[early beta] Ao3 reader app based on Plato

[momijizukamori]

So I've been working on and off on an app to give a nice interface to archiveofourown.org on Kobos, because I want to browse fanfic in e-ink without having to pick out a bunch of stuff I may not end up enjoying, download the epubs, transfer them over, etc etc.

This is kind of in late alpha/early beta at this point - the main functionality (browse a search result and read fics) works but there's still a lot of missing features and bugs. I'm kind of stuck on it, so I figured I would throw it up here and ask for feedback/advice. It's been tested on the Glo and Forma, and should work on any of the e-ink Kobo readers, but YMMV, I am not responsible if you brick your device, etc etc.

If anyone wants to browse the repo (along with some slightly more coherent planned features/known issues), it's available here: https://github.com/momijizukamori/ao3-reader

Assorted dev notes and discussion available here: https://momijizukamori.dreamwidth.org/tag/ao3

Biggest known issues (which I am stuck on):

• Jump-to-page in the work index view does not work and will instead just hang weirdly
• When the about work overlay goes to multiple pages, it just... stops rendering partway down the second page? The data is there - if tags spill into that area you have invisible touch-targets for them - but they're not being drawn to the frame buffer for ?? reasons ??

Installation Instructions: the reader zip attached is based on NiLuJe's one-click-install package for KFmon and Plato, and installs the same way (though the KFmon version may be slightly out-of-date now). You will probably want to open

.adds/plato/Settings.toml

in a text editor and edit the value for "faves" unless you share my taste in fandoms - it takes an array of string pairs, where the first string is the name in the display, and the second is the URL to the view.

Release file: Ao3 Reader v0.0.4

[badrihippo]

Hey, this is cool! I've also been vaguely thinking of creating an ao3 reader for the Kobo. Can't believe I didn't stumble upon this before! Installing this now on my Elipsa and I'll let you know how it goes

[momijizukamori]

I'm glad you're interested! As a quick heads-up, if you're on an Elipsa, you'll need the newer build file I linked in this post: https://momijizukamori.dreamwidth.org/475800.html

It's unfortunately a little buggier than the older version, mostly because I had pull in a ton of changes from Plato to get support for newer devices and didn't get around to rectifying that with all the changes I've made for my stuff. But I may have another go at it soon-ish - in a wild coincidence, someone else with an Elipsa also asked me about this yesterday. So I'm glad there's interest!

[badrihippo]

Thanks for the link! I actually tried downloading the Elipsa version first, but the only link I found was broken. Anyway, it's working now!

By the way, how much work would it be to use ao3's ePub download feature instead of manually parsing it? The ePub formatting is much better there (at least compared to how this reader is working on my Elipsa). I'm not sure how you've implemented this, but since ePubs are just files of HTML, I'm guessing they can be used somehow...

Anyway, I saw your post saying to expect a new update soon and I'm looking forward to that! Okay fine I won't bug you if it doesn't happen :P

[momijizukamori]

Hmm, I suppose it might be possible to stream the epub to memory - but while it might pull in some nicer formatting, I think it'd also cause other problems because I'd still have to pull from the site to get stats stuff and to add the kudos functionality (and eventually I'd like to add bookmark and comment functionality, but those are more complex interactions)

Anyway! I did in fact get a release up - links and notes are in this journal post: https://momijizukamori.dreamwidth.org/482636.html

[badrihippo]

Ooh account login (and especially "Marked for Later") is one thing I was wishing for! This makes my fanfic reading flow very usable