Hi :)
So these last weeks I've been developing some Qt app that is now a working eBook reader. I called it InkBox, and it has been tested by very few people here (only @Elektron if I'm not mistaken). It's based on Qt 5.15.2, thanks to the Kobo Platform Plugin by @OfficerAction, which allows you to develop pretty much anything you want on Qt for a Kobo.
There are two options, basically:
1. As an entire OS
2. As a standard /mnt/onboard/.adds/ addon
The OS is the most interesting one, because it's open-source everywhere and it's completely integrated with InkBox. It's an install of bare-metal Alpine Linux with some squashfs containers with Qt, Python and InkBox. Since Alpine is musl-based, I built some root filesystem with Buildroot, and I put InkBox in it. It boots flawlessly into the GUI and it's fast. USBNetwork is enabled by default at boot, so you won't have to worry about hooking up serial or anything like that, because Wi-Fi isn't implemented yet.
Features (OS-specific features are marked with a hash)
- Reads TXT book format, or anything that's plain text (e.g. shell scripts)
- FAST! Dictionary search (takes less than 1 second);
- Options to change font, size and alignment;
- Brightness control and battery level indicator;
- Option to save a word you searched in the dictionary;
- Option to change number of words per page (you'll understand later why);
#- Sleep mode (well, kind of, it SIGSTOPs InkBox and SIGCONTs it when the power button is pressed again, but it should save battery nevertheless);
#- Seamless update process, a bit like Kobo's one;
#- USBMS mode (powered by g_file_storage);
#- GUI option to run dhclient after you've set up a network bridge on your PC.
Current OS images for the Kobo Mini are available here: http://pkgs.kobox.fermino.me/bundles/inkbox/
You can then flash it to the microSD card with this command:
Etcher or alternatives should work too, but I haven't tested those.
Add-pack will probably be available later today or tomorrow, at the same URL.
Source code is available as well at the same URL, I've not had much luck to set up a Git repo after I created the project and realised it was actually going to become something.
Please ask any questions you have about it, and I'll create a FAQ with the relevant ones. I joined some screenshots here.
Enjoy! :)
CREDITS:
@OfficerAction, for the KoboPlatformPlugin and Qt compilation guide, and also for answering the dumbest questions I had to ask ;)
@Elektron, for testing and providing feedback
So these last weeks I've been developing some Qt app that is now a working eBook reader. I called it InkBox, and it has been tested by very few people here (only @Elektron if I'm not mistaken). It's based on Qt 5.15.2, thanks to the Kobo Platform Plugin by @OfficerAction, which allows you to develop pretty much anything you want on Qt for a Kobo.
There are two options, basically:
1. As an entire OS
2. As a standard /mnt/onboard/.adds/ addon
The OS is the most interesting one, because it's open-source everywhere and it's completely integrated with InkBox. It's an install of bare-metal Alpine Linux with some squashfs containers with Qt, Python and InkBox. Since Alpine is musl-based, I built some root filesystem with Buildroot, and I put InkBox in it. It boots flawlessly into the GUI and it's fast. USBNetwork is enabled by default at boot, so you won't have to worry about hooking up serial or anything like that, because Wi-Fi isn't implemented yet.
Features (OS-specific features are marked with a hash)
- Reads TXT book format, or anything that's plain text (e.g. shell scripts)
- FAST! Dictionary search (takes less than 1 second);
- Options to change font, size and alignment;
- Brightness control and battery level indicator;
- Option to save a word you searched in the dictionary;
- Option to change number of words per page (you'll understand later why);
#- Sleep mode (well, kind of, it SIGSTOPs InkBox and SIGCONTs it when the power button is pressed again, but it should save battery nevertheless);
#- Seamless update process, a bit like Kobo's one;
#- USBMS mode (powered by g_file_storage);
#- GUI option to run dhclient after you've set up a network bridge on your PC.
Current OS images for the Kobo Mini are available here: http://pkgs.kobox.fermino.me/bundles/inkbox/
You can then flash it to the microSD card with this command:
Code:
gunzip -c inkbox.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0Add-pack will probably be available later today or tomorrow, at the same URL.
Source code is available as well at the same URL, I've not had much luck to set up a Git repo after I created the project and realised it was actually going to become something.
Please ask any questions you have about it, and I'll create a FAQ with the relevant ones. I joined some screenshots here.
Enjoy! :)
CREDITS:
@OfficerAction, for the KoboPlatformPlugin and Qt compilation guide, and also for answering the dumbest questions I had to ask ;)
@Elektron, for testing and providing feedback