The One with the Thoughts of Frans

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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KOReader’s UI is gearing up for RTL. This isn’t truly visible yet since the relevant translations (e.g., Arabic, Hebrew, and Kurdic) are only partially finished, but a preview can be obtained in English as well. By going into the file browser → tools (screwdriver & wrench icon) → developer options → UI layout mirroring and text direction you can play around with it. The full discussion can be found in #5359. If you use or develop RTL software, please contribute your expertise.

Another nice improvement this month is the keyboard layout picker (#5583). Users can select keyboards for quick access switching in settings → device → keyboard layout. Hold to pick a default layout. After you’ve selected a few layouts, you can quickly switch between them by tapping on the globe icon, or directly to a specific layout by swiping on the globe icon in the relevant direction. You can also long-press on the globe icon to bring up a popup, just like on every other key.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• [UX] Gesture to open Favorites (#5592) @robert00s
• [UX] Add Mark as read to end of document action (#5596)
• TextWidget/TextBoxWidget: enhanced text shaping (#5598) @poire-z
• [fix] Tailor plurals match (#5603) @Frenzie
• [feat, UX] Pick keyboard layout from keyboard (#5583) @yparitcher
• [feat] Synchronize local folder with dropbox (#5591) @robert00s
• [chore] Extract Cyrillic/Russian keyboard (#5610) @Frenzie
• [fix] PDF footer margins (#5620) @yparitcher
• [RFC] Switch remaining keyboard icons to glyphs (#5639) @NiLuJe
• Translate file size unit (#5651) @robert00s
• [UX] Add Moldavian diacritics to ru_keyboard (#5652) @SilverGreen93
• [UX] Add Romanian keyboard layout (#5660) @SilverGreen93
• Touch zones: fix loss of overrides when re-registering a zone (#5658) @poire-z
• [UX] ru keyboard ё popup and translation (#5662) @SilverGreen93
• android: make system fonts toggable (#5670) @pazos
• UI mirroring for RTL languages (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew…) (#5667) @poire-z
• UI font rendering: use available bold fonts for bold (#5675) @poire-z
• [fix] Crash when exporting notes (#5677) @mustafa187
• android: unbreak KO on scoped storage devices (#5680) @pazos
• [UX] Adds DoubleSpinWidget (#5679) @robert00s
• [UX] Simple symbol keyboard layer paging (#5659) @Frenzie
• TextBoxWidget: fix crash on hold after end of text (#5689) @poire-z
• [i18n] Fix Romanian plural forms (#5692) @SilverGreen93
• bump crengine, fribidi, xtext – some CoverBrowser Mosaic tweaks (#5693, #5694) @poire-z
• Ensure we flush everything to disk after an update. (#5685) @NiLuJe
• android: fix app crash when a bluetooth keyboard is connected/disconnected. (#5702) @pazos
• [UX] Footer – add option chapter markers width (#5708) @robert00s

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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After many months of testing, “best” kerning has been made the default. Without it, languages like Arabic and Hebrew won’t be displayed correctly, which led to some confusion with regard to last month’s release. The Latin alphabet also looks better this way, but less pronounced (especially compared to “good”). If you want to set an option as a global default, you can always long-press it.

Image credit: I incorporated the coat of arms of Senica as a tribute. Hope you like it!

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• [UX] Add timeout to Wi-Fi connected message and other UI changes (#5514, #5508) @dontcrash
• TextWidget: small refactoring, better handle max_width (#5503) @poire-z
• [fix] GetText: Support Arabic plurals (#5517) @Frenzie
• [i18n] Enable Arabic and Esperanto (#5515) @Frenzie NB Bidi support is not yet implemented in the UI.
• Menu: new algorithm for multi-lines items (#5496) @robert00s
• [feat] Open unsupported documents as text (#5497) @yparitcher
• [UX] Set global settings independent of local setting (#5522) @yparitcher
• Unify battery meters look’n feel (#5537) @NiLuJe
• ButtonTable: taller buttons for easier tap (#5554, #5585) @poire-z
• cre: use ‘best’ (Harfbuzz) as the default kerning method (#5553) @poire-z
• [feat] Favorites: organize book into collections (#5527) @robert00s
• android: touchscreen toggle option (#5564) @pazos
• [fix] Prevent crash on local calibre OPDS server (#5572) @robert00s
• [UX] Thicker loading bar (#5581) @yparitcher

