[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Freda version 2 - ready for beta test

Hi all,

Freda v2 is now about ready for beta-testing. Anyone who is still on for helping to test, please email me at home@jim-chapman.net, and I will send you the relevant file.

Key points / new features:

There is no 'main menu' any more. You access all features via the shortcuts screen. While no book is loaded, a short screen-tap will display shortcuts; while a book is loaded, you may need to use a long-tap.

The 'Library' is no longer a simple folder location. Instead, it is a searchable database of books. To add books to the library, tap the 'Library' shortcut, then use 'Actions->Add Books'. From there, you can select 'Add Folder' to get a similar function to what the old v1.1 library did - i.e. add to the library all the books in a particular folder (and optionally, its subfolders too). If your library folder structure is "/.../(author name)/(bookname).epub", tick the 'Use folder name for author name' option, and Freda will put those author names in the library database.

You also have an option to 'Add OPDS Catalog' to the library. Specify the catalog URI (the Feedbooks one is used by default, but you could equally use a Calibre2opds/Dropbox location, or any other OPDS-compliant catalog; for local files, use a URI like file:///my documents/my books.atom). Tap the 'Open' button to open the catalog. Use the Prev/Back/Root/Next buttons to navigate the catalog hierarchy. In the display area, you will see: in blue: OPDS-catalog links; in grey: other links; in black: book entries. 'Add Books' will add to your library all the book entries on the screen. If you have selected a book entry, the 'Add' button will also allow you to add (or to add and open) just that book.

Whenever you add books to the library, Freda identifies the place that you got those books from as a 'source'. When you wish to tidy up the library, you can select 'Actions->Remove Books' on the library screen, and it will present a list of sources; you can use this to remove from the library all the books from a given source. Note: Freda will not delete any books - it just removes them from its library database.

The library screen offers a (rather minimalist!) search function. Use the drop-down box at the top left to say which fields you want to search, and type text into the text box at the top right.

The 'Settings' screen is now more finger-friendly. It presents a list of settings; to modify one of them, tap on it, and a suitable dialog box will be displayed. Modified values will be shown in bold.

The top item on the 'Settings' screen takes you to a screen for modifying 'text appearance'.

Once you've defined the settings you want, select 'Actions->Use These Settings' to apply them.

You can also load preset settings, and save new presets. When saving presets note: (1) if you have a book loaded, you will have a special saveable preset called 'whenever this book is loaded'; you can use this to define settings that will be applied whenever you're reading this book in the future; (2) you need to specify which settings are included in the saved preset, by ticking the relevant tick-boxes.

When Freda is busy doing something, you will see a blue screen and/or a 'wait' cursor. If Freda is doing background processing (e.g pagination) you will see a small flickering square at the bottom right of the screen. If this square turns into a red-outlined box, it means Freda has run out of memory and is now working in 'low memory mode'. The main effect of this is that 'Find...' will not work reliably when searching in chapters other than the current one.

RSVP/Autoscroll is implemented. It should be fairly obvious in operation, but note: the +/- buttons will speed up/slow down the reading speed; to pause reading, tap the screen; to un-pause, tap the screen to exit RSVP mode or tap the 'PAUSE' indicator to resume RSVP reading.

The 'Lock Backlight' option will force the backlight to stay on as long as you are reading (though after 10 minutes of inactivity, it will allow the backlight to switch off anyway).

'Rotate' will turn the display one 'stop' clockwise. You can define what 'stops' are available using the 'Permissible Orientations' setting. There is a 'Lock Orientation' setting which, if set, will cause Freda to resist other applications' attempts to change screen orientation.

Logographic (e.g. Chinese) and Right-to-left languages (e.g Hebrew) should work OK. Freda will activate these features based upon the 'language' metadata it finds in the book file. If Freda gets it wrong, the Settings screen lets you force it to use Logographic ('characters are words') and/or RTL features (and obviously you can use 'save preset' to tell Freda just to use these settings for the individual book concerned).

Languages with combining characters (Arabic, Persian, Thai, various Indian scripts) may or may not work. I'd be interested to get feedback on any problems.

Other shortcuts and settings are, I think, reasonably self-explanatory. Do please play with them - you can't break anything (or to be precise, if you do manage to break anything, please tell me!)

Translation of the UI into languages other than English is still 'work in progress'; I'm working to fix some perfomance problems with the string-lookup function; depending on how it goes, it may be in the release 2.0 version, or it may have to wait for 2.1.

The current beta version only works on WM6.x devices with touchscreens. WM5, WinCE6 and non-touchscreen builds are ongoing, and will be there for the final v2.0 release.

Thanks,

Jim