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Change Log

1.7.2.0

  • DIAGRAM image descriptions: official stable release. Added direct export XML feature (no need to export the full DAISY 3 fileset anymore when editing image descriptions). Fixed audio import (resampling) from DIAGRAM XML. Improved editor user interface, popup dialog now with better internal navigation from basic to advanced views, and fixed error reporting (exceptions). Fixed image selection accessibility bug in the left navigation pane (image list). Updated links to online DIAGRAM help for each specialised description entity (now schema doc pages). DIAGRAM export now generates epub:describedAt class attribute in DTBOOK prodnote.

1.6.7.0

  • DIAGRAM image descriptions: the editor in basic mode now includes accessible tooltips to help users figure-out what the various DIAGRAM descriptions entities are meant to be used for. This feature also includes links to the z3998 specification pages. This release also fixes a few other minor bugs in the user-interface, primarily erroneous validation messages.

1.6.5.0

  • DIAGRAM image descriptions: major update (now in public beta) => numerous bug fixes, new feature to import existing XML datasets, user-interface overhaul (switch between basic and advanced editors), validation error reporting, better export to both DIAGRAM XML and embedded DTBOOK prodnotes (which can now be opted-out), support for TTS in audio waveform editor.
  • Accessibility, user-interface usability: fixed low-contrast icon, added new keyboard focus indicator outline, "autoplay" checkbox now handles space-bar activation and shifts focus, improved handling of space and return keys to activate buttons etc., F6 keyboard focus area now generates correct screen reader messages when navigating document markup using CTRL comma / period. Better dialog sequences when importing / exporting files. Fixed mnemonics in menus, renamed a few labels.
  • Document renderer: New popup context menu with common commands. Added follow link (and backtrack) command, for noterefs, etc. Support for SVG images, and better handling of HTTP-sourced media data. Preliminary support for the "video" tag (not accessible yet, requires mouse interaction). Better support for right-to-left languages, not only in the document renderer (script), but also with a new option to mirror the entire user-interface.
  • Waveform editor: new support for accelerated playback without pitch alteration (time stretching). Fixed resizing bug and reverted the zoom directionality (slider). CTRL-space keyboard shortcut now stops recording, monitoring, playback. (SHIFT)CTRL-P now used for playback preview (before, after). Begin selection doesn't interrupt playback anymore. New popup context menu with main commands. Improved playback performance by reducing memory allocations.
  • Validation tool: better widget layout in the popup dialog.
  • XUK data: created project files are now organised in independent sub-folders when a new DTBOOK/DAISY3 fileset is imported.
  • Miscellaneous: fixed handling of underscore characters in file paths (URIs) in recent files list, and background thread to check if files exist. Improved startup performance by handling internal WPF data binding exceptions. Various low-level memory optimisations and performance improvements. F2 keyboard shortcut now used for "edit text" command, CTRL-F4 for "close project". Fix for Bookshare DTBOOKs that use xml:space="preserve".

1.6.0.0

  • Audio waveform editor: major renderer update => fast loading (feels instantaneous) + support for large audio assets (thanks to incremental loading) + improved waveform styling (with lightweight style during dynamic resizing). Waveform style remains configurable in application preferences. Fixed text scaling / aliasing issues that occurred during UI magnification (text is super crisp now).
  • DAISY 3 export: fixed issue whereby text-only nodes were unnecessarily generated in the SMIL file with escapable structures (e.g. lists).
  • Skippable content structures: added an application preference to allow users to customize the list of skippables (e.g. pagenum, sidebar, notes, etc.). This is now correctly used during auto-playback, recording-and-continue and audio split-and-shift features.
  • Keyboard handling: SPACE -based keyboard shortcuts (playback functions) and CTRL-RETURN combo (audio split-and-shift) are now handled properly when the focus is in the navigation lists (e.g. page list).

1.5.2.0

  • Document renderer: no more focus stealing! The text structure doesn't accept keyboard traversal anymore (annoref and noteref were the main culprit), and the CTRL-C, CTRL-A, HOME, END, LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN keyboard shortcuts are now passed correctly to the application (before, a mouse-click inside the text was resulting in crucial commands being hijacked).
  • Project audio settings: in addition to the main application settings, there is now a dialog box to select the audio sample rate each time a new project is created (i.e. when a DTBook XML file or an OPF / DAISY 3 publication is opened).
  • Audio export settings: in addition to the main application settings, there is now a dialog box to select the audio sample rate and whether to encode to MP3, each time a project is exported to DAISY 3.
  • Audio waveform editor: the zoom factor is now consistent, which results in constant speed of the playback head (uniform milliseconds per pixel ratio). Before, the canvas dimension was fixed which resulted in the zoom ratio changing from one audio to the next.

1.5.1.0

  • Audio undo/redo: fixed a major bug which in some circumstances made the application raise a fatal error when re-doing an audio operation. Also fixed some time rounding errors.
  • Audio playback: fixed the handling of the SPACE bar, now button-press doesn't interfere anymore (use the RETURN key instead).
  • Audio waveform selection: clicking inside or outside of a current selection now deselects (equivalent to CTRL-D).
  • Accessible audio selection: fixed an annoying bug which occurred when a selection was set prior to starting a new keyboard-driven selection (CTRL-[ ]).
  • Audio split and shift (new feature): great workflow improvement when synchronizing an existing audio file with text transcript. Quick CTRL-RETURN shortcut, works even faster with "auto play" on (SHIFT-CTRL-ALT-SPACE).
  • Image descriptions: added experimental audio recording feature (with full undo/redo support). Currently doesn't export the result into the DAISY 3 fileset (audio is only stored in the Tobi / XUK project structure).
  • Audio waveform: fixed blurry rendering when using .NET 4.
  • Narrator view mode: popup window can now be closed with ALT-F4.
  • Button focus: disabled buttons now regain keyboard focus once re-enabled (focus loss was confusing before this fix).

