The versions of Universalis which have been in the App Store since last week have not been working on the following old Apple devices:

• iPad Air (1st edition)
• iPad Mini 2
• iPad Mini 3
• iPhone 5S
• iPhone 6
• iPod Touch (6th edition).

The affected version of iOS is version 12 (the latest release was 12.5.7). You can check your operating system version by opening the Settings app, selecting ‘General’ and then ‘About’.

This bug was Apple’s fault but we have found a way to avoid it. We created a new update which we sent to Apple and within an hour they had accepted it into the App Store. We are grateful for their promptness.

Catholic Calendar has the same problem: please wait 24 hours, and the update to that should be available as well.

How to get the corrected version

If you sit and do nothing, the App Store will probably update you to the latest, corrected version, but it could take a day or two.

To get the corrected version at once:

1. Open the App Store app.
2. Search for “Universalis”.
3. Tap on the heading of the entry for the Universalis app. A full-page description of the app will appear.
4. At the top of the description is the version number. This should be 3.115.
5. Press the button to download and install the new version.

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new e-book, “Resurrection Is Now”, by Dom Aelred Watkin OSB. This book has long been out of print in physical form and we have had many requests for it as an e-book.

This book, rigorously reasoned but with a keen poetic sensibility, shows how death is not only an end but a beginning, and how to live life as a preparation for death and resurrection.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new e-book, “Reading and Reflection”.

This book contains the readings at Mass according to the official lectionary of the Catholic Church, for every day of every year. Each and every reading is accompanied by an accessible and scholarly commentary by Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like the previous post, this one describes bugs in the Kindle Paperwhite e-book reader. Amazon do not provide any way of reporting bugs, so these bugs are likely to be permanent.

Footnotes

Amazon describe a way for publishers to include a footnote in text and indicate that it is a footnote.

However, they have also decided to program the Kindle to decide that certain links within a text are to be counted as footnotes whether or not they are footnotes. A publisher is therefore likely to find that any link to a page in the book may fail to take the reader to that page, and instead present a pop-up window showing a version of the page mangled into “footnote shape”.

There is nothing whatever that a publisher can do about this. Amazon’s programming is completely secret and undocumented and there is no way of knowing what is making the Kindle decide that a page is a footnote; nor of telling it that a page is not a footnote. Or perhaps there is a way but Amazon are keeping it a secret.

To make things even more entertaining, Amazon provide no way for a publisher to try out any conceivable method of “footnote avoidance”. The only way to see what an e-book will look like when published is to publish it and then buy a copy.

So we are stuck, and you have the inconvenience of guerrilla footnotes.

• The problem affects links which point to a page later in the book.
• …but not all of them.
• Pages (and links) which look identical on the screen can suffer opposite fates. Tapping one of the links will pop up a footnote, while tapping a link on another page that looks just like it will jump, correctly, to the page it is pointing to.

The cure is this. If you tap on a link, and the page you asked for pops up as a footnote instead of a page, the Kindle will also show a button marked “Open footnote”. Press that button.

A new translation of the readings at Mass will come into use in England and Wales from Advent 2024. This is based on the Catholic Edition of the English Standard Version Bible. 

We plan to provide this translation just as we have been providing the Jerusalem Bible version currently in use. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales will liaise with publishers, including Universalis, to ensure the texts are available ready for the publication date. 

In Scotland the National Liturgical Commission has announced that the same version will be used. 

Ireland is remaining with the Jerusalem Bible and will probably move to the Revised New Jerusalem Bible at some time in the future.

Everyone everywhere always agrees that between scrolling (like a web page) or page-turning (like a book) there is one and only one proper way of reading a substantial amount of text. The opposite way is just useless.

As for which of these two ways is the right way, opinions differ.

The Universalis apps on iPhone/iPad and Android let you do both. This post is to remind you of that fact and tell you how to set up the proper way of reading text.

Some of you have been waiting for version 2.159 of the Universalis app for Android from Google Play. This is now in the Play Store.

Automatic update

The Play Store automatically updates most people’s devices, so you may find that it has already updated yours without you having to do anything.

Getting the update by hand

Here are Google’s instructions for getting the latest update directly, without having to wait for the Play Store to send it to you.

If you have a registration code, we give you the ability to create a Kindle e-book using either your computer or our web site. If you use your computer, you can install the e-book on your Kindle yourself. If you use our web site, you can send that e-book through Amazon’s Personal Documents Service and have it installed wirelessly on your Kindle.

Until now, the website route has transmitted your e-book to Amazon directly. At 06:30 UTC on 1 November 2022, Amazon reprogrammed their systems to block this route. They now reject any e-books we send them on your behalf.

We have accordingly changed the way our web site works. It now sends the e-book to you, and you forward the e-book to Amazon yourself.

This blog post is simply here to explain why the procedure has changed. There is nothing that you need to do, except read the instructions carefully next time you create an e-book.

If you requested an e-book after Amazon’s embargo at 0630 on the 1st and it was rejected by Amazon, we have already re-requested the e-book for you and it has been sent to you, for you to forward to Amazon.