[sword-devel] Ezra Project 0.17.0-Beta3 - First working test candidate on Android

[Tobias Klein]

Hi all,

I'm glad to announce the first working test candidate of Ezra Project on 
Android (tagged Ezra Project 0.17.0-Beta3).

Here is a link to the app, which is now in the "open testing phase".

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ezraproject.cordova

Note that the app requires at least Android 7 and a 10" display.

Here's some technical background info:

The code base of Ezra Project only needed slight modifications to 
support running with a Cordova wrapper as an Android app.

The pure cordova part now lives here: 
https://github.com/ezra-project/ezra-project-cordova
That repository simply includes the main Ezra Project repository as a 
submodule.

The following additional aspects were added on Android:

- Write permission handling on startup
- Added an option to keep the screen on (it otherwise turns off after a 
short time without user interaction)
- Added platform-specific startup code
- Added platform-specific full screen handling

There is still some work left to replace certain mouse-dependent 
features with a touch-screen compatible UX.

Under the hood, a major refactoring of the "backend functionality" was 
required first. All functionality that is directly interacting with the 
filesystem was moved to a separate process (Sword, Settings, i18n, 
Database). The architecture is the same in the Electron app and the 
Cordova app. For each, frontend and backend are separated in two 
different processes and interacting with each other via an IPC layer. 
This IPC layer is in detail a bit different for Electron and Cordova, 
but behaves the same from an interface perspective.

I'd be happy about feedback!

Best regards,
Tobias