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Terminal emulator for PocketBook
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Alastor27/pbterm
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This program allows to interact with shells avalable on the Pocktbook. It is intended for Pocketbook models with a touch screen (it has been tested with a PB622 and PB623, but hope- fully will work also with other models). It is loosely based on the poterm program by (I assume) Mr. Fedorchenko (as avai- lable from <http://fedorchenko.net/pb.php>). The Communication with the shell is per default done using a pseudoterminal. If a pseudoterminal can't be used due to missing permissions (as was the case with older firmware versions) a set of pipes is used instead (which results in slightly reduced cabalilities). NOTE: I found that on the PB622 with firmware version 4.0.373 the program didn't start (or crashed shortly after it had been started). Upgrading to the newest firmware version available for the PB622, 4.2, fixed the pro- blem. On the PB623 I only did tests with the currently newest firmware, 4.3. WARNING: When using the terminal you're able to e.g. delete files and do other things you can't do using just the normal graphical interface. So you can delete or modify important data from the device without the program stop- ping you. It's your responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen. Don't use this program if you don't feel comfortable with using a command line shell and have some knowledge of how things work under Unix. E.g. if you enter a command (DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING THIS!) like "rm -r" in the toplevel directory ALL files not especially protected (and e.g. none of your books are) will vanish and can't be recovered - there's no waste bin! Make sure you know what each command will do and that you didn't misspell it. Keep current back- ups handy. You have been warned! To install the program simply copy "pterm.app" to the directory "applications" of your Pocketbook. You can optionally also copy the file "pbterm.cfg" to "system/config" and modify a number ofd properties of the program by changing this file. There's also a keyboard layout file, 'pbterm.kbd', which adds the '|' character to the default english keyboard layout. If you want to use it copy the file to 'system/share/pbterm/' (if necessary create that dirctory). The keyboard file can also places somewhere else, the location can be set in the configuration file. When the program is running a short tab on most of the screen area (the exceptions are small areas in the upper left and right hand corner and the lower left hand quarter of the screen) brings up the on-screen keyboard to let you enter shell commands (the ash shell from BusyBox and already installe on the device gets used per default). The command and the results returned by the shell are shown on the screen. Also pressing the menu button brings up the keyboard. If there are more output lines than fit onto the screen you can scroll using vertical swipes. The number of lines you can scroll up and down is in order not to waste memory (a somewhat scarce resource on these devices) limited to 1024 lines. This limit is configurable, you can, as many other settings, modify it via the configuration file. If you shortly press the button with the triangle pointing right or up (depending on orientation) "recording" is started. While recording is on all commands you enter as well as the shells replies get written to a log file which then can be downloaded afterwards. While in recording mode a black square is shown in the right upper hand corner of the screen. To stop recording press the same button again. Alteratively recording can also be switched on and off by tapping in the upper right hand corner of the screen. To increase or decrease the font size keep the forward or back- ward button pressed down for some time. The default font size (as well as the font itself) can be set via the configuration file. If the version of the libinkview library on your device supports it also two-finger guestures (moving them apart to increase and pulling them together to ecrease the fint size) may work A long tap on the screen (or a short press on the "backward" button or a short tab into the lower left hand region of the screen, about a quarter of its width and height) brings up the on-screen menu. This menu currently has six entries. The first one is for a submenu that shows previously entered commands, with the newest on top. Selecting one brings up the on-screen keyboard with that command already set in the input field of the keyboard (where you normally find the last command entered). The list of commands may become longer than than fits on the screen, in which case you can scroll. Again there's also a configurable limit on the commands the program stores, which per default is set to 50. All commands entered get saved to a file (also configurable) when the program exits. This file is read in again the next time the program gets started. The next entry is another submenu, labeled "User command" which may contain commands (or parts of commands) that you find you use very often. The get read from a file which per default is "system/share/pbterm/user.cmd"(but that's adjustable via the configuration file. Simply put the commands you tend to use often in here, one commmand per line, and they will appear in the submenu in the same order. The third entry also is a submenu, "Send CRTL", that lets you send a "Ctrl-C", "Ctrl-D" or "Ctrl-Z" or "Ctrl-[" to the shell (which in a normal terminal would be achieved by pressing the <CRTL> key together with either 'c', 'd' or 'z' or, for the last, the <ESC> key). Note that this submenu is disabled if communication with the shell must be done via pipes instead of a pseudoterminal. "^C" is used to kill a programm that you started from the command line and "^Z" to suspend it (to be be reactivated via the 'fg' or 'bg' command). "^D" hould only be used in case you started a program that waits for input from you - it signals it that no more input will ever be made. Be careful with this control character, if the shell receives it instead of some program you started from the shell the shell itself will accept it and quit, and thereby the whole terminal program, The fourth submenu lets you switch between the custom keyboard layout coming with this program and the default keyboard(s) - as long as the custom keyboard file can be found and hasn't been disabled via the configuration file - otherwise this submenu is disabled. The remaining two entries in the on-screen menu allow you to rotate the screen and to exit the program. Beside using the on-screen menu the program can also be quit by entering 'exit' in the on-screen keyboard or by a short tap in the upper left-hand corner. The log file used per default is "system/share/pbterm/pbterm.log", (on the disk appearing when the device is attached to a computer via USB). This can be changed via the configuration file, named "system/config/pbterm.cfg". The configuration file "pbterm.cfg" coming with the program contains a list of all settings the program knows about (with values that are more or les the default settings of the pro- gram) and a short description of its (very simple) syntax. The file for storing commands is "system/share/pbterm/pbterm.cmd" per default (but the location can be modified via the configu- ration file. It just contains commands, one per line (empty lines and those starting with a '#' are skipped). You may edit it and e.g. insert further commands manually. Just remember that there's an upper limit on the number of commands (modifiable via the configuration file) and only that many commands will be read from the command file. The program per default tries to read in a layout file for the on-screen keyboard from 'system/share/pbterm/pbterm.kbd'. This is a slightly modifier layout for the english keyboard, with the major difference being that the missing '|' character has been added. The configuration file allows you to select a different layout file (or none). If the file does not exist or is disabled via the configuration file the normal keyboard is used. The file with the commands that you often use, per default you should create it as "/system/hare/pbterm/user.cmd", may contain one command per line. Empty lines or lines starting with a hash mark ('#') are skipped. If the very last character of a line is a hash mark then this command will be send to the shell imme- diately, i.e. the keyboard won't pop up to let you edit this command. The program is not 100% bullet-proof. When trying to "view" a largish binary file I had it crashing, I suspect due to memory exhaustion (debugging is a bit difficult;-) Alse the way it has to interact with the shell imposes some restrictions. The program comes with full source code (under the GPL3). Feel free to change and improve on it as you wish as long as you distribute it also with making the sources available under the GPL3. For compiling you may have to tweak the CMakeList.txt file, which in it's current form assumes the the 'pbterm' directory is in the 'sources' directory of the SDK. 25/9/2013 Jens Thoms Toerring Email: jt@toerring.de> Homepage: http://toerring.de
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