This page describes the changes made in each new release of Dictionary App Builder. You can download the latest or previous versions on the Download page.

Dictionary App Builder 12.3

Release date: 08 November 2024

New Features and Improvements:

  • Updated fonts:
    • Harmattan 4.300 (21 October 2024)
    • Lateef 4.300 (21 October 2024)
    • Scheherazade New 4.300 (21 October 2024)
    • Abyssinica SIL 2.300 (29 October 2024)

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The app would crash for some configurations.
  • Dropdown lists on the Registration screen were not working.

In the app builder:

  • If English was removed from the list of enabled interface languages, it would appear again when the app builder was restarted and would also be enabled in apps, hence making it impossible to remove it (#1733).
  • There could be problems reading the index section of the configuration file.

Dictionary App Builder 12.2

Release date: 10 October 2024

New Features and Improvements:

  • Feature and Settings Finder in the App Builder
    • As the number of configurable options has increased in the app builder, users can sometimes forget where to find a feature on the many pages and tabs. The Feature and Settings Finder is a way to help.
    • To find a feature or setting within the app builder, press the “Find” button on the toolbar at the top right of the screen, or CTRL+F.
    • You can begin typing to find the configuration page you are looking for.
    • Select an item and press enter to move to that page.
       
  • Index configuration improvements
    • There is now a new “Index” tab for each writing system configuration.
    • Omit Items settings can be configured on a writing system level.
    • You can also specify a list of item names not to include in the index. These can be specified with wildcards (* and ?) or regular expressions.
       
  • Redesign of the APK tab
    • The settings at the bottom of the “APK” tab are now split over three tabs, “Android Version”, “Install Location” and “Multiple APKs”.
    • The Target Android Platform is now displayed above the Minimum Android Platform. This is because some users were changing the minimum platform, thinking it was the target platform, and finding that their app would not work on older devices.
    • Added a note with Minimum Android Platform to say “Keep this as low as possible, so that people with older Android devices will be able to install the app”.
       
  • Alphabet indexes now ignore accents, as long as the list of alphabet letters has no accents
     
  • More menu Item image gallery icons
    • Additional icons are available in the Image Gallery for menu items.
       
  • Fonts added and updated
    • Ezra SIL and Ezra SIL SR fonts are now available for use for displaying Hebrew scripts.
    • Awami Nastaliq font updated to version 3.300 (9 October 2024).
       
  • Additional interface translations:
    • Dictionary App Builder now offers a Russian and Vietnamese interface, in addition to the existing English, French and Spanish options.
       
  • Project configuration file improvements
    • The project configuration file (.appDef) used to contain a lot of unnecessary information, such as app interface translations and writing system details for languages that were not enabled. This additional information is now removed to reduce the configuration file size.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Some XHTML tags weren’t included in the html output used for entry display, causing some CSS styles to not match. This fix should improve image/caption formatting in the app.

Dictionary App Builder 12.1

Release date: 15 August 2024

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • On the “APK” tab, allow the Android Version Code to be greater than 1,000.

Dictionary App Builder 12.0

Release date: 20 July 2024

New Features and Improvements:

  • Build for Android 14
  • Apps are now compiled to target Android 14 (API 34).
  • You will need to update your Android SDK with the new libraries. Use Tools > Install Android SDK.
  • The minimum Android version is now Android 5 (API 21), required for many of the latest library versions. Apps will run on devices from Android 5 to Android 14.
  • Removed Grandroid font rendering libraries which were only for Android 4.x.

  • Keyman 17

  • Keyman keyboard handling has been updated to use Keyman version 17 in both the Android and iOS apps.

  • Font update: Annapurna version 2.100.

  • Updated libraries used in compiling Android apps.

Dictionary App Builder 11.4

Release date: 17 May 2024

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • Fixes for privacy manifest requirements.

Dictionary App Builder 11.3

Release date: 29 April 2024

New Features and Improvements:

  • Include iOS Privacy Manifest in apps
  • Starting May 1, 2024, Apple App Store will require new or updated apps to contain privacy manifests. See Apple’s privacy requirements for details.

  • Updated version of Android SDK Tools

  • The latest version of Android SDK Tools is downloaded in the Install Android SDK wizard.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Display markdown syntax for images on the About page.
  • Specifying an increment (+) to the version number in command line arguments did not work as expected.

Dictionary App Builder 11.2

Release date: 28 March 2024

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • Fix activity indicator not stopping and start-up performance

In the app builder:

  • Names of File Sources were not being retrieved correctly.
  • Creating a new Keystore on Mac failed if the JDK was not installed. It now uses the bundled JDK.
  • On Mac, restoring the integrated menu bar after crashes on Sonoma 14.1.2 was fixed in Sonoma 14.2.

Dictionary App Builder 11.1

Release date: 06 December 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • In-App Messaging
  • You can now use Firebase for in-app messaging. These are messages that users will see when they are inside the app.
  • To enable in-app messaging, go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > Firebase Features.
  • To send in-app messages, go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > In-App Messaging.

  • Push Notifications tab

  • It is now easier to find the page in the Firebase console to send push notifications.

  • Go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > Push Notifications.

  • Build multiple Android App Bundles

  • When building multiple apps, you can now choose between building Android APK files and Android App Bundles (AAB).

  • See Build > Build Multiple Apps

  • Prevent screenshots when using the Android app

  • In some cases, you might want to prevent users taking screenshots when they are using your app, for example, to make it more difficult to copy illustrations.

  • To do this, there is a new setting on App > Security, ‘Prevent the user from taking screenshots in the app’.

  • Font updates:

  • Updated Annapurna SIL font to version 2.000 (8 Nov 2023)
  • Updated Awami Nastaliq font to version 3.200 (23 Oct 2023)

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • When sorting apps in the tree on the left of the app builder screen, they would be sorted using the group name whether or not the group was being shown (#1450).
  • Correct the Google Play Language for Khmer (km-HK to km-KH). If you used this language for a Google Play Listing, you will need to rename the folder under {project name}_data/publish/play-listing folder before opening the project in DAB 11.1+.
  • Require the iOS signing identity to start with “Apple Distribution” or “Apple Development”. “iPhone Distribution” used to work but is now causing app uploading errors.

Dictionary App Builder 11.0.4

Release date: 12 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Dictionary App Builder 11.0.3

Release date: 03 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • When opening an app, the tree nodes on the left of the app builder screen are expanded to the first level instead of fully expanding every node.

  • Updated to the latest Android Gradle Plugin build tools, which now require a minimum Android SDK Build Tools version 33.0.1.

  • If you receive a warning about an older version of Build Tools, you can use the Tools > Install Android SDK wizard to install an updated version of the Android SDK.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Could not add iOS icons or iOS splash screen images.
  • On macOS, trying to import the app store listing information from Google Play would fail.

Dictionary App Builder 11.0.1

Release date: 03 August 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When using an Android 13 device, there could be problems saving files to device storage.

In the app builder:

  • On Mac computers, the download path was wrong for installing JDK 17.

Dictionary App Builder 11.0

Release date: 27 July 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Reorganised app configuration pages
  • In the tree on the left of the app builder screen, the pages have been organised into categories: Lexicon, Appearance, Data & Analytics, Publishing, Navigation, Media and Languages.
  • The Lexicon category contains pages for Lexicon Source, Fields and Features.
  • The Appearance category contains pages for Icons, Graphics, Interface, Colors, Fonts, Styles and Changes.
  • The Data & Analytics category contains pages for Analytics and Firebase.
  • The Publishing category contains a page for App Store.
  • The Navigation category contains a page for the Navigation Drawer.
  • The Media category contains pages for Audio and Illustrations.
  • The Firebase tab has been moved to its own page, with two tabs: Firebase Features and Firebase Configuration.

  • Building apps for Android 13

  • Apps are now compiled using Android 13 (API 33) libraries, which is required by Google Play for new apps from 31 August 2023.
  • Before building an app, you will need to install a new version of the JDK (version 17). Use the Install JDK wizard (from Tools > Install JDK…)
  • You will also need to update the Android SDK to install the latest libraries. Use the Install Android SDK wizard (from Tools > Install Android SDK…)

  • Apps can still be installed on older versions of Android, down to Android 4.1 (API 16), although this will be Android 4.4 (API 19) if using Firebase, or Android 5.0 (API 21) if using Branch deep linking, because of the requirements of the latest versions of these libraries.

