>penguin would shrink the result to fit its screen.
>I declared A5 and Letter paper, media type stationery, and an output bin called face-up.
You can (and should!) define exact dimensions of your screen in `media-size-supported`. It will probably be a non-standard IPP name, that's why you should define that in `media-supported` as `om_NNNmmxYYYmm` or `oe_NNNinxYYYin`
That way you don't need to scale the incoming data, the PC will format it exactly to the dimensions of the screen.
Both PWG Raster and Apple Raster support 1-bit-per-pixel mode (instead of 8-bit-per-pixel you use), that's why the input could be 8 times less in size. Use `print-color-mode-{supported,default}=bi-level` instead of `monochrome` for that. And also tune `urf-supported`'s `W` option, use `W1` for this case.
This is why I like it here. Somebody does irrefutably incredible work outside of their comfort zone, and somebody else goes "yeah actually I was born in that zone. Moulded by it. Here's how to improve it" (in a positive way)
ValdikSS 2 hours ago [-]
Oh no, I wasn't, and that's definitely not my comfort zone. I mess with the printers and printing stack due to anger, not because I like it.
It's bugs on bugs, with bugs chasing bugs! So little developers, so complex stack with 25 years of technical debt, and little community around because it's not a sexy technology to be involved in.
That's why I have to dive deep and fix my bugs myself if I want to make it work properly as I would like it to. I also ended up making my own print server device, because China did not make a proper one for some reason for all these years.
cat-whisperer 2 hours ago [-]
lovely, this would save me a bunch of memory during transformation and dithering. Will do!
alternativeworl 2 hours ago [-]
Very cool. I was expecting to learn about the ins and outs of ink, printheads etc but instead learned "How to build a paper that acts like a printer" which turned out much more entertaining.
cat-whisperer 2 hours ago [-]
glad you liked it!
ks2048 3 hours ago [-]
Good job, but I’m left wanting to know how to build a printer.
tdeck 28 minutes ago [-]
If a DIY plotter would do, this site has a long list of different projects
This is amazing!!! It just makes sense. And its just how you would want to use a e reader.
cat-whisperer 4 hours ago [-]
if it looks like a paper, it should act like a paper
nomel 4 hours ago [-]
You can even fold it, once!
cat-whisperer 3 hours ago [-]
It's also not effective against rock
valleyer 3 hours ago [-]
Funny. But... paper covers rock.
sudo_cowsay 3 hours ago [-]
Jan Ken Po!
greazy 3 hours ago [-]
I don't understand the purpose. What am I missing?
The author "prints" to the eink display. Why not load say the pdf directly?
stdatomic 3 hours ago [-]
From the 4th line in the article:
> But getting stuff onto it was tedious. I had to join its hotspot and open a little upload website in my browser. Yuck.
Anyway, very creative, I like the idea a lot.
cat-whisperer 3 hours 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.
ghostly_s 2 hours ago [-]
It's an e-reader. According to the specs it has native support for PDF.
mrheosuper 2 hours ago [-]
It's an esp32 MCU, even if it can somehow run the PDF render pipeline, it won't be more ideal than just accept the raw byte stream and display.
joshmarinacci 3 hours ago [-]
I love the concept, but I wonder why he wasn’t printing to PDF. Can this device not render PDFs?
ValdikSS 2 hours 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 2 hours ago [-]
This thing is an e-reader with 16GB of flash and an SD slot. It has native support for PDF.
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.
bluGill 3 hours ago [-]
Probably not. It doesn't appear to have enough ram. I'm not sure the CPU is up to that either.
NDlurker 3 hours ago [-]
Very cool. I'll be updating to this fork
cat-whisperer 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks. It's rough around the edges, so PRs are open, and there's a recipe in the repo if you want to build your own apps.
andyfilms1 4 hours ago [-]
We finally have PADDs from Star Trek!
cat-whisperer 4 hours ago [-]
Wow!! I didn't think of that.
sho_hn 4 hours ago [-]
This is a fantastic idea!
stavros 4 hours ago [-]
I've been seeing the Xteink a lot lately. Should I get an X3 or an X4? I don't really know why I want it, but I have an eInk addiction, so I just need it.
a2dam 4 hours ago [-]
I've owned all of them and the answer is the X4 Pro IMO. It has a backlight, which is the only thing I really missed on the others.
cat-whisperer 4 hours ago [-]
It's funny that X3 is a successor of X4. Only downside is that X4 has a USB-C port and X3 doesn't
stavros 4 hours ago [-]
What about the back light? Are they otherwise identical?
cat-whisperer 3 hours ago [-]
X3 isn't backlit, but the battery lasts 7 days. So, it's pretty good for me
hamaluik 3 hours ago [-]
I bought an x4 a month or so ago, zero regrets. It sounds hyperbolic but it’s finally been the thing to actually decouple me from my phone. Whenever I’m out and about, bored, I just slide it out and pick up where I left off reading last. It’s a nicer reading experience on my kobo but the portability and.. frankly charm just can’t be beat.
Brian_K_White 5 hours ago [-]
Outstanding! This is so...correct.
phoenixtao 14 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 03:46:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
You can (and should!) define exact dimensions of your screen in `media-size-supported`. It will probably be a non-standard IPP name, that's why you should define that in `media-supported` as `om_NNNmmxYYYmm` or `oe_NNNinxYYYin`
That way you don't need to scale the incoming data, the PC will format it exactly to the dimensions of the screen.
Both PWG Raster and Apple Raster support 1-bit-per-pixel mode (instead of 8-bit-per-pixel you use), that's why the input could be 8 times less in size. Use `print-color-mode-{supported,default}=bi-level` instead of `monochrome` for that. And also tune `urf-supported`'s `W` option, use `W1` for this case.
The screen/dithering could be ass in 1-bit mode, see https://github.com/OpenPrinting/libcupsfilters/pull/160 where I added more dithering options (Linux-only though, Apple seems to abandon their CUPS).
It's bugs on bugs, with bugs chasing bugs! So little developers, so complex stack with 25 years of technical debt, and little community around because it's not a sexy technology to be involved in.
That's why I have to dive deep and fix my bugs myself if I want to make it work properly as I would like it to. I also ended up making my own print server device, because China did not make a proper one for some reason for all these years.
https://mattwidmann.net/notes/pen-plotters/
The author "prints" to the eink display. Why not load say the pdf directly?
> But getting stuff onto it was tedious. I had to join its hotspot and open a little upload website in my browser. Yuck.
Anyway, very creative, I like the idea a lot.
> Kindles have a ton of RAM, this one didn't.
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.
check page 3. even I was surprised
Kindles have a ton of RAM, this one didn't.