12  Plugins

Plugins are programs that Rockbox can load and run. Only one plugin can be loaded at a time. Plugins have exclusive control over the user interface. This means you cannot switch back and forth between a plugin and Rockbox. When a plugin is loaded, you need to exit it to return to the Rockbox interface. Most plugins will not interfere with music playback but some of them will stop playback while running. Plugins have the file extension .rock. Most of them can be started from Browse Plugins in the Main Menu.

Viewer plugins get started automatically by opening an associated file (i.e. text files, chip8 games), or from the Open with option on the Context Menu.

12.1  Games

See also the Chip-8 emulator in section 12.3.3, Frotz in section 12.3.4, and ZXBox in section 12.3.14.

12.1.1  2048

2048 is a simple, addictive puzzle game played by moving tiles in around on a 4x4 grid. Tiles slide as far as possible in the direction chosen by the player each turn until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid. If two tiles of the same number collide while moving, they merge into a tile with the total value of the two tiles that collided. The resulting tile cannot merge with another the same move. After each move, a tile with the value of 2 or 4 is created in an empty spot on the grid.

The game is won when a tile with a value of 2048 is created, and the player loses when there are no more possible moves.

Note: On players with a small screen tiles with a value greater than 1000 are shortened to “1k”, “2k” and so forth (k is the abbreviation of kilo, which – in computer talk – means a multiple of 1024).

12.1.2  Blackjack

Blackjack, a game played in casinos around the world, is now available in the palm of your hand! The rules are simple: try to get as close to 21 without going over or simply beat out the dealer for the best hand. Although this may not seem difficult, blackjack is a game renowned for the strategy involved. This version includes the ability to split, buy insurance, and double down.

For the full set of rules to the game, and other fascinating information visit
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/blackjack-_rules.php

12.1.3  BrickMania

BrickMania is a clone of the classic game Breakout. The aim of the game is to destroy all the bricks by hitting them with the ball once or more. Sometimes a special item falls down when you destroy a brick. For a special item to take effect, you must catch it with the paddle. Look out for the bad ones.

Special items

12.1.4  Bubbles

The goal of the game is to beat each level as quickly as possible by clearing the board of all bubbles. Bubbles are removed from the board when a cluster of three of more of the same type is formed. The game is over when any bubbles on the board extend below the bottom line. To make things more difficult, the entire board is shifted down every time a certain number of shots have been fired. Points are awarded depending on how quickly the level was completed.

12.1.5  Chessbox

Chessbox is a one-person chess game with computer artificial intelligence. The chess engine is a port of GNU Chess 2 by John Stanback.

It also works as a PGN file viewer. Instead of executing the game from the plugin menu, look for any file with .pgn extension in the file browser and execute it. Chessbox will show the list of matches included in the file and allow you to select the one you want to watch. After that, you can scroll back and forth through the moves of the game. If the menu is invoked while in the viewer, the user is allowed to select a new match from the same file or quit the game.

“Force play” while the computer is thinking will cause it to make its move immediately. If done while it’s your turn, the computer will move for you and flip the board so that you are playing from the other side. If you want, you can force play an entire game and watch the artificial intelligence fight against itself.

When you quit the game the current state will be saved and restored when you resume the game. The menu also allows the user to reload the last game saved, save the current position and start a new game without having to quit the game.

Keys

12.1.6  Chopper

Navigate a cavernous maze without banging into walls, the ceiling, or the floor. How long can you fly your chopper?

12.1.7  Dice

Dice is a simple dice rolling simulator. Select number and type of dice to roll in a menu and start by choosing “Roll Dice”. The result is shown as individual numbers as well as the total of the rolled dice.

12.1.8  Flipit

Flipping the colour of the token under the cursor also flips the tokens above, below, left and right of the cursor. The aim is to end up with a screen containing tokens of only one colour.

12.1.9  Goban

Goban is a a plugin for playing, viewing and recording games of Go (also known as Weiqi, Baduk, Igo and Goe). It uses standard Smart Game Format (SGF) files for saving and loading games. You can find a short introduction to Go at http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhatIsGo and more information about SGF files can be read at http://senseis.xmp.net/?SmartGameFormat or the SGF specification at http://www.red-_bean.com/sgf/.

This plugin can load all modern SGF files (file format 3 or 4) with few problems. It attempts to preserve SGF properties which it doesn’t understand, and most common SGF properties are handled fully. It is possible to view (and edit if you like) Kogo’s Joseki Dictionary (http://waterfire.us/joseki.htm) with this plugin, although the load and save times can be on the order of a minute or two on particularly slow devices. Large SGF files may stop audio playback for the duration of the plugin’s run in order to free up more memory and some very large SGF files will not even load on devices with little available memory.

Note: The plugin does NOT support SGF files with multiple games in one file. These are rare, but if you have one don’t even try it (the file will most likely be corrupted if you save over it). You have been warned.

The file /sgf/gbn_def.sgf is used by the plugin to store any unsaved changes in the most recently loaded game. This means that if you forget to save your changes, you should load /sgf/gbn_def.sgf immediately to offload the changes to another file. If you load another file first then your changes will be lost permanently. The /sgf/gbn_def.sgf file is also the file loaded if another is not selected.

The information panel which displays the current move number may also contain these markers:

Controls

Menus

Main Menu.

The main menu for game setup and access to other menus.

New.

Create a new game with your choice of board size and handicaps.

Save.

Save the current state of the game. It will be saved to /sgf/gbn_def.sgf unless otherwise set.

Save As.

Save to a specified file.

Game Info.

View and modify the metadata of the current game.

Playback Control.

Control the playback of the current playlist and modify the volume of your player.

Zoom Level.

Zoom in or out on the board. If you set the zoom level, it will be saved and used again the next time you open this plugin.

Options.

Open the Options Menu.

Context Menu.

Open the Context Menu which allows you to set play modes and other tools.

Quit.

Leave the plugin. Any unsaved changes are saved to /sgf/gbn_def.sgf.

Game Info.

The menu for modifying game info (metadata) of the current game. This information will be saved to the SGF file and can be viewed in almost all SGF readers.

Basic Info.

Shows a quick view of the basic game metadata, if any has been set (otherwise does nothing). This option does not allow editing.

Time Limit.

The time limit of the current game.

Overtime.

The overtime settings of the current game.

Result.

The result of the current game. This text must follow the format specified at http://www.red-_bean.com/sgf/properties.html#RE to be read by other SGF readers. Some examples are B+R (Black wins by resignation), B+5.5 (Black wins by 5.5 points), W+T (White wins on Time).

Handicap.

The handicap of the current game.

Komi.

The komi of the current game (compensation to the white player for black having the first move).

Ruleset.

The name of the ruleset in use for this game. The NZ and GOE rulesets include suicide as a legal move (for multi-stone suicide only); the rest do not.

Black Player.

The name of the black player.

Black Rank.

Black’s rank, in dan or kyu.

Black Team.

The name of black’s team, if any.

White Player.

The name of the white player.

White Rank.

White’s rank, in dan or kyu.

White Team.

The name of white’s team, if any.

Date.

The date that this game took place. This text must follow the format specified at http://www.red-_bean.com/sgf/properties.html#DT to be read by other SGF readers.

Event.

The name of the event which this game was a part of, if any.

Place.

The place that this game took place.

Round.

If part of a tournament, the round number for this game.

Done.

Return to the previous menu.

Options.

Customize the behavior of the plugin in certain ways.

Show Child Variations?

Enable this to mark child variations on he board if there are more than one. Note: variations which don’t start with a move are not visible in this way.

Disable Idle Poweroff?

Enable this if you do not want the player to turn off after a certain period of inactivity (depends on your global Rockbox settings).

Idle Autosave Time.

Set the amount of idle time to wait before automatically saving any unsaved changes. These autosaves go to the file /sgf/gbn_def.sgf regardless of if you have loaded a game or used Save As to save the game before or not. Set to Off to disable this functionality completely.

Automatically Show Comments?

If this is enabled and you navigate to a node containing game comments, they will automatically be displayed.

Context Menu.

The menu for choosing different play modes and tools, adding or editing comments, adding pass moves, or switching between sibling variations.

Play Mode.

Play moves normally on the board. If there are child moves from the current node, this mode will let you follow variations by simply playing the first move in the sequence. Unless it is following a variation, this mode will not allow you to play illegal moves. This is the default mode before another is set after loading a game or creating a new one.