  • Data Safety information for Google Play

  • The Data Safety CSV export has been updated with the latest questions and answers.

  • It will be generated automatically in the APK Output folder when building an Android App Bundle (AAB), or when selecting Build > Export Data Safety to CSV.

  • Updated libraries used in compiling Android apps:

  • Gradle compiler version updated to 8.2.
  • Android Gradle plugin updated to 7.4.2.
  • Android AppCompat version 1.6.1.
  • Android Material components library 1.9.0.
  • Firebase Bill of Materials: 32.2.0.
  • Google Play Services library 4.3.15.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • The Search entry text font was not being set which could result in characters not being displayed correctly.

In the app builder:

  • The SIL logo in the About box needed to be updated.
  • Inconsistent left and top margins were being used in several App Builder configuration pages.

Dictionary App Builder 10.4

Release date: 28 June 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • iOS app improvements
  • Rearranged index screen so that tabs are now at the top, similar to the Android version of the app.

  • Improved keystore creation:

  • Changed the layout and descriptions on the Signing page of the New App wizard, making it clear that the choice is between creating a new keystore file and using an existing one.
  • Instead of a hyperlink, there is now a ‘Create Keystore’ button.
  • In the Create Keystore wizard, the Browse button is now connected to the choice of folder rather than the filename.

  • When adding Certificate Issuer information, there is now a country code selector dialog. You can search for a country and find its two-letter code.

  • Registration screen: improvements to Skip functionality

  • If you are using a registration screen, you can choose to add a Skip button. If a user presses Skip, you can now choose if and when the user gets asked again to fill in the form: every time they launch the app, never again, or after a certain number of days.

  • See App > Security > Configure Registration > Skip Registration.

  • Registration screen: database path

  • If you are using a registration screen, you can choose where you want the data to be stored in your Firebase database: either at the top level (as before), or at an app-specific level (which allows you to use the same database for different apps).
  • There is a new ‘Database Rules’ dialog which gives you the rules you need to copy to configure your Firebase realtime database.

  • See App > Security > Configure Registration > Database.

  • Website addresses in tooltips

  • Where the App Builder provides links to external websites, a tooltip is now displayed showing the web address when the user hovers their mouse over the link.

  • Updated library versions:

  • GeckoView updated to version 114.0.

  • Keyman upgraded to version 16 (in the iOS app).

  • Additional fonts:

  • Noto Naskh Arabic
  • Noto Sans Devanagari, Noto Serif Devanagari
  • Noto Sans Ethiopic, Noto Serif Ethiopic
  • Noto Sans Malayalam, Noto Serif Malayalam
  • Noto Sans Telugu, Noto Serif Telugu
  • Noto Serif Tibetan

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When failing to add data to the database in a registration screen, the error message was untranslated.
  • When using a registration screen and GeckoView, the submit button cleared the form rather than attempting to add the data to the database.

In the iOS app:

  • Dictionary tab titles were not localized.
  • Homograph numbers were not displayed on the reversal index page.
  • Issues with blank index entries and entries with the wrong size were being used for display.

In the app builder:

  • The Build folder and App Projects folders were not created when first running the app builder program.
  • Creating a keystore failed if you had not already installed the JDK (#1353)
  • When compiling apps in Windows, a ‘ÿ’ character would appear instead of a non-breaking space when displaying the APK file size.
  • The output and error logs displayed in Tools > View Logs did not handle UTF-8 encoding in Windows.
  • The compilation dialog was not being placed in the centre of the program window. It would appear on screen 1 even if the App Builder program was being displayed on screen 2.
  • Additional compilation warnings needed to be hidden from the user.
  • The title of the Google Account dialog appeared in Russian when the app builder interface was in English.
  • In the JDK wizard, use the Next button to start the download, rather than a separate Download button. It was confusing to users, who are used to pressing Next to progress to the next step.
  • Replace the dependency on the JCenter repository which is no longer being updated.
  • Some of the statements used in the Gradle build configuration files were deprecated.
  • Sorting apps into alphabetical order did not take into account project group names. The sort should also be case insensitive.

Dictionary App Builder 10.3.2

Release date: 17 May 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • In the New Keystore wizard, the Browse button should select the folder rather than the filename.

Dictionary App Builder 10.3.1

Release date: 03 May 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • After running a build, the color picker would not display.
  • Data Safety: incorrect answers in some other situations.

Dictionary App Builder 10.3

Release date: 29 March 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Responses to Data Safety questions
  • When publishing an Android app on Google Play, you need to answer a set of Data Safety questions, telling your users which data is collected and why. To help you answer these questions correctly, on the menu select ‘Build’ > ‘Export Data Safety to CSV’ to create a CSV file which can be imported into the Google Play developer console for the app.

  • Fonts

  • Added: Akatab, Doulos SIL, Noto Serif, Nunito Sans, Roboto Mono, Roboto Serif, Ruwudu, Source Sans Pro.

  • Updated: Charis SIL (6.200), Alkalami (3.000), Andika (6.200), Gentium Plus (6.200).

  • Documentation updates

  • Updated ‘Building Apps’ with information about using GeckoView for font handling.

  • Stability improvements.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The app title was not being shown on the app bar when the app was first launched. It would appear after the user tapped on an entry and returned to the index page.

In the app builder:

  • If you changed the Build folder (in Settings) to a folder which already contained files, these were deleted the next time you compiled an app. Since this could have unintended consequences, if a non-empty folder is specified, the ‘build’ sub-folder is used instead, or a warning message is displayed to the user.
  • The description of min/max dimensions for 10-inch Android tablet screenshots was incorrect.

Dictionary App Builder 10.2

Release date: 02 December 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Builder Compiler window
  • When compiling an app, instead of using the standard command/terminal window, the app builder now uses its own window.
  • This allows us to hide some of the distracting compiler warnings that were not problems but which might have given the impression that there was an issue with the app compilation.
  • The window also allows app compilation using macOS Ventura, which otherwise was not working.
  • Added ‘Close compiler window on build success’ option for Mac and Linux.

  • Fonts: Updated Abyssinica font to version 2.200 (17 Nov 2022)

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The app would not compile correctly if GeckoView was enabled.
  • When using GeckoView, the About page was not being displayed correctly. An external browser would be opened instead.

In the iOS app:

  • In the container app, the cancel command showed in the app bar on the first launch even though there was nothing to cancel.
  • In the container app, the browser window during package selection continued into the safe area at the bottom of the screen.

In the app builder:

  • If app project paths contained an ‘&’ character, the list of open apps would not be saved and restored properly between launches of the app builder.
  • In the ‘Add Translation’ dialog, i.e. when adding an app name, you could not specify a language code like ‘pt-BR’ with a hyphen and uppercase letters (#1124).
  • If the welcome page was showing, changing the interface language using the button at the top-right of the screen made the welcome screen disappear, rather than redisplaying it in the selected language.

Dictionary App Builder 10.1.1

Release date: 04 November 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Homonym numbers as subscript or superscript
  • You can choose whether homonym numbers are displayed as subscript or superscript.
  • See under the Formatting heading on the Features page.

  • Homonym numbers on lexical relations

  • For LIFT databases, homonym numbers are added after lexical relations if they exist.

  • Error Log Viewer

  • To view the log files created while running the app builder, select Tools > View Logs.

  • Up to five previous logs are kept in case they are needed to identify problems.

  • Removed Crosswalk libraries

  • The Crosswalk libraries, which are no longer used, have been removed from the release. This reduces the size of the app builder installation file.

  • JDK install version updated to: zulu11.58.23-ca-fx-jdk11.0.16.1

  • Gradle compiler version updated to 7.5.1.

  • Font updates: Awami Nastaliq (3.000) (20 Sept 2022)

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Searching in Imported Styles did not work.
  • When updating from another source, the database name should not be overwritten.
  • When looking for the JDK on Windows, in some situations, the app builder would crash.
  • When using GeckoView for font handling, more memory is needed for compilation.
  • The Link tab should not be shown on the menu item dialog for Rate the App.

