## Summary
This PR introduces **Focus Reading**, a generic implementation of
artificial fixation points (similar to Bionic Reading) designed to
improve reading speed and focus by bolding the initial characters of
words. This is achieved by dynamically bolding characters during
indexing.
<img width="500" alt="Focus Reading on X3"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/94a632a5-82da-47be-957c-538b35bf84d9"
/>
### Implementation Details
#### Core Text Engine (`ParsedText`)
- Modified `ParsedText::addWord` to implement a custom bolding
algorithm. It uses a 45% ratio for bolding, with a minimum of 1
character and a maximum of 9.
- UTF-8 Safety: Integrated `utf8NextCodepoint` to ensure character
counting and string slicing occur at safe byte boundaries, preventing
corruption of multi-byte characters (e.g., accented letters or smart
quotes).
- Intelligent Tokenization: This correctly identifies and separates
"word" characters (letters, apostrophes, hyphens) from "non-word"
characters (numbers, brackets, smart quotes).
- Formatting Preservation: The logic ensures that punctuation is not
"stolen" for the bolding count and that existing styles (like italics or
underlines) are preserved across the bold/regular split.
- Processing at indexing stage reduces CPU load at render-time and
ensures layout/fit is unaffected.
- Split details are tracked with `wordIsFocusSuffix`. After splitting
and layout, suffixes are merged back into their preceding word entries
to prevent a doubling of RAM usage.
#### Settings and UI
- Version Management: Bumped `SECTION_FILE_VERSION` to `21`
- Global Settings: Added `focusReadingEnabled` to `CrossPointSettings`.
- User Interface: Added a new toggle in the "Reader" section of the
settings menu, positioned after the "Embedded Style" option.
- Localization: Added the `STR_FOCUS_READING` string
#### Plumbing
- Plumbed the `focusReadingEnabled` boolean through
`EpubReaderActivity`, `Section`, and `ChapterHtmlSlimParser` to ensure
the user's setting reaches the `ParsedText` constructor during chapter
indexing.
## Additional Context
### Files Changed
- `lib/Epub/Epub/ParsedText.h / .cpp`: Core fixation logic and UTF-8
tokenization.
- `lib/Epub/Epub/Section.h / .cpp`: Cache header updates and
invalidation logic.
- `lib/Epub/Epub/parsers/ChapterHtmlSlimParser.h / .cpp`: Plumbing the
setting to text blocks.
- `src/CrossPointSettings.h`: Data persistence for the new setting.
- `src/SettingsList.h`: UI toggle implementation.
- `src/activities/reader/EpubReaderActivity.cpp`: Handling settings
changes during reading sessions.
- `lib/I18n/translations/*.yaml`: UI strings.
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**YES**_
## Summary
**What is the goal of this PR?**
### Problem
Inter-word gap widths were computed as two separately-snapped integers:
```cpp
gap = getSpaceWidth(fontId, style); // fp4::toPixel(spaceAdvance)
gap += getSpaceKernAdjust(fontId, leftCp, rightCp, style); // fp4::toPixel(kern1 + kern2)
```
Because `fp4::toPixel(a) + fp4::toPixel(b)` can differ from
`fp4::toPixel(a + b)` by +/-1 pixel when the fractional parts straddle a
rounding boundary, each inter-word space could be one pixel wider or
narrower than the correct value. This affected line-break width
decisions and word-position accumulation across the whole paragraph
layout pipeline.
### Fix
Replaces `getSpaceKernAdjust()` with `getSpaceAdvance(fontId, leftCp,
rightCp, style)`, which combines the space glyph advance and both
flanking kern values (`kern(leftCp, ' ')` + `kern(' ', rightCp)`) into a
single fixed-point sum before the snap:
```cpp
return fp4::toPixel(spaceAdvanceFP + kern(leftCp, ' ') + kern(' ', rightCp));
```
This is the same single-snap pattern already used by `getTextAdvanceX`
for word widths.
### Changes
- **`GfxRenderer`**: Replaces `getSpaceKernAdjust()` with
`getSpaceAdvance()`. `getSpaceWidth()` is retained for the
single-space-word case in `measureWordWidth` where no adjacent-word kern
context is available.
- **`ParsedText`**: All four call sites (`computeLineBreaks`,
`computeHyphenatedLineBreaks`, and both loops in `extractLine`) updated
to use `getSpaceAdvance()`. The now-redundant `spaceWidth`
pre-computation and parameter are removed from all three internal layout
functions.
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**YES to analyze for
correctness**_
## Summary
**What is the goal of this PR?**
Improved typesetting, including
[kerning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning) and
[ligatures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)#Latin_alphabet).
**What changes are included?**
- The script to convert built-in fonts now adds kerning and ligature
information to the generated font headers.
