I've just released the first version of my ebook and document reader application, Paperback. It's still in a fairly early stage, but I think it's good enough now to be called 0.1. Please do open issues if you find any bugs! github.com/trypsynth/paperback…
@alexhall so nice to see something small. So many monolithic python packages out there. beautiful. responsive. I'd personally have renamed go to edit as a menu for familiarity, but not got much else to complain about.
@cachondo @alexhall Thanks for this, glad to hear I'm not the only one that cares about this. I cared about this enough that I rote this entire app in C++. As a result, it's suuuuper fast too! :)
@cachondo @alexhall Small, portable, yes, if you never touch this again, I'm keeping it around. If you enhance it, I will switch to it. This is a huge step forward for anyone who wants to read well. The only thing that really works is QR. Bookworm is getting there, but it's been getting there for a few years and is still not there. The less said about the other stuff, the better.
Can you add an auto-shutdown option? it'll work brilliantly as a sleep timer regardless of screen reader. And I don't care about go being called edit if alt+e opens the menu. :P
@cachondo Auto shutdown? Can you expand a little bit on how you'd expect this to work? press a key, get a dialog asking for a time, you set it, and after that time elapses paperback just closes?
Yeah, although you'd want it as a menu option. The idea here is that if you're doing a say all in your screen reader it stops after a preset point. Although for that to be truly useful you'd want the option to automatically re-open the files you last had too, I guess.
@cachondo Yup, which is planned too. There's actually an issue opened about it and it's the next feature I'd like to add, but my programming energy is going to be spent elsewhere these next couple weeks minus weekends and I wanted to get this into the hands of people who don't feel like building it before my semester starts.
I think @cachondo is looking for a sleep timer, right? Isn't that wat the feature is usually called? If that's what iis meant, let me second the suggestion.
@techsinger yes, exactly this. An old software reader i used to use had this too. it also let you switch into an editing mode to correct OCR errors, but I guess that's less needful with ebooks being supplied by more publishers than scanned these days.
@techsinger @cachondo @alexhall I'm intrigued. QR is getting really long on the tooth. Thorium is ok, but unintuitive. I'm going to have to give this a read.
@ysotomayor @techsinger @alexhall the navigation commands are awesome. zipping through an ePub's chapters is awesomely fast. Be nice if we could do markdown in the same way.
@cachondo @ysotomayor @techsinger @alexhall Markdown is on my quite long list of formats I want to support, yup. First though I want to add heading navigation to HTML documents, most epubs use sections to group by chapter but there's no rule that says you're actually supposed to do that, so some people just don't, or if you get an epub that was converted from a mobi for example the toc doesn't work. This will all be fixed, though.
@cachondo @alexhall As far as go vs edit, I considered this, and honestly I'd be open to changing it back if people request it enough. My line of thought is that the text isn't actually editable, so edit makes slightly less sense, but I also see the familiarity argument.
Congratulations on your first release! I'm fascinated by how quickly the program opens. Bookworm sometimes took longer to start up than it took for my computer to boot, but with Paperback the start-up time is barely noticeable. Even Windows Notepad is slower. The current navigation keys are a bit awkward for some keyboard layouts (e.g. quertz), but I'm sure you can add configuration options for that in the future.
@radiorobbe Oooh that's a point I had not considered, thanks for that. I plan to add many more navigation commands, e.g. h and shift h for heading, the numbers for headings at a particular level, etc. but I can see how the brackets might be awkward. Remapping keys would be a really cool feature to have.
I love this thing. Went on a hunt and found you'd released 0.2 but neither Chrome nor wget will let me download, as it thinks it has a virus. I know this is not your style, so windows is doing the false-positive thing again, just thought I'd let you know.
@FreakyFwoof @JamminJerry I had an interactive fiction interpreter fail as well like this. I had to add it as an exception in defender. It’s a portable executable so I had to manually place it, find the threat and then add the exception.