Dictionary App Builder 10.1

Release date: 09 September 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • GeckoView for Graphite font rendering of complex scripts (Android)
  • Some scripts cannot be rendered correctly using the standard Android web viewer component. Instead we need to replace the viewer with a Graphite-enabled viewer, such as Crosswalk.
  • In Android 11 and 12, the Crosswalk component no longer worked and only displayed a black screen. To resolve this, Crosswalk has been replaced by Mozilla’s GeckoView component, which is the web viewer used in Firefox. GeckoView includes SIL’s Graphite font rendering libraries.
  • Using GeckoView adds at least 55 MB to your app size, so you will only want to use it if you really need to.
  • See Fonts > Font Handling, or the Font Handling page in the New App wizard.

  • Font updates:

  • Added Dai Banna SIL font (23 Aug 2022)

  • Added Payap Lanna font (26 Aug 2022)

  • Updated library versions:

  • Android library versions updated (material components, preferences, AppCompat support).

  • iOS app improvements:

  • If user taps the screen during splash screen delay, the delay is canceled and the app starts

  • The minimum deployment level was changed to 12.2, which reduces the size of the app that needs to be uploaded to the App Store by about 80MB.

  • For Scriptoria:

  • When publishing a PWA, you can add the publishing property BUILD_PWA_AUDIO_RELATIVE_URL so that the audio URL used will be a protocol relative URL so that the PWA will work when accessed from https (on a webserver) or http (from a wifi box).

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • In the Publishing > Google Play Listing page, when doing Import From Google Play on Windows, the results were not displayed.
  • When attempting to build and the Build Folder in Tools > Settings > Build Folders was not a valid folder, it would fail to start the build – but not report any error.
  • When migrating from an App Builder prior to version 10, the checking of the automatic JDK Location was not looking for Java 11. On Linux, Java 11 is an install requirement and was already present and it should have automatically switched to the new JDK.
  • On Linux, when manually installing the JDK, it was using the Windows JDK install zip.
  • The ‘Audio Not Found’ message on the Audio > Audio Settings page is no longer used. The localizable translation ‘Audio_File_Not_Found’, defined at Interface > Translations is used instead.

Dictionary App Builder 10.0.1

Release date: 13 July 2022

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • App was crashing on startup because Keyman was being initialized even if not used.
  • App was crashing on startup if Keyman keyboards were used.

In the app builder:

  • Downloads of JDK and Android SDK as well as other network communications including with Scriptoria were not working on Mac.

Dictionary App Builder 10.0

Release date: 29 June 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Building apps for Android 12 (API 31)
  • Android apps are now compiled for Android 12.
  • Apps continue to work on Android versions 4.1 and above.
  • You will need to use the Install Android SDK wizard to download and install a new version of the Android SDK before you build an app.
  • See Tools > Install Android SDK.

  • JDK 11

  • Android apps are now compiled using Java Development Kit (JDK) version 11, rather than version 8 which has been used until now.
  • You will need to use the Install JDK wizard to download a new version of the JDK before you build an app.

  • See Tools > Install JDK.

  • More French translation of the App Builder interface.

  • Improved Keyman keyboard support

  • Updated to use Keyman version 15 (Android and iOS).

  • Updated iOS minimum version to 12.1

  • Font updates

  • Updated Alkalami font to version 1.300 (27 April 2022).

  • Updated Padauk font to version 5.001 (8 June 2022).

  • Updated Gradle compiler to version 7.4.2.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Fixed the processing of minor entry headwords, which helps the display of glosses in complex forms.

In the Android app:

  • Fixed various stability issues.

In the iOS app:

  • Fix bold and italic not working

Dictionary App Builder 9.3

Release date: 15 April 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Documentation updates:
  • Installation instructions: describing the new Install JDK wizard.

  • Use modern style for the Windows install wizard.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If the selected default interface language was not among the enabled interface languages, the app would crash on launch (#994).
  • If using Amplitude Analytics, the app would crash on older versions of Android.
  • Stability improvements.

In the iOS app:

  • Depending on the name, audio might not play.
  • If an index entry does not have a subtitle, reduce the size of the entry.
  • The title of the Close button did not immediately change text when a new interface language was selected.

In the app builder:

  • If the JDK or Android SDK folders have not been specified, we need to look first in the default folders for Windows, e.g. c:\jdk and c:\sdk.
  • Do not allow JPEG files to be added as images if only PNG files are allowed, e.g. for navigation drawer images.

Dictionary App Builder 9.2.4

Release date: 22 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • JDK Install wizard
  • You can now download and install the JDK using a wizard within the app builder.
  • Click Tools > Install JDK, or the Install JDK button on the Settings > Code Libraries tab.

  • Install buttons on Welcome screen

  • If the JDK has not been installed, an ‘Install JDK’ button will be displayed on the Welcome screen.
  • If the Android SDK has not been installed, an ‘Install Android SDK’ button will be displayed on the Welcome screen.

Dictionary App Builder 9.2.3

Release date: 15 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Icons from IconKitchen
  • If you create your app icon using IconKitchen, the downloaded zip file will be correctly interpreted for setting Android legacy, adaptive and iOS icons.
  • Choose the IconKitchen-Output.zip file on the ‘Android Icon (legacy)’ or ‘iOS Icon’ page when selecting the icon image files.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If the app project could not be saved after the New App wizard, an error message should be displayed rather than failing silently.
  • If the Android SDK Install wizard failed to rename certain folders, this should be done before trying to build an app.
  • JDK version 17 will not work for building an app. A check is made to ensure that a valid JDK version (8 to 16) is specified.

Dictionary App Builder 9.2.2

Release date: 02 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Translation of Language Name tabs:
  • If you have more than one user interface language in your app, you can provide translations of the lexicon languages. In this way, the tabs at the top of the screen can change according to the user interface language, e.g. displaying “English” or “Anglais” depending on the user interface language.

  • In Android versions 10 and above, rules about how apps can write to external device storage were changed with the introduction of “scoped storage”. This has affected where audio files are downloaded.

  • From now on, downloaded audio files will be saved in a sub-folder of the phone’s Music folder.

  • Improved information about which code (IMEI, serial, Android ID) to specify on the Security Devices dialog, according to the Android version.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Security modes such as restricted devices or device-specific code access were not working. The user would just see a blank screen when they launched the app.

In the app builder:

  • Missing translations on the ‘Show Access Code’ tab of the Security configuration dialog.
  • If you select the registration screen, restricted devices or device-specific code access, the builder needs to check that the user interface messages have been provided before building the app.
  • If you used the Android SDK Installation wizard on a Mac, when you tried to ‘Install APK’ on a device, you would get permission denied messages.

Dictionary App Builder 9.2.1

Release date: 23 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Navigation Menu Items
  • The rows in the Navigation Menu Items table can be reordered by dragging rows up and down.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • ‘Authentication’ was mispelt in the documentation.
  • For some tables, the popup menu item corresponding to the double-click action was not indicated in bold.

Dictionary App Builder 9.2

Release date: 10 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Search bars for Styles, Colors and Interface Translations
  • It is now easier to find the row in the table you are looking for. The Styles, Colors and Translations tables all have search bars at the top. Begin typing to filter the list of items displayed.

  • Image gallery for navigation menu items

  • Added an icon gallery in the Add Menu Item wizard and Edit dialog, allowing you to select the navigation menu item icon.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • Index view: Subscript displaying as large as text.
  • Always display index items with the orientation matching the language as with Android.
  • Fix right-to-left issues with item detail display.
  • Apply interface font to search select screen labels.

In the app builder:

  • Removed the old Scheherazade font, so users are encouraged to use Scheherazade New.

Dictionary App Builder 9.1.1

Release date: 05 November 2021

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If the Create New Keystore wizard failed to create a keystore file, it would say it had succeeded (#818).
  • Spaces could be added accidentally to publishing property names. Extra spaces are now trimmed at the beginning and end of property names and values.
  • When uploading a project to Scriptoria with the audio mode set to “Send Assets”, the audio clips that were assets were not included.
  • When building Android apps, preference should be given to the Google repository rather than JCenter for downloading libraries.