- Epub page layout calculates proper kerning spaces and makes ligature
substitutions according to the selected font.
## Additional Context
- I am not a typography expert.
- The implementation has been reworked from the earlier version, so it
is no longer necessary to omit Open Dyslexic, and kerning data now
covers all fonts, styles, and codepoints for which we include bitmap
data.
- Claude Opus 4.6 helped with a lot of this.
- There's an included test epub document with lots of kerning and
ligature examples, shown in the photos.
**_After some time to mature, I think this change is in decent shape to
merge and get people testing._**
After opening this PR I came across #660, which overlaps in adding
ligature support.
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**YES, Claude Opus 4.6**_
---------
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
## Summary
_Revision to @blindbat's #802. Description comes from the original PR._
- Replace `std::list` with `std::vector` for word storage in `TextBlock`
and `ParsedText`
- Use index-based access (`words[i]`) instead of iterator advancement
(`std::advance(it, n)`)
- Remove the separate `continuesVec` copy that was built from
`wordContinues` for O(1) access — now unnecessary since
`std::vector<bool>` already provides O(1) indexing
## Why
`std::list` allocates each node individually on the heap with 16 bytes
of prev/next pointer overhead per node. For text layout with many small
words, this means:
- Scattered heap allocations instead of contiguous memory
- Poor cache locality during iteration (each node can be anywhere in
memory)
- Per-node malloc/free overhead during construction and destruction
`std::vector` stores elements contiguously, giving better cache
performance during the tight rendering and layout loops. The
`extractLine` function also benefits: list splice was O(1) but required
maintaining three parallel iterators, while vector range construction
with move iterators is simpler and still efficient for the small
line-sized chunks involved.
## Files changed
- `lib/Epub/Epub/blocks/TextBlock.h` / `.cpp`
- `lib/Epub/Epub/ParsedText.h` / `.cpp`
## AI Usage
YES
## Test plan
- [ ] Open an EPUB with mixed formatting (bold, italic, underline) —
verify text renders correctly
- [ ] Open a book with justified text — verify word spacing is correct
- [ ] Open a book with hyphenation enabled — verify words break
correctly at hyphens
- [ ] Navigate through pages rapidly — verify no rendering glitches or
crashes
- [ ] Open a book with long paragraphs — verify text layout matches
pre-change behavior
---------
Co-authored-by: Kuanysh Bekkulov <kbekkulov@gmail.com>
Closes#182. Closes#710. Closes#711.
## Summary
**What is the goal of this PR?**
- A longer-term, more robust fix for the issue with spurious spaces
appearing after style changes. Replaces solution from #694.
**What changes are included?**
- Add continuation flags to determine if to add a space after a word or
if the word connects to the previous word. Replaces simple solution that
only considered ending punctuation.
- Fixed an issue with greedy line-breaking algorithm where punctuation
could appear on the next line, separated from the word, if there was a
style change between the word and punctuation
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**YES**_, Claude Code
## Summary
* **What is the goal of this PR?**
- Adds basic CSS parsing to EPUBs and determine the CSS rules when
rendering to the screen so that text is styled correctly. Currently
supports bold, underline, italics, margin, padding, and text alignment
## Additional Context
- My main reason for wanting this is that the book I'm currently
reading, Carl's Doomsday Scenario (2nd in the Dungeon Crawler Carl
series), relies _a lot_ on styled text for telling parts of the story.
When text is bolded, it's supposed to be a message that's rendered
"on-screen" in the story. When characters are "chatting" with each
other, the text is bolded and their names are underlined. Plus, normal
emphasis is provided with italicizing words here and there. So, this
greatly improves my experience reading this book on the Xteink, and I
figured it was useful enough for others too.
- For transparency: I'm a software engineer, but I'm mostly frontend and
TypeScript/JavaScript. It's been _years_ since I did any C/C++, so I
would not be surprised if I'm doing something dumb along the way in this
code. Please don't hesitate to ask for changes if something looks off. I
heavily relied on Claude Code for help, and I had a lot of inspiration
from how [microreader](https://github.com/CidVonHighwind/microreader)
achieves their CSS parsing and styling. I did give this as good of a
code review as I could and went through everything, and _it works on my
machine_ 😄
### Before
### After
---
### AI Usage
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? **YES**, Claude Code
## Summary
* Adds (optional) Hyphenation for English, French, German, Russian
languages
## Additional Context
* Included hyphenation dictionaries add approximately 280kb to the flash
usage (German alone takes 200kb)
* Trie encoded dictionaries are adopted from hypher project
(https://github.com/typst/hypher)
* Soft hyphens (and other explicit hyphens) take precedence over
dict-based hyphenation. Overall, the hyphenation rules are quite
aggressive, as I believe it makes more sense on our smaller screen.