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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@poire-z has outdone himself this month by implementing RTL/bidi support in crengine. With a hat tip to the FriBiDi and HarfBuzz libraries for minimizing the still substantial amount of effort involved.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• Significantly improved footer configuration, including a minimal progress bar (#5345). @robert00s
• Messages in numberpicker widget (#5353) @robert00s
• [feat, Kobo] Autoshutdown (#5335) @Frenzie
• Support the Kobo Libra (#5362) @NiLuJe
• [UX] Add fine tune in line spacing (#5375) @robert00s
• Fix: don’t create sidecar file when indexing pdf documents (#5384) @poire-z
• [feat] Allow setting any document cover as screensaver (#5369) @Frenzie
• crengine: support RTL/bidi text (#5390, #5436) @poire-z
• Set screenshot output folder (#5382) @robert00s
• [UX] Sort footer elements (#5389) @robert00s
• [fix] added PocketBook InkPad 3 Pro to device.lua (#5398) @tobiasarndt
• Update Greek keyboard, move accented Greek characters to the “Accented” group (#5400, #5402) @noembryo
• [feat, UX] Ignore hold corners (#5404) @Frenzie
• Two-line footer (#5405) @robert00s
• crengine, show progress meter on load/re-rendering (#5406) @poire-z
• [Kobo/Cervantes] Prefer using the ioctl over sysfs when setting the FL. (#5407) @NiLuJe
• [UX] Add Hebrew keyboard (#5414) @yparitcher
• Use the proper LED driver on the Libra (#5416) @NiLuJe
• [UX] Add fine tune in contrast (#5413) @robert00s
• [UX] Add inverse reading order to gesture manager (#5423) @yparitcher
• [UX] Use ProgressWidget in frontlight (#5373) @Frenzie
• [UX] Add fine tune for zoom(dpi) and font size (#5432) @robert00s
• [feat] Add haptic feedback (#5380) @Frenzie
• [Plugin] Joplin support (#5431) @mustafa292
• [wallabag] fetch pdf files directly instead of converting them (#5443) @teroshan
• [UX] Add … button to highlight edit (#5456) @Frenzie
• ImageViewer: start with image fullscreen with no buttons shown (#5446) @max-cw
• [Android] Ship Noto (#5458) @Frenzie
• [Plugin] Per directory defaults (#5428) @yparitcher
• android-luajit-launcher: migration to kotlin, splashscreen with ko icon, e-ink friendly spinner while uncompressing assets, haptic feedback (#5454) @pazos
• [UX] Option to show progress bar at the bottom of the screen (#5442) @robert00s
• [Plugin] Support for exporting annotations/bookmark renames (#5440) @mustafa292
• [feat] plugins/Wallabag: add ability to set a list of tags to ignore (#5467) @teroshan
• crengine: adds DOCX and FB3 support (#5498) @poire-z

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

ArsClip uses the same method of quick selection as my own Nimbler.

Press your hotkey, I chose Win + `, followed by a letter to paste. This way it’s user-friendly when your hands happen to be only on the keyboard, as well as when you have your hands on the mouse. Pasting is single-click, so no useless clicks are required.

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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I was never a big fan of the Android code names. They didn’t have that Ubuntu flair, and I always struggled to couple them to version numbers. But learning that the next version will simply be called 10? It seems to be illustrative of losing a certain kind of fun. In response, I scream for ice cream!

There’s been a fair bit of work on documentation and internationalization. The GitHub landing page was made more welcoming to make it easier to find the information you need, with developer-oriented information moved into a separate file (#5217), while the translation code was updated to allow for proper pluralization in languages like Polish and Russian (#5257). Furthermore, the release package filename has been simplified to exclude excessive compiler information (#5268). This should make it easier to find the package you need.

2019.08	2019.09
koreader-android-arm-linux-androideabi-v2019.08.apk	koreader-android-arm-v2019.09.apk
koreader-android-i686-linux-android-v2019.08.apk	koreader-android-x86-v2019.09.apk
koreader-cervantes-arm-cervantes-linux-gnueabi-v2019.08.zip	koreader-cervantes-v2019.09.zip
koreader-kobo-arm-kobo-linux-gnueabihf-v2019.08.zip	koreader-kobo-v2019.09.zip

For Android, we’ve changed our resource bundle from lzma to zip (#5264). Unfortunately, this would make the package size slightly larger and the first time start ever so slightly slower, but we were able to drop the Noto fonts from our package (#5310). On Android these already come with the system. It’s all for a good purpose, because the switch from lzma to zip resolves unexplained first-startup crashes on some systems, improving reliability.

