Passages

Passages, an Android parallel text reader which began as Aglona Reader for Android, is scheduled to launch 1st quarter 2019.

Features:

Simultaneous (parallel) display of a text in two different languages;
Ability to listen to either translation through speaker or headphones;
Control of spoken text speech rate and pitch;
Three reading modes: side by side, interleaved text, or one language display with touch to reveal translation;
Pinch zoom;
Three highlighting modes for parallel passages with adjustable color contrast;
Selectable serif or sans serif font for text display;
Selectable white or eyesaving background color;
Selectable sound effects;
Selectable haptic feedback (device dependent).

Requirements:

Android Text To Speech (TTS) voice files must be installed before Passages can speak text aloud;
Android 4.1 (JellyBean) or higher is required;
Will function on small devices, but 5" or larger screen recommended for best reading experience.

Demo:

Here is a video showing some of Passages' features:

Coming soon:

History:

The development history of Passages (working title ParallelBook):

ParallelBook Release 1.14 - FIXED: Consider disabling partition left/right movement (too many gestures confuse the user). - DISABLED FOR NOW: How useful is left right pane ratio control? Eliminate? - Increased LONGTAPDELAY from .5 to 1 second - Larger, bold type in Book Information screen - FIXED: Consider three finger instead of double-tap to bring up controls (too many gestures confuse the user). - FIXED: Use bold font for section headers. Uses dark blue. - FIXED: Do not "speak" -, ~, etc. (needed with some, but not all, TTS voices). - ADDED: Haptic feedback during line scroll (optional) - FIXED: Tap help screen to back out of it. - FIXED: TTS rate control does not return to 1.0 (goes to 1.1 or 0.8) BY: using round() instead of (int) cast (truncation error). - FIXED: Consider moving contrast control to "controls" panel (too many gestures confuse the user). TODO: - Triple tap for controls gets confused with pinch zoom. (increase delay? use quadruple tap instead?) - When fully zoomed in, page drag sometimes does not go forward (does nothing, e.g., start of Ninety-Three) - In Library view, touch/hold on an entry brings up Removing Item panel, but panel disappears when finger lifted (workaround: DRAG finger to panel menu item to invoke it) - Back button too easily exits application (leverage onBackPressed()). - Advanced popup sometimes does not appear when a phrase at top of screen is touched. (looks like state corruption). - Percentage position strip needs to be larger on large screens. - While speaking, highlight corresponding segments in both languages (challenging). - Leave last spoken outline on screen when scrolling. (Difficult because location of outline is mapped to screen coordinates, not text. Find way to map to text?) - Fix problem with speaking text which extends beyond display (intermittent problem). - Consider embedding one or more books as assets or resources for easy demonstration & portability. Note: .pbo files may be larger than this entire app (about 300k). - Investigate how we currently handle "l=" tags. Which level numbers are handled, how? - How to use tags to force newline (for verse); - How to use tags to disable paragraph indent. - Investigate global vs. application volume controls. - For legibility, move "other language" popup further from highlighted text in expert mode. - Option to have the Expert mode popup speak the popup language rather than the visible language. - Enable the "Done" button in the Settings dialog - Continuous TTS reading feature. - Rebrand as "Passages" (try not to lose Git edit history) - Immersive mode / turn off action bar? To do so we must design a means of regaining user control. - Fix normal mode color spillover at top of screen - Investigate use of integers or doubles instead of floats for better performance. - Investigate latency of sound effects under some (but not all) conditions. - Sound and color highlighting inoperative when alternate system font is used on Samsung platform and we (re)start ARA from Task Manager. Workaround: force stop ARA. - Use smaller font and/or tighter spacing for menus on small screen devices. - Consider reducing font size rather than dispersing text when a side of screen is shrunk. (possibly not needed if we disable resizing) - Serif font text spacing still corrupted in some circumstances. - Add multilanguage support to menus, etc. - Colored text instead of or in addition to colored background. - Builtin volume control for whatever channel TTS uses. - Dexguard if possible; otherwise optimize Proguard. - Apparently ARA saved/retrieved preferences on per-file basis. Follow up. - Long tap on word --> dictionary lookup. (assign another gesture for popup menu). - Add capabilities to Controls menu: - Reverse sides - Show in Book Info: - User's native language - Investigate using PopupWindow for dialogs. - Separate TTS controls (pitch, speed) for each language. - Apparently PB will only display the start of a sufficiently