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Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

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Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#91

Post by sfvegandude »

Jolter wrote: post #57
FullyFunctional wrote: post #30

This is great, looks totally usable. I've pursued that eInk life style for about a decade now :) My best setup is with a Dasung Paperlike, but in practice the ergonomics keeps me from using it often (too many things to carry outside and setup). What I hope to see one day is a Linux friendly laptop with an eInk display (frontlit for extra bonus [1]). I wouldn't use it as a replacement, but for quickly grabbing when sp…

Maybe you’re aware but the Boox Max Lumi has an HDMI In port, so you can use it as a secondary monitor for that laptop. https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi

Reminder: onyx violates the Linux kernel license.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hk7d5v/onyx_is_v...

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#92

Post by dheera »

Jolter wrote: post #56
dheera wrote: post #17

I'd love to see someone crack the partial fast update modes of the Boox tablets. They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.

Check out what Zubersoft has done with their sheet music app, in a special edition for e-ink. https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/archive/index.php?t... The kicker is this: “- Freeform annotations with the stylus utilize special rendering on Boox devices allowing the drawings to show up in real time. This makes it much easier to write and draw.” I use this app on a Boox Max Lumi and the effect is very pronounced…

Oh damn! Thanks!

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#93

Post by dheera »

muhehe wrote: post #37
TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you not use ADB to download the APK off the app and reverse engineer anything anomalous?

Maybe the apps are completely normal, but whitelisted somewhere in the system for different behaviour. Like some phone manufacturers cheat at benchmarks...

I don't think that's it. The issue is how to tell the screen to do a fast partial refresh at the expense of not refreshing anything else, which is what you want for handwriting. The app would need a way to tell the system what to partially refresh, i.e. some sort of nonstandard Android API.

The Boox tablets are touted for their ability to run third-party Android apps, so I highly doubt they would deliberately cripple them.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#94

Post by dredmorbius »

robinsoh wrote: post #90
dredmorbius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching "by:robinsoh e-ink patent" over the past year turns up numerous comments, mostly variants of "I've explained this before", but none with a link to the specific explanation you have in mind. If you happen to know of a reference, it's a courtesy to others to provide it directly. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... Do you mean this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28465…

> but none with a link to the specific explanation you have in mind. If you happen to know of a reference, it's a courtesy to others to provide it directly. It is unclear what exactly you want explained to you. Or what reference you are referring to. I asked what patent you are pointing to as evidence of the allegation that you made and instead of addressing that, you're asking me for evidence that no such patent exi…

What I'm hoping for here is for you to point to the specific comment(s) you have in mind.

You're ... being somewhat less than helpful here, and are doing much the same as you've repeatedly accused others of doing: hand-waving vaguely in some general direction without being specific.

I'd be interested in discussing, or even simply understanding, what point(s) you're making. But you're failing to make them here, or indicate where you've made them previously.

If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#95

Post by dredmorbius »

_8rlb wrote: post #41
dredmorbius wrote: post #26

An interesting test case would be the aalib demo, bb: https://sarata.com/manpages/bb.1.html Here videoed off an emissive display: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=WubDqdV2r9k And what seems to be a direct screen capture: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JFFJYJ6QkME I'm also curious as to what display damage high-speed refresh causes, and what reasonable guidelines at avoiding this might be. I have an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, whose displa…

The pixels are classical mechanical, as opposed to LEDs (electrical) or other solid state devices. The particles in a pixel could deform/burst or clamp together over time, as they move around. Both scenarios lead to decreased contrast. The less they move the longer the screen will last. I've no experience with the manufacture of those displays but I reason with physics.

More fluid than mechanical.

Note that even electrical displays can suffer burn-in, with CRT, LCD, and LED screens all exhibiting this. (I'm unsure about plasma displays, as I don't understand that technology.)

