v1.5.1+bookorbit.1-rc6

[agosez]

Sixth release candidate for the X4 Pro, still based on CrossInk v1.5.1-rc-4. Thanks to @boop-kpy for the detailed X4 Pro reports, and to @getthething and @jmswangit for their reports.

See CrossInk's rc-4 notes for everything this RC inherits (frontlight schedules, pinch-to-resize and two-finger gestures, X4 Pro USB Drive, Quick Lock, and a long list of touch fixes).

Important

KOREADER SYNC IS GONE FROM THIS FORK. The reason is space, not preference: the latest CrossInk changes increased the firmware size, and with this fork's features added, the image no longer fits the available partition.

Dropping KOReader Sync is the best compromise, as this fork exists for users who specifically want to synchronize their reading progress with BookOrbit.

If you have KOReader credentials saved on the SD card, they remain untouched and unread, allowing you to switch back to CrossInk or CrossPoint seamlessly.

Important

SINCE RC4: THE X3/X4 BUILT-IN FONTS NO LONGER CARRY EMOJI, SYMBOL AND CJK FALLBACK GLYPHS. It is once again an attempt to make some space for the features delivered by this fork. Regular text in every supported language is untouched — what goes away is a small set of fallback glyphs (about fifty common emoji and some CJK characters) that was duplicated in all 32 built-in reading font variants. The S3 devices keep the complete fonts.

If you read books that use those glyphs, install your font from Settings > Manage Fonts: the downloadable fonts — including Bitter and Lexend Deca, the same families as the built-in ones — carry the full fallback coverage.

Every book re-paginates once on first open after this update, because the font identities change.

Installation

This is a release candidate so it should be installed from USB or SD firmware update. OTA updater will not provide access to this release.

New

• The Lyra and Lyra Extended home menus scroll by swiping on the X4 Pro and the Sticky (fixes Unable to access settings on X4 Pro #49). Those themes show seven menu rows at a time and turn the page by moving the selection past the last row, which is a button motion; on a touchscreen there was no way to reach the rows beyond the first page. On the Minimal and Dashboard themes, Settings is still a swipe down from the middle of the home screen.
• Smart sync (implements Add option to automatically apply most advanced progress #42). A new Sync Behavior choice in the BookOrbit settings, on the device and in the web settings: Ask every time (the default — what every sync did until now) or Smart sync. Smart sync applies the server's progress or uploads yours without showing the choice screen, but only when the two sides tell the same story: the further position must also be the more recent one, judged against the last time this device synced the book. Equal positions just say "Already synced" and return to the book. A genuine conflict (both sides moved since your last sync), a first sync of a book, or a server that sends no dates still shows the choice screen.
• BookOrbit Sync can now be assigned to the Home button (tap, long press or double tap) and picked as a Quick Action (fixes X4 Pro - No control option for BookOrbit Sync on Home Button or Quick Actions #37). Wherever it is triggered from, it behaves like the power-button shortcut already did.
• A BookOrbit sync now shows what its reading-session upload is doing — a message, a count and a progress bar.
• The screens this fork adds are translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Dutch and Polish, each following the wording its language already uses for KOReader sync.

