Freda can read out text, using any language pack (voice) that is installed on your device.  But it can happen that the text is read in the wrong language.  The fix to this is to adjust the 'language' of the book.  In detail:

PROBLEM: My book is in German, but Freda reads it using an English voice; it sounds like an English person trying to pronounce German.
SOLUTION: In the bookshelf, right-click (or long-tap) the book, and when the menu pops up, select Edit.  Find the 'Language' field on the screen, and enter the two-letter language code for the appropriate language - in this case DE . Tap 'ok' to save this change, and Freda will now realise that the book is in German, and will read it using a German voice.

You can select text in Freda by long-tapping/right clicking, and then dragging the selection handles.

If you want to make it easier to select text, you can change the behaviour of the drag gesture so that, instead of moving the page, it will select text; that is the 'swipe action' option at the top of the controls page.

Freda's normal action on selected text is to pop up a menu, offering various options - highlight, bookmark, find, copy, etc.  If you want Freda to always perform the same action, you can make this happen by using the controls ribbon that pops up at the top of the screen, when ... is tapped.  The left-most item on the controls ribbon shows what Freda does with selected text - tap that item, and you can change its behaviour. [EDIT: now it is the right-most; I will update the video when I get a minute!]

In this video, you can see how to do this, and set Freda up so that every time you select a piece of text, a window will pop up, showing that text translated into German.

Freda's appearance and behaviour can be customised in many ways.  You can access:
Settings: To change the colour and layout of text on the page, and also to change the colour scheme and background image on the main Freda screen.

Controls: To assign custom gestures (such as the effect of tapping the various corners of the page).

Presets: To apply a 'preset', which is to say a named group of settings, all applied in one go.  You can add, delete and change presets, to suit  your personal tastes.

For details of how to do all these things, refer to this demo video.

If you're having problems logging in to the forum, please check what URL you are using to access it.

For best results, use http://www.turnipsoft.com/forums .  Note: that is com not co.uk.  The co.uk URL will work for reading the forum without signing in, but it will not work reliably for signing in (this is because of various oddities around hostname aliasing and cookie-management ... you really do not want to know!)

If you're using the .com forum URL, and still having problems logging in, please contact me for help (jim@turnipsoft.co.uk) and I will see what I can do.

On Windows, Freda is available in two versions, Freda+ and Freda.  The difference between them is that:

• You have to pay to install Freda+
  
• Freda displays advertising
  

On the book reader screen, you can open the ribbon menus by pressing the ... control at bottom right.

There are four ribbon menus, from top to bottom:

• Control Buttons
  
• Book Information
  
• Presets
  
• Navigation
  

• Dragging the 'current position' cursor
  
• Tapping the 'current position' cursor, to enter a new page number
  
• Tapping the 'back' indicator to return to the place you just came from in the book
  
• Tapping  a bookmark indicator
  

Using the menu buttons at the bottom of the bookshelf screen, you can sort and group books, and filter them by title, author and other details.

You can add and remove tags to a book, including the special   tag ('favourite').

This video shows how to do all these things.

BTW: when you download and open a book, tags will be added automatically, if they are present in the EPUB file.  Freda will pick up subject tags from books coming from Calibre or Feedbooks.

1) Install Freda on as many devices as you like.
2) On each device:
  2.1) Check that you can access OneDrive through Freda [*] 
    2.1a) Make this check by scrolling across to your list of book sources and tapping on 'OneDrive'.
    2.1b) Check that it does display a list of files and folders.
    2.1c) If it does not, then, on Freda's OneDrive screen, tap the 'login' button at the bottom
  2.2) Go into the settings screen (tap hamburger button at top left of main screen, then tap the 'settings' item)
  2.3) Scroll down to the 'advanced' settings group and adjust the 'sync using internet' setting to 'yes'.
  2.4) Tap the 'OK' button at the bottom of the screen.
  2.5) On the Freda main screen, watch the line of text at the bottom of the book list; after a few seconds it should say 'Bookshelf synchronisation: OK'.
3) Open a book on one device and start reading it.
4) Open the book on another device, and observe that Freda will open it at the same location as you'd got to on the first device.

Caveats:
Freda will sync reading position between two books open on different devices, if it thinks they are the same book.  The definition of 'the same book' is 'the two books have the same title and author'.

Freda maintains synchronisation by copying files to and from OneDrive every minute.  This uses up your data allowance and battery, so only turn synchronisation on if you need it.

Because files are copied only once a minute, there is a delay in synchronising - so the position could be a page or two out, especially if you were moving through the book quickly.


[*] (because Freda synchronises reading positions by periodically placing small files on your OneDrive).

Instructions – short version:

• In Calibre’s preferences screen, set the Content Server username and password to your preferred values, and make a note of them.
  
• Start the Content Server and leave Calibre running.
  
• Look up the IP address of the machine that’s running Calibre.
  
• Ensure your device is connected via WiFi or a wired network, to the same network as the machine running Calibre (not via mobile data)
  
• On your device, run Freda, go right to the books sources list, and find (or create) an OPDS source called 'calibre'.  Don't fill in anything for URL or search URL yet.
  
• Tap the source icon; it will open and fail to find the source contents.
  
• Tap the 'edit' button, and for 'calibre host' enter the IP address mentioned above, and tap 'ok' to save it.  Note: in general, Freda will not work with a Calibre server running on the same machine as Freda.  But, depending on your security settings, you may be able to get it to work if you enter the 'loopback' IP address here, 127.0.0.1.
  
• If you've set a password on your Calibre server, then set it on Freda too, by tapping the 'password' button and entering it here.
  
• Tap the 'home' button at the top of the screen, and you should now see folder icons representing the different sections of your Calibre catalog.
  

1) Try performing whatever action is causing the problem
2) Choose the 'support' item on the hamburger menu (menu at top left of the main screen), and select 'save log file'
3) Select a location for the log file (desktop, documents, ... wherever is convenient)
4) Send an email to support@turnipsoft.co.uk, adding that logfile as an attachment