LibreScribe Progress Update

Since my last post, I have made a lot of progress with LibreScribe. Just a few commits ago, LibreScribe gained the ability to retrieve a list of installed applications on the device, and add them to the list in the applications tab. I also fixed several other significant issues, including:

• When the smartpen is connected/disconnected, the application no longer crashes, and the status is automatically refreshed
• Device storage usage is now displayed in MiB instead of in bytes. This makes it a lot less confusing how much space is remaining on your smartpen.
• A bug, where the Echo Smartpen was detected as an “unknown LiveScribe Smartpen” in certain cases was fixed.
• All absolute paths have been removed from the project. All resources are now referenced using relative paths.
• wxFormBuilder has been replaced with wxSmith. The entire user interface has been recreated from scratch (although it’s very similar to the old interface, intentionally)
• Many C++ source and header files are no longer necessary, so they have been removed, and merged into other files. This makes the codebase a lot more maintainable.
• Duplicate udev events (such as multiple add events of the same device) are ignored now. Previously, we ended up refreshing the device information up to four times in a row because of duplicate events. This significantly reduces the delay between plugging in a device and seeing a response on the screen.

There are still tons of issues that still need to be fixed before LibreScribe becomes usable in a production environment, but I’ve been steadily making progress, and I hope to have something useful out soon.

Major Bug Fix in LibreScribe

A lot of work on the LibreScribe project has been accomplished since I first wrote about it. Just today, I fixed a major regression which was preventing the device information dialog from being displayed. In addition to that, I now have more work done on the interface, so that when the windows is resized, most of the elements will scale properly to fit the new size. Another major change I made was setting up the layout of the “Audio” and “Applications” tabs, so that there are now lists, with data split into columns. These changes mark a significant improvement in the look and feel of LibreScribe, but it’s only the beginning. Expect a large number of major changes in the not-too-distant future.