Pachli 3.5.0 is now available. This release improves the notification UI, contains significant improvements for users of assistive technologies, like TalkBack, and also contains fixes for some crashes.
New features and other improvements #
All notifications about a post now include action buttons #
@wolfblade@mastodon.social noted some notifications about posts didn’t include action buttons (to reply, boost, etc). @fluchtkapsel@nerdculture.de also filed bug #2111 about this making it difficult to open notifications about posts that only contain attachments.
This was fixed in #2160.
TalkBack descriptions and actions for notifications #
Notifications now have complete TalkBack descriptions, including:
- Notifications about a post use the post’s full description, prefixed with the notification’s type (mention, boost, poll ending, etc).
- Follow requests read the notification’s type, the account’s name and handle, and description.
- Moderation warnings read the full text of the notification.
TalkBack actions have been added for all notifications.
- Notifications about a post provide all the post actions (reply, boost, quote, etc).
- Follow requests provide actions to approve or reject the request.
- Moderation warnings have an action to view the warning.
- Report notifications have actions to open the report, and open the reporter and reportee profiles.
- Signup notifications have an action to open the profile.
This fixes issue #2047 reported by @aryan@dragonscave.space.
The initial work to do this had a bug reading descriptions for boosted posts. @aryan@dragonscave.space reported the problem and also submitted #2168 to fix it, their first code contribution to Pachli.
TalkBack and quotes #
Posts containing a quote now read out the quote (#2158), fixing #2049 reported by @dhamlinmusic@dragonscave.space.
Mastodon adds extra content to posts containing a quote, this content is supposed to be hidden by clients that understand quotes, like Pachli. This extra content is now also removed from the TalkBack description (#2157).
Updates to translations #
Languages with updated translations are:
- Dutch by lwgph (their first contributions to Pachli)
- Estonian by Priit Jõerüüt
- Finnish by Kalle Kniivilä
- French by Terry L
- German by Kachelkaiser
- Irish by Aindriú Mac Giolla Eoin
- Kabyle by ButterflyOfFire
- Latvian by ℂ𝕠𝕠𝕠𝕝
- Latvian by Edgars Andersons
- Polish by Łukasz Horodecki
- Slovak by Russssty
- Spanish by Juan M Sevilla
- Tamil by தமிழ்நேரம் (their first contributions to Pachli)
If you would like to help improve Pachli’s translation in to your language there’s information on how you can contribute.
Significant bug fixes #
Talkback and posts #
Testing the notification work showed Pachli was adding actions to open attachments even if the post didn’t contain any attachments. Fixed with #2155.
TalkBack was also reading descriptions for attachments and polls if the post had a content warning and the user had not expanded the post to view the content. Fixed with #2154.
Pachli 3.1.0 changed how posts were read out, moving the poster’s handle to earlier in the content’s description. Several people provided feedback that this was unhelpful, including Rene Ludwig @Clio09@digitalcourage.social and Woochancho @muchanchoasado@tkz.one, so this change has been reverted. The poster’s handle is now read towards the end of the post’s description.
Update tab contents when reordering tabs #
@ArtsandSocks@ottawa.place reported (#2178) reordering tabs (using “Account preferences > Tabs”) updated the tab icons, but the content was not updated until restarting Pachli.
Fixed with #2181.
Prevent crash when viewing an account #
A race condition could cause Pachli to crash when viewing an account. Fixed with #2175.
Prevent crash (maybe) when cropping images #
Google Play data shows a spike in crashes when users crop images before posting. I haven’t been able to reproduce this, but #2172 might fix it.
Prevent cursor jumping around when editing attachment descriptions #
@BryanGreyson@social.tchncs.de reported an issue (#2163) where the cursor could jump back to the start of the text when writing an attachment description, including a video demonstrating the problem, which was very helpful.
Fixed with #2169.
Thank you #
Thank you to everyone who took the time to report issues and provide additional followup information and screenshots.
Download Pachli 3.5.0 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.