Solve one problem......

run into another.

ATM I have again run into a problem with the eBook Reader alpha. While I was able to get the file system library working last night, I have now run into a problem reading the text from a file on the flash card. Seems that the loop used to read in the file is not stopping. For some reason it just keeps reading indefinitely for some reason. I can't tell if this is a NDS programming or C problem. I am currently hunting for answers online and at the PALib forums. I will also be talking to one of the programers I work with about it. He has a lot of C programming experience, so he might have an idea of the problem and how to fix it.

So that's it for today. Tomorrow I go into work, so I will not have time to work on the project. Expect an update no earlier then Thursday afternoon unless I find a fix and get it working sometime tomorrow.

Problems yet again

Having problems yet again. This time they are not totally caused by me. I am currently porting my parsing code from my command-line test program to the actual DS program. The problem I am having is that the library for reading the FAT file system of the flash card is not being found during compiling. So the code is there and working, but I can't test it because the NDS program can't read the text file to be parsed.

Currently I am hounding the PALib help forum for answers to why the library isn't being recognized or found. Hopefully I will get an answer tonight. I wanted to have the code ported over by tonight so I could work on the button inputs tomorrow. As of right now, I am dead in the water till I either figure out a way to fix this myself, or get help from someone in the PALib forums.

:sighs: I am soo close to getting the beta working..... why can't this work right now?!?!?!?!?

At long last, an Update!!!

Finally getting back to work. Just a quick update for those of you that actually take a look at my progress. Earlier this week I was having a major problem with parsing the incoming text. (For those of you who don't know what a parser does, it breaks up all the text into chuncks. In this case it breaks up the text into 23-letter lines that can be displayed easily on the DS's screens.) At first I thought it was a problem with the parser, then after having some problems display text, I thought it was the display functions.

Turns out it was both. I ended up taking my C functions and re-working them using XCode (Mac IDE from Apple). One of the problems was the way I was having the text put inside of the arrays. Turns out in C, you need a NULL character (basically a character that represents nothing) at the end of each line to mark the end of it. If you don't, when you try to print the line out, it goes into the next lines until it hits the last line or a NULL character. Thankfully I was able to find this problem while working on a plain, text-based program for PC and fix it.

The display problemis another matter. Seems I have my coordinets all mixed up. I need to do some research on the proper way to use the display function I am using (the one that can print text sideways). For now, I am just displaying text normally (IE not book-style) for debugging of the parser. Hopefully this weekend I will be able to fix the text printing problem. If not, I will just have to move on and use normal text displaying. I am on a tight timetable.

Goals for Weekend:

• Get parser working for multipile pages in PC "test" program and DS "alpha" program
• Get text displaying properly in book-style mode in DS "alpha"
• Get page turning working
• Start work on GUI

The first three tasks are the most important for me to get working. I can spend next week working on the GUI. Getting the code to work is the most important thing. I really need to show my book "storage" structure is more efficient then what other's have used in the past. I don't need a GUI for that.

Will post an update on Saturday and Sunday for those of you who want to know my progress. See you then.

PS Not sure if anyone will care, but I did end up getting a Mac. I ended up getting a MacBook Pro instead of the iMac and it has really helped with the development. Also, its a nice machine to boot. After using it for over a week, I decided against installing Windows XP and Ubuntu (Linux) on it. I am doing all command line/"test" programming in Leopard and actual DS programming in a Windows XP Virtual Machine under VM Fusion. Seems to be working out nicely.