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I tried that. I bought a kindle, got root access, added lots of software (a x-server that outputs directly to the framebuffer device that interfaces the display

by 1ris 12y ago

I tried that. I bought a kindle, got root access, added lots of software (a x-server that outputs directly to the framebuffer device that interfaces the display). I only ever had keyboard access from a remote computer from that i was SSHing into it. I planned to add a keyboard, but i never did. It was not usable. I tried a tiling windows manager, but It does not work. The latency is huge. Too much for me to write. Forget scrolling. The display is inaccurate, there are plenty of artifacts. You will be able to see what was on the screen 5 minutes ago. Feels like a burned in screen. The kindle display is tiny. I mean, really tiny. That could be fixed. And it the kindle does not have a particular long battery life if you use it as a laptop.

jcrites 12y ago
I believe you need to refresh / redraw the entire screen occasionally. You may notice that the Kindle will draw the entire screen black and then white sometimes, like while turning pages, while other times it will simply erase what was drawn. I gather the screen redraw is to reset the display and minimize those artifacts. (Unless - does the hardware do this for you? I've never tinkered with one and have no special knowledge about Kindles) Perhaps you could build a tiny program that pops up a black box that covered the entire display occasionally (but it would be frustrating if it appeared at unneeded times). Otherwise I think you'd need to hack on the window manager. Alternatively, perhaps this would all work out better as an app running with the Kindle development kit. I would hope running in the KDK will take advantage of the built in redraw logic. Maybe one could build an SSH client for the Kindle so as to run the programs remotely while displaying with e-ink. (I'm not trying to get you to spend more time on this - your comment just got me thinking :-) But anyway it's true that e-ink isn't a great fit for dynamically updating displays. Drawing letters one by one while you type them is doable but not its core competency. Switching window focus will be tough since you likely need to redraw the screen.

by 1ris 12y ago

jcrites 12y ago

I believe you need to refresh / redraw the entire screen occasionally. You may notice that the Kindle will draw the entire screen black and then white sometimes, like while turning pages, while other times it will simply erase what was drawn. I gather the screen redraw is to reset the display and minimize those artifacts. (Unless - does the hardware do this for you? I've never tinkered with one and have no special knowledge about Kindles) Perhaps you could build a tiny program that pops up a black box that covered the entire display occasionally (but it would be frustrating if it appeared at unneeded times). Otherwise I think you'd need to hack on the window manager. Alternatively, perhaps this would all work out better as an app running with the Kindle development kit. I would hope running in the KDK will take advantage of the built in redraw logic. Maybe one could build an SSH client for the Kindle so as to run the programs remotely while displaying with e-ink. (I'm not trying to get you to spend more time on this - your comment just got me thinking :-) But anyway it's true that e-ink isn't a great fit for dynamically updating displays. Drawing letters one by one while you type them is doable but not its core competency. Switching window focus will be tough since you likely need to redraw the screen.