1.5.0.0

  • Image descriptions: Tobi now supports the full data model defined by the DIAGRAM project (tactile, tour, etc.), and image descriptions can be authored with text prose and alternate images (audio narration coming in Q1/Q2 2012). The user interface is not localizable yet (English-only at the moment), but has been tested for accessibility with the NVDA and JAWS screen readers. The editor forms provide content helpers to assist users when filling-in the descriptions' metadata. A dedicated XML file is exported as a standalone file, when the DAISY 3 fileset is generated.
  • User interface: completely revamped tab control in navigation pane, now single-row with auto-scrolling. Display lists are now consistent in how they look and behave. Fixed various keyboard focus issues, improved usability for those relying on tab navigation (quick-landing destinations now work regardless of whether contents are empty).
  • Metadata editor: improved performance by optimizing the parsing of predefined metadata rules. Fixed single selection issue in the metadata list. Improved general layout and visual looks (margins).
  • DAISY export: fixed issue with page list and navmap, and corrected problem with producer notes (images).
  • Project cleanup: fixed bug that was due to unclosed audio stream.
  • Audio editor: minor fix of status bar messages (to remove stale state notifications).
  • Document text search: "instant search" (search as-you-type) now properly configurable in preferences. Can be deactivated to avoid performance lag with large bodies of text (known issue, search function needs to be improved).
  • Saxon XSLT: updated API DLL library to latest version (9.3.0.5)
  • Screen reader support: fixed issue with "underscore" character when using JAWS (NVDA worked fine). Fixed combo box (pull down list) aural rendering and key-activated navigation. Fixed popup menu items (accessible labels) in structure XML bread crumb navigation. Fixed UI collapse/expand toggle buttons.

1.4.1.0

  • Content descriptions (new feature, alpha): implemented Urakawa SDK data model + basic Tobi user interface to author DIAGRAM image descriptions. Fully integrated: new navigation view, popup editor dialog, undo/redo support, etc. Not localized yet (hard-coded language strings). No export function yet (only XUK project serialization).
  • Navigation views: implemented a mechanism to force a specific order of tab controls during the dynamic loading of navigation plugins (table of contents, pages, markers, descriptions).
  • Keyboard shortcuts: renamed duplicate.
  • User interface: improved metadata editor (columns stretching), implemented alternate highlighting of list items where missing.
  • DAISY export: fixed regression bug (restored one audio file per major section).
  • XUK open/save: improved performance for very large projects (UID hascode and caching optimizations). Removed useless RootUri attribute on Presentation element.

1.4.0.2

  • Undo / Redo: fixed regression bug.

1.4.0.1

  • DAISY export: fixed regression bug.

1.4.0.0

  • Project Open/Save: massive performance improvements, implemented in the Urakawa SDK backend (speed gain therefore also available in Obi).
  • Audio recording: substantial responsiveness enhancement in the document pane of the user-interface (text selections), resulting in a snappier recording workflow.
  • Obi import: NEW feature, Tobi can now import Obi projects ("*.obi" files). Because this feature is based on XSLT2, the Saxon.NET "home edition" libraries must be installed separately ( http://saxon.sourceforge.net ).

1.3.0.1

  • TTS audio generator + "Stop and continue" recording workflow: fixed performance issues by removing unnecessary audio waveform refresh cycles.
  • Structure trail: fixed screen reader message (space was missing)

1.3.0.0

  • "Narrator view": the document view can now be displayed in its own window (with extra audio buttons), making it possible to have a narrator working with a specific display whilst another display is used by an audio engineer. There is a new command in the "view" menu with the [CTRL W] keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between modes.
  • "Stop and continue" recording workflow: new application preference item to jump over skippable phrases (e.g. page numbers) in this recording mode (on by default, to avoid interrupting the natural narration flow). Deferred recording is now enabled by default (performance improvement during recording is now standard, used to be an opt-in feature).

1.2.1.0

  • Audio devices: attempt to sort-out a rare machine-dependent bug whereby DirectX fails to initialize the audio devices.

1.2.0.0

  • "Stop and continue" recording workflow: Tobi now includes a smoother recording mode when using [SHIFT CTRL R] to automatically advance to the next recordable phrase. The improved recording workflow not only skips page numbers, but also postpones the actual live refresh of the audio waveform to the end of the entire recording sequence (when hitting ESC to cancel the current recording, or when using [CTRL R] to end the narration). This new feature is currently disabled by default, you must enable it in application preferences by switching the "Audio_EnableDeferredRecord" checkbox to "True". Once we get enough positive feedback, we will enable this new feature by default.

1.1.1.0

  • Audio session time counter: the counter now allows negative values, and registers audio add/delete operations as well as their undo/redo counterparts.