Add Black Mode.

Add black stones to the board as desired. These stones are not moves and do not perform captures or count as ko threats.

Add White Mode.

Add white stones to the board as desired. These stones are not moves and do not perform captures or count as ko threats.

Erase Stone Mode.

Remove stones from the board as desired. These removed stones are not counted as captured, they are simply removed.

Pass.

Play a single pass move. This does not change the mode of play.

Next Variation.

If the game is at the first move in a variation, this will navigate to the next variation after the current one. This is the only way to reach variations which start with adding or removing stones, as you cannot follow them by “playing” the same move.

Force Play Mode.

The same as Play Mode except that this mode will allow you to play illegal moves such as retaking a ko immediately without a ko threat, suicide on rulesets which don’t allow it (including single stone suicide), and playing a move where there is already a stone.

Mark Mode.

Add generic marks to the board, or remove them.

Circle Mode.

Add circle marks to the board, or remove them.

Square Mode.

Add square marks to the board, or remove them.

Triangle Mode.

Add triangle marks to the board, or remove them.

Label Mode.

Add one character labels to the board. Each label starts at the letter ‘a’ and each subsequent application of a label will increment the letter. To remove a label, click on it until it cycles through the allowed letters and disappears.

Add/Edit Comment.

Add or edit a comment at the current node.

Done.

Go back to the previous screen.

12.1.10  Jackpot

This is a jackpot slot machine game. At the beginning of the game you have 20$. Payouts are given when three matching symbols come up.

12.1.11  Jewels

Jewels is a simple yet addicting game which involves swapping pairs of jewels in order to form connected segments of three or more of the same type.

The goal of the game is to score as many points as possible before running out of available moves. Higher points are awarded to larger combos. The game advances to the next level after every one hundred points and randomly clears several jewels.

In puzzle mode the aim of the game is to connect the puzzles, by skillfully swapping pairs of jewels.

12.1.12  Maze

This is a simple maze generator that creates perfect mazes that have only one solution.

12.1.13  MazezaM

The goal of this puzzle game is to escape a dungeon consisting of ten “mazezams”. These are rooms containing rows of blocks which can be shifted left or right. You can move the rows only by pushing them and if you move the rows carelessly, you will get stuck. You can have another go by selecting “retry level” from the menu, but this will cost you a life. You start the game with three lives. Luckily, there are checkpoints at levels four and eight.

12.1.14  Minesweeper

The classic game of minesweeper. The aim of the game is to uncover all of the squares on the board. If a mine is uncovered then the game is over. If a mine is not uncovered, then the number of mines adjacent to the current square is revealed. The aim is to use the information you are given to work out where the mines are and avoid them. When the player is certain that they know the location of a mine, it can be tagged to avoid accidentally “stepping” on it.

12.1.15  Pegbox

To beat each level, you must destroy all of the pegs. If two like pegs are pushed into each other they disappear except for triangles which form a solid block and crosses which allow you to choose a replacement block.

12.1.16  Pong

Pong is a simple one or two player “tennis game”. Whenever a player misses the ball the other scores.

The game starts in demo mode, with the CPU controlling both sides.

As soon as a button to control one of the paddles is pressed, control of that paddle passes to the player, so for a single player game, just press the appropriate buttons to control the side you want to play. For a two player game, both players should just press the appropriate buttons for their side.

12.1.17  Reversi

This is a simple implementation of the Reversi game. The objective of the game is to have a majority of own coloured pieces showing at the end of the game. The game rules can be found in the internet.

You can choose to play manually (you place both the white and dark pieces) or to play against a (not very smart) robot.

12.1.18  Robotfindskitten

In this game, you are robot (#). Your job is to find kitten. This task is complicated by the existence of various things which are not kitten. Robot must touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game ends when robotfindskitten.

12.1.19  Rockblox

Rockblox is a Rockbox version of the classic falling blocks game from Russia. The aim of the game is to make the falling blocks of different shapes form full rows. Whenever a row is completed, it will be cleared away, and you gain points. For every ten lines completed, the game level increases, making the blocks fall faster. If the pile of blocks reaches the ceiling, the game is over.

12.1.20  Rockblox1d

Rockblox1d is a game for people who find rockblox too hard. In this version the second dimension is missing so the user only has to move the bricks down. No horizontal moving anymore and no need to rotate the brick!

12.1.21  Sgt-Puzzles

The games that begin with the “sgt-” prefix are ports of certain puzzles from Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection, an open source collection of single-player puzzle games.

Note: Certain puzzles may crash when run with demanding configurations. To prevent this, avoid setting extreme configuration values.

Puzzle Documentation

For documentation on the games included, please see the “Extensive Help” menu option from inside the plugin to read puzzle-specific instructions or visit their official website at https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/.

Dynamic Font Sizing

By default, each game will only use one of two fonts in drawing: the hard-coded system font for fixed-width text, and the theme’s UI font for variable-width text. For improved puzzle rendering, each puzzle is capable of using a special font pack when it is installed. This font pack is available from http://download.rockbox.org/useful/sgt-_fonts.zip. To install, simply extract the contents of this file to the /.rockbox/fonts/ directory on your device. Once this has been done, each game will dynamically load and use properly-sized fonts whenever needed.

Note: On hard disk-based devices, this may cause a slight delay as the disk spins up to load the fonts when a puzzle is first started, and after using the “Extensive Help” feature.

“Zoom In” Feature

The “Zoom In” feature is available as an option from the pause menu. It has two modes: viewing mode, and interaction mode. The current mode is indicated in the title bar at the bottom of the screen. This feature is most useful with low-resolution devices and large puzzles.

Viewing mode is entered when the “Zoom In” option is selected, or when Power is pressed in interaction mode. It allows you to pan around an enlarged version of the game. The directional keys pan the image by a small amount in their respective directions, and Select should toggle interaction mode. To return to the pause menu from viewing mode, press Power.

In interaction mode, activated from viewer mode by pressing Select, your device’s buttons all function as they do in the normal gameplay mode, with the exception of Power, which returns the game to viewing mode, whereas in the normal gameplay mode it would return directly to the pause menu. To return to the pause menu from interaction mode, press Power twice.

Note: Using certain features such as the “Zoom In” option may stop audio playback. This is normal, as the game requires additional memory from the system, which will automatically stop playback. The “Playback Control” menu will be hidden whenever this happens. Exiting the game will allow the resumption of audio playback.

12.1.22  Sliding Puzzle

The classic sliding puzzle game. Rearrange the pieces so that you can see the whole picture, or switch to number tiles if you like it a little easier Includes one picture puzzle. You can also use the sliding puzzle plugin as a viewer for supported image types, to turn your own pictures into a puzzle.

Key controls:

12.1.23  Snake

This is the popular snake game. The aim is to grow your snake as large as possible by eating the dots that appear on the screen. The game will end when the snake touches either the borders of the screen or itself.

12.1.24  Snake 2

Another version of the Snake game. Move the snake around, and eat the apples that pop up on the screen. Each time an apple is eaten, the snake gets longer. The game ends when the snake hits a wall, or runs into itself.

In game A, the maze stays the same, in game B after an increasing number of apples eaten the maze is replaced by a new one.

12.1.25  Sokoban

The object of the game is to push boxes into their correct position in a crowded warehouse with a minimal number of pushes and moves. The boxes can only be pushed, never pulled, and only one can be pushed at a time.

Sokoban may be used as a viewer for viewing saved solutions and playing external level sets with the .sok extension. Level sets should be in the standard Sokoban text format or RLE (Run Length Encoded). For more information about the level format, see http://sokobano.de/wiki/index.php?title=Level_format

Some places where can you can find level sets:

• http://www.sourcecode.se/sokoban/levels.php
• http://sokobano.de/en/levels.php

Note that some level sets may contain levels that are too large for this version of Sokoban and are unplayable as a result.

12.1.26  Solitaire

This is the classic Klondike solitaire game for Rockbox. This is probably the best-known solitaire in the world. Many people do not even realize that other games exist. Though the name may not be familiar, the game itself certainly is. This is due in no small part to Microsoft’s inclusion of the the game in every version of Windows. Though popular, the odds of winning are rather low, perhaps one in thirty hands.