Fixed

• New in rc6 — two CrossInk readers on the same BookOrbit account are now referred to the server with dedicated identifiers (fixes All the devices are identified with the same device ID on the server #55). This issue only impacted people using several devices running with this firmware and syncing on the same server. Every CrossInk reader introduced itself to the server under the same identifier, and BookOrbit tells devices apart by that identifier alone — so a highlight synced from one reader was treated as deleted when the other synced the same book without it, with the same confusion over reading sessions, device retirement and progress resets. Each reader now identifies itself by its chip's factory address. After updating, a reader shows up as a new device in BookOrbit's device list beside its old crossink-device entry, which you can retire.
• New in rc6 — BookOrbit sync now behaves correctly with the Incremental indexing method (fixes Wrong page progress sync when incremental indexing is enabled #56). A position received from another device landed pages behind: the reader turned it into a page number from an estimate of the chapter's length and, since the chapter opens before its layout is finished, could not correct it.
• A highlight or bookmark now reaches BookOrbit on the very next sync, instead of on the one after (fixes New highlight can be silently skipped on upload #51). Its position in the book is determined the moment it is created. When it previously did not have enough memory, the position was quietly never recorded; the sync had nothing to send, and only the next sync actually sent the element.
• The download progress bar of the BookOrbit catalog no longer refreshes the screen on every step (fixes Bookorbit book download screen refreshes screen too often #48). It was repainted far too often, a blinking effect on some panels and needless wear on all of them; the screen now refreshes after a delay or once the progress has moved enough to show.
• A position pushed by KOReader (e.g. a Kindle) now lands on the right page (fixes Progress sync mismatch between KOReader and BookOrbit sync #46). KOReader and CrossInk will never compute the same book percentage — two engines, two ways of measuring the book — which is why the sync protocol also carries the position as an XPath. But the parser resolving an incoming XPath treated XML comments and declarations as elements that never close, so on some books the position silently fell back to a rough byte estimate, several pages off. The XPath now resolves properly, numeric character references are counted as a single character, and KOReader's flattened-text character offsets are accepted as such. For the same reason, the sync screen and Smart sync no longer rank the two sides by their raw percentages: both compare positions in local pages, and the remote line shows a percentage computed the same way as the local one, so the two numbers on screen can actually be compared.
• Progress sync in incremental indexing mode uploads real progress (fixes Bookorbit sync issue with incremental indexing #45). Syncing the same book between two devices no longer shifts the reading position when indexing method is set to Incremental. Progress pushed to BookOrbit now uses the same estimated chapter total the page footer shows, and the position an upload carries is refined to the exact character, so two readers on the same passage now report the same progress no matter how their fonts, orientation or indexing settings paginate it. Full-section indexing was never affected.
• A BookOrbit sync on the X3/X4 no longer fails because of low memory (fixes Not enough memory to perform BookOrbit sync on some occasions #44). The sync now restarts the device first, the way KOReader sync does, so Wi-Fi starts from a fresh boot's memory, and the whole sync shares one connection, kept through the choice screen. The sync begins with a brief "Loading" flash and a silent restart: that is the fix working, on every device, and it also makes a sync a few seconds faster.
• The two-finger swipe settings no longer appear on the X3 and X4: four settings that could never do anything on button-only readers.
• Launching BookOrbit Sync from the Quick Actions menu or from the Home key now actually starts the sync instead of dropping you back to the book (fixes X4 Pro - BookOrbit does not open on Quick Action or Home Button #41).
• The BookOrbit Sync settings menu responds to touch (fixes On X4 Pro - Bookorbit Sync menu cannot use touch screen #36).
• The BookOrbit catalog responds to touch: tap a line to open it, swipe to scroll — loading the next page when you reach the end of what is loaded (fixes X4 Pro - No touchscreen for BookOrbit Sync Sync Behavior or Browse Catalog #38).
• The sync choice (Apply remote progress / Upload local progress) is now made of real buttons you can press, instead of highlighted text (fixes X4 Pro - No touchscreen for BookOrbit Sync Sync Behavior or Browse Catalog #38).
• The BookOrbit authentication screen has a back button in its title bar, so it can be left with a finger.
• A BookOrbit sync no longer restarts the device when a book has a long backlog of reading sessions waiting to be uploaded (fixes Crash and reading events not sent when BookOrbit syncs many events #39). No reading session is lost: a queue that fails to upload is kept and retried on the next sync.
• The BookOrbit password is shown while you type it, and the web Settings page no longer sends the saved password back to the browser.

Warning

Please note that I do not own a X4 Pro myself so I have not been able to test that everything works on those devices. I do not expect any major issue on the BookOrbit layer but we never know.

Full Changelog: v1.5.1+bookorbit.1-rc5...v1.5.1+bookorbit.1-rc6

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This discussion was created from the release v1.5.1+bookorbit.1-rc6.