Official FEATURE REQUESTS thread

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Please post your ideas here.
Check http://code.google.com/p/prs-plus/wiki/FeatureRequests for
already accepted/refused/implemented features.

thanks,
kartu

[GastonP]

I would like the image standby feature could be disabled and enabled
at will, without need to erase the content of the wallpapers
directory.
Perhaps adding an option to the "PRS+ Settings" menu?

Thanks
Gaston

[O_T_N]

I'd like be implemented support for:

1-  DéjàVu format in PRS 600;
2 - Reduction of blank margins when we use pdf's files - optimization of adjusts at screen, for example.
3 - Locales for Portuguese (I'm translating this to send for appreciation)

Theses ones are my ideas. Are there plans to impplement?

Thanks

Neto

[sam...@web.de]

Am 22.03.2011 13:42, schrieb O_T_N:
> I'd like be implemented support for:
>

> 1- D�j�Vu format in PRS 600;

> 2 - Reduction of blank margins when we use pdf's files - optimization
> of adjusts at screen, for example.
> 3 - Locales for Portuguese (I'm translating this to send for appreciation)
>
> Theses ones are my ideas. Are there plans to impplement?
>
> Thanks
>
> Neto
>
>

Number 3 is still in the normal firmware of PRS 650...

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Did you check "accepted FRs" list?

[O_T_N]

Are available locales for Portuguese in 650? I have a 600...

Mikheil, I checked 'accepted FR'. Why did you ask it? Did I repeat any suggest already accepted?

regards,

Neto

2011/3/22 <sam...@web.de>

Am 22.03.2011 13:42, schrieb O_T_N:

I'd like be implemented support for:

1-  DéjàVu format in PRS 600;

2 - Reduction of blank margins when we use pdf's files - optimization of adjusts at screen, for example.
3 - Locales for Portuguese (I'm translating this to send for appreciation)

Theses ones are my ideas. Are there plans to impplement?

Thanks

Neto

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Margin cut is listed for x50, though it's rather unlikely to get
implemented for older models.
I thought dejavu was also listed, but it's not, sorry. (will add it
now)

Regarding Portuguese support, aren't you the one who's translationg
assets.xml for 600?

On Mar 22, 3:11 pm, O_T_N <otnet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are available locales for Portuguese in 650? I have a 600...
>
> Mikheil, I checked 'accepted FR'. Why did you ask it? Did I repeat any
> suggest already accepted?
>
> regards,
>
> Neto
>

> 2011/3/22 <samu...@web.de>

[OTNeto]

I forgot another implementation that would be done if possible:

4 - aggregate in Latin alphabet graphical sign like: "�", "`",
"^","�","~", to writing words like "cora��o" (heart), "p�gina" (page),
"voc�", (you), "ma�ana" (tomorrow), "fran�ais" (french), in many
languages, for example, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and others.

I don't know if theses signs exist in others device models. I have a PRS
600, so, I don't really know.

Thanks again.

Neto

Em 22/03/2011 09:53, Mikheil Sukhiashvili escreveu:
> Did you check "accepted FRs" list?
>
> On Mar 22, 1:42 pm, O_T_N<otnet...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd like be implemented support for:
>>

>> 1- D�j�Vu format in PRS 600;

[Jack Doerner]

A few more suggestions (of varying difficulty). Note, I own a PRS 600

• Application grouping support (i.e. app folders) - it would make
browsing in the "more apps" menu much easier if apps could be
folderized. E.g. a folder for games, a folder for utilities, etc.
• Direct link to dictionary - the ability to access the dictionary
from the app list or main menu, without having to go into a book (this
may already be planned)
• Wikipedia - this may be difficult to implement, and I'm sure it
would take a while. I have long wanted the ability to browse wikipedia
on my 600 (and users of the other models without 3G would benefit as
well). A dedicated wikipedia reader parsing wikipedia dumps stored on
an SD card would be quite useful and very much appreciated. I know the
iPodLinux folks had something along these lines at one point. The
ability to highlight/mark pages would be even more useful (and of
course, integration with the notes tagging system I previously
described would be absolutely fantastic).
• Calculator icon for the calculator, which currently shows a folder
icon. Individual icons for book history and all notes would be nice
too.
• The ability to select a standby wallpaper from the wallpaper folder
in options (I suppose this would be 600 only, since AFAIK that's built
in to the 650). This would be good in combination with GastonP's
suggestion.

Thanks

[rubyuser]

Text-To-Speech feature!

On Mar 20, 4:30 pm, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Karasev Studio]

I would love to be able to have an electronic document in some format
(ePub, or PDF, or HTML or DeJaVu - as long as it supports graphics /
background / fonts), that the user(s) could sign on the x50 series
readers' touch screens using the stylus. This could be a huge help for
all sorts of contracts and agreements.

Separately it would be great to have an enhanced notes application.
What do I mean by enhanced (compared to the built-in):
* Faster key press response rate on the x50 series
* Ability to have minimal logical formatting, i.e. bulleted and
numbered lists, title, subtitle and Heading1...Heading3
* Ideally also formatting specific to writing a screenplay or a novel.

Thanks
AK

On Mar 20, 4:30 pm, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Moyan_Brenn(www.flick.com/aigle_dore)]

Dear friend,
i really would like to see a very simple automatic page turner
function on prs650 because i get very bored in doing it manually

do you think it could be possible?

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Yes, it is possible on x50, but doesn't sound very practical to me, to be honest. Your reading speed / amount of text to read varies quite a bit from page to page, are you really OK with not seeing part of tha page / having to wait until automatic scroller turns pages?

[Karasev Studio]

Does it make sense to set up any sort of a donation bidding /
community funding model, whereby folks thinking certain features are
worthwhile who are willing to put their money where their mouth is,
would get some consideration.

For instance, as a photographer, I feel that being able to carry model
and property releases and contracts electronically on my PRS-350 (in
PDF or static HTML format, as long as it allows image headers,
footers, and fonts), that clients can sign electronically with a
stylus, would be a major convenience.

Same goes for DeJaVu support

On Mar 20, 4:30 pm, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[kellengar]

Request: Would like a flashcard program. Would be very valuable
for students.