@FreakyFwoof @JamminJerry @ner How dare I statically link all my dependencies to avoid bloating the user's filesystem! Viiiiiirus! I love antivirus software so much /s
@FreakyFwoof @JamminJerry @ner I know, right? Thankfully Mac saved the day. Also Have you tried opening .md files with this new version? All the ones I've tried come up empty. Just want to find out if it's me. Reason I'm responding from this version is because my other instance has temporarily died or something.
@Onj @FreakyFwoof @JamminJerry @ner Cannot reproduce. I don't doubt you, but can you link me to a markdown file that does it? I just tried with a few and they all worked, including paperback's readme itself.
@Onj @JamminJerry @ner It seems that a lot of them from the drag and drop addon don't work, but I found some that worked fine, so it was probably just a bad file. Also it opens a new instance each time, is it supposed to do that, and not add a new tab to the same instance?
Hi. A wish-list request if I may: Currently reading an epub with what seems to be very long lines. Could there be an option to specify character length or at least wordwrap? If I stop reading in the middle of a line to answer an email/social media/doorbell etc, sometimes I feel like when I restart, I'm going back several sentences. That's the fault of the book not the app, but if it broke the line into chunks it would be less rewindey. And yes this is now an official word. PS. I also wrote 'clunks' instead of 'chunks' so I'm obviously not meant to type today 😂
@FreakyFwoof You're not the first one to suggest this, so word wrap is planned for 0.30 :) you may have to go turn it on in the settings dialog and/or with a hotkey, but it'll be there.
@FreakyFwoof Well, I'm bored while waiting for my transportation to college and don't have the time or focus to do any of my paid work at the moment, so I'll add this for you real quick. Gimme 10.
@FreakyFwoof It saves it every time your cursor position in a book changes. Sorry I didn't get the word wrap zip to you, I wrote the code, found a bug in it, then my ride got here. It's in progress though :)
No worries at all, I feel like we're just piling on with request after request, and I don't want to stress you by any means. Thank you for your work on this.
I have until now been reading all my books in Notepad 2. The sheer freedom of having to restart due to a windows update, reloading Paperback and having it go straight to the line I left it on mid-sentence cannot be understated at all.
@FreakyFwoof And it's done, a simple checkbox in the options dialog. It applies to your currently opened documents too! If you have a giant book opened though it might slightly lag for just a second after closing the options dialog, I unfortunately have to recreate and repopulate the text controls. @ppatel commit 7cc91651e315ad8c887ab0d01749d0ebed586539 Author: Quin <trypsynth@gmail.com> Date: Tue Sep 2 17:16:25 2025 -0600
Added word wrap. The code for this is slightly horrifying, but I'd rather have to write slightly hacky focus setting code and possibly lag for a second if you have a giant document open when you toggle the setting as opposed to doing what JAWS does, and forcing a restart that actually doesn't even restart the app...
@ppatel When you do Shift F1 to open the documentation in paperback directly, does it work? On my system it shows an empty document, as if it can't pars the html. I don't know if that's a windows 10 issue or something else.
@ppatel It works fine in the newest Paperback, but it also behaves oddly. Press shift 2, and it says '6.3 Version 0.1 Heading level 2' but puts you at the very top of the document. Pressing H shows there are no headings in that document at all.
@FreakyFwoof @ppatel Whoa, what the hell? Okay, well I'm fixing that tonight. You're right. It at least now loads, but the heading navigation is wonky.
application-config@3.0.0 understands FreeBSD
This should fix the problem reported in the forum:
https://support.delta.chat/t/delta-chat-on-freebsd/2948/16?u=saper
This iPad—a four year old M1 iPad Pro with 1Tb of SSD—has 11 times as much storage online as the entire world-wide output of IBM hard disks in 1973 (from memory, a whopping 92Gb) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_…)
About a decade ago, I went looking for a modern machine that was about the same spec as the CDC 6600 (as an example for a lecture). The nearest I could find was an ARM M0 microcontroller prototype board with an FPU. That had twice the RAM and four times the clock rate of the CDC 6600. €9 each, or €7 if you bought 1000 of them, compared to the $24m (inflation adjusted) that the 6600 cost.
@darkling I've just taken my first, scared, tentative steps into making actual equipment rather than software. It's thrilling,confusing, but the memory we have access to is crazy nowadays.