Dictionary App Builder 9.1

Release date: 26 October 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Improved audio file handling (Android app)
  • The ExoPlayer audio player is now used instead of the standard Android media player. This handles WebM audio files in earlier versions of Android. WebM audio files are now supported in Android 4.1+.

  • Language selection in App Builders

  • If you run the Windows installer in French, Spanish or Russian, the app builder interface will default to this language when it first launches.

  • You can swap between interface languages using a new selector button a the top right of the main app builder window.

  • Share Link to app installer file

  • When publishing Android apps as Android App Bundles (AAB) to Google Play, the “Share app installation file” feature is disabled. This is because Google Play uses the AAB to send each device a customised APK which is just right for that device but does not contain all of the resources necessary to be shared with other devices.
  • The new “Share link to app on website” allows you to publish a full APK to a website that can be shared in the app.

  • If you are publishing apps using Scriptoria, you can add the publishing property BUILD_SHARE_DOWNLOAD_APP_LINK=1 and Scriptoria will enable this feature and set the URL to a Scriptoria URL which provides a download page with the icon, title, description, APK size, and “Download APK” button. It uses the localized string from the Google Play Listing information. There is a Download_APK entry in the Interface Translation that can be customized per project.

  • iOS App

  • Added support for iOS 15.
  • Added support for splash screen on start up.
  • Upgraded Firebase to the latest version.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Apps with multi-character text input buttons are now handled properly.
  • Multi-word search strings are now handled properly.
  • Registration screen: some of the messages were hard-coded to English and could not be translated.

In the iOS App:

  • Support for long press copy and paste.
  • Fixed display of images and app name and info on the About screen.

In the app builder:

  • When adding an XHTML reversal, in certain cases the reversal tab would be empty in the app.
  • Allow logout of Scriptoria. The Login process launches a web browser to do the authentication. It launches the page in the front most window. If the user has multiple windows with different profiles, then the wrong might be used. The user can logout and bring focus to the correct window and attempt to login again.
  • When downloading a project from Scriptoria, if the images were changed by someone else then this would not display correctly (old thumbnails of images still cached).
  • Added a hint in the About box configuration page on how to include illustrations.
  • Added missing French translations for various pages in the app builder interface.
  • If you edited or reset the interface translations, the modified flag would not be set and you would not be warned about saving the project before closing the App Builder.

Dictionary App Builder 9.0.1

Release date: 19 August 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Install Android SDK
  • Updated to download and install the Command Line tools version 5.0.
  • Made unzipping the package files more reliable after downloading them.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • When adding Publishing Properties, do not allow blank entries.
  • When adding Interface Languages, do not allow invalid entries (which could not be deleted).

Dictionary App Builder 9.0

Release date: 04 August 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Building for Android 11 (API 30)
  • Google now requires all new apps to be compiled for Android version 11 (API 30), and updates to existing apps will need to be compiled for Android 11 before November 2021.
  • Before building an app, you will need to go to Tools > Android SDK and click ‘Install Packages’ to update your Android SDK packages, or install a fresh Android SDK installation by clicking ‘Install Android SDK’.
  • See the updated Installation Instructions.

  • Android SDK Install Wizard

  • Installing the Android SDK was not easy for new users. They needed to go to the Android Developers’ website, download the command line tools zip file, unzip it to their computer, and then Install Packages to download and install the other Android packages.
  • There is now a simple wizard that takes you through all of these steps. See Tools > Android SDK > Install Android SDK.
  • You can now install the Android SDK from the Tools menu. See Tools > Install Android SDK.

  • You can check the Android SDK installation from the Tools menu. See Tools > Check Android SDK Installation.

  • Improvements to Keyman keyboard support

  • Android and iOS apps now contain version 14 of the Keyman engine.
  • You can specify what text to display on the keyboard’s space bar (Android only).

  • The iOS app now supports Keyman keyboards in Verse on Image text editor.

  • Updated documentation:

  • Installation Instructions: updated section on installing the Android SDK, now using the Install Android SDK wizard.
  • Installing and Building on Mac: update sections on installing JDK and Android SDK.

  • Distributing Apps: updated all sections, including publishing on Google Play with Android App Bundles.

  • Updated Fonts:

  • Padauk (5.000) (18 June 2021)

  • Scheherazade New (3.200) (15 July 2021).

  • For iOS apps, the minimum deployment level has been changed to iOS 10.0.

  • Updated Libraries:

  • Gradle compiler updated to version 7.1.1.
  • Firebase libraries updated to BoM 28.1.0.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • On the registration page, markdown links to web pages were not handled.
  • When building an Android App Bundle (AAB), the “Share app installer file” option should be disabled (since the APK file on the phone will be device-specific and not useful to share with others).

In the app builder:

  • Adaptive icons were not being saved if no background image or background color were defined.
  • When adding new user details fields to the registration page configuration, non-alphanumeric chars should be removed from the field code.
  • Do not show the ‘Allow skip’ checkbox in the Security configuration for device-specific access codes.
  • Do not show Lint errors when building Android app releases.
  • The download link for Azul JDK 8 needed updating.
  • Allow uploading projects to Scriptoria from multiple App Builders (e.g. RAB & DAB) at the same time.

Dictionary App Builder 8.6.6

Release date: 04 June 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added ‘View Apps in Group’ checkbox menu item to the root of the app tree on the left of the screen, to turn on and off viewing by group.

  • Optional ‘SKIP’ button on Registration screen.

  • Scriptoria Improvements:

  • When a user uploads or downloads a project, an entry is added to the product details’ history of events.

  • The builder of the project in Scriptoria can add the authors so that the author can upload/download the project directly to Scriptoria. This requires the author to have a Scriptoria account.

  • iOS App: Added support for Firebase realtime database and user registration.

  • Updated Mac installation and building documentation for use of Firebase features in an iOS app.

  • Updated libraries used to build apps.

  • Use latest AndroidX appcompat and material libraries.
  • Use mavenCentral rather than JCenter as the repository for downloading libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Lexicon entries were not showing after the app was restarted (when using LIFT data).
  • Images were not displaying in the About screen.
  • The registration screen could complain about a lack of internet connection in the latest versions of Android, even though there was an internet connection.
  • Allow links to image web pages in the About screen.

In the app builder:

  • If you tried to add an image from the images folder in the project data, the image file would be deleted.
  • On Windows, connecting to Scriptoria would only work once and then hang on subsequent attempts.
  • When uploading a project to Scriptoria, if there was something missing in the Google Play Listing, a warning would appear but it would still upload.
  • When downloading a project from Scriptoria, if the project name changed, then the project would not download correctly.

Dictionary App Builder 8.6.5

Release date: 04 May 2021

Bugs Fixed:

  • If you exited the Android app using the back button and then selected the app again, the About menu item in the navigation drawer would be missing until the app was restarted.

Dictionary App Builder 8.6.3

Release date: 31 March 2021

Includes changes made in 8.6.1 and 8.6.2.

New Features and Improvements:

  • The main toolbar in the App Builder now shows only those buttons that are applicable.
  • When launching for the first time, only the ‘New App…’ button will appear. Other buttons will be shown when there is an app to build or install.

  • Add option of “Always use main theme” for dark theme.

  • Installation changes:

  • Windows 32-bit is no longer supported. Windows 64-bit is required.

  • When selecting the Android SDK folder in Settings, look in the parent and child folders of the selected folder if the folder was selected incorrectly.

  • Scheherazade New font updated to version 3.100.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Allow .jpeg files to be selected for screenshots on the Publishing > Store Listing page.
  • Validate build folder for Windows. If special/accented characters are in the default path, use C:\temp\SIL\build instead.
  • Include additional files in the Java runtime library.
  • Added more space for several French and Spanish translations.

Dictionary App Builder 8.6

Release date: 15 March 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Crosswalk Viewer for complex script handling in Android apps
  • The Crosswalk viewer component had been removed in version 8.0 (August 2020) because of changes in Android 10 which caused it to crash. It is now working again and can be used if you have a complex script which relies on Graphite font rendering.
  • See Fonts > Font Handling.

  • Include Java runtime to avoid JAR file association and high resolution screen problems

  • After installing the App Builder on Windows, some users found that they could not launch the program because of incorrect JAR file associations. This has now been resolved by including a minimal Java runtime in the Windows setup program that is always used to run the App Builder (rather than searching for the Java runtime elsewhere on your computer).