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Well, dontation link, if it appears, won't work like that. I.e. you won't realy be able to "buy" features or influence roadmap.

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

How would it work? What would be displayed there?

[Moyan_Brenn(www.flick.com/aigle_dore)]

I'm sorry friend, i wrote the message but it is not appearing here so
i'm writing it again

Yes it should make sense to do the auto page turner, cause i tried it
with a pdf reader software on my computer and i really like it....the
problem is that i use very very big characters to read to avoid eye
strain, and so the number of lines is very very reduced, hence the
number of time i need to manually turn the page is double or triple

As i wrote on the other message which is not appearing, i would invite
you to create a paypal donation function so that people can donate
money to say thanks and to help you with the realization of requests

thanks

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

I've added your FR ot the feature request lists.

Donation link isn't there yet, but when it will be, it still wouldn't be possible to seriously influence the roadmap, sorry.

[Moyan_Brenn(www.flick.com/aigle_dore)]

Thanks for adding the request and for your effort
I'll check your future updates and news
Cheers from Italy

On 28 Mar, 10:08, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I've added your FR ot the feature request lists.
> Donation link isn't there yet, but when it will be, it still wouldn't be
> possible to seriously influence the roadmap, sorry.
>
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Moyan_Brenn(www.flick.com/aigle_dore) <
>

[Mark...@gentlemansclub.de]

I assume this should be a learning-aid as described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashcard
Can you point us to a (free) java-script version, running in a
browser?

[Scott]

I'd love the ability to properly handle vector images in PDFs using
font sizes other than 'S' - currently tables and vector images
disappear when changing font size.
Thanks for all the good work!

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Unfortunately this is only possible with alternative PDF viewer, which will come with its own set of problems.

[Lovro Orešković]

It would be cool if it would be possible to automatically set
wallpaper to the cover of the book that is currently being read.

[Melaine Cleach]

+1 for this feature.

2011/3/31 Lovro Orešković <lo...@oreskovic.me>

[Jimbo]

Sorry Mikheil but I tried to contribute to the discussion, and I am
quite unfamiliar with Google Code's interface. I think I posted in
three different places accidentally. I was wondering if you've already
implemented the ability to extend the Word List of the dictionary
beyond 100 words? Thanks for your help! You're doing a great job!

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

No, it's not there. I'll have a look how difficult it is. For now it's "maybe some day" FR.

[sandman]

1. Bulgarian locale bg_BG.utf8
2. In "Books by author" if author name is in Cyrillic all book are
sent in category other. If it's possible to sort by translate Cyrillic
alphabet -> Latin alphabet

[sandman]

3. "Books by name" same as 2

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

1. I don't know what bg_BG.utf8 is.  There is no need to request new languages in this thread, if you want to translate it to bulgarian, just write me an email (mentioning your reader model) and I'll tell you which files to translate.

2. It is already implemented

[sandman]

I use PRS-505 prs+ 2.0.10aplha my entire book library is in lrf format
file names are converted Cyr->Lat books name/author are in Bulgarian
and all collection are sent to other

On Apr 5, 3:31 pm, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

To add Bulgarian localization, please translate:

1) 505 strings

2) PRS+ strings

If you have further questions regarding localization, ask them in email or open new support thread "Bulgarian".

[DJPC]

feature to enable/disable page turns via touchscreen..... thnx

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Features accepted as of 2011.04.12:

Already listed as Issue or FR:
Book cover on standby. (hard)
PDF viewer improvements (margin cut etc) for x50. (hard)

Normal priority:
Flashcard. (hard) I like the idea as it perfectly fits the reader
purpose.
Disabling page turns via touchscreen. (normal)

Low prio:
Disabling standby feature via menus (easy)
x50: Automatic page turner (normal)

Maybe some day:
Increasing size of the world list of the dictionary (?)
Dejavu format support (very hard)
Allowing fine grained menu customization (hard)
Wikipedia - maybe it would be possible to convert it into PRS+
dictionary format (yet to emerge). (very hard)

Highly unlikely:
Text to speech. One hell of a task to implement, with very low user
base.
Signing support. Isn't it already there anyway as "handwritten notes"?

Selecting standby fallpaper, uhm, it will work like that, kind of,
when File Manager features are implemented.

[Jack Doerner]

Many thanks for accepting wikipedia. This link may be useful if it
ever becomes a reality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#English-language_Wikipedia

Even more suggestions (I imagine you're getting rather tired of me by
now):
• Graphing calculator (as part of the existing calculator app) - with
the right software, a touch screen PRS could easily outpace any
dedicated graphing calculator in speed and utility. Along with the
dictionary, future flash card app, and the possibility of powerful
notes, the PRS would be fantastic for classroom use.
• A standardized user interface, while not technically necessary,
would be very professional-feeling. Right now some of the apps have
controls that look and feel very different from those built into the
regular PRS software. Some buttons have bitmaps, while others are the
standard PRS ones, a few are just text with no "button" behind it, &c.
Some apps have a back button in the header bar (browse folders), and
some don't (calc). In the sudoku app, the home button doesn't work -
but the home button should *always* work, IMHO. Relatedly, some of the
controls (the dropdown menus in sudoku come to mind) are a little hard
to use with the stylus and especially a finger because of their size.
• Related to the last point: a UI toolkit of some sort would greatly
benefit future development. It's certainly a long term concern, though.

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Hi Jack,

thanks for your suggestions, (all suggestions are welcome, the only tiring suggests are those, that were already voiced many times. :))

What does graphing calculator do, does it visualize functions? Calc is written by Mark Nord, I'll forward him your request.

Regarding apps, yes, it's true and some kind of "standartizing" L&F is planned, but not in the near future. Some of them are legacy apps, created before PRS+ existed others were built on those legacy apps.

