October 23, 2015

This is a work-in-progress guide with notes on how to control inextrinsic readers for pieces downloaded or delivered as runnable .jar files. It includes notes on configuration and grammars which only apply to installations have a visible and editable ‘resources’ folder.

Starting an app:

double-click the appropriate .jar file

Controlling the readers/display when app is running:

(Initial letters and numbers refer to keyboard key. The readers are labelled ‘1’ and ‘6’ due simply to the the spatial conventions of the keyoard commands — the ‘1’ key starts reader 1 and the ‘6’ key starts reader 6, and so on.)

Reader 1:

1 - start
2 - pause
[3 - does nothing at present]

4 - go to top of next page

5 - reverse direction of reader

s - slow down the reader (with successive presses)

f - speed up the reader

q - (re)load initial grammar

w - load 2nd grammar specified in configuration file

e - load 3rd grammar

r - load 4th grammar

t - load 5th grammar

x - toggle the ability of this reader to cross the ‘gutter’ on the same line

     (effectively move from one text to another at the line level)

Reader 6:

6 - start
7 - pause
[8 - does nothing at present]

9 - go to top of next page

0 - reverse direction of reader

j - slow down the reader (with successive presses)

l - speed up the reader

y - (re)load initial grammar

u - load 2nd grammar specified in configuration file

i - load 3rd grammar

o - load 4th grammar

p - load 5th grammar

m - toggle the ability of this reader to cross the ‘gutter’ on the same line

Display:

v - toggle separate BoW/WoB treatment left and right ‘pages’

b - toggle between BoW and WoB for entire display

If you have been supplied with (a) .jar file(s) and a ‘resources’ folder at the same file-system level, then within this folder you can discover and create plain text files that allow you to configure — to a certain extent — the texts and the readers of your installation, and also compose inextrinsic grammars for your readers. A configuration file must begin with “config_” and the rest of its file name should indicate which .jar file it expects to configure. Other files (including files for supply texts) can have any name (this is configurable in the config_ file) but all such files should have a .txt extension and it is helpful to prefix grammar files with “grammar_”.

Configuration:

Syntax for the configuration file must followed carefully. This is a (JSON) file of “keys”: [followed by] “values” with commas at the end of each line. Only keys in capital letters are actually operative. The keys in lower case are ‘dummies’ that follow the same syntax but are intended to give human readers some information (like a comment in programming). Most keys explain themselves. “SPLIT” set to true will mean that: if LAYOUT_BACKGROUND_COLOUR is 0, then the lefthand side will be Black-on-White and the righthand side will be White-on-Black. The most important configuration items in terms of content are the GRAMMARS. In the resources folder you can have up to 2 x five = 10 separate grammars, up to five for each reader, and — while the app is running — you can dynamically select one of the five grammars that you have configured to work with either reader.

{

"TEXTS": ["cat_English.txt","corps_Italian.txt"],

"font_information": "font sizes available 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28",

"DEFAULT_FONT_SIZE": 22,

"EXPANSION_FONT_SIZE": 24,

"GUTTER_OFFSET": 100,

"LAYOUT_BACKGROUND_COLOR": 0,

"SPLIT": false,

"READER_SPEED_1": "4f",

"READER_SPEED_6": "3f",

"GUTTER_CROSSER_1": false,

"GUTTER_CROSSER_6": false,

"colour_information": "light blue: 0, 149, 255, 255; light yellow: 255, 176, 28, 255; dark blue: 28, 118, 214, 255; dark yellow: 215, 141, 48, 255",

"READER_COLOR_1": [0, 149, 255, 255],

"READER_COLOR_6": [255, 176, 28, 255],

"grammar_information_0": "load any of the following 5 grammars to reader 0 with keys: q, w, e, r, t",

"READER_1_GRAMMARS": ["grammar_cat_mirror.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt"],

"grammar_information_1": "load any of the following 5 grammars to reader 1 with keys: y, u, i, o, p",

"READER_6_GRAMMARS": ["grammar_cat_mirror.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt"]

}

Grammars (a few random notes):

• 'keys' (tokens-to-be-expanded, words-in-pointy-brackets) cannot have spaces in them. Note, the keys will never appear as output/display of the reader. If you make your own keys, you do this to make relationship between the various rules for expansion.

• note a 'key' does not expand as part of a definition (an expansion). This syntax is wrong:
  {<vierge> empty | blank | alone <altcomme>}
  … you might think this would expand to "empty" or to "blank" or to "alone elemental" but it won't. <altcomme> has to be an alternative, so the correct syntax is:
  {<vierge> empty | blank | alone | <altcomme>}
  ... if this is what you want.

• 'keys' must be unique, within each grammar file.

• no upper case letters in keys

• only use curly right single quote ’ (shift+option+]) inside <keys> and for everything else, not prime ' = computationally significant apostrophe.

• Note: you can make new grammar files. Copy one, rename it (to: e.g. "grammar_cat2.txt"), then reference it in the config_cat.txt file like this, for example:
  "READER_1_GRAMMARS": ["grammar_cat_mirror.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat2.txt","grammar_cat.txt","grammar_cat.txt"],