For the full set of rules to the game, and other interesting information visit http://www.solitairecentral.com/rules/Klondike.html

12.1.27  Spacerocks

Spacerocks is a clone of the old arcade game Asteroids. The goal of the game is to blow up the asteroids and avoid being hit by them. Once in a while, a UFO will appear – shoot this for extra points.

12.1.28  Star

This is a puzzle game. It is actually a rewrite of Star, a game written by CDK designed for the hp48 calculator.

Rules: Take all of the “o”s to go to the next level. You can switch control between the filled circle, which can take “o”s, and the filled square, which is used as a mobile wall to allow your filled circle to get to places on the screen it could not otherwise reach. The block cannot take “o”s.

12.1.29  Sudoku

Sudoku in Rockbox can act as both a plugin and a viewer. When starting Sudoku from the Browse Plugins menu, a random game will be generated automatically, and an estimate of its difficulty (very easy, easy, medium, hard or fiendish) will be displayed on the screen. New games can be generated from the Generate menu option. When “playing” an existing Sudoku game file from Rockbox’ file browser the plugin is invoked as viewer. The selected Sudoku will get loaded and you can start solving it. The sudoku games need to be stored as text files with the extension .ss as single file per game.

You can create and save your own grids under the New menu option. Enter the menu (as described in the key table below) when you have finished and enter the full path to save to including the .ss extension (e.g. /sudoku/new.ss).

The scratchpad

When you play Sudoku on paper most people like to mark numbers in cells that are possible candidates for the cells. This can be done with the scratchpad, shown as separate column. Change the number under the cursor to the number you want to put on the scratchpad and press the scratchpad button, the number will then be added. If the number was already on the scratchpad it will get removed again. The column is stored separately for every cell on the board. The stored values can be displayed inline as small dots by enabling the Show Markings settings.

Note: The scratchpad is not saved when saving the game.

Some places where can you can find .ss files:

• Simple Sudoku (Advanced Puzzle Packs 1 and 2 located near the bottom of that page): http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/
• Kjell’s Sudoku generator/solver: http://kjell.haxx.se/sudoku/

12.1.30  Wormlet

Wormlet is a multi-worm game on a multi-threaded multi-functional Rockbox console. You navigate a hungry little worm. Help your worm to find food and to avoid poisoned argh-tiles. The goal is to turn your tiny worm into a big worm for as long as possible.

Game controls:

The game

Use the control keys of your worm to navigate around obstacles and find food. Worms do not stop moving except when dead. Dead worms are no fun. Be careful as your worm will try to eat anything that you steer it across. It won’t distinguish whether it is edible or not.

Food.

The small square hollow pieces are food. Move the worm over a food tile to eat it. After eating the worm grows. Each time a piece of food has been eaten a new piece of food will pop up somewhere. Unfortunately for each new piece of food that appears two new “argh” pieces will appear, too.

Argh.

An “argh” is a black square poisoned piece - slightly bigger than food - that makes a worm say “Argh!” when run into. A worm that eats an “argh” is dead. Thus eating an “argh” must be avoided under any circumstances. “Arghs” have the annoying tendency to accumulate.

Worms.

Thou shall not eat worms. Neither other worms nor thyself. Eating worms is blasphemous cannibalism, not healthy and causes instant death. And it doesn’t help anyway: the other worm isn’t hurt by the bite. It will go on creeping happily and eat all the food you left on the table.

Walls.

Don’t crash into the walls. Walls are not edible. Crashing a worm against a wall causes it a headache it doesn’t survive.

Game over.

The game is over when all worms are dead. The longest worm wins the game.

Pause the game.

Press to pause the game. Press it again to resume the game.

Stop the game.

There are two ways to stop a running game.

• If you want to quit Wormlet entirely simply hit . The game will stop immediately and you will return to the game menu.
• If you want to stop the game and still see the screen hit . This freezes the game. If you hit button again a new game starts with the same configuration. To return to the games menu you can hit . A stopped game can not be resumed.

The scoreboard

On the right side of the game field is the score board. For each worm it displays its status and its length. The top most entry displays the state of worm 1, the second worm 2 and the third worm 3. When a worm dies its entry on the score board turns black.

Len:

Here the current length of the worm is displayed. When a worm is eating food it grows by one pixel for each step it moves.

Hungry:

That’s the normal state of a worm. Worms are always hungry and want to eat. It is good to have a hungry worm since it means that your worm is alive. But it is better to get your worm growing.

Growing:

When a worm has eaten a piece of food it starts growing. For each step it moves over food it can grow by one pixel. One piece of food lasts for 7 steps. After your worm has moved 7 steps the food is used up. If another piece of food is eaten while growing it will increase the size of the worm for another 7 steps.

Crashed:

This indicates that a worm has crashed against a wall.

Argh:

If the score board entry displays “Argh!” it means the worm is dead because it tried to eat an “argh”. Until we can make the worm say “Argh!” it is your job to say “Argh!” aloud.

Wormed:

The worm tried to eat another worm or even itself. That’s why it is dead now. Making traps for other players with a worm is a good way to get them out of the game.

Hints

• Initially you will be busy with controlling your worm. Try to avoid other worms and crawl far away from them. Wait until they curl up themselves and collect the food afterwards. Don’t worry if the other worms grow longer than yours - you can catch up after they’ve died.
• When you are more experienced watch the tactics of other worms. Those worms controlled by artificial stupidity head straight for the nearest piece of food. Let the other worm have its next piece of food and head for the food it would probably want next. Try to put yourself between the opponent and that food. From now on you can ‘control’ the other worm by blocking it. You could trap it by making a 1 pixel wide U-turn. You also could move from food to food and make sure you keep between your opponent and the food. So you can always reach it before your opponent.

12.1.31  Xobox

Xobox is a simple clone of the well known arcade game Qix. The aim of the game is to section off parts of the arena with your trail in order to remove that section from the game. Be careful not to get in the way of enemy balls because, if they hit you or your trail, you lose a life. To finish a level you have to section off more than 75%.

12.2  Demos

12.2.1  Bounce

This demo is of the word “Rockbox” bouncing across the screen. There is also an analogue clock in the background. In Scroll mode the bouncing text is replaced by a different one scrolling from right to left.

Available options are:

Xdist/Ydist.

The distance to X axis and Y axis respectively

Xadd/Yadd.

How fast the code moves on the sine curve on each axis

Xsane/Ysane.

Changes the appearance of the bouncing.

12.2.2  Credits

The credits plugin scrolls the entire list of the names of all the Rockbox contributors after displaying the Rockbox logo and version. This plugin is called when selecting Version from the System section of the Rockbox main menu. Exit at any time by pressing Left.

12.2.3  Cube

This is a rotating cube screen saver in 3D.

12.2.4  Demystify

Demystify is a screen saver like demo.

12.2.5  FFT

This plugin is a basic frequency analyzer with 3 different frequency-amplitude plots (lines, bars, and spectrogram).

12.2.6  Fire

Fire is a demo displaying a fire effect.

12.2.7  Fractals

This demonstration draws fractal images from the Mandelbrot set using the greyscale engine.

12.2.8  Logo

Demo showing the Rockbox logo bouncing around the screen.

12.2.9  Matrix

This plugin is a visual demo resembling the scrolling code from “The Matrix” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix).

12.2.10  Mosaique

This simple graphics demo draws a mosaic picture on the screen of the player.

12.2.11  Oscilloscope

This demo shows the shape of the sound samples that make up the music being played. At faster speed rates, the player is less responsive to user input and music may start to skip.

Keys

12.2.12  PictureFlow

PictureFlow provides a visualisation of your albums with their associated cover art. It is possible to start playback of the selected album from PictureFlow. Playback will start from the selected track. The PictureFlow plugin will continue to run while your tracks are played.

Requirements

PictureFlow uses both the album art (see section C) and database (see section 4.2) features of Rockbox. It is therefore important that these are working correctly before attempting to use PictureFlow. In addition, there are some other points of which to be aware:

• PictureFlow will accept album art larger than the dimensions of the screen, but the larger the dimensions, the longer they will take to scale.

Keys

Main Menu

Go to WPS.

Leave PictureFlow and enter the while playing screen.

Playback Control.

Control music playback from within the plugin.

Settings.

Enter the settings menu.

Return.

Exit menu.

Quit.

Exit PictureFlow plugin.

