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

Scripture App Builder 11.1.1

Release date: 19 December 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added some app interface translations in Thai and Burmese.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If you were building an app with web radio without any other features that required internet access, the internet permission would not be included.
  • If you locked the device screen when playing a web radio station, the audio would stop playing.

In the app builder:

  • If the name of a Change contained angle bracket characters, the app project would not be saved correctly.

Scripture App Builder 11.1

Release date: 06 December 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Bible Reading Plans (Android app)
    • You can add a collection of Bible reading plans to your app. Each day within a plan can include one or more passages for users to read or listen to.
    • Plans are defined in text files, using standard format markers. For details about the required file format, see the ‘Bible Plans’ section in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
    • There is a new bottom navigation bar in the app, allowing users to navigate between the main Bible view, Plans, and the Contents menu (if there is one).
    • To add plans to the app, go to Engagement > Plans.
    • You can add pre-prepared plans from the Plans Gallery, by clicking the ‘Add Plan from Gallery…’ button.
    • More features are planned for the coming releases, including: daily reminder, settings/changing the start date, cancelling plans, choosing the days of the week on which to read, and devotional notes.
       
  • Web Radio Stations (Android app)
    • You can include streaming web radio (internet radio) stations in your app.
    • To add a radio station, go to Media > Radio and click Add Station.
    • For more details, see the ‘Radio’ section in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
       
  • In-App Messaging (Android app)
    • 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.
       
  • Contents menu item targets (Android app)
    • In addition to pointing to book chapters and other contents menu screens, a contents menu item can now point to the following: About screen, Language and Layout screen, Settings screen, Plans chooser, a Web radio station or any website.
    • Go to Navigation > Contents Menu, click the Add Item button, and select ‘Elsewhere’.
       
  • 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’.
       
  • More app interface translations:
    • Added Farsi [fa] translations
    • Added Zulu [zu] translations
    • Added missing Chinese translations
       
  • Font updates:
    • Updated Annapurna SIL font to version 2.000 (8 Nov 2023)
    • Updated Awami Nastaliq font to version 3.200 (23 Oct 2023)
       
  • Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.31.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If no bookmarks, notes or highlights were defined, the corresponding screen from the navigation drawer menu was completely blank. A message has been added, telling the user that there are none, and giving some information on how to add one. The absence of such a message was causing Google Play to reject apps due to poor user experience.
  • If no search results were found, after tapping the Search button, two search fields were displayed instead of one. This would happen when using embedded Keyman keyboards.
  • If using Firebase but not Branch deep linking, disable the use of the Advertising ID.

In the iOS app:

  • The Image pop-up would not close.
  • The Audio bar in a tab was not displaying correctly.

In the app builder:

  • On the Illustrations page, resizing settings were not saved for an image. This happened when image placements were not being used.
  • If the name of a Change was modified, the new name was not saved (#1461).
  • 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 SAB 11.1+.
  • If URLs in the app were the same except for case, then both were included in the Android app metadata and the app would crash on startup on newer versions of Android.
  • 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.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.4

Release date: 12 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Custom resizing of Illustrations
    • When the app is built, illustration file sizes can be reduced differently for each image, or turned off altogether for certain images.
    • Go to Media > Illustrations, double-click on the illustration and adjust the settings on the Resizing tab.
    • For example, you can set maps to not be resized, in order to maintain their full details when they are zoomed in, whereas other picture files can be reduced in size.
       
  • Audio file discovery improvements
    • After an audio file has been downloaded and located on the device, its location will be saved to the app’s database to make it quicker to find the next time it is needed.
       
  • Keyman 16
    • Keyman Engine library updated to version 16.0.142.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • In Android 13, the app needs to ask for different permissions to read audio, video and image files.
  • In Android 13, the app would ask for permission to show notifications even when it would never need them.
  • When asking for permission to show notifications, the message could refer to “verse of the day” or “daily reminders” when neither were enabled.

In the app builder:

  • When not using Verse on Image, the compiler would fail to complete, warning about a missing BlurTransformation class.
  • The Tools > Setting dialog would not close when clicking the OK button.
  • When adding an audio file to a new audio book, the audio files would be added to the first book in the book collection rather than to the new book that you are adding.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.3

Release date: 03 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Contents Menu improvements
    • You can now choose to link a menu item to the About, Settings or Language and Layout screens.
  • 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.
  • Added Data Deletion URL for User Accounts data. See User Accounts > Data Deletion.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If an app was used to download an audio file, then uninstalled then reinstalled, it would fail to locate the previously downloaded audio file and would not successfully download and play another one.
  • It should be possible to configure introductions to have no border around the text, while other chapters have borders.
  • The Verse on Image editor was failing in some situations.
  • If a book collection was empty, switching to the book collection would crash the app.

In the iOS app:

  • Fixes to notification setup for Verse of Day.
  • Cache border images to improve performance when borders are present.
  • Verse on Image screens should be locked to portrait mode.
  • Adjust the size of the Share Media Type dialog to fit the text.

In the app builder:

  • Markdown links in footnotes would not work where there was no current book collection selected.
  • If a modified image was added, e.g. to the contents menu, with the same filename as the previous version of the image, the thumbnail would not be updated on the screen.
  • During app building, a check has been added to ensure that all book collections contain books.
  • For quiz books, if a question did not contain text, the Character Inventory screen would fail to load.
  • The Convert Audio Files feature required Aeneas to be installed, when this should not have been necessary.
  • 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.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.1

Release date: 03 August 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When using book tabs, if a border was shown on the first tab, the other tabs would also be shown with a border around the text, even if borders were turned off for these tabs.
  • When using an Android 13 device, the verse of the day and daily notifications were not shown. The app should ask permission to post notifications.
  • When using an Android 13 device, it was not possible to save or share a verse on image because of permissions issues.
  • When using an Android 13 device, there could be problems saving files to device storage.

In the app builder:

  • There were problems finding Python used by Aeneas when synchronising audio and text.
  • On Mac computers, the download path was wrong for installing JDK 17.

Scripture 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: Appearance, Data & Analytics, Publishing, Navigation, and Engagement.
    • The Appearance category contains pages for Icons, Graphics, Interface, Colors, Fonts, Styles, Formatting and Changes.
    • The Data & Analytics category contains pages for Analytics, Firebase and User Accounts.
    • The Publishing category contains pages for App Store, E-books (EPUB), and will also be where PWAs are configured in future versions.
    • The Navigation category contains pages for the Contents Menu, the Navigation Drawer, Book Navigation, Deep Linking and Tab Types.
    • The Engagement category contains pages for Annotations, Notifications and Verse on Image.
    • The Media category contains pages for Audio, Video 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.
       
  • More background images
    • 18 images with decorative borders have been added to the image gallery for Verse on Image backgrounds.
    • See Engagement > Verse on Image > Backgrounds.
       
  • 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.
    • Branch deep linking SDK: 5.6.1.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When signing in to a user account or signing up to use a new user account, in some situations the existing annotations were not synced to the server.
  • When deleting a user account, the corresponding user data in the Firebase database needed to be deleted too.
  • When deleting a user account, the confirmation message box followed by the password entry screen could be confusing to users. These have been replaced by a combined confirmation and password entry screen.

In the iOS app:

  • When deleting a user account, the corresponding user data in the Firebase database needed to be deleted too.
  • When deleting a user account, the confirmation message box followed by the password entry screen could be confusing to users. These have been replaced by a combined confirmation and password entry screen.
  • The app could crash on start if it was displaying a contents menu without an interface language.
  • The Search entry text font was not being set, which could result in characters not being displayed correctly.

