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Welcome to the aard2-android wiki!
Aard2 is a simple and fast dictionnary reader for large dictionnaries. Aard2 for Android is a successor to Aard Dictionary for Android. It comes with redesigned user interface, bookmarks, history and a better dictionary storage format which allow additionnal functions like picture download.
Here are some basic instructions for the app, addressing Aard2-Beginners, which just don't know about Aard2 and want to give it a try.
Please read also the README.org with more detailed explanations about the features of Aard2.
Aard 2 is running on Android 4.03 and above. You can install it from Google Play or you can install it from here (Github). You need to allow installation of "Unknown sources" if you want to install Aard2 from github, e.g. see here: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-install-apps-outside-of-google-play/
To use Aard2 you need dictionaries, without a dictionary Aard2 is useless. These dictionary-files have the file-ending slob. In other words: Aard2 can read slob-files. Read here about slob. You can get dictionaries from: https://github.com/itkach/slob/wiki/Dictionaries You can download dictionaries first, save them to your phone and install Aard2 after or vice versa. So as dictionaries can be very large files, best is to begin with downloading them first. (It is highly recommended to use a BitTorrent client. That way you also contribute to the project by letting other Aard users download from your computer. You can find the appropriate .torrent files or magnet links in the download section.) You can put the dictionaries on your phone in any directory you want, you can save them to your internal or, if available, external sd-card, there is no difference for Aard2.
To use any dictionary, you first need to let Aard 2 know where they are. Either you let Aard 2 find them automatically or you manually can select them in your file system. To let Aard 2 search them automatically, you do the following: If you tap the Dictionary-Tab, this is the tab with the book-icon, in the center you see a button 'Find Dictionaries' (or the same function, on the right top you will see a Sync-Icon, two circled arrows). You tap this button and wait till Aard2 searched through the whole sd-cards. Without any dictionary it will look like this:
The search could take a while, depending on your device's speed and the size of your sd-cards. You will read:
Please wait
Scanning device for dictionaries...
If you want to add the dictionaries manually then you hit the "Plus"-Icon beside the "Sync"-Icon and choose the slob-file with the integrated File-Chooser in Aard 2.
After the automatic search (or the manual selection) you will have listed your dictionaries in this window (the Dictionaries-tab), where you can disable or re-enable each dictionary, or you can delete it from the list, hitting the "Garbage"-Icon. No worries, this is not deleting the dictionary from the file system, it will just be unavailable for the moment, you can every time get it back with adding it as described above. You also can get information about the amount of items and the storage path of each dictionary file by tapping the arrow under the dictionary, the "Unfold"-Icon.
It could now look like this:
On the screenshot you can see some activated dictionaries, one with information unfolded, the "Wikipedia (en)" and one deactivated, the "Wikibooks (de)". The activation button is very handy if you need only one or a few dictionaries. You just switch off the others and won't get confused with too much results of no actual interest.
The history tab, the one with the circle-arrow around a clock, shows recently visited articles of all dictionaries.
The maximum amount of entries is limited to hundred, same as the Bookmarks.
If you want to delete any entry, long tap on it and you can use the Garbage-Icon to delete it. You also can check more entries or you tap the Checked-Icon beside the Garbage-Icon to check all and delete them.
"User Styles" is a feature for advanced users, who know about CSS. So this chapter is a bit more a technical description with less basic explanations.
In Aard 2 it is possible to use an own Stylesheet (CSS-file) to change the design of the dictionaries' contents.
You can use your own rules and save them to a css-file. You can choose this file now in the settings-tab of Aard 2 by hitting the "Plus"-Icon and choose them with the file-chooser of your system. Here is a screenshot:
You can see the "Plus"-Icon and the "Garbage"-Icon for the User Styles list. If the css-file is in the list, you can choose it in a dictionary through the menu button and the "Style..." submenu. You cannot make changes to the css-file after the import, if you want to change their content (the css-rules) you need to delete it through the "Garbage"-Icon and reload it with the "Plus"-Icon after you made the changes. So this could be a very slow thing to find the best rules but there is a way to get it faster:
Download aard2-web (it is a Java application) to your computer from:
https://github.com/itkach/aard2-web
and open a slob-file with this basic tool. Here you can use Firefox and all its css developer tools to find the right css for your dictionary. The css are the same for aard2-web and Aard 2 app on Android.
You will need to read the explanations on the README.org of Aard2 for Web, to get aard2-web running. It is explained there.