6 ms·

I love the concept, but I wonder why he wasn’t printing to PDF. Can this device not render PDFs?

cat-whisperer 23d ago
I was thinking of this, but rendering PDF takes a lot out of a 400KB RAM'd device. It also needs a ton of things to actually work which the ROM can't hold. Kindles have a ton of RAM, this one didn't.
- conorcleary 23d ago
  I'm sure there's a super trimmed down linux pdf reader that could be ported over
bluGill 23d ago
Probably not. It doesn't appear to have enough ram. I'm not sure the CPU is up to that either.
ValdikSS 23d ago
PDF is very, very complicated standard which can't be handled properly on tiny MCUs with reasonable performance and spec conformance: - 4 font formats - 9 image formats - blending with transparency - different colorspaces, each image could use its own on the page - different dithering algorithms, each image with its own - the page can have elements from another pages (global elements) This is only a small part from the top of my head. Common simple home printers absolutely should not accept regular PDF as an input: thanks to Apple and IETF we now have Apple Raster and PWG Raster for printers, as a part of AirPrint and IPP Everywhere/Mopria driverless printing standards, which are very similar but have slightly different options and headers. It's a simple raster input for printers specifically. Some companies, such as HP, invented a "raster PDF": PCLm / PCLms. Don't be confused by the name, it's a regular standard-conforming PDF which contain nothing but a full-page JPEG on each page, and don't use any other features. It's created only to be able to open "printed page" (driver output) in a standard PDF viewer on a PC for debugging or business logging needs, but otherwise it's like a regular JPEG with additional per-page metadata.
- ghostly_s 23d ago
  This thing is an e-reader with 16GB of flash and an SD slot. It has native support for PDF.
  - cat-whisperer 23d ago
    https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0759/9344/8689/files/X3-ENG-User-Guide.pdf?v=1775224862 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0759/9344/8689/files/X3-EN... check page 3. even I was surprised
    - silon42 23d ago
      First I see GIF and PNG missing.
    - ghostly_s 22d ago
      That's weird, the product page says "TXT, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, JPG, PNG" and prominently claims it is good for manga, which definitely wouldn't be possible with those formats.
utopiah 23d ago
CrossPoint at least only support ePub and BMP so they could have printed to a directory of BMPs.
- cat-whisperer 23d ago
  That’s where it ends up

I was thinking of this, but rendering PDF takes a lot out of a 400KB RAM'd device. It also needs a ton of things to actually work which the ROM can't hold. Kindles have a ton of RAM, this one didn't.

conorcleary 23d ago
I'm sure there's a super trimmed down linux pdf reader that could be ported over

bluGill 23d ago

Probably not. It doesn't appear to have enough ram. I'm not sure the CPU is up to that either.

ValdikSS 23d ago

PDF is very, very complicated standard which can't be handled properly on tiny MCUs with reasonable performance and spec conformance: - 4 font formats - 9 image formats - blending with transparency - different colorspaces, each image could use its own on the page - different dithering algorithms, each image with its own - the page can have elements from another pages (global elements) This is only a small part from the top of my head. Common simple home printers absolutely should not accept regular PDF as an input: thanks to Apple and IETF we now have Apple Raster and PWG Raster for printers, as a part of AirPrint and IPP Everywhere/Mopria driverless printing standards, which are very similar but have slightly different options and headers. It's a simple raster input for printers specifically. Some companies, such as HP, invented a "raster PDF": PCLm / PCLms. Don't be confused by the name, it's a regular standard-conforming PDF which contain nothing but a full-page JPEG on each page, and don't use any other features. It's created only to be able to open "printed page" (driver output) in a standard PDF viewer on a PC for debugging or business logging needs, but otherwise it's like a regular JPEG with additional per-page metadata.

ghostly_s 23d ago
This thing is an e-reader with 16GB of flash and an SD slot. It has native support for PDF.
- cat-whisperer 23d ago
  https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0759/9344/8689/files/X3-ENG-User-Guide.pdf?v=1775224862 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0759/9344/8689/files/X3-EN... check page 3. even I was surprised
  - silon42 23d ago
    First I see GIF and PNG missing.
  - ghostly_s 22d ago
    That's weird, the product page says "TXT, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, JPG, PNG" and prominently claims it is good for manga, which definitely wouldn't be possible with those formats.

utopiah 23d ago

CrossPoint at least only support ePub and BMP so they could have printed to a directory of BMPs.

cat-whisperer 23d ago
That’s where it ends up