tests and experience, the Mark Twains novels (in my sketch, epubs formatted as single html), are loading to WebBrowser really fast.

2) I'm also not a js-guy but:

- scrolling is not a problem! (I've already implemented scrolling yesterday)

- page turning effect is cool but really good for iphoners only and just for first 10 pages turns :D

- show embedded images, searching/highlighting, navigating - it's exactly what the WebBrowser build for! Yes, MS js-engine is kind of slow but (I believe so) just needs a proper scripts (not too modern and sophisticated; a simple plain javascripts!).

I'll ask my javascript friend to help me a little. Will show the results.

P.S. WebBrowser and JavaScript based render have a few very important advantages: you may change/improve viewer without changing the main app code! I mean: you may run scripts from isf; check the new version of the viewer script in main app; download and unpack if necessary.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Just restart Freda, and (before opening any book) tap the 'support email' button. That will send the log file, which will include any error messages from the last run. Restarting the program does not truncate the log file (but pressing that email button does).

For the rest of your thoughts on js and the like - you could be right; I'm certainly not going to argue the details as I, also, am not a js expert. That is one of the reasons why I don't plan to replace Freda's parse/paginate/render code with js code. It took me weeks to get it working in c# - the usual pattern: about 3 days to get code that worked well for my three canned examples; then months of discovering tricky special cases in various EPUBs that people sent me in bug reports! If you're interested in finding a good range of epubs to experiment on, I recommend downloading some classics from Gutenberg (I seem to remember 'Don Quixote' was challenging for a couple of reasons), and trying some MOBIs and PDFs converted by Calibre. Calibre is particularly helpful as you can tell it how large to make its chapter files (200 kB is the recommended maximum chapter size for EPUB, IIRC).
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] digitaldon37:
I don't know how difficult it would be for you to do, but I like how "ezReader" goes chapter to chapter with a side swipe.

I haven't seen anyone implement this yet - but it seems like it would be possible. I'd like to see the ability to upload to dropbox; that way I could upload while reading and pick up where I left off on another device. I'm assuming that the bookmark/last page read info can be saved back into the epub.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Interesting idea. I'll look into it.

Hmmm. The idea of writing back to the epub file is, for Freda at least, a bit of a non-starter. There is a lot of structure and information inside an EPUB file, and Freda throws away some of that information when it loads the book, because it relates to features that Freda cannot process. But having thrown away the content, Freda isn't able to easily regenerate the original content (and then insert some custom entities to keep track of the last page read). I could work round this, but it wouldn't be simple, and it would carry the risk that Freda might corrupt your EPUB (or at least, might mess with its content in some way that didn't matter to Freda, but caused problems for your other reader program). In any case, there is, as far as I am aware, no standard way of recording bookmarks/last-read-indicators in an EPUB file, so even if I came up with a way for Freda to record last-page-read, there is no guarantee that it would be compatible with the scheme used by some other reader program.

I'll have a think about it though, because the requirement 'I want to keep my bookmarks file on DropBox' does seem to be something worth implementing.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Beretta93:
very nice app. Thank you very much. ;)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] addicus:
I'd like to make some suggestions for Freda. I have only used the WM version and am unsure if you are still supporting it. If you are not - It's understandable as WP7 is the future and much easier to work on.

My suggestions all have to do with customization. If we could simplify the process I think it would make your product better. Instead of the user messing with those sliders for font and background color without having a real time preview, I would suggest adding in presets.

i.e. - Night time give me a black background with white letters, etc....

Then simplify font changing. Under fonts just picking a size would be easier. Saving your setting should be easier to understand also.

I hope you don't take this wrong as I feel your program is basically the best overall ereader out there, but these are the improvements I think you should make as the program becomes more commercial. Best of luck thanks for all you've done so far!
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] thndrkat:
freda shutting down when opening dropbox books

I can confirm that waiting for the advert to open solves this problem.

Jim, is there a way to get an ad-free version? I would be happy to pay for a version that does not require the ads...

~T~:D
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I am still maintaining the WM6 version - so I will look at your thoughts and see what I can do.

Thanks,

Jim
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
I will put such a version onto the marketplace in a few days.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] SatScan:
This is the best reader ever used!

A Big thank-you

Sent from my HTC HD2
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] :
Is there a way to download my ebooks via email or dropbox and save them to the phone, ??
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] cutegigi:
there is built in dropbox function.

work quite well.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] vodanhdaisu:
Can anybody here share the xap installer file ?
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] gianguido:
I like Freda, it's so simple and so powerful, compliments Jim!

One thing: why i can't download to my bookshelf the book that it's on dropbox?

Freda opens it but it's too slow when i change page.

Do i need a wifi connection to read a book? :O
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
After the book is downloaded, you don't need a network connection any more - the book will stay on your phone (and you can 'pin' it to the bookshelf, to make sure it stays on the phone - tap-and-hold on the bookshelf item to do this).

Once the book has downloaded, Freda will paginate (that is, calculate page numbers). That takes a few minutes, and during those minutes, page turning will not be very smooth. If you wait, it gets better.

Hope these remarks are helpful.