[jerous]

On 20 mar, 22:30, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>

wrote:
> Please post your ideas here.
> Checkhttp://code.google.com/p/prs-plus/wiki/FeatureRequestsfor
> already accepted/refused/implemented features.
>
> thanks,
> kartu

I'd love to see these two implemented:
- keep track of what dictionary was last used per book: I often switch
reading books in different languages, but since the last used
dictionary is a global setting, I have to change this each time;
- allow reordering of the available dictionaries (maybe by sorting by
frequency, but any dynamic reordering would make me a more happy man):
I'm a lazy person, and the Italian dictionary, which I never use is on
the first page, while the Dutch dictionary is on the second, which
would save me some taps :)

Thank you very much for your awesome effort,
Jeremy

[Elminster]

Hello,

just installed it yesterday on my PRS650. Great customization, but
there is always room for suggestions :)

Key Bindings
* allow assigning bindings to the paging buttons (holding those to go
back/forward in history would make sense)
* add options to open Collections and Notes per key
* add option to toggle between edit and reading mode

Paging Bar
* add option to open TOC next to the paging
* add option to open bookmarks next to the paging

Metadata
* show a books' metadata tapping on it, open it per double tap - this
would be very useful for content descriptions

File Browser
* a scrollbar alphabet would be very nice here too and/or
* allow setting a smaller font-size

Annotations
* would it be possible to keep annotations linked to a book that's
being moved around in the folders (some kind of hash?)
* only delete "unlinked" annotations with a special menu function
(like "clean up"); so nothing gets lost by mistake

I should stop before writing beyond next christmas. Thanks in advance
for considering the suggestions.

Greeting,
Elminster

[antoine]

Hello

suggestion :
A possibility to keep the Adjust View "custom" activate for all the
book.
The aim is to have the view already adjusted for each pdf. (I've many
pdf in grey, but they are more readable with custom luminosity and
contrast)
I don't know if it's easy or hard to implement.

If not possible, an alternative way may be a
StandardActions.ACTION_adjustView to the keybidings list

Thanks for the Action OpenTOC, i use it daily.

[a.jimenez]

Would it be possible to include an e-mail client in prs950?

[quisvir]

First off, let me say: great work on this project! I recently bought a
650, and PRS+ really seems to improve it.

I often use the openTOC action, but would like to go to next/previous
chapters even quicker (I do this a lot). Would it be possible to
implement 'jump to next chapter' and 'jump to previous chapter'
actions (i.e. next/previous item in TOC)? I would definitely
appreciate it.

quisvir

[Register1987]

I Would like the ability to highlight sections of text, Maybe darken
the screen behind the text or make the text bold. I have the PRS-300

[kellengar]

I would like the capability to play Infocom(and others) text
adventures on the PRSxxx. I believe that open source interpreters are
available, as I saw some for linux at one time.

[TruelyMorbid]

First off, GREAT improvement to the 600 I just bought. I've just
switched over from a Nook and there are still two little features I
miss about it and would greatly appreciate seeing on my 600:

1) As Elminster mentioned about bookmarks in a previous post, I'd like
to add that while reading a book, any marks placed in this book should
be directly accessible, and all bookmarks from other books not be
listed. I don't like the way Sony jumbled all marks and notes from
all books into one monster list as the only way to access them, just
very hard to navigate that way.

2) Another feature I miss from the Nook is that when viewing the book
list in the library, the current page of each book that has been
opened is displayed with the book title (example: Page 125/375) and
there is pleanty of room for that on the same line as the author in
the library listings. That made it so much easier to remember which
books I had or had not read when I've got nearly 200 loaded, and jump
around from series to series.

3) and perhaps the greatest feature Sony created in the past (on my
sister's 2 year old PRS-505) was to be able to sort the library by
author, and have ONLY the authors listed on the top level, and each
author leading to a sub-menu of only that author's books. That saved
so much clutter! I'm currently using the Collections feature to
achieve the same effect, so I'd much rather see effort on the other
two suggestions first.

Thanks so much for all your (and partner's) hard work filling in the
gaps and doing what Sony should have done right from the start!

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

FRs as of 2011.05.13

Not understood/already implemented requests:
What does "open TOC/bookmarks next to paging" mean? Open TOC action is
already implemented.
Bookmarks related to particular book are available via "options =>
goto => notes"

Accepted:
Graphing calculator => request forwarded to Mark Nord, author of Calc
Changing apps to have consistent look and feel => is planned anyway
Keeping track of which dictionary was used with which book => at the
moment not clear how this would be implemented and whether default
Sony dictionaries will be supported. Maybe alternatively a way to
quickly switch between dictionaries.

Maybe some day:
Actions: Goto collections, goto Notes (I wonder if some of that is
already implemented)
Actions: Jump to next/previous chapter
UI toolkit (for devs)
Changing size of UI elements via settings
x50/600: Key bindings for paging butons => hard
x50/600: Persistent "Adjust View "custom"" for all books
Text adventures
Showing book size (kb) current page/ total pages in book list view

Highly unlikely:
Scrollbar alphabet in "Folders". => It's heavy, it eats memory and CPU
and battery and if you are using Folders, their content should already
be well structured.
Recognizing books based on hash of the book file. => Would require
way too much resources. When Folders will turn into full fledged "File
Manager" books moved via Folders would keep all the metadata,
including annotations.
950: Email client. => Why? If you have internet connectivity you could
setup querying your pop3 box in gmail and similar providers. This
solves numerous problems like "what to do with downloaded emals".
"Where to store em" etc.
300: Highlighting text. => next to impossible technically
By Author view => folders are already there, use them! What might come
in addition to it, is "shortcut" support. This would allow books to
appear in different places, without actually copying the content.

[Lukas]

Is it possible to implement support for polish fonts? Now it's working
fine with .epub and .lrf files but I miss it in .doc for example

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

Polish fonts are there.

Broken formats like RTF might cause problem, but you're better off not using them.

TXT file saved in UTF-8 encoding should work fine.

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Lukas <gonci...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is it possible to implement support for polish fonts in file types
other than .doc .epub and .pdf?

[Eiko Wagenknecht]

I currently have still too much pdf files without proper metadata that
all show up with weird titles and authors.. without the filenames it
is impossible to distinguish what's what.

It would be really great if you could add an option to display the
file names in browse folders mode! Could be done in the top right
corner of the file browsing dialog like Sony does it or in the PRS+
Options menu.