  • This change will also mean better support for users with high resolution screens, since we use a more recent version of Java.

  • Default images for menu items

  • When adding additional menu items to the navigation drawer menu (e.g. Visit our website, Rate this app, etc.), default images are provided.

  • Welcome screen

  • The App Builder logo and a ‘New App…’ button have been added to the welcome screen, rather than it being a blank page.

  • Install APK improvement

  • Added more information about enabling USB debugging to the Install APK confirmation dialog.

  • Keystore usability improvements

  • When creating a new keystore, on the Alias page, you can choose to ‘Use the same password as on the previous page’.
  • When specifying a keystore, on the Signing page, you can choose to ‘Use the same password as above’ for the alias.

  • When trying to build an app, a warning is shown if the keystore password has been entered incorrectly.

  • Updated Firebase and Material Design library versions.

  • Documentation improvements

  • Building Apps: Added section on ‘Installing the app on your phone’.
  • Building Apps: Restored sub-section on Crosswalk in the Fonts section.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Audio clips with spaces in their filenames could not be played within the app.
  • Handle line breaking on zero-width spaces in the Crosswalk viewer, e.g. for Thai scripts.

In the iOS app:

  • Builds crashed due to a link error.
  • Fix issue with colors on text size popup slider controls.

In the app builder:

  • Yes/No dialog boxes should be shown in the centre of the App Builder window, not the centre of the user’s desktop.
  • The Android device architecture specified on the ‘After Build’ tab in Settings was not being used.

Dictionary App Builder 8.5

Release date: 12 February 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Improvements to updating from databases
  • Added “Update from Other Source” button to the Lexicon page, which can be used if the original source is no longer available.
  • For XHTML databases, include CSS stylesheets and reversal indexes when updating. A message box displays which components have been updated.

  • Install Latest APK on Device

  • If you have recently built an APK but didn’t have your phone connected to your computer, or if you want to install the same APK on multiple devices, you can use the ‘Install Latest APK on Device’ feature.
  • See “Install APK” on the main toolbar, or “Build > Install Latest APK on Device” from the main menu, or “ Install Latest APK on Device” on the right-click popup menu in the app tree on the left of the screen.

  • If no APK is found, you will be asked if you want to build it.

  • Updated list of ISO language codes.

  • User interface improvements:

  • Themes: allow striped tables which is defined for some themes (Light Flat and Dark Flat).
  • Increased the height of the Project Description field.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Monolingual lexicons with no gloss languages were crashing when the app was launched.

In the app builder:

  • If there are revoked iOS Signing Identity certificates, use the correct user selected certificate.
  • If a non-existant Android SDK folder was specified, the Settings dialog could not be opened again.
  • The final page of a wizard should have a ‘Finish’ button rather than a ‘Next >’ button.
  • On Windows, correctly determine Classic mode for dialog frames.

Dictionary App Builder 8.4

Release date: 15 January 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • New look and feel to the app builder desktop interface, with a choice of themes.
  • Updated folder and book icons for the app tree on the left of the screen.
  • To change the theme, go to Tools > Settings > Interface.
  • You can specify a dark theme to be used if the app builder is launched when the computer is in dark mode.

  • Enhancements to app publishing with Scriptoria:

  • If an app project is in Scriptoria, you can download it (File > Open App using Scriptoria)
  • You can download the latest version of the app from Scriptoria (see the Download button on the Publishing page).

  • Updated Google Play listing languages (added 13 languages) to match what is available in the Google Play Developer Console.

  • Improved responsiveness of the Interface pages and translation tables in the app builder.

  • Updated Installation Instructions:

  • Android SDK command line tools are now in cmdline-tools folder.
  • The recommended JDK is now Azul Zulu OpenJDK.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • If dark theme is not selected for the app, iPhone transition to dark mode will not switch to dark theme. Previously it did, and the app would appear in a mode that the application developer did not support.

In the app builder:

  • Android SDK command line tools were not being found in the cmdline-tools folder.
  • When installing Android SDK packages in the Settings > Android SDK tab, the Platform API version number would stay red, “Not Found”, after completing the installation.
  • Correctly handle expired or missing iOS Signing identity.

Dictionary App Builder 8.3.1

Release date: 19 November 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added Scheherazade New font – an Arabic script font.

  • Updated Firebase libraries to use the latest versions.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Apps were containing a reference to an AdMob library (a sub-dependency of Firebase Analytics) which could cause Google Play to ask whether the app contained ads.

In the iOS app:

  • Settings section titles display with white text
  • The Share app feature was not working
  • Added text size button to navigation bar in word detail screen.

In the app builder:

  • When using Firebase Analytics in an iOS app, the app builder was not checking if the iOS config file was included in the project. If it wasn’t the app would crash on startup.
  • The user registration configuration dialog did not appear when clicking ‘Configure Registration’ on the App > Security tab.

Dictionary App Builder 8.3

Release date: 05 November 2020

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • Use UI drawer item text font for slide drawer menu items.
  • Use the same color for the bottom area background after the last option in the slide view drawer that is used for the option entries.
  • Support color codes with a transparent alpha setting.
  • The option to use a default language if the current interface language was not available was not matching the languages properly, resulting in it taking the default even when the translation for the current interface language was available.

In the app builder:

  • Logging into Scriptoria to send the project data could fail.
  • On macOS, trying to create a new keystore would fail.
  • On macOS, dragging the window to a secondary monitor would cause the App Builder to crash.

Dictionary App Builder 8.2

Release date: 14 October 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Publishing with Scriptoria improvements:
  • Added tool to Import Google Play Listing. This will take the information from the online Google Play Store and add it to the project. See Publishing > Google Play Store Listing.
  • Added field for specifying a Promotional video.
  • Additions to command line arguments for sending to Scriptoria.

  • Documentation Updates:

  • Updated iOS Certification Authority information in the ‘Building on Mac’ document.

  • Updated code signing certificate for Windows installs.

  • Updated Bloom Player to version 2.0.7.

  • iOS App:

  • Added support for download and streaming of audio files
  • Updated to build template app with XCode 12. DAB users are not required to upgrade to XCode 12 at this time.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • There were sharing permission problems in Android 10, e.g. sharing the APK file.
  • Handle finding media files in external device folders on Android 10.
  • Make sure security access code message dialog appears after a splash screen.
  • If only the Dark or Sepia color themes were enabled, the Normal theme was still showing first.
  • If only one color theme was enabled, there was a white row at the bottom of the in the text size popup.
  • Fixed some stability issues which could cause the app to crash.

In the app builder:

  • Selecting a table row with the left mouse button and then right-clicking could be interpreted as a double-click.
  • Do not include progress bar images when building for iOS.

Dictionary App Builder 8.1

Release date: 26 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • About box improvement:
  • If you put three or more hyphens (---), asterisks (***) or underscores (___) on a line without any other text, the app will display a horizontal line.

  • Keyman Engine updated to version 13.0.6216.

  • Updated AndroidX libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If glosses in XHTML contained multiple spans, this could cause unwanted semi-colons to appear surrounded by spaces in the main index list.

In the iOS app:

  • Styles are applied to side menu background, text and icons.

Dictionary App Builder 8.0.1

Release date: 11 August 2020

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When using the access code security method, the key was not being read correctly from the project configuration file.

In the app builder:

  • When creating the summary gloss line for the main lexicon list view for XHTML dictionaries, multiple span elements in the definition/gloss field could cause display problems, such as lines beginning with semi-colons.
  • Android app compilation failed when using both Firebase and Amplitude analytics in the same app.
  • When showing the building app progress bar, the title was not displayed correctly.

Dictionary App Builder 8.0

Release date: 04 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Android apps are compiled for Android 10
  • Google Play now requires new apps to be compiled for Android 10.
  • Apps can still be installed on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above.

  • Facebook Analytics

  • Basic support: integration of Facebook SDK library for logging when the app is launched.

  • To add Facebook, go to Analytics, click Add Analytics Account, and select Facebook Analytics as the Account Type. Enter your Facebook App ID.

  • Android App Bundles

  • Instead of creating an APK (or multiple APKs), you can create an Android App Bundle to upload to Google Play.

