

Hello and welcome to liqreader.

Software developed by Gary Liquid for the Nokia Maemo platform.

This is a playtest for a smooth bookreader on Maemo.

Use up/down arrows or slide your cursor to read more.
Press Esc to quit.

To run at fullspeed, the cpu_governor needs to be switched to 'performance'.
(This can be done automatically via root by using the -turbo switch)
see below for more information.



About:
I purchased my nokia n810 just before Christmas based upon it running Linux, having an amazing screen and looking perfect.

Once I got the platform I started to look at the options for reading text based books.

The only software readily available is FBReader.
Fbreader is an open source cross platform book reader.
This is both its strength and its weakness.

The interface on Maemo was nothing short of lacking - the raw text looks great, but its how it handles page turning and moving around the document.

There are tweaks for selecting the text and adjustments based upon whether you click with your finger or your stylus and it just doesnt work properly.

Moving backwards through the text always feels sluggish - it takes over a second to go backwards and it gets laggy and stuck in what it is doing.

My old Fujitsu pocket loox had a book reader which many people will know: iSolo.
With this I could configure it nicely, the text would scroll as I stroke my finger down and it was quick and responsive.

liqreader restores these abilities and simplifies the interface.


Options:

There are not many options yet but essentially:

./liqreader [/path/to/bookname.txt] -font [/path/to/font.ttf] -size [8..72] -colorcube -fpsshow

[/path/to/bookname.txt] 
	:: source text only document, limited to 4mb for now.

-font [/path/to/font.ttf]	
	:: selection of font

-size [8..72] 		
	:: display font size

-colorcube 			
	:: display a colorcube to test color
	

-fpsshow 
	:: display a frame counter and fps instant and total

-turbo
	:: this will attempt to set the cpu governor to 'performance'.
	:: Since I optimised the program to run faster it started to slow itself down, the governor thinks it does not need full speed and will only go full pelt when you are sliding the mouse.  I would gladly take input on how to rectify this situation without having to alter the power saving features (or requiring root).


It uses SDL and SDL_ttf for loading in the font glyphs.
It uses the X11 library XV to obtain the display overlay.

Gary Liquid
liquidcoooled@gmail.com
lcuk on #maemo
