Homebrew IkuReader, an e-book reader

[chintoi]

Features:
- txt, fb2 and partial epub format support
- UTF-8 text encoding
- horizontal and vertical layouts
- fonts look sharp even on DSi
- option to turn off one of the screens to save battery life

Download: http://code.google.com/p/ikureader/

 

[Rydian]

Man that's some nice filtering, judging from the screenshot.

 

[chintoi]

Rydian, yeah it's the same freetype2 library DSReader and dslibris use except it's a new version with bytecode interpreter and subpixel rendering enabled.

Everyone, if you like the program then say so, if you don't say something anyway, or the topic will sink, no one will download it and I'll stop supporting it.

 

[Rydian]

Whoever told you making homebrew would make you popular was lying...

 

[twiztidsinz]

I think this is everything I've wanted in a reader.

Couple questions...
- What is FB2?
- How'd you get the heading info to be a diff size?

 

[Rydian]

FB2 is "fictionbook".

 

[Depravo]

Looks nice. Any chance of supporting the .epub format?

EDIT: Just tried it. This is VERY good. I can use Calibre to convert my eBooks to fb2 so epub support isn't essential but would it be possible for you to add touchscreen page turning?

Also, it doesn't appear to save user settings. Could this be added?

 

[chintoi]

Also, it doesn't appear to save user settings. Could this be added?
Is there a file named settings.b in iku-data folder? Could you upload it? Bookmarks are still saved? You aren't testing on an emulator, are you?

would it be possible for you to add touchscreen page turning?
No problem. Tapping in right direction should turn next page, correct? I'll add this tomorrow.

fb2 is a popular format in my language community and I included it to study xml.

epub format is better, but DS' hardware is so limited it's quite a challenge to implement it (it has to do with unarchiving the file into memory, then building DOM with 4 MB RAM).

QUOTE

Whoever told you making homebrew would make you popular was lying...

I'm just trying to get some feedback on my work to improve on my programming.

 

[Depravo]

Also, it doesn't appear to save user settings. Could this be added?
Is there a file named settings.b in iku-data folder? Could you upload it? Bookmarks are still saved? You aren't testing on an emulator, are you?

I was testing on R4/Wood v1.22. The bookmarks worked but all the user data such as font, font size, screen orientation etc reverted to default every time I restarted the program.

Just tried it again on AceKard2i/AKAIO v1.8.5 and all settings save correctly.

QUOTE

would it be possible for you to add touchscreen page turning?

No problem. Tapping in right direction should turn next page, correct? I'll add this tomorrow.

Brilliant! Thanks a lot.

Don't worry too much about the epub thing. It's no trouble to make a 30 second conversion every time I start a new book.

 

[twiztidsinz]

would it be possible for you to add touchscreen page turning?

No problem. Tapping in right direction should turn next page, correct? I'll add this tomorrow.

Could you also add 'drag' motion?
turns the page back
Like it was a real book

 

[valyr]

there is an example of epub support source code available in dslibris svn on its sourceforge page
might be worth taking a look at it if you plan on implementing this

dslibris is under gpl if i remember right
but the code is freely downloadable

personally i would love an epub reader with folder support
as at present i have to rewrite dslibris settings xml file to change
book folder locations

 

[Terminator02]

dang that looks niiiiice, but if there is someway to support epub it would be awesome

 

[chintoi]

Added touch controlled page turning, both dragging and tapping.

there is an example of epub support source code available in dslibris svn on its sourceforge page

Unfortunately I still can't make a sense out of it)

 

[Depravo]

Added touch controlled page turning, both dragging and tapping.

Very much appreciated. Thanks.

What's the upper limit on .fb2 file size? Two of my eBooks give me an 'out of memory' error. Their sizes are 2.4MB and 2.9MB.

 

[chintoi]

It's about 1.5 MB.
Most books aren't that big, that's probably because of images.
First book of The Lord of the Rings barely fitted.
Ah, if only DS had at least 8 MB of memory.

...Oops, english not annotated version of Fellowship of the Ring actually takes only 1.0 MB

I can upload a windows app which strips images out of fb2

 

[spinal_cord]

A couple of (related?) bugs when loading from hbmenu (http://devkitpro.org/wiki/Homebrew_Menu) if the file is not in the root of the card, then the required folders need to be in the same folder as iku.nds as follows -

/homebrew/iku.nds
/homebrew/iku-data/
/homebrew/books/

however, once iku has loaded it looks like this -

Also I have a feature request, just a small one(s). Would it be possible to have iku automatically open the last used file when it starts? Also, I'm not sure, but does it only save the bookmark when exiting? I think it would be better to save when the page is turned, so that the DS can be switched off without loosing the current page.

-- Excellent work btw!

 

[Rydian]

As for the memory limit, I don't suppose you could shorten the tags used? This would need a custom converter between the two formats, but it's just a find-and-replace (assuming escaping is used if it's a text format, I haven't checked).

 

[chintoi]

spinal_cord sorry, I couldn't recreate that situation on my flash card. Uploading iku-data/settings.b file could help me solve this. Current page is saved when you open menu or bookmarks menu, doing it every page could slow down page turning. I'll test it.

Plain text doesn't have the memory limit, and I didn't implement proper tag handling anyway, so maybe converting to txt is the solution?

 

[Depravo]

I can upload a windows app which strips images out of fb2

That would be useful. I didn't realise before but these two books do indeed have lots of images (scans of covers and contents pages and the like). I just thought they were really big books.

EDIT: Used Calibre to convert to .txt and that worked. Both books load fine now.

 

[macgeek417]

Can you change the font / font size? If so, than this is everything I need in an ebook reader! =P