I hope you can understand my request ;-)

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

This feature is already there. You would see filenames as "comments" though. Choose appropriate sorting mode.

[navics]

Hi,

I would like to have the ability to control the audio player while
reading. I´m learning a foreign language right now and listen to audio
tracks while reading the corresponding vocabulary and notes. I have to
start/pause, rewind/forward, skip tracks quite often and thats not
very comfortable with the integrated firmware. My suggestion is to
implement following functions in the note tacking bar or in the status
bar. (Maybe you can check/uncheck that option in the prs+ settings)

- play/pause (one button; play icon is shown while paused and pause
icon while playing)
- forward/next track (one button; short press next track and long
press fast-forward)
- rewind/last track (onebutton; short press last track and long press
rewind)

Thanks for your work.

PS: I couldn´t figure out how to post directly into this thread so I
hit the answer button, hope thats fine.

[Stephan]

Ok, i have read that a Standby Big Clock is not possible because of
current draw but what is with a countdown timer stopwatch or what also
should be perfect is a standby calendar display. Will be only updatetd
if device is on but better than nothing.
I think the PRS perfectly fit the use in bright environment, has a
realtime clock and has dedicated buttons. Screen update is only
necessary every second for a stopwatch and updating the tenths of a
second only then when a button is pressed. Leap times would be a
perfect addition to that so that i can use it as a contest timing
device. :-)

Ah, i forgot, many many thanks for PRS+.

Stephan

[cebelab°]

Hello, (sorry, I firstly posted at the wrong place...)

thanks a lot this is incredibly useful. FYI I'm using PRS+ on Reader
PRS350, installed through Windows all in one package.

*** general (I see this as very important... would love if that could
be possible) ***

I really would like to see an option to change the transitions
behavior...

I mean, while turning pages, the current behavior is something like a
blinking (inverting colors of the page to be displayed), but I find
this very disturbing during reading... Each time I turn a page, I say
to myself "grrr if I could change this stupid thing"... too bad for
concentration.

I understand that it's intented to avoid screen remanence... Nice. But
why inverting the colors of the next page before displaying it?
Wouldn't it be possible simply to "reset" the screen with a full black
screen, then white, then display page content?
(hope to be clear enough)

*** menu customization ***

- allow changing "browse folders" and "books history" names (in
french, "Parcourir les dossiers" and "Historique des livre", it's far
too long for my poor 5" screen, so it's overlapping and it's ugly on
my PRS350... I would suggest just changing translations for simply
"Parcourir" or "Dossiers" and "Historique", it should be easier than
an option to modify names dynamically)

- change fixed menus on PRS 350? (I don't care of the "books" fixed
menu anymore since I only use folders of PRS+ :), and the first fixed
menu, "last read book" could be replaced with PRS+ history... )?

- can't find the "more" option anywhere in menu customization... As a
result, I can display it only as "default choice" in third position...
But, since "Browse directory" and "Books history" names are too long
(as I said previously), I would like to set it in the middle in order
to avoid ugly overlapping...

*** other ***

- I can't figure out how to select game not to install (I only use one
or two of them)?

- integrating PRS+ applications within the "application" tab (PRS350),
just like the "PRS+ settings" integrate well into the settings
menu...

- user dictionary in PRS 350? (I would like to have a true french
dict., but there are only french<>english and english<>english ones)

- previous / next pages hardware buttons customization unavailable...

- (very low piority :) ) : agenda / directory / world atlas

***

And finally, one usability feature : PRS+ comes with some default
settings, but IMHO, I believe it should install, but not modifying the
default behavior of Reader unless the user tells it to do so...

Because sometimes, it could be unclear what belongs to device default
behavior, and what is modified by user...

I would like to participate to dev. What should I read first in this
regard?

Thanks a lot folks!

[zolartan]

Hello to everybody,
first of all congrats for this great firmware for the PRS. It's a huge
improvement to the standard one.
I am very happy with my prs-650. One thing though annoys me. When
reading (especially scientific papers) I often stay at one page so
long that the prs goes into standby showing the standby picture and I
have to wake the reader up to continue reading the page.
Is it possible to disable showing a picture in standby and rather show
the last page which was open before going to standby. So you could
still continue reading the page even when the reader is in standby.
The reader could indicate that it is in sleep mode in the black bar at
the bottom of the screen where it normally shows font size, current
page time and battery status.
I think this would make much more sense than showing a standby picture
and hope that it is technically possible to implement.
Thanks

[cebelab°]

One thing could be useful too : being able to mark a book as read /
unread through menus... I can't figure out how to mark as unread...
And as I open a PDF in order to check its formatting, it's being
marked as read... But it's not...

[Michael]

Hi Guys,
Great work on all this.
I'd like to request the ability to flip the board, so that the Black
player is on the bottom.
Additional useful features would be a save/load game option, though
this would be harder to work on.
Thanks,
Mike

On May 13, 8:58 am, Mikheil Sukhiashvili <msukhiashv...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[gdoc]

two requests and half (because one already done).

days ago i went to the beach with my prs650 surronded with a plastic
bag to protect him from salt, water, sand etc.
I had some problems with page turn and tap for dictionary because
sometimes it happened without i indeed touched the screen.(maybe the
cover touched slightly when the wind blowed...)
so i thought it would be great if you succeed in disabling page turn
by touch screen as already requested, furthermore would be very
practical to disable the activation of the dictionary with the tap
(that i find not much useful when i read in my own language).

top of the top would also enhancement in menu navigation making it
possible entirely with he phisical buttons of the ereader.

too much fantasy?

thank for your efforts in making prs+ better than it already is and
forgive my poor english

[andnerb]

low priority :

- a solitaire game
- a snake game
- get the possibility to overclock the processor of PRS-600

hight priority :

- multitasking with usb (Example: Read an ebook or heard musique and
connect the PRS-600 usb in the computer (without interrupting the
current task))
- a text editor with possibilitée to bold, underline, convert to PDF
or epub, add images, change font, change the text size, making copy
and paste ...
- Able to manage the folders and files that are in the internal
memory, the Memory Stick or SD card (example: copy a file, create a
folder, rename a file, move a file, delete a folder and its
contents) .
- able to select music that is this card in any MS / SD or internal
memory and listen to the music.

sorry for my spelling mistakes, I do not speak English.