In the app builder:

  • USFM tables were being parsed for Scripture references, leading to numbers in table cells being interpreted as references.
  • SFM files were treated as empty if all content appeared on lines without markers.
  • When switching between apps, the Scripture References page was not refreshed if no Bible books were found in the currently selected app.
  • 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.
  • On Linux, the Books > Book > Viewer tab was being hidden due to missing dependencies. These dependencies are now installed and the Viewer tab is available.

Scripture App Builder 10.4

Release date: 28 June 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Better handling of audio-only books:
    • You can choose to add audio books in the New App wizard and the Add Books wizard.
    • You can choose to add selected Bible audio-only books or a non-Scripture audio-only book.
    • Audio files for a non-Scripture book can be added on the new ‘Audio Files’ page of the wizard.
    • If you want to specify selected chapters for an audio book, you now do this in the Portions section on the Book tab, rather than on the ‘Audio Only’ tab.
    • The ‘Audio Only’ tab now contains just the album image and has been renamed ‘Image’.
       
  • Default fonts and choice of fonts
    • In the New App wizard, the default font will now be based on the script used within the first book, i.e. Latin, Arabic, Devanagari, etc.
    • On the Font Choice page, the fonts displayed will be based on this script.
       
  • 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.
       
  • GIF images:
    • You can now include illustrations in GIF image format, including animated GIFs (#1350).
       
  • Contents Menu headings
    • You can now add heading items to the contents menu. These are not selectable but allow you to provide more information to the user and divide up the contents menu into sections.
    • Use the ‘Add Heading…’ button on the right of the Contents Menu page.
       
  • 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.
    • Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.28.
    • 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:

  • Tapping the Text Appearance button when viewing the Contents menu caused the app to crash if there was a choice of fonts (#1309).
  • For picture story books, if the motion duration was set to less than the duration of the audio for the page, the position of the slider would not be set correctly (#1295).
  • In quizzes, the audio clip sound was not found if the app contained audio from a non-assets source (such as internet download).
  • In quizzes, explanations containing single quote marks were not displayed.
  • 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.
  • When using GeckoView, video thumbnail images were not shown, and nor was the arrow in quiz questions.

In the iOS app:

  • Repeat mode buttons were displayed on the audio toolbar when configured to be off.
  • Text on Image font size could not be expanded as much as it should be on an iPad.
  • Contents Menu language was not changing immediately after the interface language was changed.
  • Line spacer control was not appearing correctly after the latest changes.
  • Special characters were displayed on the search screen in the wrong font.

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 using a chapter-verse separator other than a colon, and when making use of USFM3 style attributes in \xt codes, the Scripture links would not be created correctly (#1302).
  • 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.
  • In the Contents Menu Add Menu Item wizard, some of the controls on the first page were not being disabled according to the selected radio button.
  • 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 recommended EPUB 3 readers linked to on the EPUB page were no longer available and needed to be updated.
  • Deleted custom styles reappeared after saving (#1326).
  • You could not change the name of a Change added from the gallery (#1348).
  • For picture story books, more space is needed for the story book image filename label on the Story Pages tab.
  • On the Book tab, the Portions text field was visible at first when it should have been hidden.
  • 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.
  • The ‘Using aeneas for text-audio synchronisation’ documentation included expired links to the aeneasweb service, which is no longer available (#1352).
  • 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.
  • Do not show the ‘Features’ page in the New App wizard if there are no Bible books selected.

Scripture App Builder 10.3.2

Release date: 17 May 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If an image had placements, it could not be edited.
  • The most recently used video folder should be saved separately from the most recently used image folder.
  • org.sil should be allowed in package names.
  • In the New Keystore wizard, the Browse button should select the folder rather than the filename.

Scripture App Builder 10.3.1

Release date: 03 May 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Study Bibles: allow turning off the Study Bible explanatory text box (now turned off by default).

  • Fonts

    • Updated Scheherazade New (4.000), Harmattan (4.000) and Lateef (4.000).

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When Bible Brain audio source is set to allow download, the setting for how to download was not visible.

In the iOS app:

  • When Bible Brain audio source is set to allow download, the setting for how to download was not visible.

In the app builder:

  • After running a build, the color picker would not display.
  • A build would fail if a video didn’t have a valid URL. It will now display a warning and not try to build.
  • Data Safety: incorrect answers were given when using deep linking, and in some other situations.

Scripture App Builder 10.3

Release date: 30 March 2023

New Features and Improvements:

  • Font Chooser
    • The app user can now choose the text font in the Text Appearance dialog.
    • In Two Pane and Verse-by-Verse layouts, a font can be chosen for each book collection.
  • Choice of Fonts
    • The New App wizard now has an additional page ‘Choice of Fonts’ which allows you to select some additional fonts from which the user can choose in the font chooser.
    • For each book and book collection, you can choose which fonts the app user will be able to choose from. See the new ‘Fonts’ tab at both book collection and book levels.
  • Changes at a book level
    • Changes can now be specified at a book level, as well as being available at book collection and app levels.
    • See the ‘Changes’ tab for each book.
  • Footnote and Cross Reference links at a book collection level
    • The Features > Links tab has now been moved to each book collection, so you can configure these settings differently according to the book collection.
    • If the ‘Default’ caller option is selected, you can now choose to replace ‘-’ callers with the automatic ‘+’ caller symbol.
  • Collapsible Study Bible notes
    • Study Bible notes in chapters and sidebars can be displayed as collapsible blocks which the user can expand to view the content.
    • See the new ‘Study Bible’ tab for each book collection.
  • Media Player in notifications
    • When the audio player is active, a media toolbar will be displayed in the Android device notifications, with a seekbar and play/pause button.
  • Control over zooming into illustrations
    • In the past, all illustrations could be tapped on to see them full screen, with the possibility to zoom in and out. Since you might want to disable this feature for some illustrations, this can now be done on the Illustrations tab.
    • Double-click the illustration you want to modify and adjust the setting on the ‘Zoom’ tab.
    • To change this setting at an app level, use the checkbox ‘Allow users to view images full screen and zoom in to see the details’, which is checked by default.
  • 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.
  • Allow the Play/Pause button on the app’s audio toolbar to be colored differently from the other audio toolbar buttons.

  • 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).
  • Hide or Show Font subsets
    • Since the font subsets of Andika, Charis and Gentium are no longer updated, they are not shown by default. There is a new checkbox under the font chooser to allow the showing of font subsets, for example on the ‘Font’ page of the New App wizard.
  • Documentation updates
    • Updated ‘Building Apps’ with more information about inserting pictures, GeckoView and a section about Footers.
  • Updated Bloom Player to version 2.1.25.

  • Removed Facebook Analytics since it is no longer available.

  • Stability improvements.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Footnote and cross-reference callers were being shown with an underline link.
  • USFM markers for tables, e.g. \tr, tc1, were showing up in the app search results.
  • The ‘font-family’ setting was not always respected for user interface elements, such as chapter and introduction buttons in the chapter selector.
  • Book tabs were not working correctly where the main tab was displaying a Bloom book or a picture story book.
  • If the user started to select a book and a chapter but then tapped out of the selector, the app bar book and chapter would not return to their original settings.
  • Downloading audio for a picture story book caused the app to crash.
  • Downloading audio before sharing audio clips or making videos caused the app to crash, especially if the audio mode was set to streaming.

In the iOS app:

  • Added support for audio repeat buttons.
  • Fixed issue with the way the shadow view appeared when opening and closing the navigation menu.
  • Fixed crash that could occur if the URL for download or streaming source was not set.
  • Fixed problem with pane colors not following book styles when set at the book level.

