Turnipsoft Forums - Discussion

Change Log v5.03

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:32:49 +0200

Freda update 5.3 is now being deployed. This release includes various bug fixes, and a transition to more up-to-date versions of various code components (which may mean improved stability, or may not). The major changes are:

(Windows) Added menu bar to main screen
Switched to using Gutenberg for initial book list (because Feedbooks has been shut down)
(Android) Improved full-screen mode
Fixed issues with background images

Change Log v5.02

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 09:30:24 +0100

Freda update 5.2 is now being deployed. This release includes various bug fixes, and a transition to more up-to-date versions of various code components (which may mean improved stability, or may not). The major changes are:

Google Drive browsing is no longer supported, because Google's access policies have changed
It's now possible to sideload Freda from my web site, and there is the option to purchase a premium features licence for a sideloaded installation

If you want to sideload Freda on Windows (i.e. install it without using the Microsoft Store) please refer to https://www.turnipsoft.com/freda/sideloading.html

Text scrunching up on the Left.

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:23:54 +0100

Hello

I was recently sent a Epub book by its author and when I try to open the file with Freda (and Aquile), it seems that some of the text is scrunched up over the top of itself on the left side of the page.
I am using a Microsoft laptop and I am not much above sending emails in terms of computer skills. Is there anyone who might be able to suggest where the problem lies?
Would a screen shot of one of the pages help? I don't seem to be having much success with that either.

Thanks

Jennifer

Change Log v5.00

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 20:21:08 +0200

The major update to version 5 is now live, and being progressively distributed to Windows and Android users.

Changes include:

Application settings have been overhauled and rationalised, introducing a broad class of settings that allow you to tell the app to extract a value from the book file if provided (with a default if not) or else to override the value from the book with some specific value.
Other settings have been renamed or removed, where this makes sense.
Legacy mode rendering is removed (but an option is offered to instruct the renderer to use a simplified layout if you need it).
Popup ribbons, menus and dialogs now have ‘drag handles’ so you can move them around the screen. The ‘read aloud’ (etc.) ribbon has been redesigned.
Reading page UI has been improved, adding a ‘magnifying glass’ for selected text, and offering additional options for text scrolling and page turning.
There is an ‘accessible menu’ mode, in which the book navigation (etc.) tasks can be done using a single menu, and the ribbons are disabled. The other app pages use a page-level app bar menu for their various tasks.
Book synchronisation is entirely reworked, allowing you to tell the app to continuously synchronise reading position, library contents, book sources, bookmarks etc. across multiple devices – or to perform such synchronisation on demand if you prefer.
Hyphenation now uses proper hyphenation rules (selected according to the language of the book).
CODE and PRE content is now handled more accurately, so that whitespace doesn’t get accidently skipped or wrongly added.

After the update, Freda will display a ‘first run’ popup, and will offer to load your old (version 4) Freda content – this is optional, and if you choose not to load it, Freda will discard the old content, and re-initialise its bookshelf, settings and book sources. If you do wish to keep your existing Freda content, please be sure to complete this ‘first run’ task when prompted. If you should, subsequently, want to go through the 'first run' process again, it's available as an option on the 'support' menu.

Impact on the Freda+ app:
For historical reasons, there is a paid-for Freda app (called Freda+) on the Microsoft Store. That’s not going to be upgraded to version 5, so if you’ve already bought it on the Store, you can continue to use it for as long as you want, though it will not receive further updates and will eventually become obsolete. If you’re using Freda+ at the moment you should NOT remove it from your device(s), even if you decide to install the new Freda version 5 app. This is because right now, the Freda app will be unable to recognise the past purchase of Freda+, and it will therefore disable the premium features package. Within a few weeks, a new capability will be added to Freda (and the old Freda+ app) to connect to the Freda licence server, so as to allow existing users of Freda+ to use Freda's premium features without having to pay for them again - but this capability will not work if Freda+ is no longer installed on any of your devices.