[athleas]

I would love to see the following enhancements of the rudimentary
music playing capabilities of my 505
(the basic player functions of simple MP3 players):

- play songs ordered _by filename_ (note1)
- play songs from current folder only (note2), starting from selected
song until end of list.
- same as above but loop within folder
- same as above but random within folder

On the Feature Requests I saw that 'Support songs in file browser' is
in the queue. It would be great if even the first two features could
be implemented with it.
The capability for playing playlists or displaying song lyrics (.lrc),
and selecting the play mode (single/rpt/shuffle/...) in the config
section are nice-to-haves but not essential.
I bought the sony for reading as well as listening since the memory
can be so easily expanded to hold quite a collection of music. But
alas...

Thank you for considering my request. And BIG THANK YOU for what you
already achieved!

- athleas
_____
(note1) currently 505 is sorting by song title (ID3 tag); if no tag
found, by file name. Result: totally confused playing order.
(note2) All memories and subfolders are scanned. (I am listening to
classical music and don't want to hear five different adagios
first...)

[Andrew]

One small suggestion (which I couldn't find listed anywhere)

I mostly use my prs-600 to proofread documents before publishing them,
usually in PDF. These documents change quite often, I every time they
change I loose the "collection" information which I previously added
using either calibre or the original Sony software. Sometimes calibre
crashes, and I loose the collection information again.

I noticed that the prs-600 can read the title and author fields from
PDF files, and use these to classify PDFs. Would it be possible to
read the "Keywords" (or "Subject") fields from PDFs and use it as
"Collection"? That would be a huge time saver, because the keywords
information is available and correct in the PDFs which I read, and
when it's not I can add it once and for all, without relying on
calibre's library.

Thanks for your hard work! prs+ really rocks.
Andrew

(PS: +1 for exporting notes (and custom dictionaries))

[Ben]

Hi there,

If you want to participate in the development, then the first step is to build your own PRS+ installer.  The instructions are here.

Once you have the build process working, you can start customising.  I have a feeling that some of your requests will not be included in the main PRS+ (for example, excluding games!)  But you can do these things yourself, by creating a custom installer.  One of the first things you could do would be to customise the lang.ods file to provide the shorter French strings you were requesting above.  You can also remove games any you don't use (add "exclude" lines to the right section in the build.xml file).  You may even be able to relocate applications to the applications node, but since I don't have a 350, I don't know if that is possible, though.

One of the advantages of building your own installer is that you will be right up-to-date with all the latest changes.  For example, three games have been added (Draughts, MineSweeper and XO-Cubed), and there are now standby image preferences (you can select the cover of the current book, for example).

Well, I hope this helps to get you started!

Sincerely,
Ben.

[AK]

Awesome firmware. I read a lot of journal articles in pdf format, so
these are my thoughts on how the reading experience could be improved:

- Remember which 'sort order' is specified for a collection (i.e. by
Date, by Author, by File Name, etc, Currently I have to change it to
by File Name every time I access a collection)
- Be able to define the default 'Custom' settings in the 'Settings'
menu (Currently I always have to incr. contrast and decr. brightness
for my pdfs individually to improve clarity)
- Provide an alternative 'zoom' option to:
- hide the zoom slide bar and arrows
- enable a single touch close to the top, bottom, left, right
edges would shift the window in that direction
- if you try to move off the page, the page would turn to either
the appropriate place on the next page
- the 'page turn' buttons would turn the page and keep the zoom
window position from the previous page
- When audio is not playing, provide the option in the 'Settings' menu
to map the volume buttons to the choices in the 'options' menu (i.e.
orientation, go-to,etc)
- Would be great if another option for mapping would be one of
the 'page modes' offered under 'zoom'

Thanks for making these improvements possible!

AK

[Vform]

I really like this modification for my 650. Here some other ideas.

• Use the double tap in other contexts (see below)
  
• Notes
• Improve speed: Would it be possible to improve note taking speed? It's quite slow, especially while saving...
• Memo page: I'd like a kind of memo page per book. Just a page where you enter anything (by keyboard), independent of the current context/page. Currently I use a note on the first page for this, but I miss a quick way to get there (and, as already mentioned, it is too slow and the input field is too small too).
• Note content: Show full note on double tap in All Notes list in a "popup" instead of jumping into the book.
• Navigation
• Goto previous screen: I really miss a way to go back to the last view, whatever it was. For example I'd like to get back to the exact folder I opened a book from; or to the All Notes overview.
• Breadcrumb: A breadcrumb path would be nice for the browse folder navigation.
• Usability
• Book metadata: Show book metadata, especially the comment/content description on double tap
• Smaller font sizes in menus: I think the font sizes in book, notes etc. lists might be a lot smaller as to fit more letters into a row
• Dictionary change: Make it possible to switch between dictionaries after selecting a word in a book
• Other
• No games: Could the games be excluded as an installation option? Don't really care about them and the associated options.

Thank you for considering and greetings. :)

[oddy]

Adding support for .mobi files, would this be possible?

Great work!

[Janus Mourns]

I have two suggestions:

1) An option to turn off page gestures for the touch edition.

2) A modification to the on-screen keyboard. I'd like it to be more
like a phone's keyboard, where common symbols like a comma don't need
to be accessed through a menu. It'd also be nice if, in landscape
mode, the keyboard took up a larger part of the screen such as it
might need.

Thanks for your time!

[arspr]

Hi Guys,
Another thumbs up for this piece of software.


Some possible suggestions. (I don't know about their coding
difficulty, maybe they are just impossible):

1. REALLY IMPORTANT. Better quality when zooming images in ebooks.

Have you noticed that embedded images lose their "full" quality when
shown within an ebook (epub/pdf)? Just try with a hires image included
within any ebook, (if it has small text in it the problem is better
shown). You can build a test ebook with calibre/sigil if you don't
have one.