  • Select Build > “Build Android App Bundle” in the main menu, or right-click on an app name in the left-hand menu, and select “Build Android App Bundle”.

  • Updated libraries:

  • Gradle build tool updated to version 6.5.1.
  • Firebase libraries updated to latest versions.
  • Crashlytics library updated to use latest Firebase version.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

  • Search results were not being sorted according to weighting, i.e. higher position for matches on lexical names than matches in example phrases.
  • User menu items retained previous translation when interface language changed.
  • App crashed if swiped multiple times from the word display screen.
  • Pinch zoom now changes font size when in the word display screen.

Known Issues:

  • The Crosswalk viewer, which handles Graphite font rendering, is not available. Please contact the support team if you need it for your app.

Dictionary App Builder 7.2

Release date: 09 July 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • iOS app improvements:
  • Support for right-to-left languages.
  • Support for user defined menu items.
  • Performance enhancements which increase the speed of search and startup.
  • Increase size of alphabet button and match font size to user defined alphabet button size if set.

  • The App Builder macOS app is notarized.

  • Text direction selection

  • Added text direction selector on the Language Details page in the app builder.

  • Use Android ID rather than IMEI code for device-specific security access in Android 10.

  • In Android 10, apps no longer have permission to access to the IMEI code, but they do have access to a unique device and app-specific ID, called the Android ID.

  • Navigation Drawer improvements

  • The text size of navigation drawer menu items is now adjustable according to the interface language text size.

  • Updated Keyman Engine to version 13.0.6214.

  • Updated font:

  • Harmattan (2.000) (19 June 2020).

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Android 5.0 and 5.1 devices could crash in the viewer due to a bug in the androidx app compat library.
  • Search would sometimes fail to find entries containing special or accented characters.
  • Search would sometimes include repeated entries.
  • Search would crash when the search term included characters such as curly or square brackets.
  • Search results were not being sorted according to weighting, i.e. higher position for matches on lexical names than in example phrases.
  • If an expiry data was set with the app exiting on tapping OK in the message, if the user tapped outside the message, the app would not exit.
  • If device-specific security is used and a device was not authorised to use the app, if the user tapped outside the ‘Permission denied’ message box, the app would display a blank screen rather than exit.
  • If using the access by code security mode, the app would crash when administrators tried to add a user.

Dictionary App Builder 7.1

Release date: 16 May 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Spanish translations
  • The app builder interface for 7.0 now has a complete translation in Spanish. To use it, go to Tools > Settings > Interface.
  • Added missing app translations in Spanish.

  • Keyman Lexical Models

  • Support for Keyman Lexical Models in both Android and iOS apps.

  • See Fonts > Lexical Models.

  • Navigation changes in iOS app

  • Change back button functionality in detail screens. Pressing back button now takes you to the previous links, and finally to the index page. Long pressing the back button takes you back to the index page immediately.

  • iOS app information:

  • A build information status line appears when the user long presses in the about menu.

  • Updated libraries

  • Latest Firebase libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Various stability improvements.

In the iOS app:

  • Hide keyboard button did not display in search tab.
  • Pressing a link in an item detail did not go to the correct entry if sub-entries were defined for the language.
  • Multiple index tabs show overlapping text when 5 index tabs are defined. Using text size for ui.tabs user interface style to allow designer to adjust the size of the text so that tab text may be clearly viewed. * For more than 5 tabs defined, the system will display a “More…” window to allow access to the remaining tags.
  • Corrected app name display on item detail screen to be consistent with the one shown on the index page.

In the app builder:

  • iOS app build: IPA file for distribution showed an error in Terminal that prevented the file from being usable.

Dictionary App Builder 7.0.1

Release date: 28 April 2020

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:
Made performance enhancements to allow larger dictionaries to run without crashing the app.

Dictionary App Builder 7.0

Release date: 24 April 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Summary Gloss configuration
  • Choose which languages to include in the summary gloss line under each lexical name in the main list view.
  • Choose whether or not to show the part of speech in the summary gloss line.
  • See Features > Summary Gloss in the app builder.

  • Improved support for Right-to-Left scripts

  • Button bar, scrollbars, swiping between pages behave as they should with Right-to-Left scripts.

  • Additional Menu items in Navigation menu (Android app)

  • Add menu items such as “Find us on Facebook”, “Rate App”, “Send us an Email”, etc.

  • See Features > Menu Items to configure this feature in the app builder.

  • Improved Keyman keyboard support

  • Updated to use Keyman version 13 (Android and iOS).

  • Use Keyman Lexical Models in Android app for predictive text and autocorrect.

  • Notification icon

  • You can now define the small icon that appears at the top of an Android device when the app receives a push notification.

  • See the Images > Notification Icon page.

  • Fonts

  • Added AbeeZee, Archivo Black, Roboto, Merriweather and Baskerville fonts.

  • Updated Alkalami font to version 1.200 (31 January 2020).

  • Updated libraries:

  • AndroidX (Jetpack) libraries rather than older Android Support libraries.
  • Gradle compiler – updated to version 6.2.1.
  • Firebase – updated to latest library versions.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The interface strings “Search for:” and “No matching entries” were not translatable.
  • Pressing the Globe keyboard change button on an in-app Keyman keyboard caused the app to crash.
  • Read Phone State permission was requested in certain security modes where it was not required.

In the iOS app:

  • Now using iOS version 13.
  • Add localization of app name (#59580, #59518).

In the app builder:

  • The latest version of the Android SDK Command line tools was not being recognised by the app builder.
  • The Color scheme chooser table was not using the correct selection background colour.
  • Table headings on a Mac were displayed in a very small font.
  • Remove Fastlane dependency for building iOS apps.
  • Support new (Xcode 11+) Apple certificates for signing iOS apps.

Dictionary App Builder 6.1

Release date: 15 November 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Publishing:
  • Enable the publishing page in Dictionary App Builder.
  • Added Publishing Properties on Publishing page to configure Scriptoria settings.
  • Improved layout on the Publishing page, with expandable height input box for the long description.

  • User interface improvements in the app builder:

  • Added ‘Save’ button to toolbar – to save the current app only.

  • Added ‘Copy Character’ item to the popup menu in the Character Inventory table: copies characters from the selected rows to the clipboard.

  • Additional About box variables:

  • %program-version% – version of program used to create the app, e.g. “6.1”.

  • %program-name% – name of program used to create the app, e.g. “RAB”, “DAB”.

  • Search for the keystore in the current user’s keystore folder if the full path of the keystore is not found.

  • Fonts:

  • Padauk font updated to version 4.000.
  • Abyssinica SIL font updated to version 2.000.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • When using a background image with Adaptive Android Icons, the background image would be switched to the foreground image when the project was re-opened.
  • On the Mac, the Settings dialog was unresponsive when started. It was getting the Fastlane version which takes a little time.
  • On the Mac, added configuration of the default folder for Simulator files.
  • On the Mac, if Xcode 11 is installed then the utility used to start the simulator, install the app, and launch the app doesn’t work. In this case, the Run iOS Simulator dialog will assist the user to drag/drop the built app to the simulator.
  • If the folder for Keystore files contained an ampersand, it was not saved correctly in the app project configuration file.
  • The program could crash on startup when searching for the JDK folder.
  • The option “Verify Google Play Store listing when sending app data” was not being saved.

Dictionary App Builder 6.0

Release date: 21 August 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • Faster search
  • Searching for words in the dictionary is now significantly faster.

  • Adaptive Android Icons

  • Devices with Android version 8.0 (Oreo) and above support Adaptive Icons. It is important to define an adaptive icon for your app, otherwise the icon will not be shown well on newer phones. Foreground and background layers should be specified separately.

  • See Images > Android Icon (Adaptive).

  • Fastlane installation and updates (for Mac only)

  • Simplify installing and updating Fastlane Tools which are used to digitally sign the iOS app for distribution to the App Store.

  • See Settings > Fastlane.

  • Close build window after successful app compilation (for Windows only)

  • See Settings > After Build.

  • Color scheme:

  • Added new ‘Shamrock Green’ color scheme, to match flag of Côte d’Ivoire.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Missing translation for Change File Source item in popup menu in audio clips table.
  • Some files were not copied across correctly when saving new apps.