1.1.0.0

  • Audio devices: user selection of audio devices was broken.
  • Waveform refresh/zoom: now disabled properly when recording/monitoring, to avoid interference and inconsistent display states.
  • Recent files dialog: this new popup window enables the selective removal of recent files entries and also highlights obsolete (missing) files. It is also searchable to make it easier to find recently-opened documents or Tobi projects.
  • Audio session time counter: rudimentary feature derived from the existing document total duration counter. Needs to be evaluated by users who requested it, so that further design improvements can be implemented (e.g. currently the counter doesn't decrease when undoing or deleting audio data, it only registers added audio via TTS, live recording or external files import).

1.0.0.0

  • Image group, caption and prodnote: now supports references to multiple images in the group, and minor cosmetic improvement by centering the caption.
  • Audio settings dialog: fixed minor cosmetic issue with the UI layout.
  • Validation dialog: added vertical scroll bars to the main content.

0.7.0.0

Third RELEASE CANDIDATE

  • DAISY 3 export: fixed broken NCX file generation due to multiple document titles in the DTBOOK, fixed erroneous metadata unique ID issue with some books, and fixed small page number bug (removed extra spaces)
  • Multiple doctitles: fixed support for document title(s) in the headings navigation view
  • Checkbox keyboard shortcuts: tooltips now display the command shortcut for tick boxes
  • Validator dialog: minor tab adjustment
  • Metadata dialog: minor cosmetic update
  • Text view: minor cosmetic change (color scheme)

0.6.4.0

  • Text document navigation: previous/next and the "record and continue" feature are now based on a much improved algorithm, which skips punctuation, whitespaces and text-only fragments (in XML mixed content), and automatically elects to a suitable markup ancestor. Mouse click in the document and the structure trail still allow users to select individual text content such as insignificant whitespaces or punctuation.
  • TTS audio: enhanced generation, now based on the above "intelligent" navigation algorithm, which yield better choices for narrated text fragments and which means that the audio/text granularity is a lot less coarser than it was in the previous version.
  • SAPI voices: fixed a crash that used to occur on machines without available TTS voices.
  • Structure trail: the popup menus in between 2 nodes of the XML path now highlight in bold the currently selected element.
  • Auto play: restored the checkbox in a different location of the toolbar, and increased the default window width to accommodate the extra required space.

0.6.3.0

  • Basic TTS audio generation: introduced this feature to experiment with mixing TTS and human narration in a common workflow. This gives users an opportunity to evaluate their needs in-situ, so to speak, and to report feedback / suggest enhancements for Tobi 2.0 (e.g. lexicons, etc.).
  • Document selection: Fixed a minor bug.

0.6.2.0

  • Audio clip import and clipboard paste: fixed a bug where these commands were enabled on text-only document nodes (i.e. no markup)
  • Audio editing undo/redo: fixed a rare bug where the restored selection was incorrect.
  • Validation dialog / missing audio: fixed a minor cosmetic bug whereby ellipsis "..." was not displayed correctly.
  • DTBOOK import: fixed a small remaining white-space bug that was causing problems with some documents.

0.6.1.0

  • Audio clip import: a cancellable progress bar now pops-up when decoding MP3 or resampling WAV, instead of the UI locking-up.
  • DTBOOK import/export: major bug fix, whitespaces are now normalized and preserved correctly in XML mixed-content situations. Fixing DAISY books generated by Tobi prior to this version is easy, but requires manual checkup (spot the missing separator space between inline / spans).
  • Basic text editing: structural modifications are not possible, but text contained in existing markup can now be modified (including image ALT attributes). ALT-click in the text document to get the popup editor, or invoke the command via its shortcut (see the "text" menu).
  • DAISY audio import, fast ACM decompression: now enabled by default, with 2 to 8 times performance gain compared to C# MP3 decoding. On machines without ACM support, the fallback is automatic so the functionality degrades gracefully.
  • Text view: fixed cosmetic selection glitches, introduced a nicer color scheme.
  • Progress reporting, performance: message cleanup, faster progress bars thanks to removal of unnecessary notification overhead.
  • Validation dialog: minor cosmetic issues fixed, removed unnecessary "..." ellipsis in DTBOOK code snippets.

0.6.0.0

Second RELEASE CANDIDATE

  • Search as you type: now enabled in the document view as well. This can be disabled via application preferences, in case the performance hit is too much.
  • Basic tape-like "punch-in" recording: fixed a bug whereby basic punch-in recording was disabled (play to preview, followed immediately by recording).
  • Advanced "punch-in, punch-out" recording: added this new feature to automatically transition from playback to recording when a custom selection is ready to be overwritten by the new narration (before, it wasn't possible to play audio before a selection, thus why this use-case wasn't enabled).
  • DAISY 3 export: added option in preferences dialog to select a lower sample rate than the default one (44100Hz, used for all XUK projects, when recording and resampling external imported files). The available choices are: 22050 and 11025.
  • Metadata editor: improved screen-reader accessibility.
  • Validation dialog: improved information layout and fixed accessibility issues.
  • Audio waveform rendering: fixed text overflow (minor cosmetic issue).
  • USB audio devices: improved support for removal/arrival of audio input/output devices.
  • Data folder cleanup: there was a rare edge-case whereby some resources where not closed properly before cleaning-up.

0.5.1.0

  • DAISY 3 export: improved generated DAISY 3 content because of a selected type of documents that couldn't downgrade to DAISY 2.02 and validate using the Pipeline (note: patches to the DAISY Pipeline are being prepared for public release to address bugs in the Pipeline project). Also fixed a minor error in the label shown in the progress bar during MP3 handling.
  • Audio player: fixed potential crash due to edge cases where byte values went slightly beyond stream end (rounding inaccuracies on time clock values).
  • Audio waveform editor: changed keyboard shortcut for deselect (now CTRL-D instead of SHIFT-CTRL-A).
  • Search as you type: now scrolls into view the first match, making it easier for the user to visualize the search results before navigating them with next/previous (F3/SHIFT-F3)
  • Plugin framework, composite architecture: upgraded some MEF and Unity bridge code to support their latest respective improvements.