It would be nice if the PRS viewer could be improved in this aspect.

A typical scenario where this issue is really annoying is reading
fantasy books with their maps. Ok, we all know that in a full zoom
mode I cannot read the names of the cities and rivers because of the
800x600 (or whatever other) resolution the device has. But why the
hell is not possible to read them when zooming even if the original
image has enough detail? Why is the reader software downgrading the
original image detail?


2. Left/full paragraph alignment override tweak.

It would be nice if we could have an option to override the default
book left/full alignment. It would have 3 options:
+ No change. (Default one).
+ Force full. All left justified text would be displayed as fully
justified.
+ Force left. All full justified text would be displayed as left
justified.

I would like this tweak because I hate left justified texts. It just
seems untidy. And there are a lot of ebooks which are left justified
even when NO paper book is ever left justified.

Center or Right justified text would no be affected in any way.

(Of course you can always edit the ebook and change the paragraph
alignement within it, but this is a PITA. It would be nice an
automatic "fix" within the reader)



3. Show last lines from the same paragraph on the previous page.

This option would be also enabled on demand.

In this way, when you advance page, the reader would show you also the
last one or two lines displayed on the previous page. This repeated
lines should be grayed-out in order to easily distinguish them from
the new text.

This tweak should only work with paragraphs which are split within
pages.

I think this tweak is really useful when you are reading books in a
foreign language. Sometimes, because of your knowledge limitations,
you cannot fully understand a sentence till you have finished reading
it. In this situation, if the sentence is split in several pages, I
find myself going back and forward quite frequently. Because of the
grayed-out feature this feature wouldn't be obtrusive for normal
reading even if always kept on.

Thanks

[quisvir]

Even though the list is getting quite long, I would like to add
another feature req: an option to hide the first 4 entries in the
Collections screen ('Unread books', 'Unread Periodicals', 'Purchased
books' and 'New Collection'). I never use them, and they just clutter
up the list. Thanks in advance!

quisvir

PS: I just made a small donation, in recognition of all the hard work.
It's much appreciated :)

[MagWiz]

I have now installed the prs + on my prs 950. I want to express my
gratitude to everyone who helped - fantasic job. Such a pity that the
giants like Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon et al do not work together
but fragment the digital ecology only for their corporate profits.
I wished like Zolartan (and believe there are many others) to have
last read page frozen as standby picture. I use it also for diagrams
and repair manual and have often the need to keep a page readable for
hours. Also for long term display of agenda at meetings, calendar,
formulas etc. (endless list really).
This feature would bring out the arguably highest value of the e-ink
display i.e. near powerless display. I do actually not understand why
that is not supported from day one on every single e-reader on the
market.

[hikeit]

I have to say one of the things that irks me most about my PRS-505 is
the text size on the page, and LRF Text Scale fixes it for me!
Looks like I have to remove all LRF books from my reader and put them
back on for it to work well (does not re-page because it doesn't know
it needs to).

Would it be possible to add a "repage this book" or "clear book
layout" option to force repagination after changing text scale?

Thanks all for an amazing set of additions, this just might hold me
over from going out and buying the new nook :]

[Scott]

I'd love to see support for 3rd party SIMs and internet over 3G via
the 3rd party SIM for the 950 and 650 - I think this would really
extend the functionality of the devices.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

[yolan]

Hi there !

I have a 505 reader and have been using PRS+ since almost the first
release, and I would like to thank you for this really awsome piece of
software :-)

I have this request, I hope it is not too difficult to implement:
- ability to bind keys to jump directly to the EPUB user css setting
- If not possible, it would be fine be able to customize the main menu
whith this option

And, a question: any reason why are postition 2 and 10 in the main
menu fixed?

Thanks a lot!

[anishd19]

pls add support for

NOTES TAKING EVEN IN ZOOMED MODE!!:)

thanks in advance

[erisipgate]

Reading while USB charging through a computer, is this an option that can be created?  Why Sony doesn't allow for this by default is completely puzzling to me.

Thank you for all of your work on PRS+, at any rate, because it's great.

[Terisa Morgan]

Hi,

 

  First of all, thank you very much for this software. It adds very nice features to Sony readers. I would like to know if it would be posible to add two new features:

1. At the History entry, to be able to change the view mode from list to covers.
2. To add a new option which would allow to see all the book metadata (modify the info view, that is).

  Thank you very much

 

Terisa de Morgan

[Mikheil Sukhiashvili]

FRs as of 2011.08.29:

(Number of items requested are already listed as FRs.)

In progress:
Viewer: disable dictionary activation by touch screen
Viewer: don't clear page on standby

Accepted:
Graphing calculator => request forwarded to Mark Nord, author of
Calc
Changing apps to have consistent look and feel => is planned anyway
Keeping track of which dictionary was used with which book => at the
moment not clear how this would be implemented and whether default
Sony dictionaries will be supported. Maybe alternatively a way to
quickly switch between dictionaries.

Folders: allow to play songs by filename
Viewer: reduce page flickering
Collections: hiding built-in collections

Maybe some day:
Actions: Goto collections, goto Notes (I wonder if some of that is
already implemented)
Actions: Jump to next/previous chapter
UI toolkit (for devs)
Changing size of UI elements via settings
x50/600: Key bindings for paging butons => hard
x50/600: Persistent "Adjust View "custom"" for all books
Text adventures
Showing book size (kb) current page/ total pages in book list view

App: (chess) allowing to flip the board (black player on the bottom)
App: Stopwatch
Folders/Book History: thumbnail mode
Folders: breadcrumb
Actions: (audio player): play/pause next/prev track
Actions: allow to bind next/previous keys
Viewer: default contrast setting
Viewer: "memo page" with notes related to the book
Collections: creation of collections (metadata / folder based)
Collections: rememering collections sort order
Cosmetic: integrating PRS+ applications within the "application" tab
(x50)

Highly unlikely:
Scrollbar alphabet in "Folders". => It's heavy, it eats memory and
CPU
and battery and if you are using Folders, their content should
already
be well structured.
Recognizing books based on hash of the book file. => Would require
way too much resources. When Folders will turn into full fledged
"File
Manager" books moved via Folders would keep all the metadata,
including annotations.
950: Email client. => Why? If you have internet connectivity you
could
setup querying your pop3 box in gmail and similar providers. This
solves numerous problems like "what to do with downloaded emals".
"Where to store em" etc.
300: Highlighting text. => next to impossible technically
By Author view => folders are already there, use them! What might
come
in addition to it, is "shortcut" support. This would allow books to
appear in different places, without actually copying the content.