Well I didn't even get a snarky note from the mods this time. A number of upvotes, so clear interest, before they decided to say no. hey ho. reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/1m…
@GamingWithEars That's how Reddit works, even if something is removed the person who posted it can still link people to it, and people can still interact with it. I have had people show up and reply to my replies on things that were removed months or years later.
@GamingWithEars @dhamlinmusic If you're just looking for quality discourse on there, the latest thread about service animals has at least 2 people regularly calling them "guy dogs". Dictation fails, I know, but ... > "We're blind but just as capable as anyone else!" > "Why can't I have a guy dog?"
@dhamlinmusic LOL! I would have pointed this out, too! *Sighs. I think those people reread their messages but are too lazy to edit. Is that ablist of me? I don't know anymore...
This is somewhat old news but I only just learned about it today. After 67 years, Newsreel Magazine ceased publication as of June 30. I hope that someone is able to archive issues of this magazine for posterity. newsreelmag.org/
@EdenLinnea Newsreel was a magazine that was originally distributed on tape but later went digital. I don't know if you're familiar with Playback from Ed Potter but it was similar in that it mostly consisted of submissions recorded by its subscribers. While Playback tended to focus on electronics and other gadgets, Newsreel was a bit less techy. It consisted of poems, stories and various submissions.
@techsinger @EdenLinnea Yep, the Matilda Ziegler magazine is also gone. We need a single Web site for archiving these publications, not only for the sake of those who are into nostalgia but for preserving our history. There are collections of these magazines and other old documents scattered throughout cyberspace. This in itself has a benefit, since if one single archive goes away you don't want everything going away with it. That being said, we do need a single, organized archive to preserve things like written and recorded blindness publications, product catalogs, screen reader manuals and tutorials, etc. I'm not the best person to set up something like this but I'm willing to share what I have with someone who is.
With over six month into his second term, Mary Trump breaks down what it means to resist Donald Trump in today's world. What does resistance look like? How c...
To come to the US legally? Farm workers are supposed to get an H-2A visa.
In theory, H-2A visas are fine. They're supposed to work like a temp agency/worker-to-workplace matching service.
But in reality? So many H-2A workers are abused, extorted, cheated, raped, & held prisoner on the job.
Here's a brief piece on how over 100 people who went through the entire proper H-2A documentation process to enter the US legally, still wound up in slavery.
*Originally aired December 13, 2021*Two dozen people have been indicted on charges of smuggling Mexican and Central American immigrants into the U.S. Officia...
Quelles sont les conséquences sociales, familiales, sécuritaires pour les musulmans qui décident un jour de quitter l'Islam ? Et les retombées que subissent ...
If you haven't read this HP fanfic, I highly recommend it. It's long. I've been reading it off an on for a week.
A Marauder's Plan by CatsAreCool (Rachel500)
What if Sirius decided to stay in England and deliver on his promise to raise Harry instead of hiding somewhere sunny? Changes abound with that one decision...
An epidemic that's been sustained for 44 years might finally be quelled, with the milestone approval of the first HIV drug that offers 100% protection with its twice-yearly injections. It's a landmark achievement set to save millions of lives.
The always-in-crisis crisis that is Mexico's public health system is worsening. Some headlines just from today:
"Workers in the nutrition area of the Doctor Aurelio Valdivieso Civil Hospital in the city of Oaxaca denounced that they have run out of food for more than 200 patients from various Indigenous communities in the state."
* Bruce: lets you interact with Bruce Firmware on your ESP32 device 🛡️ * Aucards (added yesterday): create short messages for quick access when non-verbal communication is needed 🛡️
RB status (now also visible for each app in "Neo Store"): 670 apps (50.8%)
Battery Tile rebranded due to Google trouble, pls switch to the new app for updates.
This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
The #LG VX5300 joins the ranks of BREW phones with the ability to freely sideload unsigned apps!
I have noticed that the AppUI AppManager replacement doesn't play nice with the "Verizon UI" pop-ups on this device, so it's best to stick with the original "Get It Now" interface.
