Interface of B-Editor

B-Editor is the browser based tool for alignment texts in two different languages.

Developed by Bilinguator.com.

The B-Editor aligner has been developed and tested in Google Chrome, Yandex Browser, Edge, FireFox browsers. No third-party libraries or frameworks were used during development, except JQuery 3.6.0. Our stack consists of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP. We used XAMPP with PHP version 7.4.29 for development.

Put the repository contents to your web server and open index.php file in browser.

Texts must meet the requirements of the specification.

The following scheme of naming your files is highly recommended:

<BOOK_ID>_<LANG>.txt, where

• <BOOK_ID> is a unique identifier of your book;
• <LANG> - ISO code of the language. This part of the file name determines the size and direction of the texts (left-to-right or right-to-left).

Put your files to be aligned in the books directory. Launch B-Editor, choose two files in the header and press the Launch button ("Play" button-like triangle Launch button) in the top right corner. Then, the paragraphs of the two chosen texts are uploaded.

Header of B-Editor

Each paragraph has the plus button (Add button) on its side. Clicking it, you can add a new empty paragraph to the current place. Current paragraph and all below will be shifted down.

To delete a paragraph, click the diagonal cross (Delete button) on its side. All the paragraphs below will be shifted up.

Each paragraph is marked with an index. When clicking an index of a left paragraph, it appears in the upper textarea of toolbar; click a right paragraph’s index, it to appear in the lower textarea (Delete button). It is also possible to change the textareas’ values manually. These indexes are useful in the following manipulations.

The bookmark is one index corresponding to a paragraphs couple. To set a bookmark, click to the index of the left paragraph of the current couple or type it to the upper textarea in the toolbar. Click the Bookmark button (Bookmark button) to set the bookmark. The bookmark index is saved to the books/bookmarks folder named as bookmark_<BOOK_ID>_<LANG1>_<LANG2>.<BOOK1_EXTENSION>. While the file exists, the bookmark is set all the time of using B-Editor, and it is displayed on the right side of the toolbar as bookmark/total paragraphs count ratio (Progress ratio).

Click the bookmark part of the bookmark/total paragraphs count ratio to move to the bookmarked paragraph.

To move to any other paragraph, type the index of the paragraph in the upper textarea and click the To current position button (To current position button). Look at the progress bar to orient (Progress bar).

To shift two paragraphs of different sides to make them adjacent, choose them and click the Shift button (Shift button).

To delete several paragraphs on both sides, enter the ‘from’ and ‘to’ indexes to the textareas. Click the Delete button (Delete button). Paragraph couples starting from the minimal entered index to the maximal index will be deleted. All the paragraphs below will be shifted up.

To divide a paragraph into two, click the position in its content wherein the paragraph must be divided. Press the Divide paragraph button (Divide paragraph button).

To divide a paragraph into several paragraphs, add newline symbols, wherein the paragraph must be divided. Press the Divide paragraph by newline button (Divide paragraph button).

To concatenate two following paragraphs of one side, click on the first of it in any place. Press the Concatenate paragraphs button (Concatenate paragraphs button). The two paragraphs will be merged via empty string. To concatenate two paragraphs via space character or <delimiter> press Concatenate paragraphs via space (Concatenate paragraphs via space button) or Concatenate paragraphs via delimiter (Concatenate paragraphs via delimiter button) button respectively.

Select text in a paragraph. Press Title (Title button), Bold (Bold button) or Italic (Italic button) button to tag the selected text with <h1></h1>, <b></b> or <i></i> respectively.

Click on the position in a paragraph. Press the Add delimiter button (Add delimiter button).

Select a text and press the Switch case (Switch case) to change the case from upper to lower and vice versa.

Put your PNG illustrations to the books/illustrations folder. Name them as natural arabiс numbers starting from 1 like here.

To add a new illustration to the book, create a new empty paragraph, click on it and press Add illustration button (Add illustration button). The <imgN> tag will be inserted, where N is the natural Arabic number. The <img1> corresponds to the books/illustrations/1.png file.

To save two separate source files aligned, click the Save source files button (Save source files) or press Ctrl+S keys.

Clone the git repository of Bilingual formats to the root directory of B-Editor. After the next launch of B-Editor, new buttons will appear:

All the books are saved to the books/saved folder.

Clone the git repository of Print Bilingual PDF to the root directory of B-Editor. After the next launch of B-Editor, new buttons will appear:

If both Bilingual formats and Print Bilingual PDF are in the B-Editor root directory, the Save in all formats button (Save in all formats) appears. Press it to save your bilingual book in TXT, FB2, EPUB formats and print the PDF in columns and rows.

B-Editor does not suit for working with big texts. When working with texts with more than a thousand paragraphs, the waiting time for some operations can be quite long.