System: overclocking, multitasking
System: 3rd party SIms
App: (game) Snake

[erisipgate]

A little frivolous, but: if the book cover on standby thing happens, something I'd like to see quite a bit would be that you could have a picture-in-picture sort of thing, with the book cover in a corner, so that you could still have user-created screen savers, and know what book was being read at the same time.

Thanks again, for your dedication to quality and utility for users of Sony products that need improving.

[ShellShock]

I think Backgammon would be a great addition to the games. I've found
this javascript/DHTML version: http://www.thomasweibel.ch/backgammon/.
The board seems to be back to front to me. Also it is not clear
whether it is open source. But it would probably make a very good
starting point (would need to switch the board around).

[angelos_cy]

I am interested in a Backgammon game in PRS+, as well.

[erisipgate]

Less frivolous request: always display images in sleep mode in upright (i.e. 0°) orientation, because otherwise the pictures are very teeny-tiny with very large borders when one changes between landscape/portrait modes.  I discovered that the OF rotates the images, too, when displaying the screen-saver and thought, again, that there has to be a better way to do things than this.

Related to my previous request about picture-in-picture for screen-saver, throwing out an idea that I don't really care about either way: since the 950, for example, is quite long compared to other readers, it could accommodate a band at the top or bottom, which could be split, perhaps, to include book information (e.g. title) in addition to the cover image itself.

[cebelab°]

My request would be an improvement on RTF reading : getting the
arborescence of the document's titles for having a table of contents,
as in PDFs
Any solution with any other editable file formats would be great (even
HTML)

[Roy Stead]

New option for "Customise Home Menu Booklist" of "Next Books in List" which displays the next books after the "current" book in the list which I would be taken to on clicking "Options -> Return to List" while reading the "current" book.

Reason for this FR is that when using the new-to-2.0.13 feature "Next Books in Collection" where the current book is in multiple collections (as is the case with many of my Calibre-built collections) then I guess it's displaying from the first collection it finds with that book in.

With "next books in list", if the book was opened via a collection then the "list" will be the actual collection from which that book was opened.

 

[Roy Stead]

Is there anyway to universally clear the "New" flag on all books currently on the reader? If not, can that be added also please?

[Roy Stead]

A search-by-filename facility when using "Browse Folders" would be immensely useful.

 

i.e. opens keyboard, type search term, return list of wildcard-matching files from the current folder and (optionally) subfolders.

[Roy Stead]

If there's a Zcode interpreter available then this is a great idea. I'd love to play old Infocom games on my PRS-650, even if the text had to be paged instead of scrolled.

[Roy Stead]

A facility to clean up "cacheExt.xml" file, to strip out basically history and dicHistories blocks (which contain info which, for me, is just clutter which increases the file size and likely slows down opening/closing books).

 

The "Cleanup Reader" facility should be triggerable manually or automatically (at startup, shutdown, on exiting a book or after n seconds of inactivity, for example) or, by default, be disabled.

[quisvir]

Roy Stead:

Regarding the 'next books in collection' feature: unfortunately, info
on where the user came from is lost once the reader is shutdown. This
would render the feature pretty much useless, assuming of course that
people don't finish their books in one go ;)

To set the 'New' flag for all books I would recommend using Calibre,
and kpw's wonderful plugin to manage book lists. With that, you can
select which books should be on the 'unread list'.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120828

quisvir

[Roy Stead]

Is it not possible for PRS+ to pick up that info and jot it down
somewhere when a book is opened?

i.e. when a book is opened, PRS+ checks if it already knows where that
book was opened from and, if not, makes a note of that info (in its
own db file or in cacheExt.xml) if it's available. Then, if the
"current" book has that info noted against it PRS+ can use that to
generate the list of "next books in list" to put on the home page (and
if no such info is known about the current book, drop down to using
the same info as per "next books in collection").

On Sep 17, 1:45 pm, quisvir <quis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Roy Stead:
>
> Regarding the 'next books in collection' feature: unfortunately, info
> on where the user came from is lost once the reader is shutdown. This
> would render the feature pretty much useless, assuming of course that
> people don't finish their books in one go ;)
>

> quisvir

[erisipgate]

Tweaking some of the setting titles to be more straightforward would be great.  In "Book Viewer", there are three that come to mind, and there are probably others in the setting menus: 1. "No Dictionary with DoubleTap" set by default to "Off" is more obvious as a "Dictionary with DoubleTap: On" 2. Similarly "No Page Turn with Gestures" to "Page Turn with Gestures" makes much more intuitive sense. 3. "Don't Show Overlap"  same thing, first item of the menu.

Thanks again, it's always nice to find responsive developers.

[quisvir]

Roy Stead:
That would mean saving such information for each book, which is not as
easy as it might seem (at least not for me). I'll consider it for a
future release, but don't hold your breath ;)

erisipgate:
Those options were coded by Mark Nord; I'll pass your suggestions on
to him (he is away atm though).

[B]

Dear all, please accept my apologies if I have posted this incorrectly
(which I've already done once), I'm not familiar with Google groups.

My request concerns landscape pdf viewing.

Briss and sopdf do a good job of trimming pdf margins. So too, of
course, does the margin cut in the 650 itself. Viewed in landscape
mode like this, pdfs aren't bad to read, but there's still a lot of
grey margin simply because the 650 will only split the pdf in two
(i.e. into a top and bottom half). This also means you get about 5
lines of overlap, which is distracting to read.

My request is, would it be possible to have the 650 split the pdf into
three sections (a top, middle, and bottom) rather than the current
two? And, without the overlap?

This would enable margin-cut pdfs to be read at full width in
landscape mode which would be fantastic, and in many cases would mean
that separate trimming software wouldn't need to be used.