Jim
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Why do you need the XAP file? The app is a free download on MarketPlace.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] XIGODS:
thank you very much
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] timi22666:
the latest update was so good i deleted the free ver. and bought the paid version instead
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] MadGaffler:
Hey Jim, did any of the announcements from MIX apply to or effect any of your future plans for Freda?
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] david2327:
love it

i really like the app.... I'm just wondering how hard it would be to include pdf support. Most of the books I have are pdf's.

thanks for the great program
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Still looking at what's coming up. Looks like SkyDrive integration is going to become possible, and I'm hopeful that the font-rendering and file handling APIs will be extended in Mango (which could enable some pretty major performance improvements).

I may also have a look at using the 'background agent' feature to keep track of the content of on-line OPDS catalogs (for example, periodicals and magazines, which get updated from time to time).

Sadly, it looks like Hebrew and Arabic script support is still missing.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
PDF support would be something of a pain, to be honest. I'd recommend that you keep your library of PDFs on Calibre (since Calibre can convert them to EPUB, and present them as a source that Freda can download from).

I've had a look for PDF-reading code on the internet, and all the libraries I found are quite expensive (we're talking thousands of dollars here). That's not viable, in view of the (rather tiny) amount of money that I am making from Freda.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
Jim, I forgot to tell you a BIG THANKS for hyphenation implementation (especially for Russian)! Now text looks really aligned even with large font. Good job!

Actually, Freda now work very good and stable; I have just a few low priority suggestions. If you find a time, could you please:

- replace very annoying standard warning MessageBox during loading time for something not so annoying (like a popup StackPanel at the top/bottom but without sound)?

- improve a book loading performance (I know it's not simple);

BTW, did you ever think about implementing fancy "real page curl" transaction for changing page? ;-) I don't know how to implement this effect correctly (AFAIK custom pixel shaders are not supported) but this will be fun :-)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] dkp1977:
That would really be great. I had this with Laputa for Android. If anything could be improved on Freda it's definitely the page turning effect and the look of the book shelf. I would love to see some sort of "real" looking shelf. But anyway, Freda is the best reader out there. I used it on WinMo and after I switched over to WP7, I immediately purchased Freda for it. :)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Freda development update

Thanks for the various feedback points.

As it's been a while since I made any update, I thought I should post with some info about the current state of Freda development ...

I've been doing a pretty heavy re-factoring exercise, to improve performance and to allow a more flexible setup for book sources (to get away from the restriction of having only 3 OPDS catalogs, one DropBox and one website). From a programming perspective, that's meant a lot of pushing 'book source' logic up into an abstract base class; from a user perspective it means you can decide what book sources you want to use, and have them all appear as items on Freda's screen (with a +/- control to open/close them, rather than the tabbed 'pivot view' which is clunky to use and causes horrible performance issues). I've done also some work to make the visuals for book sources slicker - though to be honest I am still sticking to a pretty bare-bones look (just text and thumbnails, no walnut-effect panelling - though if I can get hold of some suitable background bitmaps I might add it as an option).

I'm expecting to put out one more major release before Mango (which word on the street says will be in September ... but what does the street know?). Depending on my various other commitments, you can probably hope to see Freda 2.0 some time in July.

Better page-turning animations, and SkyDrive integration will have to wait for Mango - and I don't yet know about the animations, to be honest.

Thanks to all,

Jim
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
Thanks, will wait :-)

P.S. If I found something useful (and with good performance!) for page curl animation, I'll let you know. For now I had a desktop SL project converted (and working on WP7) but performance is extremely slow ('cause of ARM architecture).
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] sensboston:
Sorry for offtopic, but you should try FBReaderJ and Moon+ Reader on Android ;)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] dkp1977:
Kinda difficult, since I switched from Android to WP7. ;)
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] MadGaffler:
Hey Jim,

have you thought about incorporating the theme color the user chooses into the tile? They could be similar to what you have now except for instead of the bright green it would be light/faded green like the current light blue color for the tile and so on for red purple orange brown.....ect. I don't know much about the access devs have to the tile animations but you could maybe add the last book that was opened cover art like the "me" tile, shade effect. This could also maybe be used as a lure to purchase the app. any way I love you reader and look forward to all future updates.
[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
New Freda version

The new version (2.0) of Freda is now available on the marketplace.

I've added a bunch of fixes and small changes, but the main one is getting rid of the 'pivot' control for the main page. Now you just have bunch of stacked panels, one above the other - each panel can be 'expanded' by tapping on its '+' button, or 'collapsed' by tapping again on that button. The panels also have (at their right hand end) a 'maximise' button to let you switch to a full screen view.

The first panel is your bookshelf (i.e. recently opened books), and the other panels correspond to all the various sources of books that Freda knows about.

To add, remove, move or edit sources, tap the '...' menu selector, or long-tap on one the the panel headers. You can also 'hide' sources, which can help keep the screen tidier.

I've also added an image viewer (long-tap on an image in a book, and you will be able to pan/zoom around it). Other features (e.g. preventing the phone turning itself off, adding a simpler settings screen) you will find by looking on the settings screen.

Comments (in forum, or by email to jim@turnipsoft.co.uk) are welcome.

Cheers,

Jim