In the app builder:

  • Scripture references with commas and books like “1Pe” were not being parsed correctly.
  • Scripture references should allow multiple-character range separators (#1238).
  • Scripture references with chapter numbers on their own were not being handled, e.g. chapter 6 was not linked in “Matthew 3:1-4; 6;”
  • If you used USFM 3 attributes within cross references in footnotes, these were not handled correctly.
  • In footers, the following HTML tags were not handled correctly: <img>, <span> and <div>.
  • In the HTML ‘Page Number’ dialog, the default button should be the OK button.
  • In the ‘Change Book Collection Id’ dialog, the default button should be the OK button.
  • On the HTML files page, href attributes starting with # were being interpreted as if they were HTML files.
  • Scripture apps could not be created with org.sil package names (this restriction is no longer necessary).
  • If Changes were added or modified at a book collection level, the Viewer was not refreshed to reflect these changes.
  • If any Change contained a regular expression with an ‘Index Out of Bounds’ error, app builds would fail.
  • ‘Browse…’ buttons were missing from the Build Folders and Export Folder tabs in Settings.
  • In Export to HTML, fonts were not being copied if the ‘fonts’ folder already existed.
  • Importing a set of books in USX format failed when a book had no chapters.
  • 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.
  • The width of the Source column in the Audio Files table needed to be resized wider to see a longer name.

Scripture App Builder 10.2

Release date: 02 December 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Repeat Audio (in the Android app)
    • There is now an optional ‘Repeat Mode’ button on the audio toolbar. The user can tap it to toggle between four modes: continue playing to the next chapter, stop at the end of this chapter, repeat chapter, and repeat selected text or verse.
    • An easy way to repeat the audio for a verse or multiple verses is to tap on the verse(s) and then tap the ‘Repeat Selection’ button on the selected text toolbar.
    • A text hint is displayed above the audio toolbar to indicate the currently selected repeat mode.
    • To enable/disable these features, go to Audio > Audio Toolbar, and check/uncheck the checkboxes at the bottom of the page.
  • Book Tabs (in the Android app)
    • It is now possible to create an app which displays books with two or more tabs, for example:
    • a “Text” tab in which you display the Scripture text, and a corresponding “Questions” tab which contains Bible study questions.
    • a “Text” tab in which you display the Scripture text, and a “Commentary” tab which contains an explanation and application of the text.
    • a “Song” tab in which you display the words of a song, and a corresponding “Music” tab which contains the music score or guitar chords.
    • Tabs can be labeled with a title or an icon, and you can associate audio files with a tab.
    • For instructions, see the section on ‘Book Tabs’ in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
  • 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.
  • Scripture Reference improvements
    • The book collection ‘Features’ tab has been split into two tabs: ‘Scripture References’ and ‘Book Order’.
    • You can now specify ‘Verse Range’ and ‘Chapter Range’ Scripture reference settings.
    • Example reference labels illustrate each reference setting.
    • You can now turn on/off parsing of introductions and glossaries for unmarked Scripture references in the text. The default is now “off”.
  • Fonts: Updated Abyssinica font to version 2.200 (17 Nov 2022)

  • Bloom Player: updated to version 2.1.19.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When using GeckoView, the About page was not being displayed correctly. An external browser would be opened instead.
  • The book selector in the app toolbar could not be disabled when using GeckoView.
  • The separator grip handle between two panes was not positioned correctly when in landscape orientation with a right-to-left app layout (#1198).

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:

  • Bridging material between verses, using the \iex marker, was not being handled correctly.
  • Extended study content sidebars, marked by \esb, were not visible in the app.
  • 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.
  • If there were multiple book collections, audio files should not be able to be added on the top level ‘Audio Files’ tab.
  • If punctuation characters were used in book names, such as hyphens, Scripture references would not be parsed correctly.
  • If Scripture references were of the form “Matthew 2:3, 5:6”, separated by a comma, the second reference would not be linked correctly.
  • 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.
  • Allow the book Viewer to display introduction chapters when the chapter number is set to 0.
  • Introduction main title marker styles, \imt and \imt2, needed to be smaller with more top spacing.
  • The documentation for downloading audio files from FCBH was out of date.

Scripture App Builder 10.1.1

Release date: 30 September 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • 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.

  • Bloom Player version updated to 2.1.10.

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

  • Stability improvements.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The audio player would crash when trying to play WebM audio files.
  • In picture story books, when playing audio on a page with background music, sometimes the background audio would not play until the app moved to the next page.
  • After searching for a video file on the device, if it was not found, the app would not go on to show an online video (if specified).
  • If a video file was not found on the device and no online option was available, a message should be shown.
  • The Play/Pause button animation would not show in some cases when searching for a file or when looking for the path to use for audio streaming or downloads.
  • Reduced stroke width of Play/Pause button animation circle when using the smaller Play button.
  • When using Branch deep linking, updated Android Advertising ID library to 17.1.0, which sets the required app permission.

In the iOS app:

  • Verse on Image hung if a large amount of text was selected.
  • The Next and Previous buttons needed to be updated on the audio toolbar to use the latest image. The other images on the toolbar were updated with the latest version used by Android to get consistent shading.
  • The Settings screen needed to get font, color, and text size from the Text Settings.
  • The layout configuration icon and menu drawer were not appearing consistently with configuration.

In the app builder:

  • When selecting portions of a Bible book, the chapter number should still be shown, tailing section headings should be removed, and it should be possible to define multiple ranges in a single chapter (#1092).
  • In the Video dialog, if an offline MP4 file was not found in the project data folder, it would not be shown.
  • The Link tab should not be shown on the menu item dialog for Rate the App.

Scripture 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.
  • Slideshow Videos
    • The new documentation ‘Creating Slideshow Videos’ (accessible from the Help menu) explains how to create videos using Bible text and synchronized audio, together with predefined video templates. The process is automated using the Create Slideshow Wizard.
    • Download the Slideshow Video Templates from Tools > Settings > Slideshows.
    • The Illustrated Scripture video templates from SIL International Media Services are currently available.
    • The Gospel of John video templates are being revised and will be available in the near future.
  • Search by Reference
    • You can enter a Scripture reference in the search field to navigate to a book, chapter or verse.
  • Font updates:
    • Added Dai Banna SIL 4.000 font (23 Aug 2022)
    • Added Payap Lanna 1.000 font (26 Aug 2022)
  • App translations:
    • Updated Arabic translations in the app.
  • Updated library versions:
    • Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.7.
    • Android library versions updated (material components, preferences, AppCompat support).
  • In iOS App:
    • If user taps the screen during splash screen delay, the delay is canceled and the app starts
    • Add support for share video from Text on Image
    • Add support for share video to share video with audio of selected text
    • 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.
    • Added Branch Native Link option support. Note: To make use of this feature for your app, you need to go to the Branch.io configuration for your app and enable Native Link there.
  • 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 Android app:

  • In older versions of Android, the app could crash when preparing an audio file, while animating the Play/Pause button.
  • When streaming audio, it was possible to hear the same audio track played twice, one of which was impossible to stop without exiting the app.

In the iOS app:

  • If the Audio file download feature is not selected and the user selects Automatic download, the option is not saved.

In the app builder:

  • When communication with BibleBrain to get information about Gospel Films didn’t work, it would silently fail.
  • 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.
  • In the Audio Source dialog, the FCBH Fileset ID was not being checked for a valid format.
  • 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.

Scripture App Builder 10.0.1

Release date: 13 July 2022

New Features and Improvements:

In the iOS app:

  • Support added for new audio sound bar play/pause buttons and button sizes.

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.
  • Only display notes, bookmarks, and highlights in slide menu if text has verses, to match Android

In the app builder:

  • Downloads of JDK and Android SDK as well as other network communications including with Scriptoria and Scripture Earth were not working on Mac.
  • When uploading to Scriptoria, video stills in the videos folder were not uploaded and deleted remotely.
  • When installing a new version on Windows, the old versions of Bloom JavaScript files were left and all were included in the app.
  • Changed “bloomd” to “bloompub” in user interface.