Freda and Privacy: (Update for Freda version 5)

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 19:37:33 +0200

Up until now (August 2023) Freda has been advertising supported. For me, as the app’s author this has become increasingly troublesome:

Back in the day, on-line advertising worked like TV and billboard advertising, the business model being ‘I rent out some display space, and in that space the advertiser shows an appealing product description, which may induce the viewer to buy their product’.
But that has morphed, over the years, into something much more objectionable – these days it isn’t really ‘advertising’ at all, as I used to understand the word; rather, the app is becoming a conduit for the harvesting and correlating of personal data, for purposes that we mere netizens cannot understand but would probably disapprove of if we did understand them.
Assorted initiatives (GDPR for instance) have tried to restrict this data harvesting (or at least make sure it happens only with the subject’s consent) but mainly what they’ve achieved is to make the process more cumbersome, without really making it any less insidious.

So I’ve finally had enough of all that. Freda is no longer advertising supported. The app won’t participate in the harvesting and selling of your personal data to anyone. Instead, Freda is now freemium/nagware: you can use Freda free of charge for as long as you like, and all that will happen is that you see occasional nagging messages, and certain features are restricted. In the current release, the restrictions are:

You can’t create more than ten bookmarks or highlights in one day
The read-aloud function will stop at the end of each chapter
Automatic sync of book position and other details from one device to another will not be available.

To remove these restrictions, you can buy the ‘premium features’ package. At present, Freda is available only from the app stores (Microsoft Store and Google Play, with Apple App Store coming soon). The ‘premium features’ package will be available as an in-app purchase item in these stores.

Within the next few months [UPDATE: for Windows, this feature is now live], I will release a version of the app that’s designed for side-loading – so you can just download an installation file (APK, MSIX or whatever) from Turnipsoft’s website and install it yourself, without using an app store at all. Licencing for such a Freda setup will be managed via a licence server running on the Azure cloud. To buy the ‘premium features’ licence for this kind of installation, you’ll need to sign in to OneDrive using Freda, and make a PayPal payment to Turnipsoft. The OneDrive sign-in is needed to give me a verified email address for the person who bought the licence and – if you should lose or re-install Freda – we can grant you the licence again without you having to pay for it. One payment (whether on an app store, or via PayPal) will allow you to use Freda on multiple devices (the limit will be about ten devices).
From a privacy perspective, your options will be:

If you’re OK to share your personal details with an app store operator (Microsoft/Google/Apple): download Freda from the app store, and buy the premium features’ add on if you wish.
If you don’t want to share personal data with an app store operator: download the Freda installer from Turnipsoft’s website.
If you’re willing to share personal data (your OneDrive user name / email) with Turnipsoft, then you can acquire a Freda ‘premium features’ licence, and share it between your devices, by paying me for it (either using PayPal, or via an app store).
If you don’t want to share personal data at all, you can still use Freda, but you won’t be able to use the premium features.

What about existing users of the old (version 4) Freda?
If you’ve been using the old version of Freda for a while, the upgrade process will notice this fact, and will grant you a licence to use the premium features without making any payment. My reasoning: you’ve already ‘paid’ me by putting up with advertising for some time; it wouldn’t be right to make you pay again. Note that very recent installations of Freda version 4 will not benefit from this concession, unless you’ve actually paid for the ’no advertising’ feature.

What about existing users of the old (version 4) Freda+ app?
For historical reasons, there is a paid-for Freda app (called Freda+) on the Microsoft Store. That’s not going to be upgraded to version 5, so if you’ve already bought it on the Store, you can continue to use it for as long as you want, though it will not receive further updates and will eventually become obsolete. If you are using Freda+ you can transfer your licence, so as to allow you to use the new Freda app with premium features enabled. In Freda+, tap on the support menu button, and you will see an option for licence sharing. Tap this button and follow the instructions. After this, when you run the new Freda app, you will find that premium features are enabled (if not, you should try the licence sharing menu's 'check' button to force the app to go and look for the licence).

Change Log v4.41

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 12:38:06 +0200

Minor bug fixes and updates to the versions of some third party libraries
Changes to support the imminent update to Freda version 5

Freda will be updated to version 5 in the coming days.

After the update, Freda will display a ‘first run’ popup, and will offer to load your old (version 4) Freda content – this is optional, and if you choose not to load it, Freda will discard the old content, and re-initialise its bookshelf, settings and book sources. If you do wish to keep your existing Freda content, please be sure to complete this ‘first run’ task when prompted.