This method of BREW sideloading deals with patching parts of the firmware to remove the signature checks entirely, allowing test signatures with mismatched ESNs...
Tome, hlavním autorem je náš manažer kybernetické bezpečnosti Ivor Kollár, já to podporuju a propaguju, kde můžu. Oficiálně to patří do naší IT sekce, to ano
I've been really hesitant to share this because there's a lot of claims being made with zero evidence to back it up. A lot of "trust me, I was in the CIA so I know the NSA did this"
Just saying, if you're a paid developer with a six-figure salary and you use AI to generate your profile picture instead of spending less than 1% of your salary to pay an artist, you suck
Young men helped carry President Trump to office. Half a year into his term, we asked six of these voters about how they think the president is living up to his campaign promises.
Studies have found the most logical and fastest keyboard layout is not between key orders like qwerty and dvorak, but one that prioritises the size of keys depending on the frequency of those letters in the language being typed, regardless of the ordering.
This Apple keyboard has an English layout. More frequently used letters in english are larger and slightly taller, less used letters are smaller and lower, which conveniently prevents tyops.,
Can we finally stop pretending that what we have been witnessing in Gaza over the past 22 months is a “war,” a “conflict,” or even a “humanitarian crisis”?
Many of the world’s leading human rights and humanitarian groups – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders – agreed months ago that what is being livestreamed to our phones on a daily basis is indeed a genocide.
Alex Hall
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Alex Hall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Quin • • •beautiful. responsive.
I'd personally have renamed go to edit as a menu for familiarity, but not got much else to complain about.
Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Tech Singer
in reply to Quin • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Tech Singer • • •And I don't care about go being called edit if alt+e opens the menu. :P
Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Quin • • •Tech Singer
in reply to Quin • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Tech Singer • • •An old software reader i used to use had this too. it also let you switch into an editing mode to correct OCR errors, but I guess that's less needful with ebooks being supplied by more publishers than scanned these days.
Yadiel Sotomayor
in reply to Tech Singer • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Yadiel Sotomayor • • •Be nice if we could do markdown in the same way.
Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Steffen
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Steffen • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •JamminJerry
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to JamminJerry • • •JamminJerry
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to JamminJerry • • •Noel Romey
in reply to Andre Louis • • •JamminJerry
in reply to Noel Romey • • •Andre Louis
in reply to JamminJerry • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Onj 🎶
in reply to Quin • • •Also Have you tried opening .md files with this new version? All the ones I've tried come up empty. Just want to find out if it's me.
Reason I'm responding from this version is because my other instance has temporarily died or something.
Quin
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Currently reading an epub with what seems to be very long lines. Could there be an option to specify character length or at least wordwrap? If I stop reading in the middle of a line to answer an email/social media/doorbell etc, sometimes I feel like when I restart, I'm going back several sentences. That's the fault of the book not the app, but if it broke the line into chunks it would be less rewindey. And yes this is now an official word.
PS. I also wrote 'clunks' instead of 'chunks' so I'm obviously not meant to type today 😂
Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Quin • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •@FreakyFwoof And it's done, a simple checkbox in the options dialog. It applies to your currently opened documents too! If you have a giant book opened though it might slightly lag for just a second after closing the options dialog, I unfortunately have to recreate and repopulate the text controls. @ppatel commit 7cc91651e315ad8c887ab0d01749d0ebed586539
Author: Quin <trypsynth@gmail.com>
Date: Tue Sep 2 17:16:25 2025 -0600
Added word wrap. The code for this is slightly horrifying, but I'd rather have to write slightly hacky focus setting code and possibly lag for a second if you have a giant document open when you toggle the setting as opposed to doing what JAWS does, and forcing a restart that actually doesn't even restart the app...
Pratik Patel
in reply to Quin • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Pratik Patel • • •Pratik Patel
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Andre Louis
in reply to Pratik Patel • • •Quin
in reply to Andre Louis • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Quin • • •But perhaps I'm behind now
Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Quin • • •How do you feel about the delete key closing an open file if you press it on the tab bar?
Quin
in reply to Sean Randall • • •