Scripture 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.
  • Automated Bible story slideshow video creation
    • Previously you needed to purchase and use the PhotoStage video editing software to create slideshow videos after using the Create Slideshow Wizard. Now this final step is automated and videos are created without needing to use PhotoStage.
    • Thank you to the students of Gordon College for the development of the Story Builder tool which has made this possible.
  • Audio toolbar styles
    • While preparing an audio file for playback, the play/pause button becomes an animated circle to indicate a waiting state.
    • The Play/Pause button can be displayed larger than the other buttons on the toolbar, as a simple arrow, a filled circle or an outline circle.
    • See Audio > Audio Toolbar.
  • FCBH Bible Brain
    • Apps connect to Faith Comes By Hearing’s Bible Brain server (DBP4) for audio file downloads and streaming. Previously we used Digital Bible Platform version 2 (DBP2).
  • Updates for Bloom books
    • Bloom books can include HTML5 activity widgets and these pages are now displayed correctly in the app. See here for examples: https://bloomlibrary.org/activities/books-with-widgets
    • Bloom books are now recognised as .bloomPUB as well as .bloomd.
    • Updated Bloom Player to version 2.0.120.
  • Improved Keyman keyboard support
    • Updated to use Keyman version 15 (Android and iOS).
  • Updated iOS minimum version to 12.1

  • Handling USFM for sidebar content

    • Recognises the esb codes for specifying extended study notes as sidebars.
  • Added more app translations in German.

  • 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 Android app:

  • Background audio files in picture story books would cause the app to crash (#992)
  • Downloaded videos could not be found in Android 10+ devices.
  • Changing the colour theme (e.g. from normal to dark) would show words of Jesus in red even when Red Letters is turned off (#1018).
  • Fixed various stability issues.

In the iOS app:

  • Fix whole word match delimiters for search to match Android.
  • Handle window opens from within the container app HTML.
  • Handle email and telephone links from within book text.
  • Use standard background color for single pane view.
  • Fix issue with FCBH download or streaming by using new DBP4 protocol.
  • Fix crash in audio controls on lock screen.
  • Support 3GP files.
  • Verse on Image: Apostrophe in reference not handled properly.
  • Link pressed in YouTube video did not go to link.
  • Adjust verse on image text to initially fit on screen.
  • Fixed quiz book sometimes selecting the wrong answer for the first question.
  • Fixed issues with swiping in and out of a quiz book.
  • Fixed issues with HTML source quiz book displaying the font at the wrong size.
  • Fixed crash in container app with Firebase Analytics.
  • Fixed crash in container app that was not configured with a Firebase database and the asset package was configured to have user login. User login option is ignored in this case and the user login is not shown.

In the PWA app:

  • When using .3gp or .webm audio file, fall back to .caf or .mp3 audio file. The .3gp and .webm audio file format is not supported by Safari on iOS or macOS. You can provide alternate audio files in .caf audio file format (native to iOS and macOS) or .mp3 audio file format.

In the app builder:

  • If the Python 3 version of Aeneas was installed, Python might not be found and Aeneas could not run.
  • Double-clicking a book after reordering books viewed the wrong book.
  • Do not allow changing book types to/from the ‘Audio Only book’ type.
  • Do not allow HTML books to have a book type other than ‘Default’.
  • When uploading or downloading a project to Scriptoria, you can choose how to handle video as well as audio.
  • The duration of 3GP files are now correctly determined.

Scripture App Builder 9.3

Release date: 15 April 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Page views in Analytics:
    • If a page or chapter is viewed for more than 5 seconds, an analytics event is created.
  • iOS App improvements:
    • Now supports FCBH Analytics.
    • Adds search and other buttons to the right of the navigation bar depending on the size.
  • Documentation updates:
    • Installation instructions: describing the new Install JDK wizard.
    • Building Apps: added a description of variables program-type and program-version.
  • Use modern style for the Windows install wizard.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Tapping a link to an audio clip would result in the app crashing (#965).
  • If the selected default interface language was not among the enabled interface languages, the app would crash on launch (#994).
  • When using links in markdown format to change the current book collection, the layout configuration screen would not take into account the change of book collection and would continue to highlight the previous collection (#966).
  • On the song index screen, the number “1” would be displayed even if the numeral system was different.
  • Images could be displayed twice on a page if the book had previously been marked as a picture story book but the book type was now set to be default.
  • Handle sharing audio clips with WebM files for Android 10 and above.
  • If using FCBH Digest Analytics, the app would crash if the digest period was undefined.
  • If using Amplitude Analytics, the app would crash on older versions of Android.
  • Stability improvements.

In the iOS app:

  • The title of the Close button did not immediately change text when a new interface language was selected.
  • Automatically advance page if streaming audio is selected and playing.
  • Include a deep link in the Verse On Image reference text.
  • Layout screens were not consistent with those in the Android app.

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 show the Contents menu page in the New App wizard if no books have been selected.
  • Do not allow JPEG files to be added as images if only PNG files are allowed, e.g. for navigation drawer images.
  • Several improvements and fixes to slideshow creation.

Scripture 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.
  • Documentation for About screen variables
    • Details about the %program-type% and %program-version% variables have been added to the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The app could crash when sending FCBH analytics for local audio plays.

In the app builder:

  • There was an encoding problem on the Help menu when the interface was in French.

Scripture 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 (https://icon.kitchen), 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 Android app:

  • In the Layout Configuration screen, Verse by Verse view, do not show 3 book collection options if there are only 2 book collections in the app.

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.
  • Borders which contained graphic elements only in the corners, and not on the sides, were not interpreted properly, leaving too much top and bottom padding around the text.
  • 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.

Scripture App Builder 9.2.2

Release date: 02 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • 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, and where Verse on Image pictures, audio clips and video clips are created when saving or sharing. From now on:
    • Downloaded audio files will be saved in a sub-folder of the phone’s Music folder.
    • Image files from Verse on Image will be saved in a sub-folder of the phone’s Pictures folder.
    • Audio clip files from Share As Audio will be saved in a sub-folder of the phone’s Music folder.
    • Video clip files from Share As Video or the Save/Share Video in Verse on Image will be saved in a sub-folder of the phone’s Movies folder.
  • In the New App wizard, if none of the books are Bible books, a ‘Contents Menu’ page will be shown, allowing you to add the books to the Contents Menu. This is what already happens in Reading App Builder.

  • For Android icon creation, link to the new IconKitchen tool rather than Android Asset Studio.

  • Added documentation about compressing videos for including in app assets.

    • See Building Apps > 7.2. How do I reduce the size of a video that I want to package within the app?
  • 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:

  • If you tried to create an audio or video clip which included the final verse of a chapter, it would fail and not create any clip.
  • If a song book was linked to from a Contents menu, the first song would be shown instead of the song index page.

In the iOS app:

  • Fixed quiz feature functionality.
  • The Security authorization screen was off centre.
  • If security login and user account login were both enabled, the user account screen showed NULL as the user.
  • Single audio story book: If you pressed Play on a screen other than the first, the audio still started at the beginning.
  • Single audio file story book: Moving the progress bar did not set the sound to the correct page.
  • Do not display the audio toolbar on the Contents screen.
  • Landscape subtitles could appear in portrait mode if device was lying flat.
  • The slider drawer title image always displayed with a white background.
  • The Verse on Image watermark image was positioned incorrectly if a rectangular (rather than square) image was selected.

In the app builder:

  • After clicking ‘Update from Source’ on the Book File tab, the text in the Preview window would not be updated unless you moved away from the tab and came back again.
  • 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.
  • The Video thumbnail grabber was not working for MP4 video files.