Settings Menu

Show FPS.

Displays frames per second on screen.

Spacing.

The distance between the front edges of the side slides, i.e. changes the degree of overlap of the side slides. A larger number means less overlap. Scales with zoom.

Centre margin.

The distance, in screen pixels, with zoom at 100, between the centre and side slides. Scales with zoom.

Number of slides.

Sets the number of slides at each side, including the centre slide. Therefore if set to 4, there will be 3 slides on the left, the centre slide, and then 3 slides on the right.

Zoom.

Changes the distance at which slides are rendered from the “camera”.

Show album title.

Allows setting the album title to be shown above or below the cover art, or not at all.

Resize Covers.

Set whether to automatically resize the covers or to leave them at their original size.

Rebuild cache.

Rebuild the PictureFlow cache. This is needed in order for PictureFlow to pick up new albums, and may occasionally be needed if albums are removed.

12.2.13  Plasma

Plasma is a demo displaying a 80’s style retro plasma effect.

12.2.14  Rocklife

This an implementation of J. H. Conway’s Game of Life (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life for a detailed description).

Rockbox can open files with a configuration description (.cells files). Just “play” such file and the game configuration stored in it will be loaded into this plugin.

A .cells file is a text file. A capital ‘O’ marks a live cell, a dot marks a dead cell, all other characters are ignored. Everything on a line starting with an exclamation sign (and including it) is a comment and is ignored.

12.2.15  Snow

This demo replicates snow falling on your screen. If you love winter, you will love this demo. Or maybe not. Press Power or Long Power to quit.

12.2.16  Starfield

Starfield simulation (like the classic screensaver).

12.2.17  VU meter

This is a VU meter, which displays the volume of the left and right audio channels. There are 3 types of meter selectable. The analogue meter is a classic needle style. The digital meter is modelled after LED volume displays, and the mini-meter option allows for the display of small meters in addition to the main display (as above). From the settings menu the decay time for the meter (its memory), the meter type and the meter scale can be changed.

12.3  Viewers

Viewers are plugins which are associated with specific file extensions. They cannot be run directly but are started by “playing” the associated file. Viewers are stored in the /.rockbox/rocks/viewers/ directory.

Note: Some viewer plugins can only be used by selecting the Open With... option from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2).

12.3.1  Shortcuts

The Shortcuts Plugin allows you to jump to places within the file browser without having to navigate there manually. The plugin works with .link files. A .link file is just a text file with every line containing the name of the file or the directory you want to quickly jump to. All names should be full absolute names, i.e. they should start with a /. Directory names should also end with a /.

Note: This plugin cannot read Microsoft Windows shortcuts (.lnk files). These are handled by a separate plugin; see section 12.3.2.

How to create .link files

You can use your favourite text editor to create a .link file on the PC an then copy the file to the player. Or you can use the context menu on either a file or a directory in the file browser tree, and use the “Add to shortcuts” menu option. This will append a line with the full name of the file or the directory to the shortcuts.link file in the root directory of the player. (The file will be created if it does not exist yet.) You can later rename the automatically created shortcuts.link file or move it to another directory if you wish. Subsequent calls of the context menu will create it again.

How to use .link files, i.e. jump to desired places

To use a .link file just “play” it from the file browser. This will show you a list with the entries in the file. Selecting one of them will then exit the plugin and leave you within the directory selected, or with the file selected in the file browser. You can then play the file or do with it whatever you want. The file will not be “played” automatically.

If the .link file contains only one entry no list will be shown, you will directly jump to that location. The file shortcuts.link in the root directory is an exception. After “playing” it, the list will be shown even if the file contains just one entry.

If the list you are seeing is from shortcuts.link in the root directory, you can delete the selected entry by pressing Home. Deleting entries from other .link files is not possible.

Advanced Usage

Placing the line “#Display last path segments=n” (where n is a number) in the beginning of a .link file will leave just the last n segments of the entries when they are shown. For example, if n is chosen to be 1, then the entry /MyMusic/collection/song.mp3 will be shown as song.mp3. This allows you to hide common path prefixes.

You can also provide a custom display name for each entry individually. To do so, append a tabulator character after the entry’s path followed by your custom name. That name will then be used for showing the entry. For example:

12.3.2  Windows Shortcuts

This plugin follows Microsoft Windows Explorer shortcuts (.lnk files). In Rockbox, these types of shortcuts will show up as .lnk files. To follow a shortcut, just “play” a .lnk file from the file browser. The plugin will navigate the file browser to the linked file (which will be highlighted) or directory (which will be opened). Linked files will not be automatically opened; you must do this manually.

Only relative links across the same volume are supported.

Note: You may like to use native Rockbox shortcuts instead. These can be created from within Rockbox itself and have advanced capabilities. See section 12.3.1.

12.3.3  Chip-8 Emulator

Chip8 is a kind of assembly language for a long-gone architecture. This plugin runs games written using the chip8 instructions. To start a game open a .ch8 file in the File Browser

There are lots of tiny Chip8 games (usually only about 256 bytes to a couple of KB) which were made popular by the HP48 calculator’s emulator for them. The original Chip8 had 64×32 pixel graphics, and the new superchip emulator supports 128×64 graphics.

The only problem is that they are based on a 4×4 keyboard, but since most games do not use all of the buttons, this can easily be worked around.

To do this, one may put a .c8k file with the same name as the original program which contains new key mappings (for BLINKY.ch8, one writes a BLINKY.c8k file). That .c8k file contains 16 characters describing the mapping from the Chip8 keyboard to the default key mapping (that way, several Chip8 keys can be pressed using only one Rockbox key). For example, a file containing the single line:

would correspond to the following non-default mappings:

3 → 2, 6 → 8, 7 →4, 8 → 6.

The default keymappings are:

Some places where can you can find .ch8 files:

• The PluginChip8 page on www.rockbox.org has several attached: PluginChip8
• Check out the HP48 chip games section: http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/games/chip/
• Links to other chip8 emulators: http://www.zophar.net/chip8.html

12.3.4  Frotz

Frotz is a Z-Machine interpreter for playing Infocom’s interactive fiction games, and newer games using the same format. To start a game open a .z1 to .z8 file in the File Browser. Most modern games are in the .z5 or .z8 format but the older formats used by Infocom are supported.

Z-Machine games are text based and most depend heavily on typed commands. The virtual keyboard is used for text entry, both for typing entire lines and for typing single characters when the game requires single character input.

Sounds, pictures, colour and Unicode are not currently supported, but the interpreter informs the game of this and almost all games will adapt so that they are still playable. This port of Frotz attempts to be compliant with the Z-Machine Specification version 1.0.

Some places where you can find Z-Machine games, and information about interactive fiction:

• The Interactive Fiction Archive, where many free modern works can be downloaded: http://www.ifarchive.org/
• The specific folder on the if-archive containing Z-Machine games: http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-_archiveXgamesXzcode.html
• A copy of the Infocom homepage, with information about the classic commercial Infocom games: http://www.vaxdungeon.com/Infocom/
• The Frotz homepage (for the original Unix port): http://frotz.sourceforge.net/
• A Beginner’s Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction: http://www.microheaven.com/IFGuide/

12.3.5  Image Viewer

This plugin opens image files from the File Browser to display them using Rockbox’s greyscale library. Supported formats are as follows.

Note: This plugin will cause playback to stop.

The menu has the following entries.

Return.

Returns you to the image

Toggle Slideshow Mode.

Enables or disables the slideshow mode.

Change Slideshow Timeout.

You can set the timeout for the slideshow between 1 second and 20 seconds.

Quit.

Quits the viewer and returns to the File Browser.

Note: Progressive scan and other unusual JPEG files are not supported, and will result in various “unsupported xx” messages. Processing could also fail if the image is too big to decode which will be explained by a respective message.

12.3.6  MP3 Encoder

This plugin encodes a .wav file to MP3 format. The supported input format is uncompressed, linear PCM with 16 bit per sample and a maximum of 2 channels. Allowed sample rates are 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz. The user will be asked to select the desired output bitrate of the compressed MP3 file.

Select Bitrate

The following bitrates can be selected: 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320 kbps.

Remark: Bitrates above 160 kbps cannot be used in MPEG 2 Layer 3 bitstreams. The encoder plugin automatically limits the output bitrate to 160 kbps for input files with a sample rate of 16, 22.05 or 24 kHz. The same limitation is valid for mono files.

