PRS-T1 Page Turn Buttons on Rooted PRS-T1

[537h]

I'm rather interested in what use we make of the T1's hardware page turn buttons. Within the confines of the Sony interface, the buttons serve to not only turn pages, but also skip tracks in the audio player and "page-down" in the stock web browser. I'd be nice to give those keys added live in the rooted world. So here are my thoughts and discoveries as I've been trying to learn a bit about this issue.

The page turn arrows are, to the Android system, buttons 105 and 106 and are mapped as DPAD_LEFT and DPAD_RIGHT. The Sony apps are written in such a way that these "keyboard" commands have meaning. Most other apps don't give them a roll or at least a useful one, though someone has been kind enough to tweak FBReader to use them (see the Rooting and Modding Wiki).

One thought I had was to remap the buttons as volume up and down buttons, since many Android apps use these controls for scrolling and turning pages (for example the Kindle, InstaFetch, and Google Reader apps on my reader).

Another idea is to remap the buttons as "spacebar" and "shift + spacebar", which Android itself recognizes as page down/up on web pages and unpaginated documents (so other apps would work like the stock T1 browser). This might be the more beneficial use for me since I don't mind horizontal swiping to turn pages but definitely dislike vertical animated scrolling on Eink.

Obviously, for many of us, it would be nice to retain the function of the buttons in Sony's reading app as well as gain use in other apps. I really don't know how easy or possible it would be for the buttons to fire simultaneous commands or commands based on the app being used.

I played around with an app called ButtonRemapper that was developed a year or so ago but never left beta. I managed to change the keymap with it but didn't really get to see any results, which might have been related to the fact that it locked up and I had to hard reset and then factory reset after that. Perhaps manually changing things in the keylog file is the way to go, but I'll have to do some more research before I dive back in (burn me once...).

Here is some reading on keymaps.

And the XDA thread for ButtonRemapper.

If anyone else has any resources or experience to share or want to try their hand at a button-hacking solutions, please do.

[uboot]

This is really a great discovery!! I'd also love to have the page turn buttons circumvent flashy finger scrolling in many apps / menus.

[jr17oo]

In my opinion it is not a good idea to remap the hardware page turn buttons, as they won't be usable in the original sony apps anymore.
One of the first versions of porkupans minimal root set remapped the buttons to volume up/down, and if I remember correctly there was some discussion about the benefits and downsides of remapping the keys in the original rooting thread.

Sony's implementation is everything but straightforward: We know the scancodes (105 and 106), but the keycode for both buttons is 0. This the reason why we can't use FBReader's integrated key bindings settings. Fortunately porkupan provided us with a patched version.

As far as I know, only Cool Reader has native support for the page turn buttons. And regarding the fact that the T1 is an e-ink device, only a limited number of apps can be used on it (at least I don't use it for anything but reading). It might thus be worth to talk to app developers and ask them to include support for the T1's hardware buttons. There was a similar discussion for the Nook Touch some months ago.

[uboot]

Thank's for the hint to the rooting thread. Here is the related post:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ey#post1805119

So, all you need to do is navigate to /system/usr/keylayout/ via root explorer, remount as r/w and append the following lines to gpio-keys.kl:

key 105    SPACE SHIFT
key 106    SPACE

Unfortunately, SPACE+SHIFT does not work on most apps. The best compromise for me is having only page right mapped to space and page left kept at stock settings. This will allow fast forward in android menus, filemanager, etc and also work as page forward in stock browser.

For myself, I don't care about Sony Apps as they can be controlled via touch screen. And I frequently use apps like Dolphin Browser, iRealb and Bible Reader which greately benefit from page turns.

[537h]

uboot, we are kindred spirits. I implemented this a few days ago and wrote essentially the same reply as you yesterday, but it was lost after I got distracted for a while and then submitted it after I'd been auto-logged-out. My current compromise differs only in that I've mapped the page-left (105) button to SPACE and left the right one as is.

Not the most elegant solution but it is quite functional and well worth the loss of "page-back" functions, since I tend read in a mostly front to back fashion and there's always the touch screen for back-tracking.

As jr points out this is purely a matter of preference and I'm sure many will elect to keep the stock keys. For me though, the primary benefit of remapping is that the keys can be used to minimize scrolling and turning animations and imprecision in several apps I use.

My current button uses:
Stock page-forward (106): Turn pages in Sony Reader and CoolReader, and page-down in stock browser.
Remapped SPACE button (105): page turn in Kindle App, next item in Google Reader/Gmail, and general page-downing in pages and lists (especially useful for me in root explorer and various menus).

[uboot]

Good point! I think _this_ is really the best compromise now!

Until we find a tool that auto-remaps page turn buttons depending on current foreground app, of course...

[jdsolor]

i have a question. Is not posible to add some on-screen button to fast foward? That because i don´t want to lose the option to turn the pages.
I really need a method to reduce the flashing of the sreen, even tough is only for one app (i want to use a feed reader whitout the flashing when i scroll the page)

[rubentje1991]

Originally Posted by jdsolor

i have a question. Is not posible to add some on-screen button to fast foward? That because i don´t want to lose the option to turn the pages.
I really need a method to reduce the flashing of the sreen, even tough is only for one app (i want to use a feed reader whitout the flashing when i scroll the page)

This would also be a possibility, but needs some work though; however quality for reading is less, but it's enough for navigation...

It would be nice that when the hardware button is pressed, the normal event is fired, but if it isn't handled, another event is fired (for example the space button, of whatever button is mentioned in the older posts)...
=> however, I don't know if that would be possible (to check if an event is handled by the application; maybe the system "handles" it itself )

[darseno]

Originally Posted by 537h

I really don't know how easy or possible it would be for the buttons to fire simultaneous commands or commands based on the app being used.

What we need is an app that runs in the background and reinterprets button presses for specific user-defined apps. That would be the perfect solution.

Would someone please write such an app?

[j0534ng31]

Originally Posted by darseno

What we need is an app that runs in the background and reinterprets button presses for specific user-defined apps. That would be the perfect solution.

Would someone please write such an app?

Are you speaking about something like this?

[darseno]

Originally Posted by j0534ng31

Are you speaking about something like this?

ButtonRemapper remaps globally, for every app.

What I would like to have is an app that doesn't remap buttons, but listens for button presses and, depending on the current foreground app, fires another corresponding button (for example: listens for the "page forward" button and activates "volume up" in one app, and in other app activates "shift+space" depending on user preferences).

[darseno]

Here's an app for Windows Mobile that does what I'm looking for. We need something like this for Android.

http://aeinc.ru/aebplus.php

[uboot]

Aebplus does not work on a per app basis

[Prince Coco]

Hello

New user here. I've rooted my Sony PRS-T1 (bought in March) thanks to this wonderful message board and now I've achieved almost everything that I wanted: I now have a decent RSS-reader app + a low refresh rate + Tapatalk (app to read forums). The only thing i'm searching for is a way to remap the page turn buttons.

I read this topic and tried to understand what to do, but when I get to the gpio-keys file, I don't see buttons 105 & 106.

I see: 28, 103, 126, 108, 125, 102, 357, 158, 114 & 115.

I've already tried changing the ones with DPAD_UP, DPAD_RIGHT, VOLUME_UP, VOLUME_DOWN to SPACE but nothing happened. Then I tried adding 105 but no result as well. Normally this would stop the function in the web browser, no?

Can someboy help me with this matter?
Thx in advance.

Edit: nvm => reset did the trick