Dictionary App Builder 5.6

Release date: 05 July 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • Firebase configuration:
  • Improved configuration screen, App > Firebase, with a link to the Firebase console.

  • Fonts:

  • Awami Nastaliq font updated to version 2.000.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If you wanted a splash screen together with one of the restricted user security modes, the app would crash on start-up.

In the app builder:

  • Building the Android app failed with errors if including Firebase Crashlytics.
  • Right-click popup menus were missing from several tables, i.e. for Edit and Delete actions.
  • Allow use of Zulu OpenJDK from Azul Systems as the JDK.

Dictionary App Builder 5.5

Release date: 14 June 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • 64-bit libraries
  • From August 2019, Google requires all apps submitted to Google Play to have 64-bit versions of native libraries. These have now been added for Crosswalk and Grandroid.

  • Amazon Corretto 8 for JDK

  • Since Oracle has changed its licensing agreement for the use of their JDK, we recommend you use Amazon Corretto 8 instead. Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK).

  • Installation instructions can be found in the documentation.

  • View Project Folder

  • Show the current app project folder by right-clicking on the app name in the left panel and selecting ‘View Project Folder’, or ‘File’ > ‘View Project Folder’ on the main menu.

  • Updated Gradle compiler to the latest version 5.4.1.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

In the app builder:

  • In the list of images, the thumbnail is now updated correctly if replacing a file with the same name that is only different by case (e.g. replacing wraB1.png with wrab1.png).
  • If an image file contained an ampersand character, it was not saved correctly in the app definition file.

Dictionary App Builder 5.4

Release date: 06 April 2019

New Features and Improvements:

Download this version

Dictionary App Builder 5.3

Release date: 20 March 2019

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Installing Android SDK packages from Settings did not work if there were spaces in the path.
  • The READ_PHONE_STATE permission should not included when building the app (unless you are using one of the restricted user security modes).
  • The choice of interface languages in Settings > Interface should just be English, French and Spanish.

Dictionary App Builder 5.2

Release date: 1 March 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • More translations:
  • Added more Spanish translations to the App Builder interface.

  • Updated font:

  • Annapurna SIL updated to version 1.204.

  • Separated out code for security modes requiring access to the device IMEI number into a separate library. The code will only be included in the app if it needs to be.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If the list of interface languages was reordered, this order was not saved between sessions.

Dictionary App Builder 5.1

Release date: 22 January 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • In-app Keyman keyboards (for beta testing)
  • You can now integrate Keyman keyboards within your app for use on the Search screen.
  • Add one or more keyboards in the builder at Fonts > Keyboards. You will need the compiled keyboard JavaScript file from Keyman Developer.

  • Relative font sizes for interface languages

  • For interface languages that need a slightly larger font size, you can specify a relative font size (e.g. 110%).
  • Currently supported: message boxes, progress boxes and Settings screen.

  • Go to the Interface > Languages tab, edit a language and select the Text Size.

  • Documentation

  • Added bookmarks to the PDF documents.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Message box buttons were not being displayed using the interface language font.
  • Some markdown links, such as empty links, were not handled correctly in the About box.

In the app builder:

  • The progress bar did not move when writing lexicon data for the app assets.

Dictionary App Builder 5.0

Release date: 8 January 2019

New Features and Improvements:

  • Open Multiple App Projects
  • Allows you to open several previously created app projects from your App Projects folder.
  • See File > Open Multiple Apps…

  • App Project Groups

  • Allows you to group related apps together in the tree view on the left of the App Builder screen.
  • See ‘Project Group’ on the App > Project page, or the ‘Project’ page of the New App wizard.

  • Right-click on a project group folder and select ‘New App…’ to add a new app to that project group.

  • Zip files of Icon images

  • When adding icons on the Images > App Icon page, you can select a zip file of icon images (e.g. as downloaded from Android Asset Studio) rather than needing to unzip the file and add each of the images separately.

  • About page

  • There is a new ‘Viewer’ tab which allows you to visualise how the About page will look in the app after interpreting formatting codes and variables.

  • Documentation: a new section describing the About page has been added to the ‘Building Apps’ document. This includes a list of allowable formatting codes, such as how to add images, change styles and fonts.

  • Improved font handling in message dialogs

  • Message dialogs (such as asking whether or not to download audio) and progress dialogs (such as during file download) have been rewritten to use the chosen interface language font for titles, text, checkboxes and buttons.

  • These new dialogs can use the Crosswalk viewer component to display complex Graphite fonts.

  • Android compiler upgrade

  • Upgraded to compile with the latest version of Android, 9.0 (Pie) and the latest Google libraries.
  • The minimum Android version on which the app will run is now Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). It will no longer run on the older Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) phones.
  • Now using Gradle compiler version 4.10.3.

  • You will need to update your Android SDK libraries. Go to Tools > Settings > Android SDK and click ‘Install Packages…’

  • Runs on Windows with Java version 10, as well as versions 8 and 9.

  • Firebase integration

  • See the App > Firebase page.
  • You can enable Firebase Messaging for push notifications.

  • You can enable Firebase Crashlytics for crash reporting.

  • Allow user to opt out of sharing usage data (analytics)

  • See the Analytics page or Features > Settings.

  • More Color Schemes

  • Added Dark Orange, Chocolate, Asparagus Green, Dark Olive Green, India Green, Pakistan Green.

  • Additional documentation

  • Fonts: explanation of Crosswalk viewer.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • The app builder program would not start on Windows machines using the Java 10 runtime environment.
  • Changes in the app name Translations dialog were not reflected in the app name edit box after closing the dialog.
  • Corrected the link in Settings to the Android SDK Command Line Tools download website.
  • Handle images in About box with spaces in filenames.
  • If you use File > Open… to open an already open project, the builder should select this existing project rather than opening a second instance.
  • If all apps were removed from the builder, the title bar needed to be updated to remove the last app project name.

Dictionary App Builder 3.1

Release date: 15 March 2018

New Features and Improvements:

  • Search
  • Normalize lexicon data and search phrases (decompose composed characters) so that words with composed and decomposed accents are found.
  • Added ‘Match accents and tones’ checkbox to the Search page (unchecked by default).

  • Changes Gallery

  • Select from a set of frequently used changes.

  • Click ‘Add Change from Gallery…’ on the Changes page.

  • App Analytics

  • Added three more Analytics engines:
  • Firebase Analytics
  • Amplitude Analytics
  • S3 Digest Analytics

  • Please see the Analytics section of the Building Apps manual for more details.

  • About box code for inserting an image

  • Use the markdown code: !(alt text)[image.png]

  • Allow setting the Maximum Gradle Heap Size to increase or reduce memory use when building the app.

  • See Settings > Build Settings.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When sharing files on Android 7.0 and above, the app crashed sometimes because of a Uri encoding problem.
  • Incorrect CSS was being generated for Graphite font features and language. Use font-language-override and font-feature-settings.

In the app builder:

  • Documents were missing in the Windows installer.
  • Some fonts were missing in the Windows installer.
  • Changes to the interface language order (by dragging rows) were not saved and not reflected in the Settings screen in the app.
  • The Browse button was not visible on the Files tab in the Settings dialog.
  • The iOS IPA filename was shown at the start of the batch file when building an Android app, and app version information was repeated.
  • The app builder toolbar could be detached by double-clicking, and it was not obvious how to get it back in position again.
  • Need to check that a valid JDK folder has been entered before trying to install Android SDK packages.
  • Font features were not always encoded properly for XML in the appDef file.
  • Update the tools used to get the list of iOS Simulators available to make it work on macOS High Sierra.

Dictionary App Builder 3.0.1

Release date: 18 December 2017

New Features and Improvements:

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • The last audio clip filename was being replaced by a font filename (#52668).

Dictionary App Builder 3.0

Release date: 12 December 2017

New Features and Improvements:

  • Initial release of Dictionary App Builder for Mac
  • With DAB for Mac you can build dictionary apps for both Android and iOS (iPhone and iPad).
  • Many of the features of the Android app are implemented in the iOS app, except for audio and search.
  • For more information, please see the document Installing and Building Apps on a Mac, available on the Resources page.

