some first impressions

[Yuan Chao]

On 8/11/07, Guylhem Aznar <olpc at guylhem.net> wrote:

> > It's simply like most SD devices that it *does* have a spring, just
> > the slot is a bit too tight. (tested with my genuine panasonic SD
> Ok, I feared I was pushing too hard. I will try again harder
I've tried one SD card made by a local company. It's a bit thinker
than the genuine panasonic one. So this results in that it can only be
ejected out a bit and I have to use my finger nail to grab it out.
(probably same situation as you) Usually there's a groove at the tail
of an SD card top side. However, the access on XO SD slot is only on
the bottom side... :(

> > I guess you are also a Zaurus user. ;)
> And developper :-) I did maintain a 2.4.18 fork (the 'common kernel'),
> a custom ROM for the 6000 to be more user friendly ('guylhem rom'), a
> gsm phone application (which wasnt that good), etc.
Mmm... I was taking part in a local Zaurus user group that making our
localized custom ROM. However, as sharp stopped the product line and
many people graduated from school, there's no much activities now.
(most resource are upon local college education network) I also
maintain a utility for particle database look up. Though it's mainly
for high energy physicists instead of *normal* people. (just some
"good" old days :) )

> Right. Many things are missing. And there is a lot to learn from
> plucker and opie-reader (for which I helped Tim Wentford on CHI
> features). The plucker format should be supported, but most advanced
> formats like the custom rb2 are more interesting.
Tried FBReader on XO. It needs some fine tuning for XO's special
resolution and works well. It may not be a bad idea that FBReader can
be merged into XO as the current Read activity is mainly for PDF. The
browser can be used as offline reader but still too heavy and not
optimized for book reading.

> compromise between access speed and compression. We were working on
> big and complex documents (the mercks manual, the english wikipedia,
> dictionnaries...) and were aiming at the Zaurus.
During a gathering of our local open source user group, Ksana people
showed us an offline wikipedia with full text searching.
http://www.ksana.tw:8080/
They also show this on the OLPC Jam during last wikimania in Taipei.
Though they are currently working on the search result display. They
tried to parsed the xml in their engine for better performance in
stead of the whole LAMP but not complete yet. You can try the above
link.

They also have another project for stroke based composite font. Based
on this tool we can have a more complete unicode font for CJK display.
We are working on providing a package for XO.
http://www.ksana.tw:8081/

> Have you seen how kids read cbr comics on computers? Usually the
> picture is in portrait mode while the screen is in landscape mode -
> they display the top half of the picture then click to display the
> bottom half instead and click again to move to the next picture.
> (clicks can be on screen buttons, or directly on keys)
The picture book looks best to me when rotated in 90 deg. It's just
need some optimization on the page layout (remove menu frame) and some
javascript for hotkey to flip pages. Or maybe FBReader serves better
here?


-- 
Best regards,
Yuan Chao