---------
Co-authored-by: Dave Allie <dave@daveallie.com>
## Summary
* Update EpdFontFamily::Style to be u8 instead of u32 (saving 3 bytes
per word)
* Update layout width/height to be u16 from int
* Update page element count to be u16 from u32
* Update text block element count to be u16 from u32
* Bumped section bin version to version 8
• What is the goal of this PR?
Implement a horizontal EPUB reading mode so books can be read in
landscape orientation (both 90° and 270°), while keeping the rest of the
UI in portrait.
• What changes are included?
◦ Rendering / Display
▪ Added an orientation model to GfxRenderer (Portrait, LandscapeNormal,
LandscapeFlipped) and made:
▪ drawPixel, drawImage, displayWindow map logical coordinates
differently depending on orientation.
▪ getScreenWidth() / getScreenHeight() return orientation‑aware logical
dimensions (480×800 in portrait, 800×480 in landscape).
◦ Settings / Configuration
▪ Extended CrossPointSettings with:
▪ landscapeReading (toggle for portrait vs. landscape EPUB reading).
▪ landscapeFlipped (toggle to flip landscape 180° so both horizontal
holding directions are supported).
▪ Updated settings serialization/deserialization to persist these fields
while remaining backward‑compatible with existing settings files.
▪ Updated SettingsActivity to expose two new toggles:
▪ “Landscape Reading”
▪ “Flip Landscape (swap top/bottom)”
◦ EPUB Reader
▪ In EpubReaderActivity:
▪ On onEnter, set GfxRenderer orientation based on the new settings
(Portrait, LandscapeNormal, or LandscapeFlipped).
▪ On onExit, reset orientation back to Portrait so Home, WiFi, Settings,
etc. continue to render as before.
▪ Adjusted renderStatusBar to position the status bar and battery
indicator relative to GfxRenderer::getScreenHeight() instead of
hard‑coded Y coordinates, so it stays correctly at the bottom in both
portrait and landscape.
◦ EPUB Caching / Layout
▪ Extended Section cache metadata (section.bin) to include the logical
screenWidth and screenHeight used when pages were generated; bumped
SECTION_FILE_VERSION.
▪ Updated loadCacheMetadata to compare:
▪ font/margins/line compression/extraParagraphSpacing and screen
dimensions; mismatches now invalidate and clear the cache.
▪ Updated persistPageDataToSD and all call sites in EpubReaderActivity
to pass the current GfxRenderer::getScreenWidth() / getScreenHeight() so
portrait and landscape caches are kept separate and correctly sized.
Additional Context
• Cache behavior / migration
◦ Existing section.bin files (old SECTION_FILE_VERSION) will be detected
as incompatible and their caches cleared and rebuilt once per chapter
when first opened after this change.
◦ Within a given orientation, caches will be reused as before. Switching
orientation (portrait ↔ landscape) will cause a one‑time re‑index of
each chapter in the new orientation.
• Scope and risks
◦ Orientation changes are scoped to the EPUB reader; the Home screen,
Settings, WiFi selection, sleep screens, and web server UI continue to
assume portrait orientation.
◦ The renderer’s orientation is a static/global setting; if future code
uses GfxRenderer outside the reader while a reader instance is active,
it should be aware that orientation is no longer implicitly fixed.
◦ All drawing primitives now go through orientation‑aware coordinate
transforms; any code that previously relied on edge‑case behavior or
out‑of‑bounds writes might surface as logged “Outside range” warnings
instead.
• Testing suggestions / areas to focus on
◦ Verify in hardware:
▪ Portrait mode still renders correctly (boot, home, settings, WiFi,
reader).
▪ Landscape reading in both directions:
▪ Landscape Reading = ON, Flip Landscape = OFF.
▪ Landscape Reading = ON, Flip Landscape = ON.
▪ Status bar (page X/Y, % progress, battery icon) is fully visible and
aligned at the bottom in all three combinations.
◦ Open the same book:
▪ In portrait first, then switch to landscape and reopen it.
▪ Confirm that:
▪ Old portrait caches are rebuilt once for landscape (you should see the
“Indexing…” page).
▪ Progress save/restore still works (resume opens to the correct page in
the current orientation).
◦ Ensure grayscale rendering (the secondary pass in
EpubReaderActivity::renderContents) still looks correct in both
orientations.
---------
Co-authored-by: Dave Allie <dave@daveallie.com>
## Summary
* Build out lines for pages when holding over 750 buffered words
* Should fix issues with parsing long blocks of text causing memory
crashes
* add horizontal indent in first line of paragraph in case Extra Paragraph Spacing is OFF
* Treat tabs as whitespace (so they are properly stripped)
* Changed size of indent to 1 em.
* Fixed calculation of space when indenting (avoiding squeezed text).
* Source code formatting
Vincent Politzer