Thorium Reader v2.0.0
Summary
Version 2.0.0 was released on 30 May 2022.
This release includes the following (notable) new features, improvements and bug fixes:
- Electron v19, Chromium v102
- Thorium's internal database format changed from native LevelDown/SQLite3 modules to JSON serialisation (this migration started several releases ago, but this major upgrade marks the point at which the native DB is not accessed anymore).
- Updated locales: Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portugese
- New translations: Basque, Galician, Catalan
- New major bookshelf functionality: interactive "data grid", i.e. table graphical user interface that features filtered rows based on keyword search (instant for visual find-as-you-type, or deferred for screen reader usage with submit button + ARIA live assertive annoucement), paginated list of results, alphanumerical sortable columns (descending / ascending), basic vs. advanced choice of columns (e.g. title, author, publication format, publishing date, etc.), clickable cell contents to automatically search for selected text (includes support for user-provided tags), etc. etc.
- Improved accessibility feature: alternative "where am I" for screen readers in speech mode only (i.e. assertive ARIA live region via toast notification) using the SHIFT-CTRL-K keyboard shortcut (this is equivalent to the existing "where am I" via SHIFT-CTRL-I popup modal dialog, with the advantage of not loosing focus in the publication HTML document)
- Fixed a bug where publication HTML documents were reset to the first page when ALT-TAB between application windows.
- Fixed issue with HTTP downloader, stream read/write pipe was causing invalid ZIP directory parsing (unwaited filesystem buffer flush), also improved request timeout handling.
- EPUB metadata accessibility summary is exposed in publication info popup modal dialog, and several under-the-hood mechanics to pave the way to proper presentation of the full set of a11y metadata.
- Several key improvements in user interface structure / semantics to ensure more confortable experience with screen readers.
- Updated MathJax integration to support MathML alt text with special treatment of screen readers (specialised Math plugins offer structural exploration of Math markup), and separate treatment for Thorium's built-in TTS read aloud feature.
- Fixed footnotes issue where the note contents inside "aside" HTML elements weren't hidden.
- Fixed DAISY 2.02 support (NCC HTML file picker), and fixed XML/HTML parsing issues.
- Fixed a Readium CSS bug where some publication document height was not fully extended Also fixed a performance issue with CSS columns.
- Fixed night / dark mode GUI inconsistencies.
- Improved visual rendering of Table Of Contents.
- Improved toast notifications placement to avoid obscuring critical GUI parts, added keyboard focus and mouse click handling, easier clipboard copy of message, and fixed the overflow text clipping.
- LCP META-INF/license.lcpl now excluded from hash computation to eliminate duplicates during EPUB import.
- Fixed a Windows bug where drive letters other than C: were not supported when opening publications directly from the file explorer.
- New image zoom feature with SHIFT-click in publication HTML documents.
- Fixed HTML5 audio controls mis-renderering due to CSS overrides.
- Better, clearer presentation of "borrow" links and other publication acquisition details in the publication info modal popup dialog.
- Fixed a PDF metadata bug related to date format parsing + timezone calculations.
- Major update under the hood to support latest package dependencies, notably WebPack and associated build / development plugins, but also critical application components such as React, Router, etc. (Thorium remains on React 17 so that forks do not experience upgrade issues to React 18)