0.5.0.0

First RELEASE CANDIDATE

  • DAISY 3 export: added a prompt at export time when the built-in validator detects issues, giving the user a choice of ignoring the errors or to cancel export and open the validation dialog. Fixed an error where DTBOOK notes sometimes had duplicated IDs in the SMIL files. Fixed timing accuracy issues, now the Pipeline Validator passes 100% without a sinel warning! :)
  • Recording/playback: fixed a rare but annoying bug due to recording while the audio waveform was loading. Added a setting for the time in milliseconds used for jumping back and forth, and for previewing audio. Added a special behavior for popup dialogs, equivalent to pressing ESCAPE (interruption of playback, waveform loading, recording, monitoring, etc.)
  • Search as you type: now works in the correct order when columns are sorted in the application preferences editor. Major improvement in the user interface, now using popup panels to save precious screen real estate. Menu items now work, and are context-sensitive.
  • Metadata editor: fixed cosmetic and accessibility issues.
  • Validation dialog: fixed accessibility issues (text labels) and added an indicator of the number of issues reported by each specialized validator.
  • File does not exist warning: now friendlier than an exception dialog, when trying to open a non-existing file.
  • Preference dialog: now supports generic combo-boxes / "pull-down lists" for arbitrary enumerated values.

0.4.0.0

  • Audio editing: fixed a regression bug introduced in the last build due to rounding errors during time clock value calculations (floating point arithmetics, random inaccuracies). The fix consisted in a thorough refactoring of the time infrastructure, so this fixes a number of other sneaky (rare, hard to reproduce) bugs.
  • Text layout: the document now spans the whole width. Sidebars now display correctly.
  • Image rendering: fixed a major bug where images were not using the correct ratio. They now scale nicely to remain entirely visible in the allocated space.
  • Waveform display: the time ruler now stops at the audio data boundary. Massive performance improvement for when displaying many audio phrases/chunks, by pre-rendering the text labels in the backing bitmap. There is a slight pixelization compared to the normal rendering. The threshold is configurable in the application preferences, so users with powerful machines can enjoy the full visual quality.
  • Metadata dialog: fixed the blank refresh of the audio waveform when closing the dialog with "OK".
  • Localization: Validator dialog is now ready for translation.
  • DAISY export: implemented the missing support for imgref (for a caption inside a imggroup to point to its corresponding img). SMIL files now get generated with time clock values with only 3 decimal places in the fractional part (was 7 before).
  • Data cleanup: fixed a bug where CSS files were not being preserved.

0.3.8.0

  • Audio editing: fixed a major authoring bug (select-all + insert audio). Fixed a floating point rounding error that was sometimes generating a crash. Fixed a small undo/redo content refreshing issue.
  • Waveform rendering: replaced the misplaced gray area on the right with the same background as the rest of the scrolling area (black, configurable of course).
  • Validation dialog: cosmetic enhancements, scrolling view fixes, copy to clipboard improvement.
  • Text selection: text from the document can now be selected with the mouse and copied to the clipboard. This feature works separately from and in parallel with the markup selection.
  • DTBOOK rendering and navigation: fixed pagenum handling error, mouse selection is now reliable. Noteref, Annoref (and their counterpart Note and Annotation) now navigable using CTRL-Click, still relies on the ESCAPE key to go back to a link source from a link destination. Such links are now keyboard accessible using the TAB key, and they are scrolled into view automatically.
  • Markup selection: the current highlight now centers automatically in the middle (vertically) of the display area, to ease the reading/narration tasks.
  • Text search: the find next/previous feature is now available in the document renderer as well (F3 / SHIFT-F3 to move amongst the result hits, as usual).
  • Text-only view: CTRL-T quick-switches to and from the lightweight 2-color single-line-of-text document renderer.
  • Text colors: minor changes in the default color scheme, resetting the application preferences is therefore advised.
  • Localization: a few corrections in dialog and menu items.
  • Protection against corrupted application preferences: the user settings are likely to make the whole application crash on startup when corrupted, so there is now a recovery measure (deletion of culprit file and reset to defaults).
  • Document markers: added command with shortcut (and menu item).
  • Log verbosity: reduced to avoid unneccessary cluttering.
  • File drag and drop: the text area now accepts dropped files, just like the rest of the application window.

