Awesome Interface for e-Readers

AIR is a graphical interface for e-readers that heavily relies on AwesomeWM. It's tested on the Kobo Clara HD using PostmarketOS, but perhaps it can be used elsewhere. It is a work in progress.

AIR was created because most Linux graphical interfaces don't work very well with e-ink tablet out of the box. They often require keyboard or mouse to configure things. Sometimes, unique features such as cold & warm brightness cannot be easily controls. Lastly, things like proper suspend and resume can require some hacks. AIR aims to make these things Just Work ™️.

Features

• Tilling interface
• Brightness control
• WiFi toggling
• Suspend / Resume
• Touch gestures
• On screen keyboard

You can use any Linux application with it, for example:

• KOReader or Foliate for ebooks
• Firefox for (slow) web
• Castor for Gopher and Gemini
• St for terminal

Setup

AIR isn't nicely packed as it's actually just a collection of different tools, together with an AwesomeWM configuration. Setting up takes a couple of steps:

0. cd ~/.config && git clone https://github.com/bjesus/air.git awesome

1. Install all needed packages: sudo apk add awesome util-linux-misc svkbd lisgd network-manager-applet pm-utils brightnessctl upower adwaita-icon-theme font-inter xrandr

2. If you want, install the additional optional software: sudo apk add foliate castor mobile-config-firefox sxmo-st

3. Place your background image at ~/.config/awesome/bg.jpg

4. Set your default desktop environment: sudo tinydm-set-session -f -s /usr/share/xsessions/awesome.desktop

5. Allow password-less rfkill, suspend and poweroff by adding this to /etc/sudoers:

   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/rfkill
   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/pm-suspend
   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff
   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/chroot
   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /bin/mount
   YOUR_USERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/tee

6. Set some font-size optimizations by copying ~/.config/awesome/.Xresources to ~/.Xresources, and ~/.config/awesome/settings.ini to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

7. chmod +x ~/.config/awesome/suspend.sh

8. Rotate the touchscreen by creating /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/rotate.conf with this content:

   
   Section "InputClass"
           Identifier "Coordinate Transformation Matrix"
           MatchIsTouchscreen "on"
           MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
           MatchDriver "libinput"
           Option "CalibrationMatrix" "0 -1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1"
   EndSection

Section "Monitor" Identifier "None-1" Option "Rotate" "left" EndSection

### KOReader

The only way I managed to run KOReader is using a Debian chroot. Get the Debian package from [KOReader releases page](https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases). Creating the chroot is pretty simple:

$ sudo apk add debootstrap xhost $ sudo debootstrap testing ~/debian http://http.debian.net/debian/ $ cp koreader-2023.04-armhf.deb ~/chroot/root $ mkdir -p ~/chroot/tmp/.X11-unix $ sudo chroot ~/chroot /bin/bash

inside the chroot:

$ apt update && apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 fonts-noto-hinted fonts-droid-fallback $ sudo dpkg -i /root/koreader-2023.04-armhf.deb

You should now be able to use the koreader.sh script to launch KOReader.

## Usage

The menu on the bottom left is where you can launch your applications. By default it uses Foliate, Firefox, Castor and St. The bottom right has a gears icon that opens the Settings modal. You can set brightness using it, toggle the WIFI and restart. The keyboard icon toggles the keyboard.

### Gestures

AIR uses lisgd for gestures. By default the following gestures are set:

- Sliding up from the bottom edge toggles the keyboard
- Sliding down from the top left opens the settings modal
- Sliding down from the top right shows window controls for the currently focused window (useful for killing an app)

## Known issues

- Battery status reporting could be off
- GTK header buttons are tiny. Can be fixed by setting `GDK_SCALE` but for me it crashes Foliate.