Scripture App Builder 9.2.1

Release date: 23 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Improvements to Book File tab
    • The ‘Source’ tab for a book has been renamed ‘Book File’.
    • The project filename and original source filename are displayed, together with the date/time last modified for each.
    • Clicking the ‘Edit Source’ button launches the associated file editor for the original source file.
    • Clicking the ‘Update from Source’ button updates the file in the project with the original source file.
    • An ‘Update from Source’ menu item has been added to the popup menu for a book on the treeview.
  • Tables in USX
    • Support for <table>, <row> and <cell> elements in USX Scripture book files.
  • Navigation Menu Items
    • The rows in the Navigation Menu Items table can be reordered by dragging rows up and down.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The Highlights, Bookmarks and Notes pages were blank if ‘Verse of the Day’ was not enabled in an app.
  • Optional line break characters (//) were showing in the Verse on Image editor screen.

In the app builder:

  • The slideshow templates were not showing in the Create Slideshow wizard.
  • ‘Authentication’ was mispelt in the documentation.
  • The ‘Installing and Building Apps on a Mac’ document did not have bookmarks.
  • For some tables, the popup menu item corresponding to the double-click action was not indicated in bold.

Scripture App Builder 9.2

Release date: 10 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Quizzes
    • You can create multiple-choice quizzes with questions and answers.
    • Questions and answers can be in words and/or images, with an audio recording for each.
    • Sound effects for right and wrong answers can be specified.
    • Explanations in text and audio can be given after a user taps on an answer.
    • A final score is given after the user answers all the questions.
    • For full instructions, please see the new “Creating Apps with Quizzes” manual, accessible from the Help menu.
  • 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.
  • Layout configuration options
    • If you have multiple book collections in the app, you can choose how the user can show the layout configuration screen in the app: a menu item in the navigation drawer, a button on the app toolbar, the short name of book collection in the top corner of the text viewer. Each of the these options can be enabled or disabled.
  • 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.
  • Scripture Earth Integration for Scriptoria published apps
    • If your app is published using the Scriptoria app publishing service, you can ask Scriptoria to notify the Scripture Earth website, so your app can be listed there.
  • App interface translations
    • Added more Russian and Spanish translations.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Security access by code improved for newer phones.

In the iOS app:

  • Include a deep link when copying or sharing text.
  • Fixed right-to-left script issues on User Account screens.

In the app builder:

  • Removed ‘Create Job’ option in the aeneas synchronization wizard.
  • Removed the old Scheherazade font, so users are encouraged to use Scheherazade New.
  • When opening an app from Scriptoria, provide the base URL in the text field.

Scripture App Builder 9.1.1

Release date: 05 November 2021

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • On the layout configuration tabs for two pane and verse-by-verse views, the dropdown arrow images next to the book collection names were missing.
  • When doing a long press on a word or phrase in the viewer, the Copy, Share and Image icons were hardly visible if the popup background colour was dark.
  • When doing a long press in the edit box on the Search screen, the Paste icon was hardly visible if the popup background colour was dark.
  • In some situations, a long press in the edit box on the Search screen could result in the app crashing.

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.

Scripture App Builder 9.1

Release date: 26 October 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Improved Layout configuration selector (Android app)
    • A layout button appears on the app toolbar, as an alternative to tapping on the book collection short name at the top-right corner of the viewer.
    • The layout configuration is shown full screen, giving more room for book collection names.
    • You can show book collection descriptions as subtitles under each book collection name.
    • You can show the layout configuration the first time the app is launched. See Books > Layout Configuration.
  • 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+.
  • Contents Menu improvements
    • You can set the image width separately for different contents menu items, for example making some images take up half the screen width and others to take up the whole menu item.
    • See the ‘Titles and Image’ page for the contents item.
  • Faith Comes By Hearing – Bible Brain
    • FCBH has updated their Digital Bible Platform server for providing audio files. The new service is called Bible Brain. More information can be found here: https://biblebrain.com
    • Bible Brain continues to have 64Kbps MP3 files available. They have also added 16Kbps Ogg Opus/WebM files to the non-dramatized versions (i.e. Fileset ID ending in N1DA). You can add a FCBH File Source with “-opus16” appended to the Fileset ID (e.g. ENGKJVN1DA-opus16) to download and/or stream the Ogg Opus/WebM files.
    • The File Source dialog has been updated to refer to FCBH Bible Brain and has links to request an API key and test access.
    • IMPORTANT: If you have been using the FCBH Digital Bible Platform to serve the audio files in your app (download and/or streaming), please use the Test button on the File Source dialog to verify that your API key is still working on the new server.
    • If the result is “Not Authorized” then use the “Contact Support” button to request that your key is migrated to the new service.
    • If the result is “Not Found” then use the “Contact Support” button to request that your audio fileset is made available on the new service.
  • Showing images and videos in Bible text
    • If you have images or videos embedded within the Bible text, you can add user settings to allow the user to choose whether or not they want to display the images or videos in the text.
  • 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 at the top right of the main app builder window.
  • Language definition page
    • There is a new language definition page in the New App and Add Book Collection wizards.
    • This includes an ISO-639-3 language code chooser, and a chooser for BCP 47 language tag scripts.
  • Fine Tune Timings improvements
    • Buttons have been added to move back or forward 10 seconds.
  • Quizzes
    • You can create multiple choice quizzes with text, images and audio.
    • More information will follow in the coming weeks, including documentation and training.
  • 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.
  • Bloom Player version 2.0.86.
    • Includes a new page selector slider, allowing you to move to a page quickly within the book.
  • App interface translations:
    • Added Tamil language translations.
  • iOS App
    • Support for User sign in and synchronization of highlights, notes, and bookmarks using Firebase Realtime database.
    • Support for all Deep Linking configurations.
    • Selecting About for a Container App will display about information from the container app configuration as well as the information from the asset package currently loaded.
    • Added support for iOS 15.
    • Upgraded Firebase to the latest version.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The user account screens (Sign In, Sign Up, etc.) were not being styled properly in Dark and Sepia color themes (#834).
  • Bloom books that used the default Andika Basic font were being shown in a standard sans serif font, not Andika (#835).
  • Registration screen: some of the messages were hard-coded to English and could not be translated.
  • User Accounts: ‘Please check your internet connection’ was repeated in error messages (#814).
  • When sharing text after a long-press in the viewer, additional copyright lines were not added (#793).

In the iOS app:

  • Video sound was continuing to play after swiping to the next page.
  • Add version name to asset package configuration.

In the PWA:

  • When using WebM audio for chapters, include MP3 audio as a fallback for Safari on macOS and iOS. Make sure to include MP3 files with the same basename as the WebM files (e.g. if there is MAT01.webm, include MAT01.mp3).
  • Escape book names with double quotes in the name.

In the app builder:

  • Import from Word documents: list numbering was incorrect when lists were interrupted by blank paragraphs.
  • User Accounts: the Change Password error translation appeared twice (#817).
  • 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.
  • Book names with double quotes would break the book name dropdown in the PWA (#827).
  • When adding Gospel Films videos to projects, remember the API Key between uses of the wizard.
  • 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 Aeneas was installed while App Builder was running, checking its installation and using it to synchronise text and audio would fail.
  • 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.
  • It was not possible to delete the video filename in the Video dialog.
  • The Convert Audio Files dialog would not use the folder specified but would always output files in its default folder.

Scripture App Builder 9.0.1

Release date: 19 August 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Gospel Films
    • Provide segment-specific video thumbnails. The video stills that are provided with Bible Brain are the same for each segment in a chapter, which could be confusing to users.
  • User Accounts
    • Added a link to the Building Apps documentation on the User Accounts page, which contains instructions on how to set up the Firebase database.
    • Improved error handling if the email/password authentication method was not enabled.
    • Added documentation on how to configure database rules when using both User Accounts and a Registration screen.
  • Push notifications
    • Added a section on ‘Push Notifications’ to the Building Apps manual, explaining how to set up Firebase and how to send out messages.
    • Refer to ‘Firebase Cloud Messaging’ on the Firebase page rather than ‘Firebase Messaging’.
  • 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 Android app:

  • Include the resources needed to play a Gospel Film in a separate book (when included with the video tag).
  • Include access mode (server or local) in audio analytics events.