0.3.7.0

  • Microsoft .NET: the latest 4.0 Framework is now supported, in addition to .NET 3.5-SP1. There are now 2 separate downloads so that Tobi can be installed in both versions side by side. Version 4.0 is recommended due to numerous performance improvements and bug fixes. Although it is recommended to uninstall previous versions of Tobi (via the Control Panel), this is not actually a requirement as the new .NET 3/4 versions will be installed in separate location.
  • Windows integration: drag-n-drop from the file explorer is now supported to open XUK projects or XML/OPF files. Windows 7 "Task Bar" is now supported: basic progress report for now, will add "recent files" (Jump List) later on.
  • UI performance: there is now an application preference for UI software rendering (as opposed to hardware DirectX rendering, which oddly, can sometimes be slower). This should also remove some compatibility issues with old video cards. The log file now contains information about the Rendering Tier. Removed blur effect which was slowing-down some computers. Added support for .NET4-only feature: Bitmap Cache (GPU hardware-accelerated) for audio waveform rendering.
  • Validator user interface: many small improvements. Copy to clipboard feature extended.
  • Metadata editor: minor UI updates, a few improvements in the processing of key/values.
  • Application preferences: settings can now be reset to their default values. Individual items can now be selected, there is also a (un)check all tick box. Sortable columns improved, including a visual indicator.
  • Text document renderer: fixed selection bug (was not applying brush to all tree descendants). All colors are now externalized as application settings, and are refreshed dynamically when changed (live preview). Heading sizes decreased. Reduced memory consumption (cached color brushes). Unknown markup is now displayed, in red (e.g. MathML). Dotted selection highlighter is now optional (off by default).
  • Waveform display: added progress report while loading the raw audio PCM stream. Fixed an occasional deadlock rendering bug.
  • Page navigation: fixed a bug where the last page of the document was not getting selected.
  • Headings navigation: the "doctitle" now sits at the top of the tree. Fixed expand/collapse bug.
  • MP3 encoding: the "Lame.exe" file was missing in the deployed version of Tobi.
  • DAISY import/export: the missing CSS files are now ignored. Enhancement in the metadata processing and cleanup. Minor improvement in the handling of XML namespaces. Fixed a minor issue which was preventing the fileset to play correctly in some players. Added the missing resource files that were creating validation errors.
  • Plugin backend: updated component library to the latest Unity 2.0, now used for both .NET 3 and 4 versions.
  • Localization: various minor string message updates.

0.3.6.0

  • Audio validator: missing audio data in the current document is now listed and automatically updated as the multimedia presentation is authored. This is part of the improved validation dialog in Tobi, that centralizes the interactive display of document errors / warnings (the current validators are: metadata, markup and audio, but the list can be extended via plugins).
  • Document rendering: there was a bug in colorizing of phrase with/without audio, in cases where the audio was synchronized at higher XML levels than the text-containing markup "leaves".
  • Audio cleanup: fixed a rare bug that happened whilst moving files to the "_DELETE" folder.
  • Search as you type: user interface improvements and fixed the broken find feature in the TOC/headings view. In addition, the CTRL-F, F3, SHIFT-F3 shortcuts (configured in the application preferences) now apply to all the search boxes, including the application preferences dialog itself.

0.3.5.0

  • Audio editing: added the total document duration in the status bar (updated automatically when adding/removing audio data, and when using undo/redo).
  • Performance improvements: minor changes in undo-redo event listeners logic that lead to slightly better response times.
  • System statistics tracking: added anonymous logging of basic OS information and time (the IP address is used to compute uniqueness of Tobi installations, but no other information is communicated to the server). This is an opt-out feature that kicks-in each time Tobi starts (when the application checks for a new version). See this url for a sample report. The following statement has been added on the relevant download pages: "Tobi checks for a new version each time it starts, so our our HTTP server knows the user IP address. In addition, basic Operating System information is given to the server (similar to a web-browser "user-agent" string) along with a timestamp. This information is logged so that DAISY Consortium developers can analyze usage patterns. This is an opt-out feature, which can be deactivated in the application preferences."

0.3.4.0

  • Document loading: noticeable performance improvement in all progress report dialogs, particularly in the document converter popup window (around 3x faster !)
  • XUK serialization (XML): the "pretty" format can now be specified in the application preferences (so that non-developers can also access the uncompressed XML format, for example to debug or to apply XSLT transforms).
  • Search as you type: fixed malfunction in TOC (headings) tree view, and enabled auto-focus in all views for easier keyboard-driven navigation.
  • Authoring-time place-markers: feature was missing in previous builds. These authoring-time "bookmarks" do not get exported into the DAISY fileset, they currently only exist to help the user navigating the content (e.g. going back and forth to copy/paste audio data from one part of the document to another).
  • DAISY export: added better support for annotation/notes and annoref/noteref navigation in DAISY players.
  • Application preferences: removed the redundant column and fixed the incomplete information message.
  • Metadata editor: fixed undo/redo issue, various improvements.
  • Content validation: fixed crash on selection.
  • User interface refresh: fixed a bug whereby some widgets did not get notified of state changes.

0.3.3.0

  • Audio playback: fixed a regression bug that was due to Windows XP and Seven acting differently based on thread priorities (at least on my virtualized machine...we need more tests on different hardware to be sure). There are no lock-ups as far as we know, but the refresh is sometimes slow...for some random reason.
  • Audio recording: fixed bug whereby text nodes with no XML element could be recorded (in a special edge case that wasn't covered properly).
  • Document rendering: the text now gets colored based on whether or not audio is assigned, making it easier to spot missing synchronized audio (this visual status is updated during undo-redo, so it is always up to date).
  • Structure trail: fixed accessible label, and now using system colors.
  • Auto play: the waveform selection was active despite being hidden. Now fixed.

0.3.2.0

  • Audio recording and playback: fixed remaining (hopefully last) thread synchronization issues (in particular: the auto-play feature), stress-testing revealed no instability bugs. This looks very promising indeed !
  • Tobi log: the application now creates a Desktop shortcut each time it starts, to link to the Tobi.log file that is buried in the application folder (an obscure secret location when using !ClickOnce). This is particularly useful when the application crashes, leaving no chance to go in the Tool->Folders menu in order to figure-out where the log file is.
  • Metadata editor: various user-interface improvements.