The output .mp3 file is written to the same path as the .wav file using the same filename. To use this plugin, open the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2) on a .wav file and select Open With…→ mp3_encoder.

Note: The encoder will choose the appropriate bitstream format from the sample rate of the input file. The output bitstream format is MPEG 1 Layer 3 for 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz, and MPEG 2 Layer 3 for 16, 22.05 and 24 kHz. MPEG 2.5 Layer 3 is not supported.

12.3.7  Rockboy

Rockboy is a Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator for Rockbox based on the gnuboy emulator. To start a game, open a ROM file saved as .gb or .gbc in the file browser.

Default keys

Rockboy menu

Load Game…

Loads a previously saved game.

Save Game…

Saves your current state.

Options…

Max Frameskip.

Change frameskip setting to improve speed.

Sound.

Toggle sound on or off.

Stats.

Toggle showing fps and current frameskip.

Set Keys (BUGGY)

Select this option to set a new keymapping.

Reset.

Resets the Emulator.

Quit RockBoy.

Quits the Rockboy plugin.

12.3.8  Search

This plugin can be used on playlists. It searches through the playlist that it opened on looking for any occurrences of the string entered by the user. The results of this search are saved to a new playlist, search_results.m3u, within the same directory as the original playlist.

12.3.9  Shopper

Shopper is a plugin which allows you to maintain reusable shopping lists. To create a list, use a text editor to write down a list of items (one per line; note that the line length should not exceed 40 characters) and save the file as <name>.shopper. If you want to separate the items you can do so by creating categories, which are prepended with ‘#’. To open a .shopper file just “play” it from the file browser.

Note that it isn’t possible to choose exact quantities, but you can create a number of entries with different quantities in the name of the item, such as for the apples in the above example.

There are two modes, edit mode and view mode. The edit mode shows all the items, and it allows you to select which of the items you want to buy. When you have finished selecting the items, use the menu to go to the view mode, and you will see only the items you wish to buy. If you ‘select’ an item in view mode then that item will be removed from the list.

When you exit Shopper the last view is saved, including which items you have selected, so if you re-open the shopping list it will be as you left it. There are additional menu options for clearing the list, selecting all items, showing and hiding the categories, toggling the categories, and displaying the playback menu.

Shopper Keys

12.3.10  Sort

This plugin takes a file and sorts it in ascending alphabetical order. Case is ignored. This is useful for ordering playlists generated by the Create Playlist menu option (see section 5.10).

12.3.11  Text Viewer

This is a Viewer for text files with word wrap. Just open a .txt or .nfo file to display it. The text viewer features controls to handle various styles of text formatting and has top-of-file and bottom-of-file buttons. You can view files without a .txt or .nfo extension by using Open with from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2). You can also bookmark pages.

Default keys

Menu

Return

Return to the file being viewed.

Viewer Options

Change settings for the current file.

Encoding

Set the codepage in the text viewer. Available settings: ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1). ISO-8859-7 (Greek), ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew), CP1251 (Cyrillic), ISO-8859-11 (Thai), CP1256 (Arabic), ISO-8859-9 (Turkish), ISO-8859-2 (Latin Extended), CP1250 (Central European), SJIS (Japanese), GB-2312 (Simple Chinese), KSX-1001 (Korean), BIG5 (Traditional Chinese), UTF-8 (Unicode), This setting only applies to the plugin and is independent from the Default Codepage setting (see section 8.4).

Word Wrap

Toggle word wrap mode.

On

Break lines at the maximum column limit.

Off (Chop Words)

Break lines at white space or hyphen.

Line Mode

Change how lines are displayed.

Normal

Break lines at newline characters.

Join

Join lines together.

Expand

Add a blank line at newlines. Useful for making paragraphs clearer in some book style text files.

Reflow Lines

Justify the text.

Screens Per Page

Set the number of screens per page. Available options are 1 to 5 screens per page.

Alignment

Set the text alignment.

Right

Set the text alignment to the right. (Useful for displaying right-to-left languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew)

Left

Set the text alignment to the left.

Show Header

Select whether to show the header. The header displays the file path.

No

Do not display the header.

Yes

Display the header.

Show Footer

Select whether to show the footer. The footer dispays the page number.

No

Do not display the footer.

Yes

Display the footer.

Font

Select the font to be used by the Text Viewer.

Show Statusbar

Select whether to show the status bar. If you select a theme settings that the status bar does not display (see section 9), the status bar is not displayed even if you select Yes.

No

Do not display the status bar.

Yes

Display the status bar.

Scroll Settings

The scrolling settings submenu.

Horizontal

Submenu for horizontal scrolling settings.

Scrollbar

Toggle the horizontal scrollbar for the current mode. If the file fits on one screen, there is no scrollbar and this setting has no effect.

No

Do not display the horizontal scroll bar.

Yes

Display the horizontal scroll bar.

Scroll Mode

Change the function of the “Left” and “Right” buttons.

Scroll by Screen

Move to the previous/next screen.

Scroll by Column

Move to the previous/next column.

Vertical

Submenu for vertical scrolling settings.

Scrollbar

Toggle the vertical scrollbar for the current mode. If the file fits on one screen, there is no scrollbar and this setting has no effect.

No

Do not display the vertical scroll bar.

Yes

Display the vertical scroll bar.

Scroll Mode

Change the function of the “Scroll-up” and “Scroll-down” buttons.

Scroll by Page

Scroll up or down one full screen.

Scroll by Line

Scroll up or down one line.

Overlap Pages

Set whether the last line from the previous screen is retained when scrolling pages.

No

Do not retain previous line.

Yes

Retain previous line.

Auto-scroll Speed

Control the speed of auto-scrolling in number of lines per second. Available options are 1 to 10 lines per second. As an example, 4 will scroll the text at four lines per second.

Left/Right Key (Narrow mode)

Change the function of the “Left” and “Right” buttons when the screen is in narrow mode (i.e. one screen per page).

Previous/Next Page

Scroll up or down one full screen.

Top/Bottom Page

Move to the top or bottom page.

Indent Spaces

Set the number of spaces to indent the text when line mode is set to Reflow Lines. Available options are 0 to 5 spaces. If you select 0, a blank line is displayed as an indent.

Show Playback Menu

Display the playback menu to allow control of the currently playing music without leaving the plugin.

Select Bookmark

Select a saved bookmark. In the screenshot below, the “*” denotes the current page.

---

Figure 12.43.:

The select bookmark menu

---

Global Settings

Set the default settings for the text viewer. The setting items are the same as Viewer Options. The global settings are stored in .rockbox/rocks/viewers/viewer.dat.

Quit

Exits the plugin. The text viewer automatically stores its settings, the current position and bookmarks in .rockbox/rocks/viewers/viewer_file.dat.

Bookmarks

To add a bookmark, press Submenu+Select. The bookmark will be displayed as shown below. To delete the bookmark press the same button again.

12.3.12  Theme Remove

This plugin offers a way to remove a theme. Open the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2) upon a theme.cfg file and select Open With... → theme_remove. Some files are not removed regardless of the Remove Options such as rockbox_default.wps and the font file currently in use.

Theme Remove menu

Remove Theme.

Selecting this will delete the files specified in the Remove Options. After a theme has been successfully removed, a log message is displayed listing which items have been deleted and which are being kept. Exit this screen by pressing any key. A file called theme_remove_log.txt is created in the root directory of your player listing all the changes.

Remove Options.

This menu specifies which items are removed if Remove Theme is selected in the menu.

One of the following options can be chosen for each setting.

Ask for Removal.

Selecting this option brings up a dialogue with two options: press Select to confirm deletion or any other key to cancel.

Remove if not Used.

Selecting this option will remove the file automatically, if it is not used by another theme in the theme directory and not currently used.

Never Remove.

Selecting this option will always skip deleting the file.

Always Remove.

Selecting this option will remove the file with no regard to whether it’s used by another theme or not.

Font.

Specifies how the .fnt file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled. If this option is set to Remove if not Used, the fonts came from rockbox-fonts.zip will not be removed as themes may depend on those fonts.

WPS.

Specifies how the .wps file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled.

Statusbar Skin.

Specifies how the .sbs file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled.

Iconset.

Specifies how the iconset .bmp file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled.