In the iOS app:

  • When including Gospel Films directly with the video tag (e.g. in a separate Videos book), videos would not play.
  • Videos configured as having their source in an external folder don’t play streaming link.
  • Include access mode (server or local) in audio analytics events.

In the app builder:

  • When building an Asset Package from a project with Firebase enabled, do not require iOS Firebase configuration. Firebase is defined in the Container app.
  • When adding Publishing Properties, do not allow blank entries.
  • When adding Interface Languages, do not allow invalid entries (which cannot be deleted).
  • Allow resizing the Video ID field to see Gospel Films IDs that are longer.
  • When sorting videos by a different column, display the correct data when editing an entry.

Scripture 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.
  • User Accounts
    • Users can create an account to save highlights, bookmarks and notes.
    • This allows users to share highlights, notes and bookmarks between devices, and they can avoid losing their work if they change their phone.
    • See App > User Accounts.
    • For more information on setting up a database in Firebase, see User Accounts section in the Building Apps documentation.
  • iOS Container app
    • A container iOS app can be created which gives the user a choice of app contents on first launch. You need to specify a URL to a website which will give the user the choice of Asset Packages to download.
    • See App > IPA on a Mac.
    • Assets Packages for the container app can also be created using Mac, Linux or Windows. See App > iOS.
    • More information on this feature is available in the Installing and Building Apps on a Mac documentation.
  • 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.
  • FCBH Gospel Films in the Add Video Wizard
    • When you select Add Videos on the Videos page, you now get the option of inserting Faith Comes By Hearing’s Gospel Films into your text (i.e. the LUMO films based on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). This works in a similar way to adding clips from the JESUS film.
    • You will need to request an API key from Faith Comes By Hearing to use this feature.
  • 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.
  • Improvements to USFM handling
    • Handles table cells spanning multiple columns, e.g. tc1-2, tcr2-3.
    • Tables can appear in the introduction section.
  • Verse of the Day
    • Verses added from the Old Testament books of Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah, Micah and Nahum.
  • App Translations
    • Added Dutch translations for the app.
    • Improved and added Arabic translations for the app.
  • App Store Optimization (ASO)
    • A new document has been added to the documentation, giving advice on App Store Optimization. It explains how to increase the discoverability of your app on the app stores (making it easier to find) and how to improve the chance that users will want to install your app once they find it (making it attractive).
  • Updated documentation:
    • Installation Instructions: updated section on installing the Android SDK, now using the Install Android SDK wizard.
    • Building Apps: added section on User Accounts.
    • Installing and Building on Mac: update sections on installing JDK and Android SDK, and added section on building iOS container apps.
    • Distributing Apps: updated all sections, including publishing on Google Play with Android App Bundles.
  • Updated Fonts:
    • Padauk, version 5.000 (18 June 2021)
    • Scheherazade New, version 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.
    • Bloom Player updated to version 2.0.75.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When downloading an audio file after pressing the Play button, the file would not automatically begin playing after download. You would see a Pause button and would need to tap it twice to start the audio.
  • When creating a verse on image, text from qa, qd, sp or d lines should not be included (#750).
  • When viewing a Bloom book, pressing the back arrow would open the navigation drawer if the wrong contents menu navigation type had been selected. It is now fixed to moving back to the contents menu.
  • 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 iOS app:

  • Fix two panel synchronization issues so that if two translations are displayed and one is scrolled, the other moves in sync as it is supposed to.
  • Turn off full screen mode when transitioning from landscape mode to portrait.
  • Layout setups defined as the initial startup mode in SAB were not working properly.
  • When in verse by verse layout with three translations selected, if the user changed to two by selecting “—” as the third language, the app would crash.

In the PWA app:

  • Fix the generation of book-names.js so that references to glossary (GLO) and front matter (FRT) books are included. They can be chosen from the book dropdown menu.

In the app builder:

  • When parsing and displaying USX documents, blank lines (e.g. between poetry lines) were ignored.
  • Images were not being displayed in EPUB documents created by the app builder (#705).
  • Adaptive icons were not being saved if no background image or background color were defined.
  • If the book collection ID was changed, image and video placement references need to be updated (#762).
  • 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. SAB & DAB) at the same time.

Scripture App Builder 8.6.6

Release date: 08 June 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added ‘Extra Material’ option to Scripture reference settings.
    • See ‘Features’ tab for each book collection.
    • SAB reads the extra material setting from the Paratext settings file.
  • Added ‘Text Font’ setting for the Contents Menu.
    • Otherwise the font for the Contents menu was being set to whichever font was last used in the text display.
  • 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.

  • Added confirmation dialog when deleting book collections.

  • 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.
  • Handle Paratext settings from Settings.xml for newer versions of Paratext.

  • 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.

    • Updated bloom-player to version 2.0.58.
    • Use latest version of Branch deep-linking library.
    • Use latest AndroidX appcompat and material libraries.
    • Use latest FFmpeg library.
    • Use mavenCentral rather than JCenter as the repository for downloading libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The registration screen could complain about a lack of internet connection in the latest versions of Android, even though there was an internet connection.
  • If there is no reference, do not include a null deep link when sharing a verse on image.
  • Speech marks were being balanced incorrectly in right-to-left verse on image.
  • Allow links to image web pages in the About screen.
  • Fixed some occasional causes of crashes within the app.

In the iOS app:

  • Speech marks were being balanced incorrectly in right-to-left verse on image.
  • Handle situation where RTL settings for a book are different from those of the book collection.
  • For text on image, do not set text as RTL if it contains Roman script.
  • The wrong top image was being displayed when swiping between books.
  • Inconsistency with Android with picture book backgrounds. It now displays black background for the image in landscape mode and the default background when in portrait mode.
  • A crash occurred when the configured font file was not found.
  • A crash occurred on pre iOS 11 installs where .webm files were configured.
  • The text on image font should default to the book collection font.
  • Book Collection grid view in an Right to Left interface environment could display buttons in the wrong order.

In the app builder:

  • Rows in the books and book collection tables could not be dragged up or down to reorder the items.
  • Menu items in the Contents Menu could not be dragged to reorder them.
  • 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.

Scripture App Builder 8.6.5

Release date: 04 May 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added additional organisation to the Copyright helper.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • For books with many chapters, e.g. Psalms, some of the chapter buttons were not completely visible on the chapter selector. Need to adjust the width of the chapter page in the book selector if required, so that all chapter buttons can be seen.

In the app builder:

  • If a deprecated analytics type (old Google Analytics or Amazon Analytics) was used in a project, the project would not be opened properly and would lose its books and settings.
  • Create Slideshows: if audio files were contained in the project folder, rather than being linked from elsewhere, they would not be found when creating the audio clips for the slideshow.

Scripture App Builder 8.6.4

Release date: 30 April 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Allow turning off text editing in the Verse on Image editor
    • See ‘Edit text in verse on image’ on the ‘Sharing’ tab for each book collection.
    • If this checkbox is unchecked, app users will not be able to double-tap the text in the verse on image editor to change it.
  • Better handling of Words of Jesus in red
    • If the words of Jesus are marked in a book (i.e. with wj markers), the New App and Add Book Collection wizard will show an additional page, asking whether to enable viewing these words in red.
    • See also Features > Formatting.
  • Removed deprecated Analytics options
    • The old Google Analytics and Amazon Analytics engines are no longer supported in the Android app.
  • Added additional organisations to the Copyright helper.

  • Updated Awami Nastaliq font to version 2.200 (29 April 2021).