0.3.1.0

  • Audio recording workflow: the automatic selection to the next eligeable text phrase is now based on a logic that takes into account mixed content (text that is sandwiched between XML elements) and punctuation text that doesn't need to be narrated. This leads to much less disruption in the recording workflow, but there are still situations where the user needs to manually adjust the selection before going ahead with the recording (e.g. when many hyperlinks are interspersed within the text content).
  • Text rendering: there is now a font selector and zoom adjuster to let the user setup an environment optimal for recording. These parameters are saved in the application preferences.
  • UI layout: toolbars are now collapsible using the keyboard or the mouse (the application preferences had to be used before this improvement). There is now also a focus landing for the text document navigator and font selector area.
  • DAISY export: The directory chooser dialog now automatically locates the current document's folder, and the export process creates a subdirectory (the previous behavior was to erase the destination directory completely). Fixed a bug due to %20 (space character) and other URI escape sequences. Also fixed a minor issue with progress reporting.
  • Document/phrase navigation: fixed a mouse click bug on page numbers, that was preventing a pagenum to be individually selected as a sub-selection within a ancestor XML fragment.
  • Recent files: the last open document now gets pushed at the top of the list, even if is already existed in the list of recent files.

0.3.0.0

  • Audio editing workflow: there is now a "special" stop-record button next to the regular one, which will automatically continue recording to the next available text part in the document. The selection logic is "dumb" at this stage (i.e. no semantic recognition of the difference between a "sent" and its parent "p", for example). As a result, the user may still need to adjust the selection in order to record audio at the appropriate granularity level. Should the automatically selected text already contain audio, Tobi will play that audio instead of starting to record, giving the user an opportunity to adjust the selection in the waveform display (to chose between "insert at", "replace selected portion" or "overwrite all").
  • Audio toolbar: added a checkbox for auto-play (still uses the same shortcut and command available in the playback submenu)
  • Audio auto-play: fixed a bug that occurred when no document was open.
  • Audio navigation: improved "chunk" previous/next navigation within a waveform corresponding to several text fragments.

0.2.6.0

  • Audio waveform loading: the application thread was locking-up randomly under Windows 7 and Vista 64 bits. Now fixed.
  • Audio editing: select-all followed by insert file or recording was crashing. Now behaves as intended.

0.2.5.0

  • Audio playback: fixed major bugs in standard playback and annoying inconsistencies with the auto-play function.
  • Metadata editor: fixed fatal undo/redo bug.
  • Audio waveform: minor selection restyling (dashed borders).

0.2.4.1

  • Accessible XML/audio navigation: fixed screen reader message to include complete selection information.
  • Application icon: flipped to the correct orientation.

0.2.4.0

  • Search as you type: now works in the application preferences dialog.
  • Audio selection: added a shadow selection outline to make adjusting easier.
  • Application icon: changed to a less generic logo (the infamous smiling light bulb).
  • Peak/VU meter: fixed a minor rendering artifact.
  • Clear recent files: the icon wasn't resizing properly.
  • Audio waveform: added a reload command in the "zoom" sub-menu.
  • Content validation: improved error reporting.

0.2.3.0

  • Peak/VU meter: new feature, max-level line indicators (one fixed, the other dropping). Also fixed the peak overload stereo/mono labels.
  • Audio selection: new feature, select audio before or after the play cursor.
  • Annotation / note navigation: new feature, when clicking on an "annoref" or "noteref", the text selection is redirected to the corresponding target, AND NOW: the ESCAPE key can be used to get back to the source hyperlink, avoiding getting back and forth manually between potentially disparate parts of the text document.
  • Structure navigation: the previous/next and up/down commands were not disabled after closing a document.
  • Interruptable recording: the ESCAPE key now actually cancels the recording, which not only makes sense but also prevents crash conditions (this change, amongst others, has fixed the last known fatal bugs).

0.2.2.1

This update required a FULL INSTALL due to a change in processor architecture (i.e. uninstall any old version beforehand)

  • Window 7 x64 support: before this bug fix, only 32 bits (x86) versions of Windows were supported.

0.2.2.0

  • Audio editing: too many bug fixes to list individually. In a nutshell: much more reliable selection and editing tools (copy/cut/paste, delete, insert, replace, record/open file). There was a series of problems now eliminated thanks to a completely revamped selection infrastructure.
  • Audio waveform: the loading of WAV samples can now be interrupted reliably (i.e. no crash, even in switching rapidly between phrases) and it's reasonably fast too. This used to be the cause of most audio-related bugs. Selections can now be made using SHIFT + mouse clicks.
  • Structure navigation: the popup list of child nodes now function properly.
  • Document / markup: human narration can now be recorded for images, based on their ALT attribute (they were not selectable before). Of course, audio can still be attached to the caption in the imggroup as well. Hyperlinks can now be clicked like any other recordable text (they were swallowing mouse input before). The parsing and rendering of the document markup now happens whilst a progress bar is shown (no more confusing UI lockup).
  • Metadata: fixed refresh error and crash.
  • Accessibility: the focus steal problem has been removed, and the screen reader labels have been refined to convey more meaningful information during the authoring workflow.
  • Localization: there's no language pack yet but the extraction of literal strings is nearing completion (we just need to do some quality control on keys and values)
  • USB devices: the audio->settings dialog now lists an up-to-date set of input/output devices (we don't cache values anymore), and the current selection is preserved in application preferences (the fallback in case a USB headset is disconnected is the first device available through the Windows operating system). Tobi now detects the arrival and removal of USB devices, but we have yet to implement user notifications.
  • Accelerated audio playback: fixed inaccuracy in time reporting.
  • DAISY import/export: fixed rare XMLNS (namespaces) bugs.
  • Performance: we now avoid copying audio buffers when it's not strictly necessary (e.g. peak meter)
  • Audio cues: can now be turned on/off via application preferences.
  • Window positioning: the popup dialogs were not behaving logically, now they resize and re-position themselves in a much more intuitive way.
  • User Interface refresh: icons were sometimes grayed (disabled) when in fact they represented enabled commands.
  • Save-As progress report: a cancellable progress bar is now displayed when "save-as" is running.