Viewers Iconset.

Specifies how the viewers iconset .bmp file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled.

Create Log File.

Setting this to No prevents the log file from being created.

Quit.

Exits this plugin.

12.3.13  VBRfix

This function scans a VBR (Variable Bitrate) MP3 file and updates/creates the Xing VBR header. The Xing header contains information about the VBR stream used to calculate average bit rate, time information and to more accurately fwd/rew in the stream. This function is especially useful when the playback of a file skips, fwd/rew does not work correctly or the time display is incorrect. To use this plugin, open the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2) upon a .mp3 file and select Open With…→ vbrfix.

Note: VBRfix can only run when music is turned off (since it uses the same memory as the player) and can take a while to complete if run on big files.

12.3.14  ZXBox

ZXBox is a port of the “Spectemu” ZX Spectrum 48k emulator for Rockbox (https://sourceforge.net/projects/spectemu/). To start a game open a tape file or snapshot saved as .tap, .tzx, .z80 or .sna in the file browser.

Note: As ZXBox is a 48k emulator only loading of 48k z80 snapshots is possible.

Default keys

The emulator is set up for 5 different buttons: Up, Down, Left, Right and Jump/Fire. Each one of these can be mapped to one key of the Spectrum Keyboard or they can be used like a “Kempston” joystick. Per default the buttons, including an additional but fixed menu button, are assigned as follows:

ZXBox menu

Vkeyboard.

This is a virtual keyboard representing the Spectrum keyboard. Controls are the same as in standard Rockbox, but you just press one key instead of entering a phrase.

Play/Pause Tape.

Toggles playing of the tape (if it is loaded).

Save Quick Snapshot.

Saves snapshot into /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80.

Load Quick Snapshot.

Loads snapshot from /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80.

Save Snapshot.

Saves a snapshot of the current state. You would enter the full path and desired name – for example /games/zx/snapshots/chuckie.sna. The snapshot format will be chosen after the extension you specified, per default .z80 will be taken in case you leave it open.

Toggle Fast Mode.

Toggles fastest possible emulation speed (no sound, maximum frameskip etc.). This is Useful when loading tapes with some specific loaders.

Options.

Map Keys To Kempston.

Controls whether the player’s buttons should simulate a “Kempston” joystick or some assigned keys of the Spectrum keyboard.

Display Speed.

Toggle displaying the emulation speed (in percent).

Invert Colours.

Inverts the Spectrum colour palette, sometimes helps visibility.

Frameskip

Sets the number of frames to skip before displaying one. With zero frameskip ZXBox tries to display 50 frames per second.

Sound.

Turns sound on or off.

Volume.

Controls volume of sound output.

Predefined Keymap

Select one of the predefined keymaps. For example 2w90z means: map ZXBox’s Up to 2, Down to w, Left to 9, Right to 0 and Jump/Fire to z. This example keymap is used in the “Chuckie Egg” game.

Custom Keymap

This menu allows you to map one of the Spectrum keys accessible through the plugin’s virtual keyboard to each one of the buttons.

Quit.

Quits the emulator..

Hacking graphics

Due to ZXBox’s simple (but fast) scaling to the screen by dropping lines and columns some games can become unplayable. It is possible to hack graphics to make them better visible with the help of an utility such as the “Spectrum Graphics Editor”. Useful tools can be found at the “World of Spectrum” site (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/utilities.html).

12.4  Applications

12.4.1  Alarm Clock

This plugin is an alarm clock, which resumes a paused song at a given time.

Key configuration

Setting an alarm

First select a track and play it, then launch the “alarmclock” plugin. The plugin pauses the playback. Enter a 24h-time (e.g. 13:58) and set the alarm. Music playback will resume when the set time is reached.

12.4.2  Battery Benchmark

The Battery Benchmark plugin enables you to test your battery’s performance whilst using your player normally. Results can be submitted to the BatteryRuntime wiki page.

How it works

Once loaded, Battery Benchmark runs in the background recording various information about your battery to memory. A new point is written to memory every minute. Every time the disk is accessed for any reason (such as refilling the audio buffer, opening a directory or entering USB mode etc.) then the information in memory is written to disk. Once the memory becomes full (after many hours), then the data are written to disk anyway. This is done so that the data are not biased by excessive additional disk accesses. The file is written to the root directory of your player and is called battery_bench.txt. The plugin will continue to log info until:

• Another plugin is loaded.
• The player is shut down.
• The battery is empty.

Benchmarks can be resumed if you accidentally load a plugin, or turn off your player, so long as the log file battery_bench.txt is not deleted.

Information explained

At the top of the battery_bench.txt file is various information on how to use the plugin, followed by the data themselves.

Time

This column reports the total time of operation of the player. It is not the time that you started the plug-in. If you have your player on for 5 minutes and then start the plugin, it will start measuring from 5 minutes.

Seconds

The same as Time, except measured in seconds.

Level

The percent level of the battery estimated by Rockbox, and not the actual battery level. The actual battery level can be seen from the Voltage column

Time Left

This shows the time remaining until the battery is empty, again as estimated by Rockbox.

Voltage

The battery voltage in mV at the moment the measurement was taken.

C

This stands for Charger. An “A” in that column shows if the power adapter was attached to the unit at the time of the measurement.

U

USB powered. Only for targets that support this. A “U” will indicate if the unit was using the USB port for power at the time of the measurement.

Usage

The log file can be used to tell you how long the battery lasted (with some limitations, see below), but it is most useful for graphing discharge curves in order to improve Rockbox’s estimation of battery level and time remaining. The battery log (battery_bench.txt) is in CSV format (comma separated variables) and thus can be easily imported into a spreadsheet or similar program.

Limitations

As Battery Benchmark needs to write the data held in memory to disk in order to save them, it is possible that should Rockbox shut down due to low battery then there will not be enough power remaining to write the data to disk. Therefore all measurements since the previous save will be lost.

12.4.3  Calculator

This is a simple scientific calculator for use on the player. It works like a standard calculator. Pressing the “1st” and “2nd” buttons will toggle between other available math functions.

12.4.4  Calendar

This is a small and simple calendar application with memo saving function. Dots indicate dates with memos. The available memo types are: one off, yearly, monthly, and weekly memos.

You can select what day is first day of week by the setting First Day of Week in the menu.

12.4.5  Chess Clock

The chess clock plugin is designed to simulate a chess clock, but it can be used in any kind of game with up to ten players.

Setup

• First enter the number of players (1–10)
• Then set the total game time in mm:ss
• Then the maximum round time is entered. For example, this could be used to play Scrabble for a maximum of 15 minutes each, with each round taking no longer than one minute.
• Done. Player 1 starts in paused mode.

While playing

The number of the current player is displayed on the top line. The time below is the time remaining for that round (and possibly also the total time left if different).

Keys are as follows:

From the menu it is possible to delete a player, modify the round time for the current player or set the total time for the game. When the round time is up for a player the message “ROUND UP!” is shown (press NEXT to continue). When the total time is up for a player the message “TIME UP!”is shown. The player will then be removed from the timer.

12.4.6  Clock

This is a fully featured analogue and digital clock plugin.

Key configuration

Clock Menu

View Clock

Exits the menu and returns to the current clock mode display.

Mode Selector

Opens a menu from which you can select a clock mode to view.

Counter Settings

Opens a menu from which you can adjust settings pertaining to the counter.

Mode Settings

Opens a menu from which you can adjust settings pertaining to the current clock mode (analog, digital, binary).

General Settings

Reset Settings

Reset all settings to their default values.

Save Settings

Save all settings to disk.

Show Counter

Toggle Counter display.

Save

Choose whether to disable automatic saving, saving to disk on exit, or saving to disk every settings change.

Backlight

Choose whether to disable the backlight, use the user’s timeout setting, or keep the backlight on.

Idle Poweroff

Toggle Idle Poweroff.

Note: This setting is not saved to disk.

Help

Opens a brief help screen with key mappings and functionality.

Credits

Displays a credits roll.

Analog mode

Small, round, analog clock is displayed in the middle of the LCD. Time readout, if enabled, is displayed at the upper left. If Time readout is in 12-hour (“12h”) mode, AM or PM will be displayed at the upper right. The Date readout, if enabled, is displayed at the lower left. The Counter, if enabled, is displayed at the lower right. The second hand, if enabled, is displayed along with the hour and minute hands. Digit display, if enabled, places “12”, “3”, “6”, and “9” around the face of the clock in their respective positions.