  • App interface translations:

    • Updated Indonesian app interface translations
    • Added missing French translations for Copy, Share and Image.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Verse on Image: sharing and saving as a video was not working.

In the app builder:

  • If the book collection ID is changed, any variables referring to the ID in the footer need to be updated.

Scripture 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.
  • Added ‘Page Footer’ page to the Add Book Collection wizard.
    • You can select between no footer, copyright information or a custom footer.
  • Added ‘Add Placement…’ or ‘Edit Placement…’ to right-click menu in Illustrations table, to make it more obvious where to add or edit image placements.

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

  • Installation changes:

    • Windows 32-bit is no longer supported. Windows 64-bit is required.
    • Updated Installation instructions for JDK 8, removing reference to 32-bit.
    • 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:

  • Corrections to Scripture formatting:
    • The Acrostic Heading style (qa) needed more top and bottom padding.
    • The Speaker Identification style (sp) needed more top padding.
    • Do not create cross reference links to mr references like “Psalms 1-42” in the book of Psalms.
    • Add top padding to reference link lines (r) which appear without preceding section headings.
    • The footer block in the lower pane in two-pane layout needed a darker background colour.
    • The footer in verse-by-verse layout should include footer information from both book collections, e.g. copyright information for both.
    • Some Scripture reference links in headings and footnotes were not handled correctly if coming from a Digital Bible Library text bundle.
    • Do not add an additional space after a USX footnote.
  • 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:tempSILbuild instead.
  • Include additional files in the Java runtime library.
  • Added missing French interface translations to the Analytics page.
  • Added more space for several French and Spanish translations.

Scripture 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.
  • Improvements to the iOS app
    • Added support for Bloom books, using Bloom Player
    • Support sharing of Text on Image through a long press of the text
    • Text on Image: added support for editing text (no keyman support for edit in the feature at this point)
    • Support for streaming of WebM audio files
  • 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.
  • End of Ayah verse number formatting
    • Verse numbers can be displayed inside a decorative End of Ayah symbol.
    • See Styles page for the book collection.
    • This feature will work only if the font supports End of Ayah, such as Scheherazade.
  • 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 Bloom Player to version 2.0.47.

  • 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.
    • App Publishing Checklist: added sections on Verse of the Day, Verse on Image (English and French).

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Audio clips with spaces in their filenames could not be played within the app.
  • If you started playing one audio clip then tapped on a second one, two clips would play at the same time rather than stopping the first one.
  • Do not show the line height slider when showing the text appearance dialog for a contents menu.
  • If the copyright information was missing for a book collection, the string “null” could appear on the About screen.
  • Handle line breaking on zero-width spaces in the Crosswalk viewer, e.g. for Thai scripts.

In the iOS app:

  • Fix issue with colors on text size popup slider controls.
  • Book names over 15 characters were only showing the first three characters for the book button on the main screen. Changed so that book names over 18 characters will show the first 18 characters followed by ellipsis.
  • In an Right-to-Left configuration, the back to contents arrow pointed in the wrong direction.

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.
  • French translations were missing on the Contents Menu configuration and Notification Icon pages.
  • More space was needed for some French translations which were being truncated on the screen.
  • The Android device architecture specified on the ‘After Build’ tab in Settings was not being used.
  • Previous/Next image buttons in the Contents menu item dialog needed to be wider.
  • Use thumbnail.jpg as the default contents menu item image for Bloom books.
  • Handle s1 as the song title (as an alternative to s) when building the song book image.

Scripture App Builder 8.5

Release date: 12 February 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Copyright and Licensing:
    • New Copyright and Licensing page in the New App wizard, combining both copyright and licensing.
    • New Copyright Helper wizard (see the Copyright Helper button on this page) to help to construct the copyright and licensing statement from title of work, copyright owner, year of publication, etc. This wizard contains an Organisation selector and a License selector.
    • Buttons for copyright and trademark symbols.
    • Copyright and Licensing metadata are merged and can be viewed on the Copyright and Licensing page at the book collection level.
    • New variables for the About box, including %copyright-all%, which displays all of the text, audio and image copyright information for all book collections.
  • ‘Changes’ at a book collection level
    • Regular expression changes can now be defined for a book collection, i.e. changes to be applied only to a specific book collection.
    • See the Changes tab at the book collection level.
  • 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.
  • Support for .webm audio files containing Ogg Opus audio format
    • Compared to MP3, Ogg Opus .webm files provide better quality audio with a smaller file size.
    • Requires Android 5.0 and above and iOS 11.
  • Changes to New App wizard:
    • Features page now asks about Verse of the Day, Verse on Image and sharing audio and video clips, rather than asking about the book selector and numeral system.
    • The Font Handling page has been removed from the wizard, and Grandroid has been enabled by default (with fewer people owning Android 4.0-4.3 devices, it is less likely that those building apps will think of testing on such devices). Grandroid can be turned off in the Fonts > Font Handling page if it is not needed.
  • Changes to Add Book Collection wizard:
    • Default short name to long name as it is being typed.
    • Added Copyright and Licensing page.
    • Added Restrictions page.
  • Digital Bible Library (DBL) bundle import improvements:
    • Better handling of importing the copyright statement, especially multi-line statements.
    • Import the versification file (.vrs) from the bundle.
  • Inline Quotations (rq)
    • Added links to inline quotations, e.g. rq Matthew 11:28rq*
  • Updated ‘Building Apps’ documentation:
    • Changes to copyright and licensing variables for the About box.
    • Revised steps described for the New App wizard and Add Book Collection wizard to reflect the changes to the wizard pages.
    • Removed details about Crosswalk and noted that it is no longer available.
  • Updated fonts and modules:
    • Updated Bloom Player to version 2.0.43.
    • Updated Awami Nastaliq font to version 2.100
  • 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.
    • Removed the choice of Crosswalk for the Font Handling page, and added a link to App Support.
  • In the iOS App
    • Add support for sharing audio
    • Support book collection restriction changes

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Markdown links codes were showing in text sharing, verse of the day and text on image.
  • Allow the use of periods in markdown links between book collections, e.g. C01.MAT.1.5
  • The long press popup menu items were being shown as asterisks on some Android 6 and 7 devices. Icons will now be shown for Android 8 and above.

In the iOS app:

  • Markdown links codes were showing in text sharing, verse of the day and text on image.
  • If verse on image is not selected, related components are not installed which allows app to be approved without needing permission for photo access.
  • Fix crash that could occur when downloading audio file whose name contained spaces
  • Set action bar (containing copy, highlight, note etc buttons) so that the buttons displayed match the feature set for the selected book collection.
  • Enable or disable long press copy according to the book collection feature settings.
  • Improve handling of internet disconnects while streaming audio.
  • Improve maintaining playback speed when transitioning between chapters.

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 selected book order was not being saved when returning to the Book Order page in the Add Book Collection wizard.
  • The final page of a wizard should have a ‘Finish’ button rather than a ‘Next >’ button.
  • Consider ! or ? followed immediately by an alphabetic character as not a phrase-end character (for Solomon Islands languages which use these markers at both the start and end of phrases).
  • On Windows, correctly determine Classic mode for dialog frames.
  • Handle footnotes within a cl chapter label field.

Scripture 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.
  • Faster launch times for Android apps with multiple book collections.
    • Apps with several book collections and a lot of books in each (e.g. full Bibles) could take a long time to load. This launch time has been reduced significantly. An app that took over a minute to load now appears in 3 seconds.
  • Verse on Image in the iOS app.
    • This major feature, which is already an option for the Android app, is now available for iOS.
  • Improved Text Appearance dialog:
    • Added font size as a number, to the right of the text size slider. (Android)
    • Added line height slider, to adjust line spacing.
    • These sliders can be turned on or off (See Features > Formatting).
    • If both sliders are disabled, and there is only one choice of color theme, the text appearance icon and navigation drawer menu item will not appear.
  • 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.
  • Audio controls should always be left-to-right, including the seek bar (which is shown when there are no timing files).