0.2.1.0

  • Audio editing: massive stability improvement, many bugs crushed (crashes, wrong time offsets, etc.). Performance has been improved thanks to non-destructive audio editing implemented across the board.
  • Audio waveform: now gradually (incrementally) displays loaded audio data (every one lapsed second) and can be interrupted using ESCAPE (or the dedicated button next to the progress bar). This is great for when editing large podcasts (often, the author will listen and start splitting at the beginning at the audio stream, no need to visualize the rest). Some other performance improvements in the loading of the PCM samples.
  • Authoring session, dirty flag: unsaved changes are now synchronized properly with the undo-redo stacks. The "dirty" indicator is now properly reliable.
  • Audio time units: the default syntax is now the formal notation, the informal (friendlier?) one is still available via the preferences.
  • Audio playback, recording, and monitoring: now can be stopped using ESCAPE.
  • Cleanup: the removal logic for data is now much improved, and leads to more regained space. There was also bugs due to non-closed resources, now fixed.
  • Project files: now using a dedicated folder and name convention, even for "save as".
  • User interface: more responsive thanks to cancellable progress reports for: "save as", "cleanup". Still to do: audio conversion (resampling and MP3 decoding) when inserting a file from the file system.
  • Navigation view: the headings expand/collapse logic was generating tons of performance-impacting messages. Now fixed.
  • Document validation: improved error reporting (more to come in that space, within the next few days). Fixed reloading bug.
  • Metadata editor: fixed minor bugs.

0.2.0.0

First BETA

  • Audio delete: audio in the waveform editor can now be selected and removed, and it works even by slicing through any level of the document markup (Tobi seamlessly displays audio for an entire fragment/subtree of the text document, by collating audio data from all the descendants of a given root element).
  • Audio copy/cut/paste: finally available! Of course this kind of operation is undo/redo-able, just like the above feature.
  • Audio waveform import: WAV/MP3 files imported into the opened document now get resampled/decompressed (respectively) to the correct PCM format.
  • Audio clip preview: WAV/MP3 files can be "previewed" at any time (no need to have a loaded document), in their original PCM format, using the SHIFT-CTRL-O keyboard shortcut.
  • Audio playback and selection: fixed a number of bugs that were making the application crash in some specific edge-cases. Also improved the accuracy of the selection tool.
  • Content validation: the list of markup/structure errors now displays more details.
  • User interface: fixed menu and toolbar rendering bugs (layout and separators).
  • DAISY import: missing images are now accepted (and simply not rendered), as we often get XML-only DTBOOKs for testing (missing external files).
  • Utility: added a command to open the containing folder for the currently-loaded document.
  • Localization: in progress, updated a few labels too.
  • Project file storage/organization: XUK files are now stored in their own individual folders, on a per-project basis.

0.1.6.0

  • Recent files: new feature - in the file menu, as one would expect.
  • Data cleanup: new feature - unused files get moved to an adjacent folder that users can delete straight from the file explorer popup.
  • Search as you type: improvements - now context-aware, currently active for the TOC tree and the pages list. (next target is the options list)
  • Document view: bug fix - images imported as part of a DAISY fileset were not displaying in the reflowable scrolling text pane.
  • Exception / error reporting: improvements - Tobi now displays a popup dialog that can be closed, allowing the user to resume using the application.
  • Content validation: DTBOOK support is improving, especially the rendering and interaction of structural errors (not in the text document view, but as part of a standalone interactive list-style report).
  • Localization: work in progress - the backend is written, and the language packs are working. However only english is available right now as the string literals are still being replaced by dynamic translations.
  • Performance: expand/collapse-all should now be faster in the TOC navigation tree.
  • Audio waveform: fixed text ellipsis problems.
  • Audio export: application preference for optional Lame MP3 encoding.
  • UI layout: toolbars can now be turned on/off (the top one, and audio transport buttons)
  • Progress report: improved progress messages during DAISY export (relevancy, frequency).

