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    eReader for RetroPie

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Ideas and Development
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    • meleuM
      meleu @mediamogul
      last edited by

      @mediamogul said in eReader for RetroPie:

      Would this be an option by chance?
      http://www.nongnu.org/fbi-improved/

      I think yes. Curiously, I noticed that the fim package is not present on jessie, but it is on wheezy, stretch and sid...
      https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keywords=fim

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      • mediamogulM
        mediamogul Global Moderator @meleu
        last edited by

        @meleu

        When I have some time, I might make this my next addition and see how it goes. I've got a good idea for the Carbon theme images.

        Curiously, I noticed that the fim package is not present on jessie, but it is on wheezy, stretch and sid...

        What are the repercussions of that? Would it make creating a script module more complicated in the end?

        RetroPie v4.5 • RPi3 Model B • 5.1V 2.5A PSU • 16GB SanDisk microSD • 512GB External Drive

        meleuM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • meleuM
          meleu @mediamogul
          last edited by meleu

          @mediamogul said in eReader for RetroPie:

          Curiously, I noticed that the fim package is not present on jessie, but it is on wheezy, stretch and sid...

          What are the repercussions of that?

          If it's not in jessie you can't just sudo apt-get install fim.

          Would it make creating a script module more complicated in the end?

          Yes. If it was in jessie the aptInstall function (from helpers.sh) would be enough to install it. If you have to install fim from source you have to install the dependencies (README file, item 4) and then do the steps described on their download page.

          But I only checked at packages.debian.org. I didn't actually check on my raspbian (I'm away from it now). Check if you can sudo apt-get install fim on your raspi. I'm crossing my fingers!

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          • mediamogulM
            mediamogul Global Moderator @meleu
            last edited by

            @meleu

            It failed with:

            E: Unable to locate package fim

            Oh well, the extra steps certainly aren't a deal-breaker. If it were too easy, it wouldn't be worth doing, right?

            RetroPie v4.5 • RPi3 Model B • 5.1V 2.5A PSU • 16GB SanDisk microSD • 512GB External Drive

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            • meleuM
              meleu @mediamogul
              last edited by

              @mediamogul said in eReader for RetroPie:

              Oh well, the extra steps certainly aren't a deal-breaker. If it were too easy, it wouldn't be worth doing, right?

              Maybe using some tricks to unpack cbr/cbz files and reading the images with the traditional fbi is less painful.

              You may want to use joy2key to "turn the pages" with the joystick too...

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              • mediamogulM
                mediamogul Global Moderator @meleu
                last edited by

                @meleu

                You may want to use joy2key to "turn the pages" with the joystick too...

                That's a great idea. I was just going to use xboxdrv myself, but joy2key would definitely be best for a final script module installation.

                RetroPie v4.5 • RPi3 Model B • 5.1V 2.5A PSU • 16GB SanDisk microSD • 512GB External Drive

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                • mediamogulM
                  mediamogul Global Moderator
                  last edited by mediamogul

                  Just experimented with fim and I think there's just too many obstacles in place to make this practical at the moment. First off, archive support is very experimental and appears to be somewhat non-functional. Also, a few of it's dependencies aren't available for Jessie, which I guess is why there's no package. On top of everything else, there's no way to display two-page layouts with documents scanned as individual pages, which negates a lot of the utility for it being a magazine reader. That being said, it does compile and run with a little negotiating. I'll post the process below for anyone who might want to give it a go themselves.

                  sudo apt-get install -y flex bison libreadline-dev libexif-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev libtiff-dev libpoppler-dev checkinstall libarchive-dev
                  
                  wget http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/fbi-improved/fim-0.5-rc1.tar.gz
                  
                  tar -xf fim-0.5-rc1.tar.gz 
                  
                  cd fim-0.5-rc1
                  
                  ./configure --disable-readline --enable-archive
                  
                  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc
                  
                  sudo checkinstall
                  

                  The version needs to be changed to a numeral in checkinstall or else it will fail.

                  RetroPie v4.5 • RPi3 Model B • 5.1V 2.5A PSU • 16GB SanDisk microSD • 512GB External Drive

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                  • OneSwitchO
                    OneSwitch
                    last edited by

                    Some kind of .pdf / .doc / . docx / .txt reader as described above would be wonderful for RetroPie, ideally accessible entirely using a joystick for navigation and quitting back to the RetroPie front-end.. Really hope it happens one day.

                    ClydeC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • ClydeC
                      Clyde @OneSwitch
                      last edited by Clyde

                      @oneswitch One possibility to view pdf files in the console is to convert them to plain text by the tool pdftotext which is part of the software package poppler-utils.

                      Install the package poppler-utils:

                      sudo apt install poppler-utils
                      

                      Convert some.pdf to some.txt and view it:

                      pdftotext some.pdf
                      less some.txt
                      

                      Within the text viewer less you can search a string with the hotkey / and quit the viewer with q.

                      View the text version directly without creating some.txt:

                      pdftotext some.pdf - | less
                      

                      This "pipes" (|) the output of pdftotext directly to less. Mind the single -, it means "output to stdout". The output will still go to some.txt and not to less without it.

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                      • OneSwitchO
                        OneSwitch
                        last edited by

                        Thanks for this @Clyde - however, I'm really hoping for something like Kodi, or any of the libretro emulators. Something that can be started, used and quit using a game controller.

                        The wonderful thing about RetroPie (once set up) is the huge array of things you can do all with a game controller. For an accessible games machine, that's such a good thing for some disabled people.

                        Having a box that's so affordable that can view video, listen to music, play games and (one day) read material all using just a joystick controller (that are easy to adapt) is quite brilliant.

                        ClydeC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • ClydeC
                          Clyde @OneSwitch
                          last edited by

                          @oneswitch Well said. Alas, a multi-reader for the formats you mentioned doesn't seem to exist for the Linux console without an X environment. At least none I could find one on the web.

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