Wednesday, September 2, 2009

QComicBook: 0.4.2 & 0.5.0

QComicBook 0.4.2 has just been released; this is mainly a bugfix release which fixes compilation problems. As already mentioned before, I've also been working on some changes that will debut in the near future with  QComicBook 0.5.0. Some changes have already been revealed, but here are more news to give you the taste of what's coming:
  • true continuous mode (see screenshot)
  • improved multi-threading affecting background image loading
  • cmake-based compilation
  • ui-based windows and dialogs.

I'm particularly happy to give you the long-awaited, true continuous reading mode. Imagine reading comic books with no jumping to next page, but having all pages displayed on a continuous sheet of paper, which can be freely scrolled upwards/downwards! This is already implemented, but I've to hammer out some bugs and implement some missing bits to support all the functionality QComicBook had before introducing this feature.

The new 0.5.0 release should be ready within a few weeks. Stay tuned!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Just now I stumbled on this blog after having a look at your QComicBook project site again, like I regularly do. This is really great! I had already realized that you had begun releasing new versions and working on this again, but this: continuous mode and especially CMake.

I think with CMake it'll be easy to compile this on Windows, too. I have a custom QComicBook 0.4.0 build for Windows. It works, but I had to convert it to use QMake (I don't understand automake), and there were one or two hacks, so I didn't think of sending in a patch or releasing it in any way. I also got it working with zip only and only when I had zip.exe and unzip.exe (downloaded them somewhere) in my PATH env variable.

There were only a few things in the code that really depended on Linux/Unix. The trickiest one was a call to create a symlink. I simply made a quick hack, but now I know that Vista and 7 have some kind of symlink functionality "to aid in migration and application compatibility with UNIX operating systems" (from MSDN). Not every Windows user has Vista or 7, though.

I'm waiting for 0.5.0 and then I'll certainly see what I can do to make it work great on Windows. I simply love your app, and use both Linux and Windows. I simply can't stand online comic readers (=web pages) for reading manga.

Pawel Stolowski said...

I'm glad to hear you had some success with running qcomicbook on Windows. I would like to support Windows port, so any patches and suggestions for better Windows compatibility are welcome. I'll try to review qcomicbook code and spot possible pitfalls, but if you have found any yet, plese send them to me.

I'd be especially interested in a "report" about how archives can be handled using external utilities (unrar, unace, p7zip...) on Windows and if there are any differences between Linux and Windows when using them.

"Dirty" hacks should of course be avoided if possible. And don't worry about 'symlink' functionality - symlink in the code is a leftover from the functionality that was never really enabled (creating of cbr archives) in qcomicbook and it will be dropped.

I'm not able to maintain Windows port by myself in terms of preparing binaries and testing it on Windows, but I'll do my best to make it easy to compile for others. I can also provide links to Windows packages on my website if you (or anyone else) would like to provide binaries for Windows.

Thanks for your comment and effort to run qcomicbook on Windows. Please email me if you have any technical details about making qcomicbook more Windows-friendly.