DAISY Pipeline App Quick Start Guide

This is a desktop application for the powerful DAISY Pipeline engine. It features the following:

Scripts for frequently required format conversions such as DAISY 2.02 to EPUB, DTBook to DAISY 3
New scripts for converting DAISY books to MegaVoice format and unscrambling DAISY 2.02 books to MP3 files.
DAISY Pipeline app can use high quality Text-to-Speech cloud voices from Microsoft Azure and Google to generate audio for the given text. As an example, a DTBook XML file can be converted to multi-media DAISY 3 book with narration in the chosen Microsoft Azure or Google TTS voice
Validation scripts for DAISY, DTBook, EPUB and NIMAS files
Multiple jobs can be run in the tabbed interface
It has an accessible user interface with basic keyboard shortcuts. For screen reader users, navigation is similar to reading web pages
To check for updates click on ‘Check for updates’ in the ‘About DAISY Pipeline’ window which can be opened from the Help menu

DAISY Pipeline App can be installed on Windows and macOS.

Overview of the User Interface

DAISY Pipeline has a menu bar at top. The File, Edit, View and Help drop down menus can be accessed with the mouse and keyboard like other applications.

Below the menu is the tab control area. By default there is only one tab and a “+” shape button for adding more tabs. New conversion jobs can be created in different tabs and can be run in parallel.

In each tab there is a “Select a script” drop down list. When no script is selected, the rest of the DAISY Pipeline window is blank.

Screenshot of DAISY Pipeline App window. There is one default tab and 'Select a script' list box.

After selecting a script you will see a short description of what it does.

Below the description is the “Required information” section. It has “Browse button” to select the input file. After a file has been selected, the file path and name is displayed on the side of the Browse button.

Depending on the selected script there may be an “Options” section which has various fields to be completed. The name and number of fields in this section varies for each script.

There is a “Run” button to start the conversion process.

Note that the Job tab name changes to the name of the selected script.

DAISY Pipeline window with a script selected. The Required information and Options section are in view

On running a script, “Job status” is shown at the top. It can read “Running” or “Error” or “Completed”

When the job is completed, the DAISY Pipeline window displays three sections, namely:

Settings – Displays the input file name and options selected for the job
Messages – Displays various progress messages of the script
Results – Contains links to Validation report, log and output

The DAISY Pipeline App window displaying status, settings, results and messages on completion of a job.

Using DAISY Pipeline App

Start the Pipeline App and wait for the Pipeline engine to start
Choose a script and fill out the appropriate fields
Run the job and observe its progress and results
Click the “Show results folder” if the conversion is completed successfully to view the output.

App Settings

The job results are automatically save in the folder named “DAISY Pipeline results” in the Documents folder. You can change the default folder in Settings. To do this, go to the File menu and click on Settings. The Settings window opens as seen below.

The Settings window of the DAISY Pipeline App

Click on Browse and select the folder in which you want to save the output.
You can also change the user interface appearance by choosing Dark mode or Light Mode or the System default.
In this Settings window you can also choose what will happen on closing the app window. The options are: Keep running in the system tray, Close the application or Ask while closing the app.
Click on Save button to save your selected choices

Keyboard shortcuts

Windows

Control + N to add a new job
Control + R to run a job
Control + Tab and Shift + Control + Tab to move between jobs
Control + Alt + 0-9 to access the first 10 tabs quickly (1 = first tab, 0 = tenth tab)
Shift + Control + I to get job status
Control + D to close a job
Control + W to close the window
Control + , to open the settings dialog
Control + E to edit a job
Control + = to zoom in
Shift + Control + = to zoom out
Alt + Shift + Control + = to reset the zoom level

Mac

Command + N to add a new job
Command + R to run a job
Control + Tab and Shift + Control + Tab to move between jobs
Command + Alt + 0-9 to access the first 10 tabs quickly (1 = first tab, 0 = tenth tab)
Shift + Command + I to get job status
Command + D to close a job
Command + W to close the window
Command + , to open the settings dialog
Command + E to edit a job
Command + + to zoom in
Command + – to zoom out
Command + 0 to reset the zoom level

Tags: Pipeline App