Additionally, to reduce the risk of problems you may: (1) using Freda’s backup function, make a backup of your bookshelf and other Freda content to your OneDrive (2) in addition, if you have bookmarks that are important to you, open each book that contains bookmarks, view the bookmark list for that book and then close it again.

Change Log v4.40

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 11:58:28 +0200

BUG FIX: some cases causing app crashes on Windows and Android.
(Android) Updated to use Google UserMessagingPlatform to manage user consent for advertising cookies
(Windows) Switched to Pubfinity for providing advertising and managing user consent

Change Log v4.39

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 14:01:31 +0200

Refactored the application, to make a better separation between ViewModel and Model code, and introduce the use of the Command pattern.
Fixed dictionary search using Lexico, which had been broken by changes to the lexico web-site.
BUG FIX: Fixed a problem where empty tags (such as image tags) would break the processing of chapters in FB2 books, meaning that the chapters got truncated.
(Android) Fixed a performance issue with the recolouring of large images.
(Android): BUG FIX: Corrected a problem which was preventing the selection of certain code pages (such as Cyrillic)
(Android) Applied the new 'scoped storage restrictions' in Android, by removing the storage card book source, and the ability to save/restore backups in local folders. To open book files stored locally on an Android device, you now need to use a 'file picker' popup.

Change Log v4.38

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 18:37:12 +0100

Refactored the Book Source classes, to make a better separation between ViewModel and Model code.
Fixed DropBox authentication / authorisation to use the new ‘refresh token’ workflow and the PKCE auth flow. Note: Some time in ~ Sep 2021 existing DropBox users will be forced to reauthenticate (because their access tokens will expire, and they will need to obtain a refresh token, in order to refresh them). There does not seem to be a good way around that problem.
Fixed the CSS loader so it will also load sheets referenced by @import directives.
Fixed the CSS parser to handle pseudos like :not([foo]).
Added a special case to the renderer, so as not to render elements that are explicitly assigned height=1px (they are placeholders, and should be treated a bit like ‘display=none’).
Added support for MathML, by converting MathML to SVG.
Made my ‘advancedrenderingoverridesmargins’ setting a bit more comprehensive (ignore margins, padding, line spacing and page breaks in all their forms).
BUG FIX: OPDS reader was inadvertently consuming some elements, which meant that the Ubooquity OPDS feed did not work.
BUG FIX (Android): SVG image scaling was wrong (didn't account for device pixel scale correctly).
BUG FIX: background image scaling was sometimes distorting the background image when tiling the background.
WORK-AROUND: (Android) Addressed, for now, the problem with access to local files and storage card folders, by adding android:requestLegacyExternalStorage="true" in the declaration in the manifest file, so that the scoped external storage restrictions won’t apply to Freda just yet.

