Mobile progress
I've been busy with coding the mobile client and I'm hoping to release a first version in a couple of weeks. I've just published what I have so far on Gitlab. I put it under GPLv2 (or later) this time around.
This shows the app running in minimized mode, or in cover mode
as Sailfish calls it. Tapping on the button on it will open the
app and open the first comic on the list in reader mode. The
default sort mode for comics is to put the comics with least new
pages first. In this case, that would be the second newest page
on this blog.
This is the app in reader mode. Clicking on the button at the
bottom opens a list of all pages in the comic and the navigation
buttons work as you'd expect. In this case, the comic would
have two unread pages (never mind that this is with stale data
from my development environment). Tapping the forward button
once would show the newest page in the archive and update the
user's bookmark. Another tap would mark the whole comic as read
and open -HEID for reading.
I've had all sorts of fun with connecting signals with all the ways how subscriptions can change and that all seems to work now. All together it's at over 4000 lines of QML markup and code. The main feature still missing before pushing this to openrepos and Harbour is bookmark storage and handling for unregistered users. I'm hoping that it would make the app more approachable towards new users to not insist on coming up with a user name and a password right away.
I still haven't tried the app on an actual phone. I have one but at this stage it's easier to just run it in the emulator. The WebView component used by Sailfish is pretty old and I hope it won't cause trouble with viewing comics.
It's been a learning experience but it wasn't too hard to get started with Qt. It's been a long while since I've last used C++ but it wasn't too hard to pick it up again. Somehow the language had gained lambdas since I last looked at it.
Once the dust has settled somewhat and I've seen what the reaction's been to my app (hopefully not nil) I'll start looking into making an Android version. I'd expect it to be a lot smoother sailing than with the initial Sailfish version. Not that this was all that difficult either, it just took some time to get here. I'm not promising any time frames for that version and I may need to take a bit of a break.
If anyone's interested in providing translations for the app then you're welcome to. I'll maintain the Finnish version myself.