  • Verse of the day verses added for Psalm 1-49.

  • 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.
  • Additional images:
    • Decorative border images added to the Verse on Image backgrounds gallery.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Search was crashing on devices running Android 4 and 5.
  • The menu shown after a long press in the viewer would show * rather than icons on Android 5 devices.
  • On lower end devices, changing the background image in the Verse on Image editor could cause the app to crash with an ‘Out of Memory’ error.
  • On Android 10 devices, audio files in external storage (outside the app-specific data folder) were not found by the app. They will now be found if they are indexed in the app’s Media Store.
  • Do not show the chapter selector after the book selector for non-Bible books with only one chapter.
  • In the Verse on Image editor, setting the reference line to italics was not working consistently.

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.
  • For dark and sepia themes, correctly invert colors in the border.
  • Use configured colors for text size slider.

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.
  • If you delete a book from one collection but keep a book with the same ID in one ore more other collections, all Contents menu items referencing the book ID were deleted, rather than just the one relating to the book that was deleted.
  • When importing a book from an EPUB document, the reading order of the pages was not being read correctly from the EPUB’s contents.opf file.
  • If importing a song book from a Word document, manual line breaks in song titles would appear as zbr codes in the song indexes.
  • If you sorted the Illustrations table by clicking on a column header, double-clicking on a row would show you the wrong image.
  • When using image placements, the specified caption was not displayed in the output.

Scripture App Builder 8.3.1

Release date: 19 November 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added “Scheherazade New” font, version 3.000 – an Arabic script font.

  • Updated Firebase libraries to use the latest versions.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Duplicate cross-references were being displayed where xt fields contained multiple references.
  • 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:

  • Search with books with names less than 3 characters and no abbreviation defined could crash the app.
  • In landscape mode with no orientation lock defined, the screen could get flipped to an upside down view when navigating to a new book.
  • Single pane configuration was not the same as the Android version.
  • Arabic numerals in a reference could crash the app.

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.
  • If you changed the body font size in Styles, this would be reset to its original setting after running Export to HTML.
  • The user registration configuration dialog did not appear when clicking ‘Configure Registration’ on the App > Security tab.

Scripture App Builder 8.3

Release date: 05 November 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Fine Tune Timings:
    • Two right-click menu options are now available:
      • “Fine Tune Timings” – create the files for local fine tuning and launch the browser immediately.
      • “Fine Tuning File Manager” – launch the Fine Tuning File Manager wizard, allowing you to create timing files to send to others.
  • Improved Cross reference (xt) handling:
    • Handles the +xt .. +xt* codes in footnotes (i.e. using the plus sign)
    • Handles the use of | attributes in xt…xt* structures.
  • Updated Bloom Player to version 2.0.17.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The chapter title was not displayed correctly when a c chapter marker was followed by cl.
  • Searching for audio files on the device could cause the app to crash in Android versions lower than 10 if the read permission had not already been granted.

In the iOS app:

  • Replace icons for audio controls with less pixelated versions.
  • If in full screen portrait mode, continue to hide the audio control bar when advancing from page to page in a storybook app.
  • Correct problem that made black borders disappear in Sepia mode.
  • 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.
  • Horizontal and vertical elements of the border were adjusted differently which could cause corners to appear squashed or horizontal components to be wider than vertical. Now they are consistent.
  • 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.
  • On macOS, change the JRE (which includes OpenJFX) used in the App Builder so that the Viewer works again.
  • When a change was made to Image Placements, the corresponding row in the placements table would not be updated when leaving the dialog.
  • If a change was made to Image Placements and then the Cancel button was pressed, the changes would not be undone. If the OK button was pressed, the project should be flagged as modified.
  • If a book collection ID contained spaces, video placement references were not loaded or saved correctly.

Scripture 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.
  • Verse of the Day:
    • Allow for an earlier default time for the Verse of the Day.
  • Contents Menu:
    • Added Clear button to allow you to remove an image for a menu item.
  • USFM 3.0 Features:
    • Now supports jmp marker, when used with Scripture references. (Links to anchors and media are still to come.)
  • 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

    • Updated to build template app with XCode 12. SAB 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.
  • Do not try to download the audio for the next chapter if user is at the last chapter (app would crash).
  • If audio file is not found on device for an external folder source, change the toolbar back to the paused state.
  • Images were not being placed as indicated in the Illustrations image placement settings.
  • When copying text, sharing text or editing verse on image, the app should add line breaks where there are paragraph breaks in the text and also between non-contiguous verses.
  • Add Paste button to the context menu in the Search screen.
  • Make sure security access code message dialog appears after a splash screen.
  • If only the two pane layout mode was enabled, this was not respected when launching the app for the first time.
  • 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:

  • In Export to HTML, the text was not being scrolled when the audio reached the bottom of the page.
  • Book collection layout settings (e.g. which collections to show by default in two pane and verse-by-verse views) were not being preserved correctly after saving and reopening SAB.
  • In the Slideshow creation wizard, verse numbers were not being displayed correctly in the references for each slideshow.
  • Selecting a table row with the left mouse button and then right-clicking could be interpreted as a double-click.
  • The footer text direction was not being saved correctly.
  • Fixed hanging indent in introduction list items ili, and add styles for ili2 and ili3.
  • Recognise the Aeneas install location when using Python 3.
  • Do not include Verse on Image background image files when the feature is not enabled, and when building for iOS.
  • Do not include progress bar images when building for iOS.

Scripture App Builder 8.1

Release date: 26 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Audio file streaming in the iOS app.

  • Verse of the Day improvement:

    • Added ‘Change Verse’ menu item to right-click menu in Verses table: chooses a different verse at random for the selected dates.
  • 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:

  • The history of chapters viewed would disappear between sessions if you had not selected a different book and chapter within a session.
  • Verse on Image: black squares appeared in the background image selector.
  • Verse on Image: choosing a custom image from the device image gallery did not work on Android 10 devices.
  • Verse on Image: if you edited the text of a verse and deleted the Bible reference line, the save/share to video options were no longer available from the toolbar menu.
  • Verse of the Day notifications could cause the app to crash when there were no associated audio files.
  • Scripture reference links: the verse list separator character specified in Features was always replaced by a comma.
  • Scripture reference links: if there was a non-breaking hyphen in a reference, the cross reference popup would only contain the first verse rather than all the verses in the range.
  • Tapping the ‘Submit’ button twice in the Add User screen could cause problems.

In the iOS app:

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

In the app builder:

  • When generating PWA output and the name and short name fields were blank, then default App Name was not being used (like it says it would be in the Export to HTML Settings dialog).
  • Fine Tuning keyboard shortcuts N (next) and P (previous) were not working.
  • Removed unused interface translation rows from the translation tables.
  • If you right-clicked on a row in the Verses table in Verse of the Day, the Edit menu item would be repeated each time you right-clicked.

Scripture App Builder 8.0.1

Release date: 11 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Image placement
    • Supports new format PicList.txt import file, as used in PTXprint 0.9.1.
  • Fine Tuning wizard
    • Show the wizard when choosing Fine Tune Timings in the Audio Files table.
    • Remember the previous choices in the wizard.

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:

  • Footnotes were not being handled if they appeared in major title fields (mt).
  • If using Arabic script, add the Arabic comma and question mark as default phrase ending characters for audio-text synchronization.
  • 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.
  • When generating HTML with video embedded, the HTML formatting had unbalanced tags and the audio toolbar didn’t display correctly.
  • Missing app interface translations in French.

Release Notes v4.1 – v8.0
Release Notes v1.0 – v4.0