You can now select your keyboard layout independently from your language, because display language and keyboard layout shouldn’t be tied together. (#5318). On Kobo there’s a new crash screen that displays the last few lines of the log (#5328), which looks so neat you’ll want to crash! But hopefully you’ll never see it. 😉

Of course the usual performance improvements and bug fixes are also present. See the full changelog for details, but various CSS parsing optimizations (#5239) can be quite noticeable on affected documents. The gesture manager received some further polish (#5202, #5225, #5294). For the curious who’ve been using MuPDF to read FB2 or EPUB, it’s now finally possible to change the font size without crutches (#5282). Be warned, however, that it’s no less experimental. The document will have to be reloaded to update the total number of pages after font size changes, and bookmarks and highlights will not be in the right location.

Last but not least, accessibility is an often overlooked aspect of design. On a touch screen device without physical buttons the hardware doesn’t exactly contribute to ease of use. Hopefully the new automatic page turner plugin (#5295) will enable more people to enjoy reading. Please let us know about any suggestions you have or resources we can use to do better!

PS Remember, if you don’t use a plugin you can disable it in the plugin manager for a slightly faster startup and a cleaner menu. That’s in Tools (screwdriver & wrench) → Plugin management, which might be on page 2.

Image credit: “Cute Anthropomorphic Ice Cream Cone” from openclipart.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• [UI] Status bar alignment (#5195) @robert00s
• [shell] Avoid hard-coded path (#5197) @contrun
• [fix, Kobo] Add missing parentheses (#5198) @jetomit
• [Android] Big refactor with better logging (koreader/android-luajit-launcher#161) @pazos
• Simplify isWifiOn on Kobo (#5211) @NiLuJe
• [lang] Change ‘ignore’ to ‘pass through’ (#5209) @Frenzie
• [UX] Add gesture – poweroff and restart device (#5202) @robert00s
• [Android] some runtime permissions / keys fixes. (#5207) @pazos
• PocketBook 626 new codename (#5215) @vvasseur
• More footer options, default to use icons as prefixes (#5203, #5218, #5300) @robert00s
• bump crengine and others, adds HTML extended debug view (#5219) @poire-z
• [chore] Remove Polish keyboard (#5223) @robert00s
• [UX] Move tap x y corner to tap corner submenu (#5225) @robert00s
• [UX] Option to never full refresh (#5227) @robert00s
• [doc] Simplify and reorganize readme (#5217) @pazos
• [Desktop] Open writable font dir, toggle system+user/user fonts @pazos (#5220)
• [i18n, feat] Add basic context (msgctxt) support (#5234) @Frenzie
• bump crengine: CSS parsing: cleanup and optimisations (#5239) @poire-z
• [Kindle] Update Kindle support devices list (#5235) @hwhung0111
• [fix] Handle OPDS catalog responses accordingly (#5241) @edoput
• [i18n] Add translator notes (#5250) @Frenzie
• [feat, i18n] Implement ngettext (#5257, #5301) @Frenzie
• [feat] Friendly filename (#5268) @Frenzie
• [UX] Ignore page flipping toggle while bookmark flipping (#5276) @Frenzie
• [feat, Kobo] Implement shutdown from suspend (#5280, #5304, #5305) @Frenzie
• [UX] Treat inverse_reading_order as a proper setting (#5284) @Frenzie
• [feat] Implement fulltext search direction (#5283) @Frenzie
• [feat] Add MuPDF EPUB/FB2 dynamic font size (#5282) @Frenzie
• android: migrate from lzma to zip file (#5264) @pazos
• [UX] Reorganize tap corner menu in Gesture Manager (#5294) @robert00s
• [feat] Handle file:// protocol URI scheme (#5297) @contrun
• [UX] Add fine tune buttons to horizontal margins (#5303) @robert00s
• [feat, plugin] Add AutoTurn (#5295) @Frenzie
• [fix] Allow setting a fine-tuned font size as default (#5306) @NiLuJe
• [Android] Don’t ship Noto (#5310) @Frenzie
• Frontlight – Add checkbox use system settings (#5307) @robert00s
• Cervantes: Add back to stock reader (#5316) @pazos
• [UX] Option to show horizontal line separator in footer (#5309) @robert00s
• [UX] Allow keyboard layout selection (#5318) @Frenzie
• [Kobo] Restart KOReader after a crash (#5328) @NiLuJe

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

Apparently this is not completely unusual, see here. The only solution I found was to manually remove a whole bunch of oddly codependent Mono packages manually with sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq mono-this mono-that mono-whatever-else-shows-up. apt and apt-get were pretty stumped.

