Getting Started : issues regarding the whole book

 

1  Using this study-guide

●      This study-guide was developed in this context:

o      The system apps were run on Windows, e.g., Ozone.

o      The book's Kindle version was used.

o      Page-number references are for the Kindle version.

 

2  Writing your own programs

To gain skill with FreeRTOS, it's helpful to write programs based on the code and features presented in the book.  The book's example-programs are intended to be downloaded and run.  Adding a program-file is non-trivial (e.g., a C-file), due to the IDE's build system.  And, if a program-file is added improperly, fixing the build-scripts can also be non-trivial.

 

The book does not include info on adding a program-file or fixing build-scripts.  That info is in this study-guide, in the web-page for STM32CubeIDE (the IDE).

 

3  Problems with the book's Kindle version

3.1  Missing chapter-identifiers and chapter-numbers

●      Problem:

o      In the Kindle version, the headings do not identify chapters nor chapter numbers. 

o      This makes it very hard to navigate within the book and to know where you are in the book, e.g., what chapter am I on; how much of the book have I read, and how much is left?

o      This screenshot shows the chapter "Selecting an IDE", and the table-of-contents (TOC) frame. Among the TOC entries, it's not clear which are chapters, and there's no chapter numbers.

 

 

 

●      Work-around:

o      The printed book's full TOC is on-line, with proper chapter-headings and page numbers.  It's useful for navigating the book and seeing where you are in the book.

■      Google search, or  Google Books search:

●      "Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers" "table of contents"

o      A Kindle page-number can be looked-up in the full TOC, e.g., to determine what chapter the page-number is in.

 

3.2  Copy-and-paste are unusable

●      Problem:

o      With Kindle books, copy-and-paste are invaluable for writing study-notes.  However, in this Kindle book, the paste is effectively unusable because it always adds the book's copyright info. 

o      Below is an example copy-and-paste, from the chapter shown above, for its first sentence:

 

An integrated development environment (IDE) has the ability to greatly help or hinder development.

 

Amos, Brian. Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers: Building real-time embedded systems using FreeRTOS, STM32 MCUs, and SEGGER debug tools (p. 103). Packt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

 

●      Work-around:

o      For pasting into Microsoft Word documents, I wrote a macro that removes the blank-line and last paragraph, from the pasted text.  The macro can be assigned to a hotkey.

o      The macro is on GitHub.  Info on using it and installing it are in the code-comments.

■      paste_text_from_kindle.vba

■      https://github.com/jimyuill/MS-Word-macros-and-vba

 

4  References to TrueSTUDIO

The book and code have some references to TrueSTUDIO that are puzzling or incorrect:

●      An early draft of the book was based on the TrueSTUDIO IDE.  The draft was later updated to be based on the STM32CubeIDE IDE.  However, a few parts of the book and code were inadvertently  not updated, and TrueSTUDIO is still referenced.

●      This change of IDEs is described by the author here, on GitHub:

https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-RTOS-with-Microcontrollers/issues/9

●      The book describes how STM32CubeIDE is based on TrueSTUDIO.  It appears the two IDEs are very similar, but there can be small differences in the user-interface and console output.

●      Any related bugs that I encountered are described in the present study-guide, for the relevant chapter.