Does anyone have any brief experience with these Latin teaching books for German schoolers? tibi, VIA MEA, Cursus, Adeamus! and Legamus!
I'm starting to learn Latin now and have studied German more than a decade ago. I imagined it could be a good way to brush up on my German while learning Latin.
I'll do LLPSI on the side, so probably will only have time to look at one of those, any opinions on which should it be?
TLDR: I'll share my Simple UI+Bookshelf+Shortcuts Toolbar settings here. Files haven't been double tested. Use them at your own risk.
Hello all!
This is the long promised explanation on how to reach My Setup.
Ever since it has been released people have been periodically requesting it, so I think Its about time I deliver.
Thirtysixx has recently credited me for the inspiration of their setup, but the reality is that I only stood on the shoulders of giants.
My major inspirations were: kwebber321, BornoftheMind, LexamusPrime but most note worthy were Worried_Wrangler_361 (for the look and feel), fabrisuniverse (for the taste and instructions on how to change the icons ) and above all Diviinite (for actual instruction on how to edit everything on Simple UI). It's safe to say that without these posts, my setup would never have come to life.
Why did I take so long to share my configuration?
When I first shared my setup I was quite new to the KOReader scene. I had no Idea if what I was doing was right. When I finally got confident that I had understood Simple UI, the plugin updated to 1.5.0 and everything changed. Then I discovered a variety of other plugins and was waiting for them to get to a stable point, but I guess that won't happen for a long time.
With the release of Simple UI 2.7.0 I hope sharing users setups have become easier, so, I guess, there is no time like now.
Besides that, two weeks ago, a plugin made my KOReader break to the point I had to reinstall everything from scratch. I ended up using my own post as a reference, so I guess I'm also writing this as a guide to myself if it ever happens again (I'm pretty confident it will considering the amount of untested plugins I tend to install).
Special thanks to the KOReader developers and the plugin developers in the names of doctorhetfield, AndyHazz, Ömer Faruk, xuso, jimmyqex, Pethy23 and xBlain.
IMPORTANT: This configuration has been created for and has only been tested on a Kindle Oasis 3 (7 inches, 1680 x 1264, 300 PPI, Black and White - so no color options were taken into consideration). You might need to adjust settings according to your device.
This will be looooong, so grab a coffee and follow along.
CONFIGURATION FILES:
These haven't been tested, use them on your own risk.
FONTS:
ICONS:
I have downloaded all 5065 icons (I think I have an "old" version of the pack) and I keep two folders with two versions of the pack. One version is the regular, black, stroke-width="1.5"; the other is the same but with one adjustment: stroke-width="1.0" that I think is more visually balanced in my setup.
I changed the stroke-width by opening all the icons on notepad++ and replacing stroke-width="1.5" with stroke-width="1.0". I'm sure there's a more intelligent way to do it, but, apparently, I'm not intelligent enough.
I use the stroke-width="1.0" icons for the Simple UI and the stroke-width="1.5" ones for the Shortcuts Toolbar since I think it better preserves visual balance.
PATCHES:
MAIN PLUGINS:
Other plugins:
GENERAL CONFIGURATION:
It has been said that at least Kindles keep draining battery if you keep your files in the Kindle's default "documents" folder because they will be constantly scanning files that their own system cannot understand. So, even though I open KOReader on the "no framework" option, I still keep all my side loaded files (books, audiobooks, icons, screensavers) on hidden folders. Files and folders starting with a dot will be hidden from Kindle's standard firmware (Ex: /.books). This option allows KOReader's Library/File Browser access those files.
This prevents books from being reflowed every time I switch the hand I'm using to hold the e-reader.
This changes the font used for the general interface of KOReader, inculing menus. It requires 2--ui-font.lua for the option to show up.
This changes the default book rendering font to my preferred one (Merriweather). You can use the one of your personal preference. Books that have fonts embed still use them unless you change other per book settings.
This allows the usually annoying process of opening a footnote on e-readers to be much simpler, by enlarging the "hit box" of the usually very small number for the footnote and for the footnote to open at the bottom of the page in an unintrusive way.
ICON OVERWRITING:
If you want to change the icons on you device but don't want to use Simple UI your best bet is to overwrite the icons on \koreader\resources\icons\mdlight . Make sure the new icons have the exact same file name as the original ones otherwise KOReader won't load them and just display an error instead.
NB: As far as I know this is the only way to change the top bar icon for Bookshelf*.*
NB: All the icons used here have been modified to be black and to have a stroke-width="1.0".
SCREENSAVER CONFIGURATION:
This requires 2-dual-state-screensaver-mode.lua to work.
I use a Dual State Screensaver setup where 1. entering sleep mode while on the file browser, Simple UI or Bookshelf shows a random image from a folder as the sleep screen and 2. entering sleep mode while reading a book shows the cover of that book as the sleep screen.
I used to use the beautiful and peaceful tolino sleep screen (thank you Astiriana!) as the secondary screen saver but I have now moved to a huge folder with 686 images of Chema Mendez / MendezMendez artworks (that I discovered through Weak_Patient9867's post on r/BooksThatFeelLikeThis). I manually saved them all and am still using them in color just because I couldn't find a way to locally batch convert them to black and white punching the contrast, but still I like the surprises they give me and also the remind to get of my goddam phone. Give me a heads up if you have a solution for batch conversion.
SHORTCUTS TOOLBAR CONFIGURATION (from right to left):
To create these shortcuts go to [While reading a book] ⚙️ > Shortcuts toolbar > Reader settings > Custom Shortcuts > Add new shortcut. To add and/or reorder the shortcuts in the tool bar go to [While reading a book] ⚙️ > Shortcuts toolbar > Reader settings > Configure shortcuts
SIMPLE UI CONFIGURATION:
BOOKSHELF CONFIGURATION:
BOOKENDS CONFIGURATION:
Easy:
Also easy:
READING INSIGHTS CONFIGURATION:
FLOATING DICTIONARY CONFIGURATION:
If you got here, thank you for your patience!