  • Navigation Drawer

  • The app bar menu has been replaced by a navigation drawer which slides in from the side of the screen.
  • To show the drawer, swipe in from the side of the screen or tap the hamburger icon (the three horizontal lines on the app bar).

  • At the top of the drawer is an image which you can customise in the app builder. See Images > Navigation Drawer.

  • Changing the app interface language

  • The user can now change the language of menus and messages within the app, via the Settings screen.
  • To define which interface languages the user can choose from, see the new Interface > Languages tab in the app builder. You can add additional languages here and enable/disable existing languages.

  • You can choose to set the default language to be the current language of the smartphone or tablet.

  • Graphite font rendering support

  • The lexicon entry views can be displayed using the Crosswalk viewer component, for Android 4.1 to 8.1.

  • Image Viewer

  • Double-click on a row in an image table (illustrations, icons, splash screen) to see a bigger image, which you can resize to see more clearly.

  • Default package name

  • You can set the default start of the package name for building new apps. See Settings > Defaults.

  • Other Android app design changes

  • The About box is now a full screen page rather than a popup window.

  • Compling for Android 8.0 Oreo

  • Android apps are now compiled using the Android SDK platform library for the latest version of Android (version 8.0 Oreo).

  • You will need to update your Android SDK installation. The Android 5.0/5.1 platform has been used up until now and can no longer be used for DAB 3.0+.

  • Documentation updates

  • The documents have been updated with new information for DAB 3.0.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • Search was not working in the app for LIFT lexicons.

In the app builder:

  • In the New App Icon wizard page or the Icon Gallery dialog, the user should only be able to choose one icon, not multiple icons.
  • The OK button was not working in the Devices dialog box.
  • The Create New KeyStore feature uses new default key algorithm (RSA) and size (2048) to work with jar signing in JDK 1.8 u151+.
  • Thumbnails of images that were short and wide were cropped in the first column of the image tables.

Dictionary App Builder 2.0

Release date: 13 July 2017

New Features and Improvements:

  • XHTML Lexicon import:
  • In addition to lexicons specified in LIFT format, DAB can now import XHTML files as exported from Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx).
  • This means the formatting of lexical entries can be defined using the configuration options within FLEx and then displayed in this way within the app, in a similar way to which entries are displayed using Webonary.

  • Crosswalk viewer component:

  • If the standard Android viewer component is not displaying your complex script correctly, there is now the option of bundling the replacement Crosswalk viewer with your app.
  • Note that this will mean an increase in app size of at least 20 MB, so do not enable Crosswalk unless you know you need it.

  • Three APK fies will be created: one for ARM devices (-arm.apk), one for Intel x86 devices (-x86.apk), and a universal APK for both (-universal.apk).

  • Fonts

  • Added Alkalami font, for Arabic-based writing systems in the Kano region of Nigeria and in Niger.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • App sharing text was not translatable (“I can recommend this app”, “Share App via”, etc.)

In the app builder:

  • Translations to app names not being saved between app builder sessions.
  • Minimum Build Tools version should now be increased to 25.0.0.
  • Android builds failed if the package name contained certain Windows reserved directory names in the package name (e.g. con, aux, nul).

Dictionary App Builder 1.5

Release date: 10 May 2017

New Features and Improvements:

  • Android SDK installation changes:
  • The SDK Manager GUI is no longer distributed with the SDK command line tools. There is instead a command line installer, which is launched from the new Tools > Settings > Android SDK tab.
  • Updated installation documentation.

  • Updated Gradle Build compiler to version 3 to optimise building apps.

Dictionary App Builder 1.4

Release date: 8 March 2017

New Features and Improvements:

  • Styles:
  • Added a CSS tab to the Styles edit dialog to allow adding/editing CSS properties directly.

  • App Install Location

  • Now configurable. See the APK tab.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • Duplicate entries were shown in the index view if two or more senses from the same entry pointed to the same reversal index word.
  • If the reversal indexes contained more than two senses for the same index word, the third and subsequent senses would be ignored.

In the app builder:

  • Build path was often too long if the package name was long. Use a shorter path.
  • Style edit dialog should allow editing of all the currently defined properties.
  • Problem saving app project if the lexicon filename contained an ‘&’ character.
  • If the About box font has been changed to a different font from the first font, make sure that the edit field is updated to use this font.

Dictionary App Builder 1.3

Release date: 24 January 2017

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Sharing
  • Added optional ‘Share App’ item in app menu.
  • Gives app user the choice of:
  1. Sharing a link to the app on Google Play, or
  2. Sending APK file to another phone via Bluetooth, Wifi transfer, email, etc.

* See Features > Sharing to turn on this app sharing feature.

  • Build Multiple Apps:
  • New ‘Build Multiple Apps…’ added to toolbar.
  • Choose which apps you want to build and they will be queued to be compiled one after the other.

  • Translated Strings within the app

  • Added Import/Export, to allow you to share menu item translations between apps.

  • Added ‘Reset Translations’ to the popup menu in the Translated Strings table to allow reset to defaults.

  • Reset colors:

  • Added ‘Reset Color’ option to right-click menu to reset color to its default setting.

  • Regular Expression Changes :

  • Added enabled on/off checkbox for each change, to make it easier to test changes.

  • Icons:

  • Added ‘Choose from Icon Gallery’ button on Images > Android Icon tab.

  • Allow selection of multiple images when adding custom icon images.

  • Image sorting:

  • Sort images in size order when adding app icons.

  • Click on headers in image table to sort rows.

  • Gradle compiler – updated to version 2.14.1

  • Note: the first time you build an app, Gradle will need internet access to download an update of the Gradle Android plugin.

  • Documentation:

  • Updated Installation Instructions for installing the basic command line Android SDK tools.

  • Added a comment next to the Android Asset Studio link that it works better with the Chrome browser.

  • Fonts:

  • Updated regional font subsets with inclusion of Graphite support.
  • Updated Padauk to version 3.002.
  • Updated Annapurna to version 1.201.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • Audio files in assets not found within app in some situations.
  • Web links in markdown format, e.g. [Display Text](www.mysite.org), were not recognised in the app about box.

In the app builder:

  • Require Android SDK Build-tools of version 23 or later. Otherwise inform the user that they need to upgrade.
  • Handle tag in LIFT for specifying example audio.

Dictionary App Builder 1.2

Release date: 31 August 2016

New Features and Improvements:

  • Updated documentation:
  • Installation Instructions: added a section on copying Android SDK files from another computer.
  • Distributing Apps: more information on Google Play store details.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • Search screen always shown in English, not reading translated strings.

In the app builder:

  • Characters tab for a language not showing any characters in some situations, and so the Validate Font feature could not be run.
  • Icons in more sizes.
  • Need to check for sufficient image sizes for Android icon when building app.
  • Explanatory text on Android Icon definition page needed to be clearer about which images sizes are required.

Dictionary App Builder 1.1

Release date: 03 August 2016

New Features and Improvements:

  • Color schemes:
  • Choice of Material Design color schemes added to New App wizard and Colors page.
  • Copy lexicon database file to data folder, and allow update from source file on Lexicon page.
  • Illustration resizing:
  • Resizes images to contain in app to reduce app size.
  • See Images > Illustrations page.
  • Fonts: Padauk font updated to version 3.0.
  • Attempt to use Gradle app compiler in offline mode if there is no internet connection
  • Hyperlinks in About box:
  • Allow use of markdown link formatting, where text to display is enclosed in square brackets [], followed by the link in normal parenthesis ().
  • Example: [Text to Display](http://www.example.com)
  • Example: [Email me](mailto:john@example.com)

Bugs Fixed:

In the app:

  • Entries were not being displayed if a <span> without an attribute was found in the data.
  • Failed to handle certain characters (<, >, “, ‘) found in glosses and definitions.
  • Certain configurations of sub-entry data caused the app to crash.

In the app builder:

  • Indexes not being sorted correctly when app is built a second time in the same session.
  • Custom Field styles not being defined for vernacular language.
  • Could not remove all input buttons, ignore characters or alphabet buttons.
  • Problem correctly identifying the language code.
  • Some text not visible on some screens using 150% text size.

Dictionary App Builder 1.0

Release date: 07 March 2016

First release.