Hopefully this helps someone else.

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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Enhanced EPUB rendering can now be enabled on demand (#5117). In the relevant jargon this means correct margin collapsing, honoring negative margins and more properly floating images. In regular people speech, it just means paragraph margins and images will sometimes look slightly better. Other nice improvements include viewing unsupported files in the file manager (#5129) and the ability to restart right from the update dialog (#5150).

A few new edge swipe gestures were added to the gesture manager (#5183), as well as spread/pinch configuration and font increase/decrease actions (#5188). On Android volume keys can now be ignored or used to turn pages (#5158). New contributor @sladflob added configurable sleep messages (#5121), and new contributor @lucarota fixed up some issues in the zsync plugin (#5184, #5185).

Image credit: public domain from Yale Center for British Art. “A Starling” by Isaac Spackman.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• cre: toggable enhanced rendering (floats, collapsed margins…) (#5117, #5180) @poire-z
• [feat] Add percentage read (and other book information) to sleep message (#5121) @sladflob
• Auto-detect the touchscreen input device on the PW4 (#5113) @NiLuJe
• TOC: baseline align chapter name and page number, adds some style tweaks (#5127) @poire-z
• Fix Kindle model detection in some corner-cases (#5125) @NiLuJe
• [feat] File manager – add option to view unsupported files (#5129) @robert00s
• Cloudstorage – Add option to view unsupported files (#5131) @robert00s
• Fix: Status bar hides text with minimal bottom margin (#5135) @robert00s
• [feat] Make gesture intervals configurable (#5138) @robert00s
• android: add support for different screen timeout setups (#5142) @pazos
• [UX] Set font size for menu items (#5146) @robert00s
• [feat] Wallabag: customizable articles count per sync (#5147) @michivi
• [feat] plugins/Wallabag: archiving instead of deleting articles (#5148) @michivi
• [sdl] Add support arrow key for next/prev page (#5149) @robert00s
• [UX] Offer to restart KOReader after update (#5150) @robert00s
• On (really old) Kindles, don’t crash if there’s no sysfs entry to read for battery capacity (#5161) @NiLuJe
• android: add an option to ignore volume keys or use them to turn pages (#5158) @pazos
• Add vertical edge gesture (#5156) @robert00s
• Go Big or Go Home! (#5163) @NiLuJe — adds sensible defaults for the top-left home button
• [lang] Rename ‘Scroll Mode’ to ‘Continuous’ (#5169) @Frenzie
• Android: ignore touchscreen by user request (using a hardware key) (#5164) @Frenzie
• fix “empty folder” when accessing nextcloud webdav (#5171) @jp8
• Add gesture – show current book statistics (#5167) @robert00s
• Fix: set custom screen DPI (#5165) @robert00s
• [UX] Extend the touch zone for up button in touch menu (#5175) @robert00s
• [fix] Add libSDL2-2.0.so.0 to SDL2 ffiLoadCandidates (#5176) @Frenzie
• Fix: hold bottom left corner doesn’t work properly (#5177) @robert00s
• Dict lookups: have them always interruptible (#5173) @poire-z
• crengine: CSS attribute selectors and pseudoclasses fixes (#5178) @poire-z
• docs: fix typo (#5134) @Jason-Cooke
• [UX] Add horizontal edge gestures (#5179, #5181) @robert00s
• Change default zoom mode & add warning message for fit page + scroll (#5170) @Frenzie
• [UX] Add double finger up and down swipe gesture (#5183) @robert00s
• minor: translate some menu text and error message (#5185) @lucarota
• Fix: Zsync -> Subscribe to book share crashes (#5184) @lucarota
• [fix] MuPDF: backport fix for upstream 698877 (#5187) @Frenzie
• [UX] Add spread/pinch & font increase/decrease to gesture manager (#5188, #5189 ) @robert00s
• [UX] Update for the greek popups (#5193) @noembryo