Digital mode

An imitation of an LCD, this mode shows a Clock comprised of digital “segments”. The Date readout, if enabled, is displayed at the bottom, center. The Second readout, if in “Text” mode, is displayed at the top, center; if in “Bar” mode, is displayed as a progress bar at the top of the LCD; if in “Invert” mode, will invert the LCD left-to-right as the seconds pass (a fully-inverted LCD means the entire minute has passed). The Counter, if displayed, is shown at the upper left. The Blinking Colon, if enabled, blinks the colon once every second. 12-hour mode, if enabled, will display the time in a 12-hour format.

LCD mode

Based on the Digital Mode, the LCD mode is another imitation of an LCD. The settings available in this mode are exactly the same as Digital Mode, but they are independent of Digital Mode. For example, you can have the Date Readout enabled in Digital Mode and disabled in LCD Mode.

Fullscreen

A Fullscreen clock is displayed. Show Border, if enabled, will draw a small box at every hour position (1 to 12 inclusive). Invert Seconds, if enabled, will invert the LCD as the seconds pass. Second Hand, if enabled, will draw a second hand among the hour and minute hands.

Binary mode

This mode shows a Binary clock. The hour is displayed on the top line, the minute is displayed on the middle line, and the seconds are on the last line. Circle mode, if enabled, draws empty and full circles, instead of zeros and ones. For help on reading binary, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system

Plain mode

This mode shows a “plain” clock in large text that takes up nearly the whole LCD.

12.4.7  Dict

Prerequisites for using the plugin

To use the plugin, firstly you need to have the dictionary files which contain the words (index) and their description – dict.index and dict.desc, respectively – on /.rockbox/rocks/apps/ folder.

The dictionary files can be created by yourself, or you can get them crafted from the web. More information can be found at PluginDict.

Using the plugin

Now that you already have the two necessary files in place, you can launch the dict plugin (under Applications on the Browse plugins menu). The first thing you will see is the text input screen.

Type part of a word (or the whole word) or anything the dict files have a definition to and accept the text input. The plugin will search for matching entries on the dict.index file and display according description/meaning contained in the dict.desc file.

If no matches are found on the dictionary, a “Not found” message will be displayed and the plugin will exit. You can do another search by relaunching the plugin.

12.4.8  Disk Tidy

Disk Tidy deletes junk files commonly left behind by Windows, Linux and OS X after connecting your player over USB. Select the files you want to delete in the “Files to Clean” menu and select “Start Cleaning” to begin the process. The settings are stored in the plain text file .rockbox/rocks/apps/disktidy.config that is user-modifiable to allow custom entries to be added.

The asterisk character (“*”) can be used as a wild-card which will match any string; however only the first asterisk will be recognised as a wild-card with any additional uses being taken as literal.

Warning: Be careful when you use custom entries as you could accidentally delete important files.

Available Options

All

selects all Linux, OS X, and Windows files.

None

deselects all file options.

Linux

selects Linux files. Default files are .dolphinview, .d3lphinview, and .Trash-*/.

Windows

selects Windows files. Default files are Thumbs.db, $RECYCLE.BIN/, Desktop.ini, Recycled/ and System Volume Information/.

Mac

selects OS X files. Default files are ._*, .DS_Store, .Spotlight-V100/ and .Trashes/.

Other

selects additional files added to the configuration file by the user.

12.4.9  Keybox

Keybox is an encrypted password storage using the “Tiny Encryption Algorithm” with a key derived using md5.

Using Keybox

To get started, start up the plugin and select Enter Keybox. The first time you enter Keybox you will be prompted for a master password and for confirmation of the master password. The master password is the password that you must use to access your stored passwords.

Once inside, enter the context menu by pressing Long Select. From the context menu you can create new entries, delete entries and edit entries. Each entry has a “title”, a “user name” and a “password”.

Selecting Reset Keybox from the main menu will delete the current list of passwords and a new, empty list will be created the next time you select Enter Keybox after prompting for a new master password. Entries are automatically saved when the plugin is exited.

12.4.10  Lamp

Lamp is a simple plugin to use your player as a lamp (flashlight, torch). You get an empty screen with maximum brightness.

12.4.11  Lrcplayer

This plugin displays lyrics in .lrc files (and some other formats) synchronized with the song being played.

Supported file types

1.

.lrc

2.

.lrc8

3.

.snc

4.

.txt

5.

id3v2 SYLT or USLT tags in mp3 files

.lrc8 files are the same as .lrc files except that they are UTF8 encoded. The Lyrics3 tag is not supported.

Supported tags and formats for .lrc files

The following tags are supported:

Each line should resemble one of the following:

The time tag must be in the form [mm:ss], [mm:ss.xx], or [mm:ss.xxx] where mm is minutes, ss is seconds, xx is tenth of milliseconds, and xxx is milliseconds. Any other tags and lines without time tags are ignored.

Location of lyrics files

The plugin checks the following directories for lyrics files. If no lyrics file is found and the audio file is a .mp3, it also checks for SYLT and USLT tags in the id3v2 tags.

1.

The directory containing the audio file and its parent directories.

2.

For each of the above directories, the plugin searches for a subdirectory named “Lyrics”.

3.

Finally, the plugin will search as above, but within a directory called “/Lyrics”. The name of this directory can be customized, see below.

If the audio file currently playing is /Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3, then the following files will be searched for, in this order. .ext is one of the supported extensions from the list above, and will be searched for in the same order as in that list.

Controls

Lrcplayer Menu

Theme settings.

Change theme related settings.

Show Statusbar.

Show / hide the statusbar.

Display Title.

Show / hide the track title.

Display Time.

Show / hide the current time.

Backlight Force On.

Do not turn off the backlight while displaying the lyrics.

Display Settings.

Change how the lyrics are displayed.

Wrap.

Breaks lines at white space.

Wipe.

Wipes the text.

Alignment.

Align text to the left, centre, or right.

Activate Only Current Line.

Activate only the current line, or the current and previous lines.

Lyrics Settings.

Change how the lyrics files are loaded.

Encoding.

Sets the codepage used in the plugin.

Read ID3 tag.

Read lyrics from id3 tags in mp3 files.

Lrc Directory.

Set the directory where lyrics files are stored, must be a maximum of 63 bytes.

Playback Control.

Show the playback control menu.

Time Offset.

Set an offset for the time tags for the lyrics currently in use.

Timetag Editor.

Enter the timetag editor.

Quit.

Exit the plugin.

Editing the time tags

The display time for each line can be changed with the timetag editor. Selecting a line changes its time to the current position of the track. To set a specific time or to adjust the time, press Long Select to bring up a screen to adjust the time. Changes will be saved automatically when the song is changed. Editing words in lyrics is not supported.

12.4.12  Main Menu Configuration

This plugin helps you customizing the main menu (i.e. reorder or hide menu items). It changes the appropriate configuration file as described in section 13.1.1.

When you start the plugin, the available main menu items will be displayed. By pressing Select or Right you open a menu with the following options:

Toggle Item

Hide the selected menu item or make it visible again

Move Item Up

Swap the selected menu item with the previous one

Move Item down

Swap the selected menu item with the next one

Load Default Configuration

Discards all customization

Exit

Save your changes to the configuration file and exit the plugin

You can leave the plugin without saving by pressing Left.

12.4.13  md5sum

Open a file, a directory or just launch it from the plugin menu to create an md5sum of the file, the directory’s contents or the whole filesystem. If the file’s extension is .md5 or .md5sum, it will check the md5 sums in the file instead. If the file’s extension is .md5list it will compute md5 sums for all the files listed.

12.4.14  Metronome

This plugin can be used as a metronome to keep time during music practice. It supports two modes of operation, depending on it being started from the plugin menu or as viewer for tempomap (.tempo) files.

The sound is a piercing square wave that can be heard well also through loud music from a band. In addition, the display also indicates the beats while playing so that you can discreetly place the device in your sight for checking the tempo instead of wearing headphones at a concert.

Simple Interactive Mode

This is the mode of operation that is active when starting the plugin directly from the menu. It offers a uniform metronome sound at a constant tempo. You can adjust the tempo through the interface or by tapping it out on the appropriate button.