0.1.5.0

  • Cancellable progress reporting: import and export now run in a background thread with a popup dialog that displays progress and that can be canceled (the UI is now responsive despite the lengthy operation)
  • Playback rate: the speed of the audio player can now be set (and reset) via the user-interface (menu commands and shortcuts).
  • Application Preferences: Audio waveform colors and resolution are now configurable options. So is UI magnification (zoom), so the last value used is restored at startup. There is also preliminary support for localization (language setting). A change in the data format means that the settings of a previous version of Tobi may be the cause of a crash at startup, in which case the old "user.config" settings file should be removed manually (the path to the settings folder can be found at the top of the 'Tobi.log' text file, which is located where the application 'Tobi.exe' resides).
  • Keyboard shortcuts: harmonized the set of commands, using easy-to-reach and intuitive sequences of key strokes.
  • DAISY Import: the generated XUK file and 'Data' folder are now located in a "_XUK" subdirectory, to avoid mixing with the original DAISY fileset. Improved support for document types (DTD), which now get downloaded and used properly. Tobi now relies on a special system storage folder where all its data caching and persistence is implemented. The folders can be opened via menu tools->system. Some important fixes that make the import process more flexible with invalid / badly-formatted content.
  • Document content validation: minor fixes. This is under heavy development. The "structure trail" horizontal widget on top of the document pane is now in its own plugin, so the document view can be disconnected (for testing invalid markup) whilst still allowing structure navigation.
  • Document view: added dash-highlighting for selection (this technique is intended to be used for error highlighting for DTD validation.
  • User Interface: fixed the bottom button strip (audio pane) that wasn't reflowing / wrapping properly, and put the "landing" focus on the container panel to avoid unintentionally pressing space (e.g. for playback start/pause) and activating the focused button. Added missing accessibility labels in the preferences dialog box.
  • Various bug fixes: there was a potential crash when Tobi was flushing and closing the log file at exit time.
  • Performance: removed not-so-useful and heavy log messages.

0.1.4.0

  • Application Preferences: this major new feature is available for any plugin that contributes functionality to the application. Currently, this enables the end-user to edit shortcuts (by capturing them directly "as you type") and to save the window position/dimensions/fullscreen-state. This whole process is accessible to screen-readers, and offers real-time validation of entered values ! Settings will gradually be added to enable many other customizations (colors, delays, accessibility features, etc.).
  • Document content validation: the basic framework for DTD-based DTBOOK-2005-3 authoring-time validation is now in place. Error highlighting directly in the reflowing-text user-interface will be added soon.
  • MP3 encoding: Lame is now used to process WAV raw-PCM files at export time. This feature will be made into an extension point to support more compression formats.
  • DAISY Export: a few bug fixes and content quality improvements.
  • DAISY Import: DTDs (external and internal) are now downloaded and preserved locally in case Tobi doesn't ship with the required built-in document type. CSS stylesheets and XSLT transformations are now also preserved from the original fileset and restored at export time. Images are now properly preserved as "managed media" and are therefore treated as first-class citizens when a cleanup of the data model (and files in the Data directory) is performed.
  • "show me where the files are": this aptly-named feature consists in opening the system file explorer to the location where Tobi.log, Tobi.exe (and all its plugins) reside, as well as where the "user.config" file resides (application settings, customizable by end-users). This gives greater control to a system administrator, as normally the !ClickOnce deployment "hides" application files inside some obscure system locations.
  • Exception report: bugs happen, so it is important that end-users can copy/paste relevant error messages from the exception dialog to their email client (so the dev team is able to promptly analyze the cause of the crash).
  • UI improvements: fixed memory leaks, improved performance, and made keyboard shortcuts a dynamic feature, that can be changed on the fly without restarting the application (through application settings).

0.1.3.0

  • Major breaking change: XUK files (*.xuk) must either be re-generated (i.e. by importing DAISY3 or DTBOOK content again), or fixed manually (which is the preferred option to avoid re-importing large text+audio books). The fix procedure is simple: open the XUK XML file with a text editor and rename ="urakawa" to ="UrakawaSDK.core".
  • XUK performance improvements: the XUK files are now saved using the "compressed" format, which drastically reduces the space required on the hard disc, as well as the loading/saving time.
  • Reduced application footprint: we have removed a dependency on a rather large DLL library (-2 MB).
  • Smaller updates: we have separated some DLLs so that they don't need to be downloaded each time a new build is available (because they are likely not to change in between releases, due to their static nature).
  • Added support for internal Document Types: some DTBOOKs come with embedded DTD rules, which we now preserve at import time and restore at export time.
  • Fixed metadata unique-identifier processing: in some cases, the handling of UID was not correct.
  • New validation feature: this is still under heavy development, but the fundamentals are implemented. Basically it's a framework for validating the publication at authoring time, to let the user know about things that need fixing. Right now Tobi ships with a basic DAISY3 metadata validator, the next step will be to introduce a DTBOOK markup validator. Other kinds of validators can be provided as plugins, such as for verifying audio sampling, document granularity, etc.
  • Cleaned-up architecture, API: many "under the hood" improvements related to the dynamic discovery of plugins, and the registration of commands into the menu and toolbar.
  • Visual Studio 2010 support: the IDE is still in beta, but we have successfully managed to compile and debug Tobi under .NET 3.5 SP1 with VS2010. As it happens, .NET 4.0 support requires more work, and this is not a top priority at the moment. When all of this exiting new software stack becomes stable later in 2010, we will probably migrate Tobi to the latest framework in order to benefit from the numerous performance improvements (and smaller .NET download too !).

0.1.2.0

  • Added DAISY 3 2002 support: although the goal is to promote the use of DAISY 3 2005-3 (and therefore to deprecate earlier versions), we felt that at this stage we needed to enable support for opening older DAISY books. Please note that the export will likely crash or misbehave, as we only support DAISY 3 2005-3 as output format at the moment.
  • Fixed text-only bug: document fragments without audio now get exported correctly.
  • Audio import increased speed: there is now some net improvement when importing books with large audio data, thanks to a fix in our MP3 decoding process.
  • DAISY 3 export: various bug fixes.
  • Search as you type feature: available in the page list and table of contents. A great way to quickly navigate content.

0.1.1.0

  • Initial public alpha release.