Malaybook OPL Toolbar Battery Indicator Fix

[agregory]

Hello to fellow "Malaybook" users!

Shortly after I got my "Malaybook", I noticed the battery indicator on the toolbar of all the OPL just looked wrong. The fix requires a replacement Toolbar.opo, but as almost all OPL apps explicitly use the OPO on the Z: drive (ROM), all those apps need patching. I initially used Neuons HexEditor, but that quickly became a drag, so I wrote a small app to do it automatically. Full details on the webpage:

http://www.scsoftware.com.au/family/andrew/epoc/myprogs/tbpatcher.shtml

Cheers,

[fladda]

Well done Andrew !

There are good signs that the flood of reasonably priced Mbooks might kick-start the development of several good ER5 utilites. The Newton community have shown that the cessation of sales of a platform does not necessarily mean the end of the line. Indeed since Steve Jobs killed the Newton, the 3rd party development community have released loads of really useful upgrades and other utilities. I am hopeful that the same pattern will emerge for the Netbook, with small one-man-band developers burning the midnight oil for years to come;-)

How about somebody patching Opera 5.14, so that the Jpeg dither routines exit after the first pass ? This is probably one of the most annoying bugs in Opera and is one reason why Opera 5.xx appears to be so slow. All it probably requires is changing one StrongARM instruction to quit a loop early ?

Ralph

[MartinG]

Hi Andrew,

An excellent app! And the good news is that I can confirm that it works equally well on original netBooks (and I would expect Series 7's too). The bug in the toolbar.opo was originally in the netBook and I suspect just copied over to the S7/mBook/etc.

I especially liked the (only) language option when I installed it - Australian! ;) Decided that I'd put up with it speaking Aussie to me (seemed remarkably similar to English but I could be wrong!).

Suggestions for improvements? Perhaps the option to chose the app. you want to patch instead of it scanning/patching all? I tested it on a 'test' app (backed up for the purpose) and almost had heart failure when I realised that it was scanning/patching everything I had installed! Actually on 2nd thoughts, this probably isn't necessary as it does its job so quickly. Once a few more people have confirmed that it works on every Li-Ion/rechargable machine (I'd be 90% certain that it will) then there's no real reason to panic I guess...

Thanks for a really useful utility! :)

Martin

[pdstreet]

Just a quick one on the quick start guide supplied with my mbook it shows a tick in the battery indicator when fully charged but I have never seen this has anyone else or is it just in the picture?

[diem]

pdstreet - its only in the pic I think - I've never seen it on my netBook.

Regarding the original thread subject, I wasn't aware of the bug - could someone describe it in more detail?
Is toolbar.OPO only used by OPL programs if they wish to display a battery indicator, or is it relevant to all the built-in apps as well? A subsequent question I guess is is the toolbar handled by the foreground app, or is it handled by the OS and taps passed on to the foreground app?

[MartinG]

Originally posted by diem
Regarding the original thread subject, I wasn't aware of the bug - could someone describe it in more detail?

Psion supplied routines in the ROM for OPL programmers to use for the toolbar management (setting it up with buttons, icons, clock, battery display, etc.). In the version on the nB/S7 (I imagine)/mB/etc. the code for the battery display points to the wrong image - hence why some apps. show a couple of triangular arrows (see image attached from Andrew's site) v's the correct battery image.

Originally posted by diem
Is toolbar.OPO only used by OPL programs if they wish to display a battery indicator, or is it relevant to all the built-in apps as well? A subsequent question I guess is is the toolbar handled by the foreground app, or is it handled by the OS and taps passed on to the foreground app?

Toolbar.opo is normally used by all OPL programs to display the toolbar (inc. the battery indicator). Some programmers will have been aware of the bug (usually only if they have a nB/S7 - it's not an issue on a revo/5/mx/etc.) and worked around it; others won't. Hence it doesn't affect any of the built in apps. You just need to have a look through your 3rd party OPL apps. to see if any show the bug. Actually, you only need to do this if you want to see one being 'fixed' since Andrew's program scans and then patches them all anyway...

Best regards,
Martin

[MrJambo]

I would also like to thank Andrew. This will be a very useful utility.

I would also like to agree with fladda (Ralph) and second his idea about Opera and its JPG rendering. I'm pretty fed up with the draw the same picture three times situation, even though it is exactly the same on the third redraw as it was on the first.

Does anybody out their have a debugger, and the ability to find this stupid loop? then use Andrews technique for patching the code?

Go on Andrew you know you want to be the star of this forum! :)

[agregory]

Hey! I've stirred up a few replies :-)

I've just updated it to v1.01. The big change is a fix for another toolbar bug related to latching buttons I just read about on a Symbian forum (dating from around 2000!). Are there any other known toolbar bugs? I'm now including the source code too.

Regarding Oz English only, that's my retribution for all those applications and OPXes that only have UK English! :mad: Only joking, sort of. When you've installed apps and had to select "UK English" again and again and again as it goes through OPX and resource files, one feels like some revenge!

Regarding patching Opera, sure, it sounds like an easy fix, but patching an app without any source code is a lot different from when you've got the source code!

Anyway, doesn't Preferences, Multimedia, JPEG settings do anything useful in this respect?

[MrJambo]

Originally posted by agregory
Anyway, doesn't Preferences, Multimedia, JPEG settings do anything useful in this respect?

I do not believe so. I have played around with these settings and never found a way to do it.

If you search this forum for jpg dithering you will find more information on the subject.

I also expect Ralph to pipe up with some useful information at this point ;)

[MrJambo]

oh yea - I guess it's 5.14 most of us want patching!