entered "wolle" , got results for "wollstonecraft"

Hi everyone! I'm subscribed to the old Infinite Library repo from the first hackathon, so I get all the notifications. Since this project looks super interesting, I thought I'd build it and give it a try. Sadly, I just can't figure out how to get it to build. Here's what I've tried:

git clone https://github.com/InfiniteLibrary/infinite-electron
cd infinite-electron
yarn

and here's what I get:

$ yarn
yarn install v0.20.0
[1/4] Resolving packages...
success Already up-to-date.
$ concurrently "install-app-deps" "node node_modules/fbjs-scripts/node/check-dev-engines.js package.json"
[0] zsh:1: command not found: install-app-deps
[0] install-app-deps exited with code 127
[1] node node_modules/fbjs-scripts/node/check-dev-engines.js package.json exited with code 0
error Command failed with exit code 1.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/install for documentation about this command.

I tried npm install -g install-app-deps, and that gives me the executable install-app-deps, but then I get the same error as above, even after restarting the session.

I think that what we have right now has the potential to get people excited, maybe even some people who can help us implement the finishing pieces. I'd like to publicize this through the Unglue.it mailing list (about 4,000 people), through the Knight Foundation (which sponsored some of our work on GITenberg), DPLA, and the CODEX hackathon network; we can see if hacker news likes it.

What do others think?

The desktop file is lacking a Categories= entry in the *.desktop file.

According to the menu spec,

By including one of the Main Categories in an application's desktop entry file, the application will be ensured that it will show up in a section of the application menu dedicated to this category. If multiple Main Categories are included in a single desktop entry file, the entry may appear more than once in the menu.

Hence, please add at least one of the following in the Categories= key.

In addition, you could specify one or more from the longer list of Additional Categories.

Please test the result with desktop-file-validate and make sure it passes.

electron-builder offers native support for this since v19.22.1.

Reference: AppImage/appimage.github.io#2

Infinite Library Reader: Next steps

cc: @fchasen @ekmartin @eshellman

Now that we have a basic version of the app working (hooray!), it would be great to polish things up over the next few weeks/months as time allows. I'm happy to continue doing UI work and implementing other features where I can.

Here are some things I can think we may want to tackle in future development:

• Resize handling (just merged this in to master, but the release has not been updated)
• Get the "my books" feature working – maybe store a list of the user's "saved" books in LocalStorage?
• Plug into the unglue.it API for real now that @eshellman has opened it up

Any others?

Currently it is hard for users to download and try infinite-electron on Linux. One has to install yarn, and run multiple commands. It would be great if there was an easier way: download one file, and be ready to roll.

Providing an AppImage would have, among others, these advantages:

• Works for most Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, CentOS, elementaryOS, Linux Mint, and others)
• One app = one file = super simple for users: just download one AppImage file, make it executable, and run
• No unpacking or installation necessary
• No root needed
• No system libraries changed
• Just one format for all major distributions
• Works out of the box, no installation of runtimes needed
• Optional(!) desktop integration with appimaged
• Binary delta updates, e.g., for continuous builds (only download the binary diff) using AppImageUpdate
• Can GPG2-sign your AppImages (inside the file)

Here is an overview of projects that are already distributing upstream-provided, official AppImages.

electron-builder has support for generating AppImages built in. In fact, it is the default for Linux.

Electron supports a few different methods for running an app without the gray menu bar on MacOS (apparently this works on some Linux distros as well).

In my opinion this goes a long way towards making the app feel "native". Compare this (default navbar):

To this (no navbar):

Of course, the UI elements in the top left start to collide and will need to be adjusted for this approach:

I'm going to explore some design solutions for this problem in the ui-improvements branch, and if folks like the results I'll merge into master.