large text segment (buffer limit?). - Show which version of PB this is, somewhere better than "Book Information" - When a line is broken in order to stretch text to fill screen, it is sometimes but not always indented as if it were a new paragraph start. E.g., start of file: Ninety-three-1b.pbo. ParallelBook Release 1.11 - Renamed project for distribution as ParallelBook (more easily found when user searches for an app to read parallel texts. ParallelReader and ParallelText names already widely used for other projects so this is next best I found). - FIXED: In the "Add file from FS" screen going all the way up crashes the program. BY: not adding '..' to the directory list if we are at '/'. - FIXED: Add help screen and display it upon first use. - FIXED: Dragging on "no book is open" screen crashes app. BY: added code to PTV to open library and return false if no book opened. - Added "up" navigation to action bar, removed "back" button instructions from several menus. - FIXED: Consider sound effect for pinch zoom. - Reordered adjacent colors at InitializeColors() for better contrast. - Added orange and removed red highlighting because we now use red to indicate TTS. - PARTLY FIXED: Fix TTS latency on some platforms, especially noticable when "starting" a different language. BY: Start "first" language in .PBO file last since this is usually the "foreign" language and the one a user is more likely to use TTS on. This latency is within the TTS engine on some but not all platforms, where all TTS is threaded to a single engine, which entails a large delay when loading a new language. The only likely means of overcoming completely is to build a secondary process to force two instances of TTS to remain active. Even with that approach the startup latency will remain. Also note that at least on some platforms, failure to shut down a TTS engine during onDestroy() leads the system to crash our app. - FIXED: Consider outline instead of solid color to highlight parallel sentences. BY: Using paint.setStyle(STYLE_STROKE). - FIXED: Scale maxNumberOfLines to physical screen dimensions. BY: Using getContext().getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density. - Now displays warning Toast whenever user attempts to "speak" uninstalled language. - FIXED: Add TTS speed and pitch settings to prefs (currently controlled by system settings) - Now uses themes for some dialogues. - FIXED: Brightness control goes too "high" and turns off all coloring. Limit or arrive at reasonable fixed brightness for each mode and eliminate this control. BY: limit max brightness to .98 instead of 1. - POSSIBLY FIXED: Discard context information from older releases (causes unpredictable behavior). BY: try/catch in MainActivity, needs testing. - FIXED: Preserve filesystem browsing directory location. Return to directory of last loaded book. Release 1.0.2.6 - Changed project Target SDK version from Jellybean to Kitkat (Kitkat is currently the most widely used Android flavor). - Changed text for filesystem navigation from "Add file from SD card" to "Add file from filesystem." - Updated variable names and log messages in MainActivity.tTSInit1 for clarity. - FIXED: Refresh screen following setting change to first word/fragment highlight. - FIXED: Now that we speak text, perhaps volume controls should revert to normal function rather than page forward/back. - FIXED: Preserve filesystem browsing directory location. BY: Reverted to original getExternalStorageDirectory() logic, but commented out code which restricted browsing to "..". - FIXED: Analyze possible overuse of pTD.*, etc., to import/export context BY: Used Java 5 "static import" feature to remove many "<class>." declaration prefixes for legibility. - FIXED: DrawFrame() in all modes only draws right hand side of rectangle when it coincides with edge of screen or column if we are bleeding over at bottom of screen BY: Added missing final path.LineTo() calls to return line to origin in several sections of class ParallelTextData. - INVESTIGATED: TTS startup latency occurs asynchronously to our process (the lag occurs AFTER speak() returns control to us). Also this occurs with my LG phone but not with my Samsung tablets. Since the lag occurs in the background, no known way to display spinner, etc. during this delay. - Removed several redundant calls to invalidateParallelText() which were causing performance problems on large screens. - Revised case STATE_SCROLL in PTV to lower refresh rate and remove performance bottleneck. - Set default for reverse option to false. - Set outline color to red, changed Pen thickness from 2.0F to 3.0F. - Changed background to "easy on eyes" color with less blue light. - Changed minimum API from 8 to 11 since according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history less than 5% of platforms are now running an API below this level. - Revised "settings" preference submenu to return user to parent menu after selecting reading mode and collapsed to a more concise flat menu w/o categories. - FIXED: Possibly add serif fonts. Note that ARA