[BRLTTY] New Android apk.

[Dave Mielke]

A new apk has been released for brltty on Android. I'd appreciate it if those 
who use brltty on Android would update to it and let me know what problems they 
encounter. Among other things, it includes the following:

Your braille deivce will be found even if a specific device hasn't been added 
and selected. It'll be found somewhat slower, since brltty needs to search for 
it, so adding and then selecting it is still worth doing given that that means 
immediate connection. What it does mean, however, is that, even though 
connection is slower, it's much easier to establish initial braille access. 
Note that, for Bluetooth devices, pairing is still necessary.

There's a new general setting checkbox named Release Braille Device. If you 
check it then brltty won't keep looking for your device (e.g. if it's turned 
off, out of range, etc). You may wish to use this setting, for example, when 
going out without wanting to also take your braille device with you.

There's now a status bar item for brltty that let's you know if your braille 
device is in one of the following states:
1) connected (brltty is actively communicating with it)
2) waiting (brltty is looking for it and hasn't found it yet)
3) released (you've checked Release Braille Device)

If you open the Notifications shade then you'll find a brltty notification 
which contains the current status (see above), the name of the currently 
selected braille device (or a note saying that no device has been selected), 
and a hint letting you know that tapping the notification will take you to 
brltty's Settings screen.

Your Android device is no longer subject to timing out and locking due to 
inactivity while you're navigating one of brltty's virtual screens (help, the 
menu, etc).

If your Android device is running 5.0 (Lollipop) or later then the button on 
the right at the bottom of the screen now says Overview (instead of the older 
Recent Apps).

Checkboxes now have a table-independent representation. The old representation 
was table-dependent - an uppercase X (for ehecked) or a space (for unchecked) 
between square brackets. The new representation is three braille characters 
which have been designed to actually look more like an actual checkbox:

   1) dots 123478 (a symbol depicting the left side of the box)
   2) either a space (for unchecked) or dots 2356 (for checked)
   3) dots 145678 (a symbol depicting the right side of the box)

In braille, they look like this:

   ⣏ ⣹ unchecked
   ⣏⠶⣹ checked

Switches now have their own representation and, therefore, can be distinguished 
from checkboxes. They, too, are three braille characters:

   1) dots 4568 (depicting the left side of the switch)
   2) dots 1478 (depicting the top and bottom of the switch)
   3) dots 1237 (depicting the right side of the switch)

The state of the switch is shown by adding dots 36 (for off) or dots 25 (for 
on) to the middle character. In braille, they look like this:

   ⢸⣭⡇ off
   ⢸⣛⡇ on

Brltty now follows TalkBack gestures (actually, Explore by Touch gestrues) that 
change the screen focus more meaningfully. The braille sometimes used to show 
the widget type of a container. Now it shows the text that labels the 
container.

Brltty is now more sensitive to developer-provided descriptions for images. 
This, too, means that meaningful text, rather than widget types, are shown in 
more cases.

The states of checkbox selectors within brltty's Settings screens are now 
shown.

If your Android device is running 5.0 (Lollipop) or later then textual 
descriptions (rather than hexadecimal vendor and product identifiers) are shown 
when adding a USB device. This, of course, makes searching for the desired USB 
device much easier.

Brltty no longer crashes if your Android device doesn't support Bluetooth or if 
you've turned Bluetooth off. This, of course, only actually matters when adding 
or trying to use a Bluetooth device.

-- 
I believe the Bible to be the very Word of God: http://Mielke.cc/bible/
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | WebHome: http://Mielke.cc/
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