SubLib

SubLib 0.9 has been released. Release details follow.

• Added support for the following subtitle formats:
• AQ Title
• MacSUB
• Sofni
• SubCreator 1.x
• ViPlay Subtitle File
• Improved subtitle format auto-detection
• Allow to install the library with autotools

I'd like to welcome Cristina Yenyxe to the SubLib project. This talented developer has already done most of the work for the 0.8 release and is also helping out (in other words, doing most of the work too) in the Gnome Subtitles project. Without here, the future would be very uncertain for both of these projects.

So again, welcome Cristina. :-)

This release features:

• Added support for the following subtitle formats:
• Adobe Encore DVD
• DKS Subtitle Format
• Karaoke Lyrics LRC
• Karaoke Lyrics VKT
• Panimator
• Phoenix Japanimation Society
• Power DivX
• Different subtitle formats share similar headers, when edited
• Allow to import text lines, without timings, from a plain text file

The changes in this release are:

• Added support for subtitle translation
• Translation property in each Subtitle
• Search methods now search in translation too
• Select the type of text content (text or translation) to use when saving
• Allow to clear translations and import a translation into existing subtitles
• Try every detected encoding instead of only the first one, and use the first encoding that works
• Allow to trim subtitle lines when getting them
• When replacing blank lines, also apply the replacement if the text is empty
• EncodingNotSupportedException is now thrown if an Encoding is not supported by the platform, when opening a file
• Fixed some bugs that were visible when doing a backwards search
• Updated NCharDet

This release features minor feature enhancements, including a new property to specify the type of newline (Macintosh, Unix or Windows) to be used when saving Subtitles.

This release features an overall refactoring of the library:

• File-related state (character coding, path, subtitle format) isn't maintained anymore after parsing
• SubtitleProperties now only includes properties that aren't file-related
• FileProperties includes all the file-related properties
• Refactored the parsing engine, with ParsingProperties being used to store the properties set during parsing
• Fixed the codepage attribution for some character codings. Some were removed as no codepages were available
• SubtitleSaver now includes all file saving functionality. This was simplified, with most overloaded methods being removed
• New and Open methods were also simplified
• Updated the documentation

This release focuses on minor feature enhancements. The library now allows to find a subtitle given a specific time position. Utility functions for converting from time to frames, given the time in seconds, were also added.

SubLib has come a long way since its beginning. Its framework is proving to be fairly modular and extensible as new features get developed and added. Some key points will (hopefully) mark its development this year.

Support more subtitle formats

The engine is there, now there's the need to use it. The most used subtitle formats are already supported, but there is still a plentiful of other formats that need to get into SubLib too. The documentation section contains most of the necessary information to dig into this. The objective is to arrange support for a total of about 50 different text-based subtitle formats.

Stabilize the API

Gnome Subtitles, a GNOME subtitle editor, has provided to be a good test base for the library. Its API should get stabilized.

Improve the timing operations

Most of the needed timing/synchronization operations are already supported. These include setting timings (frames or actual times) individually, shifting a set of subtitles, changing between frame rates, and automatically adjusting a range of subtitles based on 2 sync points. The last one should be extended to a list of multiple sync points.

Release 1.0

If all goes as planed, version 1.0 should be released when all the previous bits get done.

This constitutes the roadmap for SubLib. Developers are encouraged to contribute and help on completing these tasks. Any help is most welcome and appreciated.

This release features a stabilization of the API, as well as:

• Added Search functionality:
• Find with regular expressions
• Find next or previous
• Find with specified case sensitivity and wrapping options
• Start search on the specified subtitle and text index
• Added ReplaceAll functionality
• Now updates the timing mode after saving a file with a different timing mode
• Moved to the C# 2.0 compiler

A document named Supporting New Subtitle Formats has been made available on the documentation section. It covers practically everything needed to start developing support for more subtitle formats.