eReader for RetroPie

celly

Not sure if this is even something that would warrant any real interest, how about a way to access an ebook/cbr reader as an emulator within RetroPie? I was thinking something like Calibre or any other that already runs in Linux natively. Add it as an emulator within the carosel (or under Ports), and list your .pdf/.cbr/.whatever as the "game" file. I like to read and it would be a nice way to browse and maintain a collection of ebooks. Similar function runs on other frontends just not with RetroPie yet.
Any thoughts? Any interest?

InsecureSpike

@celly said in eReader for RetroPie:

Not sure if this is even something that would warrant any real interest, how about a way to access an ebook/cbr reader as an emulator within RetroPie? I was thinking something like Calibre or any other that already runs in Linux natively. Add it as an emulator within the carosel (or under Ports), and list your .pdf/.cbr/.whatever as the "game" file. I like to read and it would be a nice way to browse and maintain a collection of ebooks. Similar function runs on other frontends just not with RetroPie yet.
Any thoughts? Any interest?

i bought this up a while back on the other forum, can't really remember the response tho, i still think it's a good idea

meleu

@celly I think there's no ereader that uses framebuffer... In other words, it can be tricky on a raspi. But I think it's doable on RetroPie x86.

By the way, I use MComix to read .cbr/cbz files on my Linux x86 machine.

celly

@insecurespike I did a search and found a thread about using Kodi. Wasn't what I had in mind though honestly.

@meleu the idea was for it on a raspberry pi running retropie. As you pointed out, on x86 it probably wouldn't take too much to get it underway. RPi is a lot easier for me to pack when I go out of town. I don't even bring a laptop with me anymore.

meleu

@celly well, if you use raspi as a personal computer, you can launch a window manager (maybe pixel desktop) and launch your X based apps...

celly

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

meleu

@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 ;-)

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.

meleu

@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

mediamogul

@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?

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!

mediamogul

@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?

meleu

@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...

mediamogul

@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.

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.

OneSwitch

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.

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.

OneSwitch

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.

Clyde

@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.