Terminal program for PB622/623

[paolog]

Originally Posted by jtt

Hi Paolo,
Your wish is my command;-)....
Best regards, Jens

wow too much for me!!! ... may be you could consider to make up pi-editor too...if you leave any spare time ...

anyway 1.6 tested, it's perfect now

thank you very much again for your work!

paolo

[jtt]

Hi,

Originally Posted by paolog

anyway 1.6 tested, it's perfect now

Well, nothing is perfect;-) So there's a new version with a few minor changes:

a) The font change step size when increasing or decreasing the font size can be set via the configuration file.

b) If you've got a newer version of libinkview on your device the menu will appear centered below the point where you made a long tap (if it isn't too near to one of the borders of the screen).

c) Again with newer libinkview versions you can use two-finger guestures to change the font size (move your fingers together to decrease or move them apart to increase the font size - larger movements result in larger changes and vice versa).

Admittedly, with the last two changes (which aren't too important for usability) I got a bit adventurous since what I used there isn't documented or supported by the current version of the SDK. It's more a kind of proof of concept and not really essential, but hopefully could be interesting for others that are looking for how such things can be done.

Of course, that stuff isn't anything I found out myself but is based on some other posts here from nearly a year ago (and, of course, 'rkomar' was one of the main contributors, as it's to be expected, see https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=197207, which I just found today.

...make up pi-editor too...

I've heard about this pi-editor but wasn't able yet to find it - can someone give me an URL where it can be downloaded from?

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

Hi Jens

tried 1.7: almost (... just to leave room to your improvements) perfect!
font change gestures works well, even inside $top

as for pi-editor here is the link in this forum:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=158571

[jtt]

Originally Posted by paolog

as for pi-editor here is the link in this forum:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=158571

Thanks, got it. It at least it starts on my PB623, but I need a magnifying glass to see what's on the screen and many buttons are too small for my fingers (I guess it was meant to be used with a stylus). Also the on-screen keyboard used is rather unsuitable for real editing - getting the cursor into a certain place with my fingers is very difficult and often needs a dozen attempts. And then just being able to edit a single line, then close the keyboard, select another line, get the menu to open and select "Edit line" doesn't seem, at least to me, to be really convenient (reminds me a bit of the way we had to edit stuff on a HP1000 about 30 years ago;-)

On the other hand, there's a vi already installed on these devices -an via pbterm I was able to start and get out of it. While not being a big fan of vi it's a real editor, so all the stuff that had to be written for the pi editor is already available there - so why re-invent the wheel? Thus, instead of trying to fiddle with the pi editor (which seems to be quite complex and then also relies on pbtk), I'd first try to get vi running with a custom made keyboard (with an ESC key, of course;-) always open on the screen. I haven't yet given much thought to it, but I guess that would be what I'd explore first before trying anything more fancy like messing around with the pi editor.

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

Hi Jens

you're right, unfortunately it was for stylus based reader. It (or pb622) has some hide gestures (to tell the truth I didn't read the 'readme' file) so now I'm get used to it.
For my porpuse (i.e. to modify settings file on the fly) it is enough

vi un my pb is for very jeeks! from my point of view isn't very friendly too due to the interface with escape chars

bye

Paolo

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paolog

vi un my pb is for very jeeks! from my point of view isn't very friendly too due to the interface with escape chars

vi is my preferred editor, but as you say, with the necessity for the escape and control keys, it was never going to be easy to use with a software keyboard, even if the terminal behaviour is solved. A line editor seems a better choice, which is more or less what the Pi editor is.

[jtt]

Originally Posted by rkomar

vi is my preferred editor, but as you say, with the necessity for the escape and control keys, it was never going to be easy to use with a software keyboard, even if the terminal behaviour is solved. A line editor seems a better choice, which is more or less what the Pi editor is.

I always thought that you don't need the <CTRL> key with vi, do you? And the idea is to actually run vi as a child process, conntected via a pseudoterminal (I fear pipes won't do due to the line-buffering), and just interpret the VT102 escape sequences vi seems to be sending for correct display, while a newly written keyboard occupies the bottom of the screen, which sends characters as they're typed in (the keyboard from libinkvew is useless here) and has an <ESC> key. Of course, that's just an idea, don't know if this can be made to work. At least I will learn a bit more about vi should I attempt at write something like that;-)

Best regards, Jens

[jtt]

Originally Posted by paolog

vi un my pb is for very jeeks! from my point of view isn't very friendly too due to the interface with escape chars

Preferences may differ;-) But vi isn't actually that bad, it just takes a bit of time to get used to it. Then you're all set for most simple things you need to do. And whatever UNIX system you get to work with it will always have some version of vi, so you're never completely lost when your favorite editor isn't available;-)

But, of course, the vi editor on the PB as it is is unusable (unless you manage to e.g. telnet into the device). We'll need some program interfacing with it on the device. Then it might become useful for stand-alone work like editing a configuration file. Let's see;-)

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

hi
not only those

on my pb this is what I see ( '*' here are 'square' char on PB):

$vi
*[1;1h*[0J
*~
*~
*~
*~
*~
*~
*~
*~*[1;1H*[24;1H*[OK- No file 1/1 100%*[1;1H

I used vi sometimes, very rarely, so once I get here I get off...