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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The Android version now supports asking for permissions.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• [fix] Kindle Basic 3: use Kobo snow protocol (#5071) @Frenzie
• bump crengine: various small rendering fixes (#5089) @poire-z
• [fix] OPDS crash with fewer than 4 servers (#5092) @Frenzie
• Allow disabling automagic image inversion in Nightmode in CRe (#5095) @NiLuJe
• switch from ant to gradle, (#5096) @pazos
• More robust Gyro toggle (#5104) @NiLuJe
• [feat] Delete book after reading (#5107) @robert00s
• fullscreen toggle for Jelly Bean devices (#5088) @pazos
• [Android] Add support for 3rd party dictionary apps (#5108) @pazos @poire-z
• Make the KUAL extension autonomous on Kindle (#5112) @NiLuJe
• Pocketbook 622 preliminary support (#5118) @DarkPreacher

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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This release adds support for various Android Freescale devices, such as Nook, Onyx and Tolino thanks to the hard work by @char11 and @pazos (#3517, #5056). Besides that there have been various bug fixes.

Image credit: adapted from Bilder ur Nordens flora. Sea buckthorn berries are deliciously acidic and full of vitamin C!

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• newsdownloader: rebuild URL on redirect to bare path (#5012) @avsej
• Bump crengine (#5017) @poire-z :
  • Ensure text decoration (underline) is continued over word gaps
  • Invalidate TOC page numbers on rendering change
  • Ensure reproducible cache files when same rendering settings
  • LVBlockWriteStream: workaround to exclude fatal error
  • Use utf8proc for string uppercase/lowercase/capitalize
• [UX] Update Greek keyboard with swipes & popup (#5028) @noembryo
• NewsDownloader: Improve info shown on UI during processing (#5030) @Thra11
• [Kobo] Tweak the Aura viewport (#5034) @NiLuJe
• [fix] util.getSafeFilename() default to worst-case scenario (#5036) @Frenzie
• NewsDownloader: Allow including images when using text from feed (#5040) @Thra11
• bump crengine: hyphenation, kerning and epub.css fixes (#5043) @poire-z
• [fix] InputText: fix ignoring first char when carat not in front of hint (#5052) @limerainne
• [i18n] Add Korean keyboard (2-beolsik) (#5053) @limerainne
• Fix shutdown action on Kobo (#5055) @NiLuJe
• Kindle Basic 3 support (#5057) @NiLuJe
• Minor networking fixes on legacy Kindles (#5059) @NiLuJe
• [fix] Save document properly in end of document – go to file browser & Wallabag – go to folder (#5062, #5063) @Frenzie
• [feat, UX] Paste in folder shortcuts (#5047) @Frenzie
• [Android] Add full support for eink refreshes on compatible devices (ntx) (#5068) @pazos @char11
• [fix] DjVu color gamma correction (#5069) @Frenzie
• [fix] util.getSafeFilename() maximum extension length (#5067) @Frenzie

Full changelog — closed milestone issues

As one of the maintainers of KOReader, a versatile a document and image viewer, I’m proud to announce the latest release.

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The standard QWERTY keyboard now supports swiping and holding for diacritics. The basic grid of 9 surrounding keys is equivalent to swipe direction.

It recently came to light that the Ubuntu Touch build has been broken for a while. Some minor fixes were applied (e.g., #4946, #4947, #4963) but without a developer who can test on an actual device this is unlikely to be fixed properly. The Ubuntu Touch builds will still be available on the nightly build server, but not as part of the official release.

We’d like to thank all contributors for their efforts. Some highlights since the previous release include:

• [UX] Gesture manager: corner gestures (#4878) @Frenzie
• Slightly less crappy Nightmode (#4871) @NiLuJe
• [UX] Add keyboard swipes (#4884) @Frenzie
• [UX] Keyboard character selection popup (#4886, #4887, #4891 & many more) @Frenzie
• Go back to “UI” refreshes in the FM (#4903) @NiLuJe
• Update FR and ES keyboards (#4906) @poire-z
• [fix] Update AutoWarmth state on resume (#4901, #4921, #4924) @NiLuJe
• [chore] Show FileManager in case of showReaderCoroutine failure (#4931) @Frenzie
• [Android] do not log verbose blitbuffer messages on release builds (#4933) @pazos
• Allow toggling CRe’s new dithering & scaling (#4922) @NiLuJe
• [fix] plugins/send2ebook: crash on setting download dir (#4944) @Frenzie
• NewsDownloader: epub with images (#4982) @Thra11
• Give more control over CRe margins (#4945) @NiLuJe
• Info message typo fix (#5003) @vaughns

Full changelog