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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:00 PM

    And finally, the release you've all been waiting for: Paperback 0.9.0! The changelog is so large it had to be completely
    restructured, and wouldn't fit in even two full-length posts at over 6300 characters, but here are some highlights: native macOS support has arrived, alongside ARM64 Windows builds! Documents are now paginated, so even multi-million-word books load in seconds flat. You can customize every single keyboard shortcut through a simple dialog; a new readability tab lets you control fonts, background color, line/paragraph/letter spacing, and text alignment. Audio books are now supported, including DAISY audio and folders of audio files, with play/pause, seeking, and syncing the caret to playback. DAISY 2.0
    and 2.02 books are now supported too! There's a brand new pb command-line tool for converting any supported format to HTML,
    Markdown, or plain text. It also adds temporary bookmarks, a full screen toggle, and a locate button for missing books, dozens of bug fixes across RTF, PDF, Mobi/AZW3, DAISY, and much more. This release covers Windows and macOS; Android
    and iOS test builds are coming soon via TestFlight and Play testing, ahead of a unified 1.0. Grab it now at paperback.dev/downloads, full changelog in the readme at paperback.dev/readme.html.

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  • Guillem Leonguilevi@dragonscave.space
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:10 PM

    @TheQuinbox AH! Now you've got my attention. I've been hearing nothing but praise about this thing ever since its release, but haven't gotten to try it yet due to the whole not being on Windows thing. Thanks for your work, I really look forward to checking this out!

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:24 PM

    @EdenLinnea Forgot to mention this in my post, but this is now in the readme, and makes JAWS work. If you use JAWS with a Braille display, you may find that long paragraphs are truncated when panning forward with your display’s navigation keys. The read current paragraph command is also affected. This is a bug in JAWS’s handling of the RICHEDIT50W text control, not something in Paperback itself, and one that took quite a while to surface a fix for given Vispero’s enthusiasm for responding to issues with open source software.
    The workaround, eventually surfaced through the JAWS discussion group after months of waiting, is to edit paperback.jcf and set “Braille Presentation and Panning” to “Always use DOM if available”. You’ll also want to enable “Pan Text by Paragraph”, otherwise your display will stay on the active paragraph rather than advancing. With both settings in place, panning should work correctly.

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  • x0x0@dragonscave.space
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:57 PM

    @TheQuinbox DAISY Audio! That'd make you unique among players that I know! If you support zipped audio, I guess mp3 or something, what are the odds you'll add chapterized m4b support? Not vital, as I typically just use something like foobar for that, but might be especially useful on Mac, where it's just iTunes or maybe the books app, or iPhone.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:57 PM

    @x0 Nods, that's planned eventually. I don't read books like that, so I'll have to get some, but more than doable.

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  • x0x0@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:01 AM

    @TheQuinbox I'm willing to be a tester on that if you like given my libation/inaudible output. And such can also be produced by careful FFmpeggery

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  • x0x0@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:02 AM

    @TheQuinbox There are actually two different kinds of mp4 chapters. QT (Apple) and ISO. Most things use QT chapters but a good player must support both for e.g. podcasts.

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  • x0x0@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:03 AM

    @TheQuinbox MP3 can also be chapterized, though I don't know the convention. I'm pretty sure the ogg convention is tags of a known format,

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  • x0x0@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:07 AM

    @TheQuinbox BTW, unsure if you might have come across this in testing. Are you aware of any actual tool to generate DAISY synced audio+text using e.g. a SAPI voice or preexisting recordings, potentially with subtitles as the source? For e.g. Balabolka renders that I can search.

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  • Timothy Wynntwynn@mas.to
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:03 AM

    @TheQuinbox Thank you so much! I think I'm doing something wrong with the PB CLI. When I run it without any parameters, it says:
    ```
    ---------------------------
    pb.exe - Entry Point Not Found
    ---------------------------
    The procedure entry point GetWindowSubclass could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Program Files\Paperback\pb.exe.
    ---------------------------
    OK
    ---------------------------
    ```

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:03 AM

    @twynn Uhm, what the fuck? You're not doing something wrong, I broke it, but I have never seen this in my life and use the pb cli every day, why did it now pop up? Taking a look.

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  • Timothy Wynntwynn@mas.to
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:12 AM

    @TheQuinbox Thank you. If it helps,I am still on Windows 10, and the export functions in the main executable works perfectly fine.

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  • Nick Giannak IIInick@hkc.social
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:11 AM

    @TheQuinbox Hey...Search seems to be really, really broken. As in, I can't even figure out how to tell you what it's doing. Like, it is completely useless, as in, I think it's quite literally finding random character sets rather than actually following the character set you search for.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:12 AM

    @nick In what type of document? I went into a book I'm currently reading, hit ctrl f, typed test, hit enter, got brought to the word test.

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  • Nick Giannak IIInick@hkc.social
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:12 AM

    @TheQuinbox Text file. Only thing I can think to do right now is load one that I have never read before I tried it with and without word wrap.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:13 AM

    @nick Would you mind sending it over, in a DM if you prefer, as well as what you're searching for? Possibly an encoding issue or similar.

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  • Rachel Ramoswalkside3@mastodon.social
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:16 AM

    @TheQuinbox Hey, wanted to send a quick note to say that I really appreciate your work on Paperback. It's a program that just works, and works well. You've created it with a purpose- that is, to read/listen to content, and purpose-built products are what we all need.