currently simply uses whatever system font is set. TODO: - Fix TTS latency on some platforms, especially noticable when "starting" a different language. - Immersive mode / turn off action bar? To do so we must design a means of regaining user control. - Add TTS speed and pitch settings to prefs (currently controlled by system settings) - Fix normal mode color spillover at top of screen - Investigate use of integers or doubles instead of floats for better performance. - Investigate latency of sound effects under some (but not all) conditions. - Sound and color highlighting inoperative when alternate system font is used on Samsung platform and we (re)start ARA from Task Manager. Workaround: force stop ARA. - Use smaller font and/or tighter spacing for menus on small screen devices. Release 1.0.2.5 - Changed version to 1.0.2.5 - Added detailed input file error logging. - TTS now working in all reading modes. - TTS startup time OK on my Samsung Tab 4, but lags on my LG LS660 (try starting 2nd TTS thread for 2nd language). Apparently LG routes all SpeakText calls to the same handler regardless of calling method. Next approach: implement separate thread for second language. - Implemented workaround for Android 4.4.2 which appears to resolve progress indicator and other display issues, see comments under RenderAdvancedPopup() in ParallelTextData.java. - Increase max screen lines from 50 to 70, for use with tablets. - Paragraphs indented in Normal mode. - Percent progress indicator precision reduced to two decimal points for clarity. TODO: - Add TTS speed and pitch settings to prefs (currently controlled by system settings) - Fix normal mode color spillover at top of screen - Improve startup time of TTS when language changes, possibly by preloading a second thread. Investigate possibility of displaying a Toast while loading. - Analyze possible overuse of pTD.*, etc., to import/export context - Investigate latency of sound effects under some (but not all) conditions. - Possibly add serif fonts. - "Library" routines cannot reach physical SD card directories (can't navigate "up" from emulated storage). - Now that we speak text, perhaps volume controls should revert to normal function rather than page forward/back. - Refresh screen following setting change to first word/fragment highlight. ==== Added this changes.txt file to make tracking more transparent (assuming it's kept up to date) Changed version to 1.0.2.4 Advanced popup and TTS now terminate upon SCROLL actions Brightness control is now same as divider, not central 1/3 of screen Doubled width of "FINGERTIP" from .1 to .2 inch providing wider area for divider drag or brightness control. Brightness control sound effect now rises/falls with brightness change Reversed brightness control so up is brighter, down is darker Reformatted MainActivity.java, ParallelTextView.java and ParallelTextData.java for clarity and deleted commented-out code. Reconfigured some areas of code marked as "probable bug" or "redundant" or "unused" by Android Studio as recommended by AS. Corrected problem where spoken text did not match popup under some conditions. Corrected problem of grayed-out fragments at end of screen containing entire sentences. Moved variable "opstate" from ParallelTextData.java to ParallelTextView.java since this is (now?) the only location it is used from. TODO: - Add TTS speed and pitch settings to prefs (currently controlled by system settings) - Add TTS to normal and alternating display modes - Fix normal mode color spillover at top of screen - Improve file navigation; sometimes directories appear to be unavailable - Improve startup time of TTS when language changes, possibly by preloading a second thread - Divider should be horizontal on vertical tablet orientation, currently vertical on all orientations - Analyze possible overuse of pTD, etc., to import/export context - Investigate small screen slider sound effect performance; possibly we need a different metric to time sound effect calls - Fix percent progress indicator. commit d5ad87d11608c81dbf31356c1b16b981b4b8a466 Author: code-read <github@carsonwilson.com> Date: Mon Aug 31 08:43:55 2015 -0500 1. Commented many areas of code flagged as unused and applied several code logic changes as recommended by Android Studio (Analyze-->Inspect). 2. Added Android TTS (Text To Speech) to Advanced Reading mode. When a section is tapped, its translation is shown (as before) and it is spoken in its untranslated language. Toasts appear for error conditions. This function may be disabled entirely via Settings. 3. Modified "Brightness" control to respond to vertical swipes on central vertical 1/3 of screen only. Rest of screen (and entire screen in Alternating and Advanced modes) scrolls text back/forward by line in response to vertical swipes. 4. Added sound effects for page turn, scroll, Brightness control, program (re)start, which may be disabled via Settings. 5. Corrected problem (in PTV) which caused font size control to stop working if pinch control was used past smallest font. 6. Changed version to 1.0.2.3