Programmed Track Mode

When starting the plugin as a viewer for tempomap files (ending in .tempo), it starts in the track mode that offers playback of a preprogrammed metronome track consisting out of multiple parts, each with possibly different properties.

In contrast to the simple mode, there exists the notion of meter and bars, along with emphasis on certain beats. Parts can have these properties:

• finite or infinite duration in bars (navigation only jumps to the beginning of infinite parts),
• differing meters (4/4, 3/4, 6/8, etc., default 4/4),
• differing tempo (always in quarter beats per minute, default 120) with
  • one tempo per bar or even one tempo per beat, or
  • smooth tempo changes with configurable acceleration, and
• custom beat patterns (tick/tock/silence on each beat), default being emphasis (tick) on first beat, normal sound (tock) on others.

The button mapping is different to enable navigation in the programmed track.

Navigation The display indicates the part properties and position in track as such:

In this example, the part label is “Interlude”, the meter is 3/4 and the tempo 120 quarter beats per minute (bpm). The volume setting is at -25 and this is the second part of a track with 13 total. In that part, the position is at the second beat of the first bar of five.

The syntax of programmed tracks in tempomap files follows the format defined by http://das.nasophon.de/klick/. Actually, the goal is to keep compatibility between klick and this Rockbox metronome. The parts of a track are specified one line each in this scheme (pieces in [] optional):

The bar count and tempo always have to be specified, the rest is optional.

One example is

for a part named “part I” , 12 bars long, in 3/4 meter with a tempo of 133 quarter beats per minute. Tempo changes are indicated by specifying a tempo range and the acceleration in one of these ways:

The first one goes from 90 to 150 bpm in an endless part with 0.25 bpm increase per bar. The second one goes down from 150 to 90 with 4 bars per bpm change, which is the same acceleration as in the first line. The last one is a part of 16 bars length that changes tempo from 100 to 200 smoothly during its whole lifetime (6.25 bpm/bar). For details on how the acceleration works, see http://thomas.orgis.org/science/metronome-_tempomath/tempomath.html.

It is also possible to provide a tempo for each individual beat in a part by separating values with a comma (no spaces),

where the beat duration is first according to 135 bpm, then 90 bpm, and so forth. You are required to provide a value for each beat in all bars of the part.

You can provide a pattern that controls how the beats are played:

Some examples:

The 12/12 for the shuffle create 1/4 triplets. Just do a bit of math;-) This is still a metronome, not a drum machine, but it can act like a basic one, helping you to figure out a certain rhythm within the meter.

The UI is developed so that it fits into the display of a Sansa Clip+ and that is the hardware device it is tested on. It seems to work reasonably on some other models in the simulator.

At last, a more complete tempomap file:

12.4.15  One-Time Password Client

This plugin provides the ability to generate one-time passwords (OTPs) for authentication purposes. It implements an HMAC-based One-Time Password Algorithm (RFC 4226), and on targets which support it, a Time-based One-Time Password Algorithm (RFC 6238).

Adding Accounts

The plugin supports two methods of adding accounts: URI import, and manual entry.

It is important to note that for TOTP (time-based) accounts to work properly, the clock on your device MUST be accurate to no less than 30 seconds from the time on the authentication server, and the correct time zone must be configured in the plugin. See section 11 for more information.

URI Import

This method of adding an account reads a list of URIs from a file. It expects each URI to be on a line by itself in the following format:

An example is shown below, provisioning a TOTP key for an account called “bob”:

Any other URI options are not supported and will be ignored.

Most services will provide a scannable QR code that encodes a OTP URI. In order to use those, first scan the QR code separately and save the URI to a file on your device. If necessary, rewrite the URI so it is in the format shown above. For example, GitHub’s URI has a slash after the provider. In order for this URI to be properly parsed, you must rewrite the account name so that it does not contain a slash.

Manual Import

If direct URI import is not possible, the plugin supports the manual entry of data associated with an account. After you select the “Manual Entry” option, it will prompt you for an account name. You may type anything you wish, but it should be memorable. It will then prompt you for the Base32-encoded secret. Most services will provide this to you directly, but some may only provide you with a QR code. In these cases, you must scan the QR code separately, and then enter the string following the “secret=” parameter on your Rockbox device manually.

On devices with a real-time clock, like yours, the plugin will ask whether the account is a time-based account (TOTP). If you answer “yes” to this question, it will ask for further information regarding the account. Usually it is safe to accept the defaults here. However, if your device lacks a real-time clock, the plugin’s functionality will be restricted to HMAC-based (HOTP) accounts only. If this is the case, the plugin will prompt you for information regarding the HOTP setup.

12.4.16  Advanced Settings

Time Zone Configuration

In order for TOTP accounts to work properly, the plugin must be able to determine the current UTC time. This means that, first, your device’s clock must be synchronized with UTC time, and second, that the plugin knows what time zone the clock is using. The plugin will prompt you on its first run for this piece of information. However, should this setting need changing at a later time, possibly due to Daylight Saving Time adjustment, it is located under the “Advanced” submenu. NOTE: in the UI simulator, use the “UTC” setting no matter what the clock may read.

12.4.17  Periodic Table

The periodic table plugin allows easy browsing and viewing of details of elements, giving a detailed output for each selection. Navigate the table using the directional keys, pressing back or exit exits the plugin.

12.4.18  Pitch Detector

With the Pitch Detector, you can play a note on a musical instrument, and the plugin will tell you what note it is (e.g. A, A#, B, etc.) The frequency will also be displayed. This may be a great assistance when tuning a musical instrument.

12.4.19  Random Folder Advance Configuration

This plugin is used to configure the folders which will be considered when the Auto-Change Directory feature is set to Random.

Menu

Generate Folder List

Generates a list of all folders found on the player. You can filter the directories which are scanned by creating a file called
/.rockbox/folder_advance_dir.txt. Only the directories in this file and any contained directories will be scanned. You can have up to 10 directories ignored by the scan by placing a minus sign before them in the list (i.e. -/CDs will cause everything in the /CDs directory to be ignored.). If you just want /CDs to be ignored but want to include the folders within it you need to have both -/CDs and CDs as entries.

Edit Folder List

Enter the folder list editor

Export List To Textfile

Exports the list to /.rockbox/folder_advance_list.txt

Import List From Textfile

Imports the list from /.rockbox/folder_advance_list.txt

Play Shuffled

Starts playback with the selected directories in random order. Tracks within a directory will be played in normal order. The plugin will exit after starting playback.

Quit

Folder List Editor Keys

12.4.20  Resistor Calculator

The resistor calculator is a plugin that works in 3 modes:

Colour to Resistance

In Colour to Resistance mode, use the menus to select the colours of the bands of a resistor which you would like to know the resistance of.

Resistance to Colour

In Resistance to Colour mode, use the menus to select the unit that you would like to use (choose from Ohms, Kiloohms, Megaohms), and use the on-screen keyboard to input the value of the resistor that you would like to know the colour code of. The colour codes are presented textually.

LED resistance

LED resistance calculator is used to determine the resistor necessary to light an LED safely at a given voltage. First, select the voltage that the LED will use (the first option is the most common and a safe bet), and the current that it will draw (likewise with the first option). Then, use the onscreen keyboard to type in the supply voltage and, if selected, the custom forward current. This function produces safe estimates, but use your own judgement when using these output values. Power rating and displayed resistance are rounded up to the nearest common value.

12.4.21  Stats

The stats plugin counts the directories and files (the total number as well as the number of audio, playlist, image and video files) on your player. Press Power or Long Power to abort counting and exit the plugin. Press it again to quit after counting has finished.

12.4.22  Stopwatch

A simple stopwatch program with support for saving times.

12.4.23  Text Editor

This plugin allows you to view and edit simple text documents on your DAP. You can view files by using Open with from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2).

Usage

If you start the Text Editor from the plugin browser you will be greeted with a blank screen. When started from the Open with menu item your file should be shown on the screen. You can now edit the file. The Text Editor is line based. This means you can edit one line at a time using the Virtual Keyboard (see section 4.1.3).

• Move the selection bar to the line you want to edit.
• Edit the highlighted text line or insert a new one using the Item Menu.
• When finished editing exit the Text Editor. You’ll be shown a list of save options.

Note: When you have not changed the file the Text Editor will quit immediately.