Change Log v4.37

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 11:40:46 +0100

Implemented CSS ‘position’ attribute values ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’.
Implemented CSS attribute background-image: url("path/to/image.ext").
Forced the read-aloud language code to always be just two letters (so EN-AU becomes EN for instance), which avoids the issue that a possibly reasonable language is getting left off the list of available languages.
‘text-to-speech applies emphasis’ is an optional setting, default no. Because Microsoft’s default voices produce an idiotic drawl when reading emphasised text.
‘text-to-speech pronounces image descriptions’ is an optional setting, default yes. Because sometimes a book has all sorts of rubbish in images’ alt-text, and we don’t want to hear it read out.
Implemented ‘advanced rendering’ behaviour for TXT and FB2 books, so that the CFI-saving of bookmarks works for them too (I will eventually want to get rid of the legacy rendering mode altogether – and need to be forward-compatible with this change).
For Android only (because Windows UWP apps don't have multiple TTS engines), added a dropdown to choose which text-to-speech engine will be used, if there are several of them installed.
PDF pages can optionally have their margins trimmed (i.e. cut down to the rectangle containing non-white pixels).
Implemented a special ‘settings to use for this book only’ preset. It appears in the preset list, with a name like "for current book" which you can save settings to, or load (if you wanted to restore some setting you'd changed). When you come to re-open the book, Freda looks to see whether you've previously saved a "for current book" preset for it, and if so, Freda will load it. [potential gotcha – there’s no easy way to make this preset ‘unload’ when you subsequently aren’t reading this particular book]
Image viewer: Now provides a ‘rotate 90 degrees’ button, and on Windows, a full-screen view and add accessible controls / buttons for zoom in/out and pan.
Added a setting to tell text-to-speech to 'skip' some characters (noting that ~ * _ seem to be particularly annoying).
When a ‘folder’ or ‘storage card’ book source is created, it now gets a default label that’s localised into the right language. [note: storage card exists only on Android]
Bug Fix: The code for squeezing table columns to fit their content is not working (it's giving up when floats were present, failing to account for margin/padding on image elements … )
Bug Fix: (Android) Windows-1251 and 1252 encodings are not working (it needed a change to the .NET build options for the project, to make it work in Release builds)
Bug Fix: Read-aloud is failing to proceed to the next chapter in some cases (in fact, when the chapter begins with a paragraph consisting only of non-selectable ‘formatting’ images.
Bug Fix: The margin of left-floating elements is applied wrongly to the ‘float formatting context’ meaning that it can over-write the content that is meant to be floating round it to the right.
Bug Fix: The width of a floated image should default to the actual width of the image in the file, rather than the layout-width of the block containing it.
Bug Fix: (Windows) When GoogleDrive redirects to an app-specific URL in its auth workflow, it uses the same URL for Freda, Freda+ and Freda-Chinese. So if more than one of them is installed, the results will be random, and not very nice. The three apps should use three different uri schemes.

Change Log v4.36

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 12:42:14 +0200

Freda update 4.36, 3rd September 2020: Change Log

Render PDF files, displaying the pages as PNG images, using the built-in Windows and Android PDF components.
Better fallback logic for cases where the advanced parser barfs; first try simplified layout, then try flattened – which should basically just emit the text without formatting or aligning it in any way at all
Fix 'float' and 'clear' logic to align better with CSS standards (e.g. force a move below the float(s) in response to an applicable 'clear'). Generally trying to do the best job I can, without (yet) implementing the Block Formatting Context in all its gory horror.
Better handling of block elements embedded inside inline elements.
Better treatment of start-of-paragraph in justified text.
(Android) Ask for permission when it's required for storage card access / save log file / backup (save/restore/merge)
BUG FIX: When the Mobi-parser (or any other thing) creates an epub having elements with HTML that sets width and height attributes, ignore these, unless they are on images. Such attributes should only be set by CSS not by HTML.
(Windows) BUG FIX: Fix an issue with multi-line text boxes – where keyboard characters like []{}\|’@#~ were getting ignored.
BUG FIX: Fix odd behaviour (and some stack overflow crashes) with getting/selecting paragraphs, sentences and sections, including when this is done by the 'read aloud' function.
BUG FIX: ‘Read Aloud’ function now starts at the beginning of the selected text (a regression bug meant that it was starting from the start of the paragraph instead)
(Windows) BUG FIX: Fixed an issue where the BookReaderPage menu ribbons would get into in a funny state, where they can’t be popped out (because they immediately close again).

Put in a Plug for FREDA on this YouTube 2020 Review

Sat, 15 Aug 2020 18:45:31 +0200

I put in a nice plug for FREDA on this YouTube review

Best E-Readers in 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwnLGrzyQNM

