Legantoo
| Legantoo | |
|---|---|
| Basic data
|
|
| Maintainer | Volunteers (Legantoo Team) |
| developer | Kay Schröer, Thomas Stege and others |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| Current version | 1.8.3 ( Windows , macOS ) December 28, 2018 1.0.7 |
| operating system | Platform independent |
| programming language | Java |
| category | Media player , e-book management |
| License | Freeware |
| www.legantoo.de | |
Legantoo is free software for playing and managing digital media that is specially tailored to the needs of blind and visually impaired users. When designing the graphical user interface, particular emphasis was placed on simplicity and only those controls that are compatible with a screen reader were used.
history
At the end of November 2014, the project started under the name "DAISY Reader" as a discussion group for blind mailing list members. The aim of this initiative was to check which solutions are available for playing back books in DAISY format (= Digital Accessible Information System) for the Mac and how accessible these programs are.
During the exchange of information and experience, however, it quickly became clear that not only were there no suitable players for the macOS operating system , but that there was also a great need there after the Windows software, which had been widely used to date, was discontinued . In addition, many users have generally criticized the lack of access solutions for reading electronic books . Such programs are often not usable for blind people, since the requirements for accessible information offerings are often not implemented in the design.
For this reason, the project was renamed in April 2015 and the declared goal since then has been the development and expansion of platform-independent software for playing and displaying digital media in the most common formats. Particularly noteworthy is the possibility for blind and visually impaired users to participate directly in the further development and to bring in their special needs, which are often dependent on the degree of disability.
At this time, the project was renamed and has since been run under the name "Legantoo", based on the word "Leganto", which in Esperanto means "reader".
The test phase began at the beginning of August 2015 and on January 3, 2016 the first stable version for the Windows and macOS operating systems was published on the project website.
After the announcement that Legantoo would also be brought to the mobile platforms iOS and Android as soon as possible , the project initially stalled. The reasons for this were, on the one hand, uncertainties in the financing of the fees for the app shops and, on the other hand, the surprising discontinuation of projects such as RoboVM, which should serve as a basis. As a result, numerous restructuring of the program code and the inclusion of new alternatives were necessary, which delayed progress. Ultimately, however, the app for Android was completed at the end of 2016. An iOS version is to follow.
In addition, the project team is pursuing another ambitious goal for 2017: In response to popular requests from users, the software should develop beyond the scope of a player or reader and focus more on the area of digital media consumption. Talks with libraries and operators of online shop portals began at the beginning of the year in order to explore the possibilities of integrating these services directly into the Legantoo program interface. The aim of these efforts is to bundle an entire process from buying or lending to playback or barrier-free reading in one piece of software, thus enabling blind and visually impaired people uniform access to digital media.
The new functions are to be made available in version 2, which will appear in autumn 2017.
technology
In order to achieve the highest possible degree of platform independence, Legantoo is completely written in Java with the inclusion of some native libraries. For example, the audio is played back using the BASS Audio Engine from Un4seen Developments and the book inventory is managed using an SQLite database.
As a GUI toolkit for the GUI comes JFace used. The reason for this is the better screen reader support through native system functions. The program can then be operated as one is used to with the respective operating system of "conventional" applications. The very good support of the integrated accessibility framework by the Eclipse Foundation was another decision criterion.
Legantoo for Windows is available in a 32-bit and a 64-bit version and is also available as a portable version. A disk image can be downloaded for macOS .
Functions
Similar to iTunes , Legantoo offers numerous functions for cataloging and managing collections of electronic books in a media library . The import can be done either for individual works, for zipped books as well as for entire folder structures. The metadata is automatically generated directly from the documents. The usual meta tags are used for web content (especially Dublin Core ), while the ID3 tags are taken into account for audio files .
Legantoo currently supports the following media types:
- DAISY books in standards 2.01, 2.02 and 3.
- E-books in EPUB3 format.
- Audio books and radio plays in AIFF, AC3, MP2, MP3, M4A, OGG and WAV formats.
- Text documents in TXT, RTF and PDF formats.
Each book can be navigated by chapter, page or (in the case of audiobooks) by sentence in the media library. Tables of contents that do not exist are automatically generated.
The presentation of content by means of a web view, whereby in particular the adaptation of font sizes and colors to for example, a screen magnifier is simplified and can make themselves available browser with the tools.
In order to support users in reading their books, Legantoo offers the option of linking text and audio positions with bookmarks and adding your own notes to selected chapters. The playback position, bookmarks, notes and program settings can also be synchronized via cloud services (e.g. Dropbox ) in order to have the same status of your library on all devices.
From version 1.2 Legantoo is also available in several languages.
Web links
- Official website
- Project mailing list
- Legantoo in the Google Play Store
- Interview with Radio Ohrfunk
Individual evidence
- ↑ Update from desktop versions. Retrieved October 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Update from Legantoo for Androidr. Retrieved October 25, 2019 .
- ↑ The project - www.legantoo.de