v1.5.1-RC-5

[uxjulia]

Tip

You can flash stable and pre-release builds using Crossink's web companion app, Inky.

This release brings compatibility to the X4 Pro.

Changes in RC-5

• Touch devices: New in-reader menu re-design.
• Night mode now affects every screen, not just the reader. Some displays/devices may see significantly worse ghosting. If there are enough complaints about this, the feature may get reverted.
• Added new shortcuts for Previous Page and Nearby Position Sync.
• Non-touch devices: Moved Book Options to the bottom of the menu so a single Up click can get to it.
• Up + Down Combo shortcut removed for X3/X4 devices since it's not supported (the buttons share the same electrical input)
• Navigating to a chapter via the TOC item should no longer continually take you back to the TOC.
• Quick Lock should properly unlock with its assigned shortcut (fixes The Quick Lock feature, which uses the Power + Up button combination, cannot be unlocked using the Power + Up button combination. #625)
• Improvements to X3's sleep and wake screen artifacts (fixes Striped lines after waking to Home screen #607, Sleep screen is posterized #608, X3 UC8279: dark sleep screen remains after wake #611)
• Incomplete directory listings in the web server are now reported instead of silently dropped (fixes Root directory listing silently truncates: folders past the cut-off are invisible everywhere but still resolvable by path #610)
• The Quick Actions menu should no longer pop-up again when selecting items (fixes Quick Action: Confirming "Dark Mode" with Power Button brings up Quick Actions again #613)
• Dictionary mode exists when exiting from a word that's not found (fixes Selection mode still active after word not found in dictionary #614)
• Clipping highlights start in the middle of the page now (Suggestion: Start highlighting from the middle of the page #609)
• Fixed dictionary's "Not Found" screen not displaying properly in dark mode (X4 Pro: Dictioary Not Found page does not display text in dark mode #612)
• Removed most emojis (faces, hands, etc.) from built-in fonts to reduce overall firmware build size. SD card fonts still include them.
• Dictionary and clippings can advance to the next page on touch devices (Tap-and-drag highlighting on X4 Pro cannot continue across pages #621)

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New

• Full touch support for Xteink X4 Pro
• New Quick Actions menu where you can set 5 shortcuts accessible via any of the shortcut buttons. Settings > Controls > Quick Actions
• The Power + Up button combo can now be assigned to a shortcut. Get to it from Settings > Controls > Power Button > Power + Up Combo
• On X4 Pro and Sticky, the Up + Down button combo can be assigned to a shortcut. Get to it from Settings > Controls > Side Buttons > Up + Down Combo
• New Quick Lock shortcut for locking the device without actually putting it to sleep. This disables all buttons (and the touchscreen) and must be unlocked with the same button shortcut.

Changed

• Fonts now display their installed point sizes next to their name (addresses Same font in multiple sizes does not work intuitively #491)
• The boot-up splash screen has been removed. You will now wake directly to your last screen
• Mark as Finished and Controls have been moved to the third tab (settings gear icon) in the reader menu
• Wi-Fi passwords are now shown while entering them.

Fixed

• Flashing when accessing Wi-fi related activities (fixes [FIXED - FIRMWARE ATTACHED] - Screen flash when access Wifi network  #495)
• Landscape dictionary navigation (fixes orientation aware does not work within look up #493)
• Enables touch on end-of-book suggestions (The menu in the next book doesn’t work on the touchscreen. #496)
• Improve loading of custom dictionary font (fixes Dictionary font falls back to book font #501)
• XTC table of contents getting cut off (fixes TOC only showing 128 pages in every .xtc manga #494)
• Inaccurate clipping/highlights after font/font-size changes (fixes Clippings are wrongly rendered after font size change or font change #492)
• "Change Font" shortcut not working on front buttons (fixes Assigning "Change font" to a front button long press doesn't work #507)
• Overlapping pages in XTC (fixes Overlaping pages in XTC, strange ghosting #485)
• Improved table rendering for large, complicated tables (fixes Tables in some books do not render. #506)
• Some data missing after lightweight network restarts (fixes Same defect as #421 in RECENT_BOOKS and KOREADER_STORE — and reproducible on hardware #512)
• Battery drain on Seeed Sticky (fixes Battery drain on Seeed Sticky #516)
• Empty crash report after flashing due to false watchdog error
• Custom sleep-image folders load faster and rebuild correctly after file changes.
• Quick Resume no longer shows a blank page after EPUB next-chapter indexing (fixes Quick Resume shows blank screen #535).
• Large EPUBs with thousands of chapters should now finish indexing more reliably on X3/X4 without running out of memory.

Tip

If you experience any problems, please clear your caches before opening an issue. Start with the least invasive and work your way down to the most invasive if problems persist after each step.

1. Delete book cache (In-reader menu > Delete book cache)
2. From your SD card: Delete the individual .crosspoint/epub_<hash> folder for the book giving you issues
3. Delete all reading cache (Settings > System > Files & Cache > Clear Reading Cache)
4. From your SD card: Delete ALL .crosspoint/epub_<hash> folders and recent.json and state.json
5. Back up your global_stats.bin and then delete the entire .crosspoint/ folder

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This discussion was created from the release v1.5.1-RC-5.

