Obi

This website is for development and support. Here you will find additional help documents, downloads and information related to development and maintainance of Obi.

Overview

Obi is a DAISY/NISO authoring tool that is easy to use, accessible and internationalized. Obi provides a powerful editing environment that supports the structured audio recording paradigm. Obi enables anyone with a minimal amount of training to produce rich yet accessible Digital Talking Books. By empowering mainstream users, Obi brings the benefits of DAISY technology to a broader range of consumers. Although the DAISY reading experience was originally designed for print-disabled users (i.e. blind, visually-impaired, dyslexic, etc.), the technology can benefit mainstream users too. In context where time and cost constraints do not normally allow the production of synchronized multimedia (e.g. classroom environment), Obi can unlock the potential of producers and consumers (e.g. teachers and students).

Behind the scenes, Obi utilizes the  Urakawa SDK for multimedia authoring and light version of  DAISY Pipeline named Pipeline-lite for output validation, mp3 encoding and fileset renaming.

Obi is free software; it is available at no cost, and its source code is available for anyone to run, modify and redistribute. Obi is released under the  LGPL license.

News

• April 29, 2013, Obi 2.6 is released. It comes with several new features like complete backward compatibility with DAISY 2.02 standard, context sensitive help, further enhancements to the features introduced in Obi 2.5 and many more. To know about the new features & bug fixes please visit  release notes.

• March 28, 2013, Obi 2.6 Beta (test version) is released. It introduces the capabilities of importing DAISY 2.02 books as well as preserving the pitch while using fast play. It also incorporates context-sensitive help, along with many other enhancements. For a complete list of new features and bug fixes, please visit  Obi 2.6 beta page.

• December 14, 2012, Obi 2.5 is released. It introduces several significant new features like comprehensive functionality for authoring skippable structures, automated book production via enhanced audio file import and many more. To know about the new features & bug fixes please visit  release notes

• August 27, 2012, Obi 2.5 beta (test version) is released. It introduces live waveform creation, French localization, audio generation using preferred synthetic voice and enhancements to the introductions of Obi 2.5 alpha release. For a complete list of new features and bug fixes, please visit  about Obi 2.5 beta page.

• June 5, 2012, Obi 2.5 alpha (test version) is released. It introduces workflow to produce skippable structures, enhanced efficiency with features like fine navigation, color preferences & more. For a complete list of new features and bug fixes, please visit  about Obi 2.5 alpha page.

• October 20, 2011, Obi 2.0 is released with several significant new features and enhancements. To know about the new features & bug fixes please visit  Release notes

• June 29, 2011, Obi 2.0 beta (test version) released with performance improvements, new features and bug fixes.

• April 29, 2011, Obi 2.0 alpha (test version) is released. It has enhanced productivity, configurable keyboard shortcuts and long awaited features like DAISY 3 import. For a complete list of new features and bug fixes, please visit about Obi 2.0 alpha.

• November 29, 2010, Obi 1.2 is released with enhanced performance and capabilities. Please visit  Release notes page for details.

• September 23, 2010, Obi 1.2 entered the RC stage with release of Obi 1.2-RC1 (1st Release Candidate), the 2nd release candidate, Obi 1.2 RC2 was released on October 21, 2010. To know about the improvements and bug fixes in Obi 1.2 Release candidates please visit About Obi 1.2 Release candidates

• September 11, 2009, Obi 1.1 is released with a new feature set, enhancements and bug fixes. Please visit what's new page for further details.

• July 24, 2009 Obi 1.1 RC1 is now available. To know about improvements and augmentations in this version, please visit about Obi 1.1 RC1. We are looking forward to your suggestions and bug reports.

• March 27, 2009, Obi 1.0 is released!

Features

• Can produce DTB conforming to both DAISY 3 and DAISY 2.02 with a choice of having exported audio files in WAV or MP3 formats.
• One of the rare audio-ncx production tools providing complete support for creating skippable structures like footnotes, annotations, etc.

• Full accessibility (keyboard navigation, magnification of text and graphics, audio clues and support for screen readers, even for the less sophisticated open source screen readers)
• Personalization by the way of customizing keyboard shortcuts as per own inclinations and preferences.

• Supports internationalization - can be easily localized into various languages

• Low learning curve; simple and comprehensive GUI with logical grouping of menu items and self-explanatory dialog boxes make it easily comprehendible.
• Quicck, relevant assistance on any UI component, via the context-sensitive help, reduces the learning curve even further.
• Carefully designed set of intertwined views enabling visual users to work simultaneously in various views on a single application window. At the same time, facilitating non-visual users to navigate through the views giving the notion of separate windows.
• Meticulously devised recording process catering to the need of both beginners and advanced users; main attractions being advanced recording mode to gear up the recording process and slim recording toolbar enabling narrating and execution of recording commands concurrently.
• Highly efficient workflows like Automated book production from pre-recorded audio files reduce manpower requirements.

• Enables utilization of existing resources via the import feature, whereby users can import structure and audio from both audio-only and full-text full-audio DAISY 3/DAISY 2.02 books, structure from DTBook.xml & xhtml files, audio from WAV & MP3 files.

• Tolerance to mistakes, automated project recovery feature reduces the probability of losing important data to bare minimum.
• Supports undo and redo operations to revert to desired state.

• Can be further customized for encompassing special requirements as it is open-source.

Obi 2.0 uses the upgraded  Urakawa SDK 2.0 and its satellite assemblies as backend. Upgraded Urakawa SDK 2.0 is the outcome of the merger of code bases of Obi & Tobi incorporating the advantages of both the tools to evolve Urakawa SDK as a powerful backend for multi-application use.

Downloads

Please visit  main download page for downloading appropriate setup of Obi. Two types of installers have been provided. One that installs all dependencies from internet which requires a good internet connection and another contains all dependencies in itself that can be used for offline installations as well for burning installation CDs.
Also one can find other useful downloads like screen reader scripts, sample projects etc.
To download previous version of Obi please visit previous downloads

Online help documents

To know more about using Obi, please visit our  online documentation page.
These help documents are additional to documents packaged with Obi and will be updated regularly.

Queries related to Obi

For any queries or feature related discussions, please visit  Obi forum, where you can interact with developers and other users of Obi.

Known limitations

Obi has some known limitations and the team is working conscientiously towards overcoming them in future releases. Details can be found at  List of known limitations. Please read this before reporting any new bugs. (If you want to report a bug after going through it, then please visit Instructions for submitting bug reports)

Contributing organisations

Following organisations have supported The DAISY Consortium for Obi and Urakawa SDK: (List in alphabetic order )

•  CWI from Netherlands
•  INRIA from France
•  NRCD from Japan