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  • Tech Singertechsinger@tweesecake.social
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:51 AM

    @TheQuinbox Two things, if I may raise them. First, I strongly suspect that opening is actually, and in the real world, much faster than before. An 11.8 million word file on a very old system (i3 2120 with 4 GB RAM and an old hard drive), takes less than ten seconds. I may be wrong, I didn't try this file with the previous version, but I don't think I am, I think this is a huge jump. Secondly, on a different machine, running Windows 10 LTSC, I'm getting this. No download: Update is available but no matching download asset or signature was found.

    OK
    when I check for updates. How do I diagnose this, if I may ask?

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 12:55 AM

    @techsinger Weird, I thought I put things in place to make this not happen, but please just manually redownload the installer or portable zip, it won't happen again. The filenames changed due to Windows ARM support.

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  • LeianoraEJGilbert@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 1:56 AM

    @TheQuinbox Oh my! When this comes to iOS, I will turn off my voice dream subscription and delete the app from my phone and use this app exclusively! Considering the fact that I was a beta tester for Winston Chen back when he owned Voice Dream, I figure that is a hell of an endorcement.

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  • Jakob Rosinjakobrosin@universeodon.com
    Aug 27, 2026, 3:07 AM

    @TheQuinbox Paperback is the rare good news source for me these days. Its one of the fiew tools I use where simply opening the tool makes me a little more happy, as I know that for the time of use, I don't have to worry about petty inaccessible shit. THank you so much.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Aug 27, 2026, 3:08 AM

    @jakobrosin This made me super happy to hear, and you're welcome! Glad Paperback improves the lives of people other than just me :)

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  • JamminJerryJamminJerry@mastodon.stickbear.me
    Aug 27, 2026, 8:49 AM

    @TheQuinbox @jakobrosin one of the reasons I love it might sound petty, and stupid, but I absolutely love it for reading HP fanfics. I can't accidently write in the file when I accidently push keys while trying to move my keyboard. Not only that, but if I have to do a reboot, when I open that same file in paperback, it puts me right where I was. no more trying to find my spot in a 2.5 meg txt file anymore. lol.

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  • Jakob Rosinjakobrosin@universeodon.com
    Sep 3, 2026, 9:25 AM

    @TheQuinbox Heya. I do have a quick question about paperback. When I use arrow keys to read the document, NVDA doesn't announce if I pass a heading or a link. If I use for example H to jump to a heading, it gets read out. Is it expected behaviour, or is something misconfigured in my NVDA or PB? PB 0.9.2, NVDA 2026.2 rc2.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Sep 3, 2026, 1:35 PM

    @jakobrosin That's how it has to be, at least currently. I sadly don't have enough control over screen readers to make the text field literally act like a virtual buffer/web browser, and the nav keys are the closest I've gotten so far.

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  • James Scholesjscholes@dragonscave.space
    Sep 3, 2026, 1:49 PM

    @TheQuinbox @jakobrosin "At least currently," they say.

    *tape fast forwarding noise*

    It's 2028. Quin has reimplemented both NVDA and JAWS in their own programming language, Nom. Not only do headings now speak in Paperback, but their BrailleNote Evolve hasn't said "landscape" for nine months either.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Sep 3, 2026, 1:59 PM

    @jscholes Look, writing an NVDA add-on that dynamically subclasses HumanWare’s compiled pyc files via zipimport just to fix duplicate shortcut keys was a one-time thing, okay? Don’t give me ideas. :P @jakobrosin

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  • Timothy Wynntwynn@mas.to
    Sep 3, 2026, 9:45 PM

    @jakobrosin In case you didn't already know, for Epub, HTML, and possibly other web content, you can Open in Web View (Ctrl+Shift+V) to open the current section/document in a... uh... web view. Not only that, but it opens where your cursor is. It doesn't update the position of said cursor on close, but that's what searching is for. @jscholes @TheQuinbox

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  • Jakob Rosinjakobrosin@universeodon.com
    Sep 4, 2026, 2:36 AM

    @twynn @jscholes @TheQuinbox Yep, did know that. I made this observation in a com plex pdf though. But as I said, its fine, the fact that I can read this pdf and make sense of it is something nothing else really can produce without me needing to pull out some hair of mine or others. So PB definitely wins here.

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  • QuinTheQuinbox@dragonscave.space
    Sep 10, 2026, 3:09 AM

    @jakobrosin Thanks, not sure when I myself will be able to look at this until at least next week, but pinging @Aryan in case he has some time and desire to look at it too. Thanks for the report, I hate pDF!

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  • Jamie Tehjcsteh@aus.social
    Sep 10, 2026, 3:22 AM

    @TheQuinbox If you implement the UIA text pattern yourself, you could probably get that level of exposure in an edit field. NVDA won't support browse mode (quick nav, etc.) itself in UIA without specific code, but it should report rich info provided via the UIA text pattern even in an edit field, which should work for your use case. Not sure about JAWS though. MacOS has rich text accessibility APIs as well, but they're undocumented, though well covered by all three web browser engines. @jakobrosin

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  • Jamie Tehjcsteh@aus.social
    Sep 10, 2026, 3:25 AM

    @TheQuinbox Sadly, I don't think you can just use AccessKit for this, as its text implementation didn't support rich text formatting last time I checked, though it's possible that might have changed (I haven't looked in ages). @jakobrosin

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  • Jamie Tehjcsteh@aus.social
    Sep 10, 2026, 3:31 AM

    @Aryan Given that Paperback is open source, I'm happy to provide pointers/guidance if you get stuck, as I'm fairly experienced with those APIs. I don't have the cycles to take it on myself, unfortunately. @TheQuinbox @jakobrosin

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