Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Pdf-to-Speech 11.0.1

Version  11.0.1 is out with some fixes.  As always, this blog post contains somewhat technical description of changes.  It is meant for hard-core users and developers looking to partner with Practical Android Apps.  Users in general are invited to follow us at Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103037044611920202429/103037044611920202429/posts

Changes:

  • Freeze (ANR) addressed:  over the previous update, the number of freezes has been reduced.  The freezes where due to the way Pdf-to-Speech has to interact with the android services. Using my background in parallel computing, I redesign the complete Text-to-Speech service to make it virtually impossible for the app to freeze.  Now, all the modules are able to share resources without deadlocking one another.
  • Fixed find/replace tool:  Better practices where used to avoid error when saving certain symbols on the find/replace tool.
  • Switch Google Account:  The initial release of Google Drive support did not include switch Google Accounts as a requirement.  This version ensures the previous Google account's file information is cleaned before loading the new account.  The user must have multiple Google Account's on the device for this feature to be noticed.
  • Support for text codecs:  The support for codecs on text files was revisited.  Better use of libraries was used to provide reliable support for Lating-1 (ISO9986), ASCII, and UTF-8.  UTF-8 is the standard used in the US, and Android OS standard.
Version 11.0
A user suggested support to open hyperlinks from the sentence viewer.  This feature was added for hyperlinks that are spelled out on any document (doc, pdf, txt, or epub).  Also, the hyperlinks encoded in MS doc files are now linked on the sentence viewer.  Future updates may include hyperlinks encoded into the pdf file.  

What is cooking in the oven ?
  • The Web-to-Speech feature on the current version will be improved with a redesign of this use case.
  • The Front-end shall be tweaked to display more than one sentence at a time.
Other user suggestions that are on the TODO list for future updates include:
  • The find/replace tools will be redesigned so the user can do straight find/replace words.  But for more advanced users, a find/replace tool that accepts patterns will be added.
  • Other features will be published as the release date nears !
If you are not a Pdf-to-Speech user already, you can find the app at:
and at 
Let me know if you would like to see Pdf-to-Speech on a market that is more convenient given your device.