Adventures with SONY Digital Paper

6/5/17 DPT-RP1 Update

Hardware

• Device really is much more responsive
• Device feels lighter and more frictiony on the back
• Device comes with a "friction cover" on the screen by default. (Previously this was an additional thing you could buy)
• Screen is flush with the border. No problems writing at the edges.
• Pen attachment is magnetic now. Option to secure to either side
• Old android style buttons removed. There is only a power/sleep and a home button. Power is on the top bevel, so no way to accidentally press it. Home is top center (and non-obvious).
• USB port now at top of device. No longer awkward to use while charging
• (NOT GOOD) Pen requires charging now. Does not charge super rapidly like iPad Pro.

Software / UX / UI

• (INSANE) Native Linux support removed
• You can easily open a fresh note from an existing view screen. The entire "home screen" and "workspace" model has been abandoned. Excellent. All features are available from two menus. Vertical toolbar is now a drop down menu on the right
• You can write in two-page mode now. Did not try writing in n-page mode
• Zoom totally reworked. Now you select and it zooms on that. No more accidental zoom with the shirt-sleeve.
• Area selection works with a free region and "smart" collapses a rectangle onto the text boundaries.
• (BAD) Area selection has been made more awkward: additional screenpresses required
• (BAD) Ability to assign button functions on stylus removed
• (VERY BAD) No DJVU support
• (EMBARASSING) Still no continuous vertical scroll mode for long-hand work

Previously on Adventures with SONY Digital Paper...

• http://www.github.com/kcroker/dpsprep

ls *.tif | parallel -j 2 tesseract -l eng {} {} pdf
pdftk *.pdf cat output final.pdf

Feature / Bug	DPT-S1 v1.5	DPT-RP1
Native Linux support	The device successfully works natively with Linux. Device appears as external USB drives if not in screen-sharing mode. The screen sharing feature in v1.5 also works natively, with the Oracle Sun Java 1.8 runtime environment. If you have a non-parenting window manager, you must "export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1" before running the app in order for it to resize correctly.	(BROKEN) The required interface application is not cross-platform. The device no longer registers as an external USB hard-drive on Linux (USB serial interface instead), making native file storage, management, and screen-sharing impossible.
Vertical scroll	The killer feature here, for longhand calculations, is that I don't need to be flipping between pages and recopying formulae from the previous page, and making mistakes. But this is precisely NOT a presently implemented feature. Why this was not implemented is baffling, especially considering that there is a beautifully intuitive horizontal swipe, and no gesture encoded for a vertical swipe, and zoom mode demonstrates that smooth scrolling is already easily handled by the device...	Feature still unimplemented
Text selection and repositioning/deletion	(ADDRESSED) This feature was added in the v1.5 firmware.	(BROKEN) Area selection requires an additional screenpress. Far worse, the stylus now has two buttons, but there is no ability to assign "area selection" to the second button. Extremely disappointing.
Send should attempt to enable wireless automatically, and then turn it back off	When I want to send something, I currently have to get into wireless settings, enable wireless, send, then go back to wireless settings disable wifi. Numerous screenpresses. Leaving wireless on really makes no sense *ever* from a lifetime perspective (10 minutes wireless sleep seems just as wasteful as leaving it on always).	(unable to test yet)
Ability to send a subset of note pages	If I have a large notepad with a lot of work, I usually only want to share a few pages of it with a colleague to get their input. e.g. the argument tidied up and made clean. Its unnatural to open a fresh document to write this in, and far more natural to send a portion of your active workbook.	(Unable to test yet)
Vertical Toolbar needs link history fwd/back	If I'm reading a journal article, and I want to see a cited paper, I click the in-document link, which takes me to the article's references pages. Cool. Now I've got the reference, and I want to go back to where I was. This should be a single click operation, but instead I have to open the page "dialpad" and click "go back". One press, long render delay, second press...Instead of a single press.	(Vertical toolbar has been removed, but I was not able to check the internal document link flow yet)
Deletion needs to slice vectors	If I'm trying to draw a technical diagram, made 3D representations, etc I need to delete hidden lines (I'm not a genius artist here). Something akin to Xfig's chop, especially when reckoned against the Text selection and repositioning feature would make a lot of sense.	Feature still unimplemented
Multiple DAV servers	It would be nice to be able to synchronize with multiple repositories, independently, as I work in different communities simultaneously	(Unable to test yet)
Option to disable delete confirmations	Its difficult to delete a page if you don't have the vertical toolbar open. Often, I find myself explicitly opening the vertical toolbar to do something like a deletion.	Feature still unimplemented
Too many screen presses to Save/Load workspace	Screen presses and dialogues are slow, this is the reality of the device and is not a serious hindrance if significant effort is made to reduce these to only the barest necessary. Since switching between workspaces is a frequent task, an option to always "Save before switch" would be great. There is also no need to always tell me "Workspace saved."	(ADDRESSED) Workspaces have been removed
Remove browser functionality (ADDRESSED)	Original criticism: Too many people on the Internet complain about the device being "bad at browsing the internet." These people are silly, as this tool is expressly not for the purpose of browsing the Internet. It is so liberating to be able to have my entire library at my fingers, and not have the harassing and distracting presence of the entire world also at my fingers. One of SONY's best decisions was to castrate this "feature", and I hope they remove it entirely. Reasonable response: Minimal browser functionality is required for various sign-ins and authentication with wireless services in many locations.
Ability to disable specific gestures	The swipe LR to change pages is very natural, but I rarely use the zoom feature. When my shirt sleeve brushes over the screen, this often triggers a zoom situation which delays writing in the queue and is annoying to leave	(ADDRESSED) The zoom feature has been reworked. The user now selects an area (like area select) and zoom happens here. Once in zoom mode, it works as previously.
Workspace tabs should support reordering	If I have a workspace with many open tabs, I need to switch between them, but only the two tabs nearest to my active tab are displayed. This sucks if I've got the article open at Tab 9 and the notes open at Tab 3.	(ADDRESSED) Entire notion of Workspace has been removed.
Prioritize page swipe over text smooth	I write something, then quickly switch to something else, I don't care if the text is smooth because I'm not going to be looking at it immediately. Easy performance gain.	(ADDRESSED) With increased hardware speed across the board, this is no longer an issue for me.
Bluetooth send/receive	It would be faster to be able to exchange content to another device via Bluetooth, as I do not require an inter mediating internet if I am collaborating with someone using my technology away from civilization.	(ADDRESSED) The device has Bluetooth and NFC capabilities in hardware. I did not get to test though, especially between another DPT device
Computer charging should not keep device in harddrive mode	(WORKAROUND) By placing the device in screen-share mode (which works with Linux since it is a Java app, contact me if you have questions), you can use the device while it charges. This is awkward to enable though, requiring 6-8 screen presses.	(unable to test)
Second USB port on the side	The device is awkward to hold in portrait mode when charging	(ADDRESSED) The USB port has been moved to the top of the device
Vertical toolbar Left/Right placement	(FEATURE PRESENT) This was stashed under the settings, I missed it! :D
Writing deteriorates at screen edges	This may just be a hardware limitation, but the writing gets compressed inward at the edges of the screen, and this is slightly annoying	(ADDRESSED) The new device has the screen flush with the boundary, so there is no bevel. Writing works prefectly all the way to the edges.

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