Thorium Reader 1.8.0

[TeamEDRLab]

Thorium Reader is a free reading application published by EDRLab. It can be installed on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Users are not bothered with ads, privacy problems. Its codebase is open-source.

This new version includes new features, improvements and bug fixes, notably the following accessibility features:

- Full DAISY 2.02 support !!
- “where am I?”: a blind user can get detailed headings trails indicating where he is in a textual publication.
- Better keyboard focus management with screen readers.
- Screen reader notifications when adding or removing bookmarks.
- Better handling of MathML synthetic speech, both with and without screen reader.

This version also includes a series of enhancements applied to the user interface and a better handling of OPDS catalogs. EPUB popup footnotes can now be expressed as external documents.

The full list of enhancements is available at https://github.com/edrlab/thorium-re...ses/tag/v1.8.0.

Download links for the different platforms are found at https://www.edrlab.org/software/thorium-reader/

If you are using Windows 10, you can download Thorium Reader from the Windows Store and benefit from automatic updates.

[Moonbase59]

Good old Thorium pops up again! I’ll certainly give the AppImage a spin later on.

(Thorium is a Readium-based Electron app.)

EDIT: First startup screen tells me Thorium can read LCP-protected DRM’ed books. Probably a good move.

EDIT 2: I love the super-clean and minimalistic appearance and the speed but miss some settings:

• TTS doesn’t work (Linux Mint 20.3; eSpeak, spd and PicoTTS installed)
• Where/how to include dictionaries (and which format)?
• Where/how to include/modify hyphenation rules (and which do you use: Linux’ hyphen-xx, Hyphenator, …?)

Library is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/EDRLab.ThoriumReader/publications/.

OPDS works fine. Tested Standard Ebooks and local Calibre instance.

Series: Should show series info (name, number), but doesn’t. Suggest showing Calibre data for EPUB2, official tags for EPUB3.

[TeamEDRLab]

Hi Moonbase59,

It is true that TTS on Linux is not fully tested, we mainly test it on Windows and MacOS. We have to work on that ...
Re. TTS, we'll also work on enhancements helped by SSML tags: some publishers of textbooks are interested, especially in Brazil.

Dictionaries are in our roadmap; EPUB 3 has an old Dictionaries & Glossaries specification, but before we implement anything, we want to discuss with the W3C, which handles EPUB 3 now.

Hyphenation: good catch: currently we let Chromium work. Your experience could be welcome.

Series: yes we can certainly do better there :-)

[Moonbase59]

Re SSML: I agree, this currently seems they way to go.

Re dictionaries: I meant user dictionaries, probably StarDict format or the like (these can be easily created using pyglossary), or integration of GoldenDict, or something. In Dictionaries, there is a de-DE-3-0.bdic, but I don’t know about its functionality or format. Suppose these are Chrome spelling-checker files.

[darryl]

@TeamEDRLab. Nice to see you on Mobileread engaging with readers. I haven't tried Thorium reader as I seldom read on Android devices. However, as you seem to prefer that I don't read LCP protected books on my e-ink readers (Kindle or Kobo) I may give it a try on a Lenovo Tab. If of course I actually come across an LCP protected e-book. Do you know of any Australian public libraries or other public sites actually using lcp? I note Bolinda seems to be a partner but the library sites I've looked at still seem to be using Adobe?

[Moonbase59]

Originally Posted by darryl

[…] If of course I actually come across an LCP protected e-book. […]

You could try one of the sample books.

[TeamEDRLab]

Originally Posted by darryl

I haven't tried Thorium reader as I seldom read on Android devices. However, as you seem to prefer that I don't read LCP protected books on my e-ink readers (Kindle or Kobo) I may give it a try on a Lenovo Tab. If of course I actually come across an LCP protected e-book. Do you know of any Australian public libraries or other public sites actually using lcp? I note Bolinda seems to be a partner but the library sites I've looked at still seem to be using Adobe?

Hi, Thorium Reader is not available on Android. Its targets are Windows, MacOS and Linux. Reading EPUBs on Android using open-source Readium tech is achieved by downloading one of these apps -> https://readium.org/awesome-readium/. Readium's goal is to make the development of such an app as painless and cheap as possible.

PS (but off topic):
- Re. LCP on Kobo, we believe that it's a matter of time. On Kindle, some magic would be required.
- We don't know of any Australian public lib implementing LCP so far.

[TeamEDRLab]

Originally Posted by Moonbase59

Re SSML:Re dictionaries: I meant user dictionaries, probably StarDict format or the like (these can be easily created using pyglossary), or integration of GoldenDict, or something. In Dictionaries, there is a de-DE-3-0.bdic, but I don’t know about its functionality or format. Suppose these are Chrome spelling-checker files.

Thanks for the info. We'll study that.

[Moonbase59]

Well, thanks for joining here and giving some feedback! Took me a moment to realize this thread was only moved, not deleted. ;-)

The Library view would deserve some polishing, too. And maybe some sorting options. I can’t really follow the logic as it currently shows.

Dictionaries: Here is a screenshot of Thorium with my own (German Wiktionary) StarDict dictionary, accessed via GoldenDict. Direct support of a popular dictionary format would of course be better.

[Moonbase59]

If, for any reason, you prefer to use the AppImage on Linux (over the .deb), here is a .desktop file that works fine on my Linux Mint 20.3:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Thorium
Exec=/home/matthias/AppImages/Thorium-1.8.0.AppImage %U
Comment=E-Book Reader (.epub, .lcpl)
Categories=Office;Education;Viewer
Terminal=false
Icon=thorium
Type=Application
MimeType=application/epub+zip;application/vnd.readium.lcp.license.v1.0+json;
StartupWMClass=edrlab.thoriumreader

This file should be copied into the ~/.local/share/applications folder, and be made executable. Please adapt the "Exec=" line to your needs!

The icon I put into my /usr/share/pixmaps folder under the name thorium.png.



Now you can use things like "Open with…" in the file manager, and use it in your menus.

[rantanplan]

Just noticed: I find it strange that Thorium supports .audiobook files (never heard of it) but neither .mp3 / .m3u nor .m4b audiobooks. Maybe they need to be inside a .zip container?

Also, I'd appreciate a flatpak version

[lostcowboy]

The latest version of Thorium Reader is 2.3.0, released in August 2023.
thorium reader 2.3.0/

Welcome to the Thorium Reader documentation

Connect Thorium Reader to Calibre using OPDS