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    eReader for RetroPie

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Ideas and Development
    ebookscomics
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    • cellyC
      celly @meleu
      last edited by

      @meleu nah, I like this pi as a gaming system.

      Currently Playing: Tetris (Gameboy)

      meleuM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • meleuM
        meleu @celly
        last edited by

        @celly cbr files are actually .rar files, cbz are zip... Some shell script tricks and you can view them with fbi... It's just an idea if you want to implement it youself ;-)

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        mediamogulM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • mediamogulM
          mediamogul Global Moderator @meleu
          last edited by mediamogul

          @meleu

          I wouldn't mind launching some Nintendo Power or RetroGamer magazines through ES for when I travel. Would this be an option by chance?

          http://www.nongnu.org/fbi-improved/

          It claims to have framebuffer support as well as being able to read the necessary archive file formats.

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

          meleuM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • 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

                  meleuM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 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.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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