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#96

Post by _8rlb »

IshKebab wrote: post #83
_8rlb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I measured and split the latency between the main tasks of a single frame draw. The main culprit was network delay as I am transmitting raw pixels (one u8 per pixel) compressed with zlib. That's a hit of ~140ms for half a screen. Next in line is the screen refresh (unmeasured, perceived). Then the optional post processing (~20ms for half a screen), and housekeeping, like keeping track of dirty regions (about as long)…

Interesting. But updating one character should be much faster than updating the whole screen then surely since you don't have to send so much data? By the way I suspect compressing multiple pixels into one is unnecessary - just quantise them and let the compression deal with it. Also zlib is not designed for image compression. I'm sure there is something more suitable, e.g. QOI. In fact, given that you're mostly comp…

Apologies for the late reply @IshKebab, I read into your recommendations and they are very interesting.

If you wish you could copy your comment verbatim as an issue over here, so we can discuss it further: https://github.com/everydayanchovies/eink-vnc/issues

I will have a chance to test the ping tonight, possibly.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#97

Post by _8rlb »

dredmorbius wrote: post #95
_8rlb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pixels are classical mechanical, as opposed to LEDs (electrical) or other solid state devices. The particles in a pixel could deform/burst or clamp together over time, as they move around. Both scenarios lead to decreased contrast. The less they move the longer the screen will last. I've no experience with the manufacture of those displays but I reason with physics.

More fluid than mechanical. Note that even electrical displays can suffer burn-in, with CRT, LCD, and LED screens all exhibiting this. (I'm unsure about plasma displays, as I don't understand that technology.)

Yes! But intuition tells me that suspended particles moving past each other make a more fragile system than solid state devices.

Also take into account the difference in refreshes between reading a book (0.05 HZ) and writing (30 HZ). That is, using the display as a general purpose monitor necessitates 600 times as many partial refreshes. I approximate full screen refreshes occur 6000 times more often.

If degradation goes linearly with usage then the lifespan of the display would decrease significantly if used as a monitor. It would be good if someone in the industry could comment on this.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#98

Post by robinsoh »

dredmorbius wrote: post #94
robinsoh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but none with a link to the specific explanation you have in mind. If you happen to know of a reference, it's a courtesy to others to provide it directly. It is unclear what exactly you want explained to you. Or what reference you are referring to. I asked what patent you are pointing to as evidence of the allegation that you made and instead of addressing that, you're asking me for evidence that no such patent exi…

What I'm hoping for here is for you to point to the specific comment(s) you have in mind. You're ... being somewhat less than helpful here, and are doing much the same as you've repeatedly accused others of doing: hand-waving vaguely in some general direction without being specific. I'd be interested in discussing, or even simply understanding, what point(s) you're making. But you're failing to make them here, or ind…

> If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here.

You seem to be intentionally engaging in a circular argument. The parent post said "after present patents expire". So please answer a simple question. Which specific patents are you referring to? Are you going to google and give a random list of eink patents? I hope you can see why I think that's a counterproductive response.

I stand by what I wrote earlier.

I'll repeat it again. " Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details. "

It is the equivalent of saying IBM is blocking progress in the software industry because of IBM patents.

I hope it is clear how ridiculous that claim is. That's why I asked the simple question to which I still haven't gotten an answer.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#99

Post by celie56 »

ozzydave wrote: post #65
celie56 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use a Remarkable 1 with yaft (1) as a terminal. I connect via ssh to a tmux session for editing and the response is fast enough. 1. https://github.com/timower/rM2-stuff/tree/master/apps/yaft

I’m doing the same, though I had to fork Yaft to get a bigger font.

Do you mind sharing your fork with the font change? I tried to get a font that supports other characters but the mkfont_bdf tool didn't like the files I fed it.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#100

Post by dredmorbius »

robinsoh wrote: post #98
dredmorbius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm hoping for here is for you to point to the specific comment(s) you have in mind. You're ... being somewhat less than helpful here, and are doing much the same as you've repeatedly accused others of doing: hand-waving vaguely in some general direction without being specific. I'd be interested in discussing, or even simply understanding, what point(s) you're making. But you're failing to make them here, or ind…

> If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here. You seem to be intentionally engaging in a circular argument. The parent post said "after present patents expire". So please answer a simple question. Which specific patents are you referring to? Are you going to google and give a random list of eink patents? I hope you can…

Thank you.

I was simply looking for the substantive version of your position.

I believe you've expressed it.

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