[twinxsegovia]

I can safely flash this on my XTEINK X3 right? Thank you!

[joetheshmo]

yes, use the firmware-x3-x4-v1.5.1-a8d2fa5-RC.bin file

[uxjulia]

You can also do it from https://inky.crossink.dev/

[lindelleric]

I love the global night mode! I did fins two issues with it:

• The book cover on the home screen is inverted. Can it just be displayed as normal while everything else is night?
• While on the home screen and reader, in night mode, and pressing the power button to put the device to sleep, it changes to light/day mode when it shows the "Going to sleep" box.

[lindelleric]

Yeah, that does make sense.

It might be a bug then, because in night mode I don’t see any white flashing during the periodic refreshes. Also when I bind ”screen refresh” to a front button and press that, the entire screen just turns entirely black as its refresh. It does remove all the ghosting and is very subtle and non-jarring (compared to having the white flashing). The same behavior exists also on the latest stable. Is that refresh perhaps a FAST_REFRESH? I don’t know if that is technically possible, but having that black-screen-refresh everywhere would be awesome.

Also! I found another bug. When in the settings page, in night mode, and the reader goes into ”light sleep”, with the moon in the lower corner, it switches to light mode. It might not be isolated to just the settings page.

Thanks for everything you are doing with crossink btw!

[uxjulia]

Oh, I should probably figure out what device model you have first haha. The different devices and display variants have subtle differences in how they handle refreshes.

Edit: and yes, your screen not doing a visible flash during a HALF_REFRESH is unexpected...

[lindelleric]

Does this help? esp32c3-7170E8
Or do you want the serial number?

Might be unexpected, but it is very nice and welcome!

[uxjulia]

Oh, I just meant like X3, X4, X4 Pro? I'm assuming X4? Also did you get the device recently? Within the past month or so?

[lindelleric]

I see! X3! I bought it from their official store a little over a month ago.

[OzzyMcBean]

Just flashed this via SD card... Seems like after flashing I'm stuck on my previous Quick Resume screen and the X3 won't wake up...

[OzzyMcBean]

It woke up again after using the reset button, but I've never had to do that before. :o

[OzzyMcBean]

It does seem to require a lot of presses to come out of Quick Resume each time. I think I'll flash back to previous.

I did want to report a possible bug on Quick Resume though! It doesn't seem to maintain the anti aliasing on the sleep screen, where before 1.5.1 I'm pretty sure it did.

Thanks again for all the effort you've put into this! I hate only ever giving feedback on bugs, hahaha! I don't mean it to sound like I'm complaining. Just trying to help flag up bugs when I find them!

[OzzyMcBean]

Just flashed back to RC-4; Quick Resume working just fine again. Anti aliasing still not preserved in either version during Quick Resume though. Much more apparent with images on the page, but you can notice it on the text as well.

[MisterWil]

The boot-up splash screen has been removed. You will now wake directly to your last screen

Can I request that this be made a toggle, or perhaps add some sort of indication that the device is in the process of waking?

My reasoning is that right now I'm reading a 14 book anthology that is contained in a single epub and waking takes upwards of 10 seconds on an X3 (if that matters). With this change it became difficult to know if the device was actually waking without that splash screen, not knowing if I had held the power button long enough or with enough pressure.

I should just split the books up, but that would require taking time away from reading... 😆

I did figure out a sort of workaround for now: Set the sleep screen to be quick resume and then the bottom left icon provides that now-waking indicator.

[uxjulia]

The boot-up splash screen has been removed. You will now wake directly to your last screen

Can I request that this be made a toggle, or perhaps add some sort of indication that the device is in the process of waking?

My reasoning is that right now I'm reading a 14 book anthology that is contained in a single epub and waking takes upwards of 10 seconds on an X3 (if that matters). With this change it became difficult to know if the device was actually waking without that splash screen, not knowing if I had held the power button long enough or with enough pressure.

I should just split the books up, but that would require taking time away from reading... 😆

10 seconds is not normal, and I fear even putting the splash screen back it'd do the same thing. The time it takes for the screen to change is the same time as it would take the bootscreen to load. Just to verify, temporarily change your sleep/wake to a short power-press action. With that, you only need to tap the power button and it'll wake. No timing needed. If it takes 10 seconds you know it has nothing to do with how long you're pressing the power button and the delay would happen regardless if there was a splash screen or not. Is your giant EPUB at the root of your SD by chance? When the device wakes, I think it might be reading some stuff off the SD card and scans everything at the root of the SD card and that's causing the delay. If you've got epubs at the root of your SD, try putting them into folders and seeing if that improves the timing.

I do eventually plan to add custom splash screens though. I had a working rudimentary version in development and then got distracted with X4 Pro stuff haha.. need to revisit that.

[OzzyMcBean]

There's also the option to upload the epub and split larger chapters into smaller ones in the advanced optimisation dropdown when uploading to the device! That might help?

