Ao3 Reader - Alpha 3

[momijizukamori]

This is now almost at the 'beta' stage, AKA the point where I start posting about it other places, though I have a small number of very troublesome bugs left, and I'd like to confirm that it doesn't turn into hot garbage on non-Glo devices before I send it out into the wild.

Changelog:
- Custom logo, scripts have now been renamed to 'Ao3Reader' instead of 'Plato'
- Tag navigation now works properly, both within indexes and works
- Second page of tags and summaries now available - sort of (see known issues)
- Won't crash if network unavailable or trying to load bad work index urls!
- Display settings for reader now save/load properly
- Saving index views to favorites via the star icon now works! You can also add them manually in Settings.toml - see the existing ones for an example
- Work index items now show chapter count
- You can now switch between long view (title, author, fandoms, and as many tags as will fit) and short view (title, author, fandoms) by setting work_display in Settings.toml to either "Long" or "Short"
- Page progress more accurately reflects position in the work (it was being calculated off the entire HTML size, which includes a pile of JS/layout bits that get thrown out)

Known Issues:
- Jump-to-page in the work index view does not work and will instead just hang weirdly
- When the about work overlay goes to multiple pages, it just... stops rendering partway down the second page? The data is there - if tags spill into that area you have invisible touch-targets for them - but they're not being drawn to the frame buffer for ?? reasons ??
- I've found at least one work that doesn't generate it's pages properly - I strongly suspect it's a combo of weird HTML and something in the underlying HTML engine (which is inherited untouched from Plato), but if you find works where the displayed text cuts off weirdly (particularly if it seems to be generating chapterlist entries for points past that), please drop me a link to the work so I have more data.

Install instructions remain as before (but look for 'Ao3 Reader' instead of 'Plato')

Comments

[adevyish]

The heatwave got to me so this is the first version I’m trying out ^_^; I couldn't actually edit Kobo eReader.conf — I initially could open it but it didn’t let me save, then after that it wouldn’t open despite what ls was telling me about the file permissions. So Ao3 Reader is currently hanging on launch.

[momijizukamori]

Hmmm. Not being able to edit that file shouldn't cause hangs, it just means that Kobo may try to add all the icon images on the app to your library.

Do you get a little text thing that says 'running ao3reader.sh' (or similar) at the bottom of your screen when you try to launch, and then hanging?

[adevyish]

No, don’t see any text. Just the logo.

[momijizukamori]

Okay, I think maybe kfmon didn't set up properly, in that case - so it's not that it's hanging, it's just not even trying to launch, so you just get the logo image loaded in the default reader. After you unzipped everything and ejected the drive, did it do an 'updating' cycle? If so, try rebooting and then loading again?

[adevyish]

Yeah, it did an updating cycle, and I’ve tried rebooting.

[momijizukamori]

Weeeeeird. Can you try following the instructions here for either of those packages and see if you can get them to work? Mine is based on the Plato package there but I may have messed something up when I was rewriting the files.

[adevyish]

Ok, looks like I was unzipping it improperly, it works now! Quick browse through and everything works as expected. I have a few UI nitpicks but I assume you don’t want those yet ;)

(Kobo still isn't letting me edit files directly on device, so I'm going to edit the Settings.toml and cp it back in so I can try reading something substantive.)

[adevyish]

Oh actually, I did find a couple fics that the reader completely ate:

• Your Fire Burned Away
• chat for nerds

[momijizukamori]

Excellent, more data points, ty.

[momijizukamori]

I'm open to hearing them now, though they may not get addressed until I sort some of the other bits out, heh. But elements are scaled properly and not all over the place?

(I've been testing the last few nights, which is how I caught some of the smaller bugs, and have also realized I really miss the progress bar that the stock Kobo app has)

[adevyish]

Yup, everything looks normal and at reasonable sizes.

Small work overlay tag things:

• tags can render on top of the overlay border (but not beyond)
• the left side is jagged rather than flush left because tags on a new line are rendering their left padding
• (suggestion) you could probably make the tag text smaller while keeping the tag background the same height, this might let you fit more tags onto a screen (no idea how hard this is btw so feel free to ignore!)

[momijizukamori]

Hmmm which border are you seeing them bump up against? I suspect that's a scaling math issue maybe.

The background rects and the text are separate objects in this case, so making the text smaller is definitely very doable, and worth trying!

[adevyish]

The thin black border at the edge of the work overlay.

[momijizukamori]

Which side, though? I'm going to guess the right-hand side because that's the 'flexible' edge, but never hurts to check.

(Also I figured out the bug with works not rendering, and it turns out it's a discrepancy in what is considered 'correct' for the BR tag in HTML5 versus XHTML, which is dumb as hell)

[adevyish]

Yeah, right hand side.

([vague screams])

[momijizukamori]

(YEAH THAT WAS MY REACTION. I'm filing an upstream bug and have put in a temporary hack that just runs a find-and-replace on the entire text to swap the tags, but god is that an ugly fix)