JWhitten

Change Log v4.35

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 14:51:08 +0200

Freda update 4.35, 27th July 2020: Change Log

Reworked the CSS code, to handle long chains of selectors better, and to deal with pseudos more correctly (:nth-child variants and :not, in particular).
Fixed a bug affecting the specificity of the lower border style of tables (and other things)
Text-to-speech no longer applies emphasis (the Android TTS engines ignore the SSML emphasis tag, and the Windows TTS engine pronounces emphasis in a way that no-one could like)
Improved the reliability of loading bookmarks/highlights created by earlier versions of Freda: when loading bookmarks / highlights, if the number of words in the chapter does not match the saved numbers, and if there is a CFI available, use that rather than trying to interpolate a new word position.
The ‘download’ action on a book that has a ‘folder’ source will no longer delete the book (because we won’t be able to get to the file again, because system permissions). It will now just clear and refresh all the cache files.
The ‘copy to clipboard’ function now includes new-lines for paragraph breaks.
(Android) Fix an issue seen with Gutenberg, around https downloads, caused by the use of an untrusted certificate by Gutenberg.
(Android) Fix problem with Dropbox login (by switching to using the system browser and a custom URI scheme)
(Windows) Accessibility fix: When the selected text range is cleared, keep it hanging around in the background, so that if the user does something ‘resumey’ it will start with that selection, not the first word on the page. ‘something resumey’ would mean hitting an arrow key for example.
(Windows) Accessibility fix: Images are selectable, and when selected they say their image description alt text (via the speak-selected-text setting, and/or Narrator, and/or read-aloud).
(Windows) Accessibility fix: Image viewer control shows the media description alt text content, if there is any.
(Windows) Accessibility fix: Dialog boxes announce their names when displayed. The close button, when selected says ‘close popup ”.
(Windows) Accessibility fix: Reader page control button says the name of the book, and “reader page controls”.
(Windows) Accessibility fix: Reader page control ribbons buttons and close/minimise/pin/unpin buttons now say something making it clear which ribbon and which function they represent.
(Windows) Accessibility fix: added an item to the ‘accessible’ menu, to do ‘go back to bookshelf’.

Change Log v4.34

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 13:52:39 +0200

Freda update 4.34, 19th June 2020: Change Log

When an SVG element specifies width and height in %, and it has a viewBox, then interpret the % values relative to the width and height of the viewBox.
Make table rendering more robust – don’t barf if some rows are shorter than others; retry layout in simpler ways if it fails first time.
The settings popup for font should, if ‘advanced rendering’ and ‘book style overrides Freda font selection’ are both set, include a message noting that this font will be overridden by the book’s font (and mentioning the possibility of adjusting ‘book style overrides Freda font selection’).
Fix lookup in the lexico dictionary, following the changes to their website.
(Android) When a glyph is missing from a font, use Noto Sans instead, or get the system to find us a font.
Make my background threads ‘long-running’.
(Android) change the behaviour of the settings screen so that it only applies the settings and repaginates the book when you tap ‘ok’ on the settings flyout. [because otherwise it’s very laggy when you start adjusting settings]
When reading aloud, include emphasis (note: the Android TTS engine appears to ignore emphasis anyway)
(Windows) – Implement a UI behaviour so that mouse-drag and finger-swipe are treated differently – i.e. mouse-drag always does select text, whereas finger-swipe may change pages, or select text, or be ignored. This does seem like the sort of thing a user would expect.
Implement EPUB 3 CFIs for bookmark/location mark logic, and use it to define my bookmark & highlight locations in a portable way.
When a block element has a width property assigned to give it a narrower width than its parent, and has textAlign “right” or “center”, then move the block over so that it is aligned correctly.
(Android) BUG FIX: fix coding issue with deobfuscating embedded font files.
When a CSS @font-face declaration uses a number to specify a font-weight, interpret 500 and under as ‘normal’ and 600+ as ‘bold’.
Integrate Vungle advertising API and only fall back to AdsJumbo if Vungle has no ads for us. (To think about later: Pubfinity, IronSource).
Improve handling of ‘v’ elements in FB2 books.
BUG FIX: ‘ERROR: MainViewModel.LibraryBookIdForURI - exception: System.InvalidOperationException: Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.’ – which happens particularly when you download multiple books in one go.
(Windows) Revert to using the WebView-based code for SVG image rendering (the wieslawstoltes Svg.Skia library is not stable in production)
(Windows) Accessibility: implement an option to use a ‘keyboard accessible UI’ on the reader screen, using cascading flyout menus.
(Android) Use HarfBuzz shaper when rendering Devanagari text. (hopefully meaning we get ligatures right)

[UPDATE 22nd July: I've made a further update, to address some reported issues with books that had been open before the 4.34 update, and were now not displaying correctly. The issue was caused by corruption of the app's cache files]

How to check if Freda has latest update installed?

Wed, 27 May 2020 11:20:08 +0200

I think I saw a popup that Freda needs to update a day ago, Not sure.

Now that I missed it, how do I check for latest Freda version in the Windows 10 app?

The update was supposed to add Sentence + - feature to easily read aloud next sentence or previous one.

Thank you.