[MisterWil]

10 seconds is not normal, and I fear even putting the splash screen back it'd do the same thing. The time it takes for the screen to change is the same time as it would take the bootscreen to load. Just to verify, temporarily change your sleep/wake to a short power-press action. With that, you only need to tap the power button and it'll wake. No timing needed. If it takes 10 seconds you know it has nothing to do with how long you're pressing the power button and the delay would happen regardless if there was a splash screen or not.

So, I actually did try changing the sleep/wake to a short press just to test it out and it did take just as long.

To clarify, I don't believe it has anything to do with how long I'm pressing the power button. With the quick resume sleep screen enabled, and my power button set to the default long press: when the X3 is sleeping as indicated by the moon icon, pressing and holding the power button will within ~1 second change to the three dots. I can then remove my finger from the power button and then it takes 10 or so seconds for the dots to disappear and the book be ready to read.

Is your giant EPUB at the root of your SD by chance? When the device wakes, I think it might be reading some stuff off the SD card and scans everything at the root of the SD card and that's causing the delay. If you've got epubs at the root of your SD, try putting them into folders and seeing if that improves the timing.

Yeah, I do have about 25 or so ebooks, including this one, in the root.

I went in and moved all the books, including the large one, that were in the root directory to a subdirectory and then tried again using the same quick resume sleep screen steps I described above. The book still took the same amount of time to open as before. I then double checked and opened a much smaller novella epub and that one was nearly instant once the quick resume three dots appeared.

[mylatestwork]

Quick feedback after updating my X4 Pro via Inky:

The device was only detected after removing the SD card and rebooting 1–2 times, but after that the update went through smoothly.

So far everything looks good. Ghosting seems reduced and the overall rendering/image quality also looks a bit better to me, although I didn’t see that mentioned in the changelog.

Most things seem to work fine. The Loading... message appears more often than before, especially when opening or closing a book, but that may just be related to updating stats.

Dark mode works well, including the inverted covers. Maybe cover inversion could be an optional toggle in the settings. The light/dark flashing during refresh doesn’t bother me if it helps reduce ghosting.

I have Sleep Mode assigned to a short power press, and I actually like that waking/powering it back on requires a long press. It prevents the device from accidentally turning on in a pocket or bag. I’m not sure if this is currently considered a bug or intended behavior, but for me it makes sense this way.

The only crash so far happened when I started the font download. According to the crash report, it was an actual firmware panic shortly after Wi-Fi connected. I already had fonts installed manually on the SD card because the built-in download never worked for me before, so maybe trying to download/update already existing fonts is related. Crash report attached.

These are just my first impressions though — I’ll need to use it for a few days in normal daily use to see if anything else turns out to be buggy.

[crash_report.txt](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/31727507/crash_report.txt)

[uxjulia]

Ah, the short-press to sleep and long-press to wake is a bug haha (and there have already been quite a few complaints both here and in Crosspoint about it). The reduced ghosting is due to the SDK side updates continually improving support for all the screen variants. I didn't want to claim improvements since it's been a hit or miss with one device over another, but things will constantly be improving as time goes on, Justin is doing great work on that.

[MahiFaiyaz]

Love the fixed Quick Lock feature! Would it make sense for Quick Lock to also toggle off the front light if it is enabled (and then toggle it back on when disabled if the front light was toggled via Quick Lock)? When I am using Quick Lock, it's usually when I need to put the book away for a few minutes, so it seems unnecessary to have the front light on, and I am assuming people aren't actively reading when Quick Locked.

Also, there seems to be a UI bug where

• pull down the front light menu while in the reader
• enable Quick Lock
  • Displays lock icon
• disable Quick Lock
  • Lock icon still displayed (however, the device isn't actually locked)

[uxjulia]

Fiiiine I'll turn the frontlight off when it's quick-locked. I would sometimes use the frontlight as a mini flashlight in my quick-lock use case (at night with a bunch of crap in my arms stumbling from one place to another in my house), but I guess I can use my phone.

[Tabascode]

I like that the light stays on in Quick Lock 😅
If I want the light off, I put the device to sleep.

[uxjulia]

I like that the light stays on in Quick Lock 😅 If I want the light off, I put the device to sleep.

Ahhh my people! haha seems like we're in the minority

[diversionmary]

I love this new RC and how all the menus and submenus feel considered and polished. Great job.

Question: how am I supposed to enable auto-page turn? Previously I’d select it from the reader menu.

Now, when I bring up the reader menu and click confirm it won’t turn on. The only way I can turn it on is to bind it to a button press (up + power) and then press confirm. What am I missing?

I usually read landscape, so my menus are landscape.

Edit: ah, if I go into reader menu, page turn, confirm then click the text behind the menu it doesn’t turn on. But if I do the same and hit the back button (x4 pro) it returns me to my book with auto page turn enabled.

That is not what I expect, and not how other reader menu functions work. Typically you can interact with the reader menu functions, then click the book behind the menu to return to the book.

[uxjulia]

Ah, looks like you found a bug with the auto page turn. Looks like if the value is the same, it doesn't think anything changed so doesn't apply it.