Messages

1

User Request for Applications / Looking for a wordprocessor.

« on: December 03, 2004, 10:46:54 am »

Have you tried TextMaker?

No, but
1) Paying anything to anyone from Russia across the border is an exercise in juggling, mark my words. Which is one more reason for a free software platform, as they commonly come at no direct monetary charge.
2) I do not need a Word replacement. I need a slim word processor with a very certain amount of features - suitable for writing large fiction texts with a small amount of rich text features, not meant for duplicating office word processors - which are all meant to edit small but very rich documents like reports, letters and office memos.

If HancomWord wasn't so slow and could do proper first line indent, it would be just fine for my needs.

I wrote about it all in my first posting in this thread, really.

2

Cxx0 General discussions / Info: Charging and Ghosting

« on: November 15, 2004, 06:49:56 am »

I wonder, does 'Clear Adjust Values' clear battery adjust as well?

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User Request for Applications / Looking for a wordprocessor.

« on: November 01, 2004, 08:00:52 am »

Should you end up going for a custom app, I do recommend Python/PyQt as a platform.

Is there a PyQt text editor I could start with somewhere though?

4

User Request for Applications / Looking for a wordprocessor.

« on: November 01, 2004, 02:56:58 am »

I'm looking for a wordprocessor for my C860.

Actually, there's a very specific set of features I need in a word processor which are not available in HancomWord, but for which I wouldn't use any commonly used office document package (and OpenOffice and Abiword are both office document editors) since they are developed in a completely wrong direction from what I need.

I'm writing a long piece of fiction, which is expected to be about 600k worth of text (assuming a 1-byte charset - since it's cyrillic, it's going to be twice as big when in UTF-8) when it's done. For this to be done comfortably, the amount of features I actually need is smal - while some markup is desirable at this stage, almost all of it is best left for when the book is done - but they are very specific features.

I don't need: Different fonts in the same document, printing or exporting to dvi/pdf, spellchecking, images, tables, page formatting, ability to read or write any document files beside pure text - all of that stuff that is necessary for an office document processor would just get in the way. Neither I need things I'd look for in a programmer's text editor like syntax highlighting or bracket matching.

I do need however, ability to handle newline-delimited paragraphs, ability to display them with indents, (recording them with indents is absolutely not essential and in fact would be detrimental) word-wrapping of these paragraphs to window width which would not consider cyrillic characters whitespace, search-replace. Since I frequently go back and change stuff, I'd like to have the whole thing in memory at once without this slowing me down. Ability to insert bold/italic markup, footnotes and possibly ability to read-write html or a simple xml-based document format which I could easily convert to html would be nice, but not essential.

When I used a Jornada 720, Pocket Word was more or less close enough to what I wanted, at least it was usable. But on the Zaurus, I still can't find anything, and console text editors will definitely not do. Not that I was able to find a linux console text editor that would work without being a pain in the posterior.

Lyx sounds closest to that description but a) it's not available yet,  people seem to concentrate on porting TeX which I wouldn't really need on my Zaurus for editing text, just for printing.

Can anyone suggest an alternative?

5

General Discussion / New HOW-TO=Fixing Non-Charging CX00 Battery

« on: October 22, 2004, 02:08:27 pm »

Thinking about all that, I'm less and less sure about what the adjustment procedure actually does.

Oh, as a side note, forcing the charge through D+M menu option "Charge" is apparently a good alternative to charging the battery by directly messing with the wires, at least it helped me enough.

I'm still not certain my battery's functioning correctly, actually.

6

General Discussion / 860 in an unusual brick-like condition

« on: October 21, 2004, 11:39:00 pm »

Looks like it got unbricked now (crossing fingers).

The key to turning it on was pressing both the on button and power on button on the keyboard together, which caused it to boot normally for the first time.

There appear to be some unusual battery problems though, which cause it to shut down unexpectedly for no good reason. Let's see if the battery level adjustments help in any way.

*proceeds with reinstlaling cacko rom and cursing the japanese people who don't know their way around SDL*

7

General Discussion / 860 in an unusual brick-like condition

« on: October 21, 2004, 10:11:25 pm »

Suddenly discovered I can actually boot into console by holding D+B.

Can anyone tell me how to exploit that to improve my chances of recovery?

As far as I can see, it doesn't help much. I can command it to 'reboot' and it will boot into qtopia with normal kernel.

Unfortunately it will still not turn on normally from powered down position.

8

General Discussion / 860 in an unusual brick-like condition

« on: October 21, 2004, 08:57:32 pm »

A bit more on my research - even if nobody comes by with the answers, doesn't mean I shouldn't detail the ones I've discovered.

As detailed in http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~rimemoon/zaurus/memo_006.htm (I wish I could understand more of it, but all of my japanese-speaking friends are not available at the moment) apparently, you can recover the kernel files referred to in NAND Checksum with the D+M service menu, and not using the blind rom method described in http://pocketworkstation.org/files/recover/ recovery kits, for which a CF card with the same files will be necessary.

Unfortunately this page does not provide any links to files which would definitely work in a 860, or I'd go for it.

Reading more into it, the failed checksum of KERNEL1 means that the main linux kernel that runs the boot process is screwed, but the maintenance kernel KERNEL2 is still intact which allows me access to the service menu. I do wonder what are the ROFLSYS and INFO files for though.

Reading yet more into it, it appears that erasing NAND will not cause ill effects IF it is restored from backup immediately afterwards, since the service menu program will keep running in RAM. I'm not very certain of that interpretation though, so I'll have to leave this as the last resort.

More interesting news. According to http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1297 the recovery kits from pocketworkstation.org do NOT work for 860, since they were assembled from earlier versions and don't actually match.

That makes me think NAND backups from other sources for the same model actually have a chance of solving my problem, though.

After restoring from a japanese NAND backup, the machine still did not boot. NAND Checksum displays a NG on PARAM partition, but no clue as to why would this prevent it from booting, or what to try next. Restoring with my old image after that still produces no improvement.

9

General Discussion / 860 in an unusual brick-like condition

« on: October 21, 2004, 08:26:52 pm »

Which I could help you, but I would recommend searching all the forums for the word "Brick"

That's what I started with.  I couldn't find the answers to these three questions in there.

It was what allowed me to ask them though.

10

General Discussion / 860 in an unusual brick-like condition

« on: October 21, 2004, 08:10:01 pm »

SL-C860, apparently new. Don't ask me, got the last one available and was in no position to choose.

During experiments in picking a better version of SDL, I tried a package taken from a japanese site. Soon into running an SDL program, the machine went out. Attempts to turn it on normally failed.

Attempts to get to the Japanese Service Menu failed as well.

The D+M English Service Menu, which I've used just a few days ago to make a NAND backup, works just fine. However, restoring from a NAND backup I made days ago still does not produce a living machine.

After restore, NAND Bad Count results in zero bad blocks, however, a NAND checksum check results in red NGs starting with KERNEL1.

I have a few specific questions:

1. Will a 'NAND Flash Erase' still leave me with the D+M English Service Menu to try restoring a NAND backup?
2. Will flashing a japanese NAND image I found on the net improve the situation?
3. Does anyone have experience in using the recovery kit at http://pocketworkstation.org/files/recover/ on a real live SL-C860 and what were the results?

Prompt and quick answers would be very much appreciated, since I have to go to work in about five hours and I'll really need my Zaurus.