[jtt]

Originally Posted by paolog

on my pb this is what I see ( '*' here are 'square' char on PB):

That's to be expected - vi sends VT102 escape sequences that e.g. tell the terminal where to put the cursor etc. (e.g. "<ESC>[24;1H" tells it to draw the next character at the first position in line 24) and they aren't interpreted by pbterm (which is much too simple-minded for that). Thus to get vi to run in some useful way you'll need a program that "talks" to vi, interprets all those escape sequences and then presents what it got back from vi in some human-readable form. Without that vi isn't usable on the PB. And you also will need a different keyboard that sends each characters as it is typed in immediately to vi.

I'm just looking into that. Unfortunately, the vi that comes with BusyBox is already rather limited in what it can do, and then the guys at PocketBook configured it in a way that cuts it further down to the bare bones. The worst is that they didn't enable window resizing, so it always expects to be connected to a 80x24 terminal, which, of course, is rather large for the PB screens (ok, you may display 24 lines with a still readable font, but then you'll never be able to show 80 characters per line). That won't make it any easier.

Perhaps it would be better to install a "real" vi and then work with that instead of trying to work around all the limitations of this castrated version of vi...

Best regards, Jens

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by jtt

I always thought that you don't need the <CTRL> key with vi, do you? And the idea is to actually run vi as a child process, conntected via a pseudoterminal (I fear pipes won't do due to the line-buffering), and just interpret the VT102 escape sequences vi seems to be sending for correct display, while a newly written keyboard occupies the bottom of the screen, which sends characters as they're typed in (the keyboard from libinkvew is useless here) and has an <ESC> key. Of course, that's just an idea, don't know if this can be made to work. At least I will learn a bit more about vi should I attempt at write something like that;-)

Best regards, Jens

I looked into getting vi running in a curses-based environment a few years ago when I first got my PocketBook device, so it's a bit vague in my memory now. You're probably right about the CTRL keys not being required (except for CTRL-V for inputting hex). Thinking back, I think it was the fact that the Enter key was missing from the software keyboard that put me off pursuing this. I had already made my own keyboard layout with more special characters, but I couldn't figure out how to add the Enter key to it. Since you can't use a bluetooth keyboard either, I just gave up on running vi from the device's interface.

I got WiFi working and used sshd and utelnetd for shell access after that, and never looked back. If you think the software keyboard sucks on your Touch device, you should see what it's like on the button-only devices like my 902 (three button presses on average per character, and much more for the special ones).

[jtt]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I had already made my own keyboard layout with more special characters, but I couldn't figure out how to add the Enter key to it. Since you can't use a bluetooth keyboard either, I just gave up on running vi from the device's interface.

Well, that's not going to be a probem here when you can write a new keyboard completely indendent of the libibinkview keyboard - just put enoygh buttons at the bottom of the screen and use the rest of the screen for the editor.

I just succeeded in building vim without ncurses/termcap (just for a VT100) for x86 and the next step is to try to built it for arm. If that works we'll have a full vim for the pocketbook instead of the rather crippled version that comes with the device (that might even be useful for you when you telnet/ssh into the device and need to do some editing). Let's see if that works;-)

The following step then would be to write a VT100 emulator that understands all the escape sequences this vim version knows about with a keyboard that's usable for editing with vi. the icing on the cake would be if one could place the cursor also using taps on the screen;-)

I got WiFi working and used sshd and utelnetd for shell access after that, and never looked back.

I would like to be able to do that but, as I said, I never got WLAN to work on my network - I'm still hoping that the next firmware version will take care of that problem. It probably would speed up development considerably!

But even then I guess being able to edit a few files when one isn't near a "real" computer (like when one is travelling) might still be useful.

If you think the software keyboard sucks on your Touch device, you should see what it's like on the button-only devices like my 902 (three button presses on average per character, and much more for the special ones).

I guess I can feel the pain;-)

Best regards, Jens

[baltus]

works fine with pocketbook touch 622. Thanks ! does not work over pocketbook pro 912.

[jtt]

Originally Posted by baltus

works fine with pocketbook touch 622. Thanks ! does not work over pocketbook pro 912.

Thanks, good to know that it works on the platforms I could test it on. Concerning the 912 I can't even start making guesses about what's going wrong since I neither have that device nor any idea what firmware it might be running. Did you use the precompiled program or did you compile it yourself?

Best regards, Jens

[paolog]

hi Jens

I'm back

could you add a 'free' command in the panel called by the tap in the low left corner?

For istance I've copied some arm binaries in /mnt/ext2/bin/ (I want those there instead to put those in /mnt/ext1/system/bin)

once I need them I have either to type $/mnt/ext2/bin/find (for istance) or to modify the path

obviously isn't so annoying, I've the history or I can type, but if I had such shortcut it could be more useful to set the path with it