Thanks for your consideration and for your great work on the project.

B.

[ph1r3ph0x]

Hey guys :)
prs+ is the best =)
However I think it should have a progressbar in the statusbar :) Like
the one that the kindle has =) Looks pretty neat and gives a better
overview than only the pagenumber.
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/03/kindle/shasta/photos/DE-im...

Maybe instead of the statusbar? :)

Greetz :)

[Tynam]

Thanks for your *awesome* work on PRS+. This upgrade was one major
reason I bought a PRS at all.

Feature request: More menu location options for button assignments.
In particular, I'd love to be able to assign the "More" menu option
(that contains all the games/notes/utilities not already assigned to a
menu shortcut) to hold-down-the-Home-button. That way I can tap Home
for book reading, or hold Home for anything else. Being able to
assign Collections or Periodicals to a button would also be pretty
golden.

Much less important to me, but while I'm asking: is it possible to
reassign the softkeys in the Applications menu? For example, I never
use audio (I have an MP3 player instead), so I'd love to be able to
assign Calc or Games in that slot - they go more naturally in Apps
anyway.

[Jose]

An interesting feature for me would be seeing in the status bar the remaining pages to complete the current chapter. Would this be too "cpu expensive?". Perhaps the current book chapter pages could be cached...

[Dennis]

I'm using the collections for book series. In Calibre you can manage
those series perfectly.

It's possible with Calibre to set a different sorterTitle while
transfering the epub to the PRS-650.
In the database (media.xml) it's possible to store a title and a
titleSorter attribute. As far as i know the titleSorter is currently
unused on the x50 devices.
If you don't tweak "Metadata Plugboard" in Calibre those two fields
should be the same either.

If it's possible to use titleSorter in the collections instead of the
title, it will be possible to set titleSorter to "xx - Title".

The books could now be sorted in the collections by it's position in
the series and by it's title in the normal book view.

I think this would be a good possibilty to manage series information
on the reader.

I would like to get the Books prefixed with the series number in front
in the collections view, but displayed without this number in the book
view.


My suggestion to implement this, is an config option to switch between
title and titleSorter. Whatever is choosen there will be used as Title
in the collections.

You can get the result i try to describe if you alter the title to "xx
- Title", but then the normal book view will be a mess.

[arspr]

Another feature suggestion: Enable access to parent levels in nested
TOCs.

Have you noticed that you cannot access the parent item in a nested
TOC, (at least in PRS-650)? If you click on it, you get a new menu
with the child items. But you cannot jump to the parent pointed
position in the e-book... (What the hell were Sony guys thinking when
they coded this feature?).

I propose two possible ways to fix this stupid behaviour:
+ In the menu with the child items, make the e-reader display a link
to the parent object (similar to the ..\ item in the PRS+ Folder
Browser).
+ When you are seeing the parent level item (ie, before accessing the
child levels), make a difference between simple and double click:
- Simple click -> Display the nested child items, (as it currently
behaves).
- Double click -> Jump to the parent TOC pointer in the e-book text.

[Someguy]

I have played around with the table of contents features in a ePub and
I a pretty sure that is a problem with the ePub.

In the TOC, you can have a link associated with each TOC entry, or you
can skip it - so if the ePub says

Chap 1 = p1
Chap 1.5 = p2
Chap 2 = p3

You will get the behaviour you want.

If it says

Chap 1
Chap 1.5 = p2
Chap 2 = p3

You won't.

[arspr]

Are you sure? How do you access the parent level?

An easy example (I'm reading it): Grab "The Woman in White" from
Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/583)

Although the TOC is a crap (it's a really mess), use Sigil to see how
CONTENTS is parent of a lot of items and also CONTENTS has its working
<content src= ...> tag. But in PRS-650, I cannot access CONTENTS. When
I click on CONTENTS, it always display the child items.

[Someguy]

Oops. You are right. Sorry. I got mine working the way you want in
the Calibre book viewer, and didn't notice it did not work in the
reader.

[arspr]

Another request (and a difficult to explain and, I suppose, to code).
The best way with an example:

+ This issue happens at least on PRS-650. Nevertheless I suppose it
affects ALL Sony devices, but as it depends on zoom and paging, it may
show with some texts in some e-readers and not in others.
+ Please grab "The Woman in White" (in epub) from Gutenberg (http://
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/583)
+ Use M size.
+ In the '7-8' page you can see a extremely long paragraph that starts
with " "In this hand, the golden Papa has a letter; ..."
+ Go to the previous page. You'll see a short paragraph ("We declared
that we were deeply interested. The Professor went on:") and then a
blank space. So it seems that there's a page-break between this two
paragraphs, don't it?
+ Well, you are wrong. Select S size (or open the ebook in Sigil) and
you'll see there is none.
+ The problem is something about how the e-reader manages long
paragraphs. It seems, (I'm not sure), that if it can reduce the number
of page breaks inside these long paragraphs by starting them on a new
page, it does it. (If you start in a new page, you'll always get the
less possible number of page breaks within those paragraphs).
+ But the problem is that it looks horrible (like in this case "...
The Professor went on:" and then an ugly page-break, aaaargh).
Sometimes, you get just two or three written lines in a whole page
because of this issue.

So, would it be possible to disable this "intelligent" page-breaking
behaviour?. I mean, make the PRS care just about widows and orphans,
but not about "trying to save in-paragraph page-breaks".




(PD. I've sometimes fixed this behaviour though CSS properties. You
can add "page-break-before: avoid" to the conflictive long paragraph.
But this is a hack that doesn't work fine in every situation because
it makes that, at least, some lines of the previous paragraph always
appear before the conflictive paragraph. So, in this situation, if the
"We declared...went on:" paragraph had been at the end of a page, the
"page-break-before: avoid" of " "In this hand ..." paragraph would
have caused "We declared ... went on:" to jump to a new page; you
would have ended with a blank space BEFORE "We declared ... went on:",
you would have just moved the issue. I don't want to avoid a page
break between them if necessary, I just want to avoid an ugly, forced,
artificial and useless page break between them.)