Hiya Mark!

whoops, sorry -- hello, Leora!

I apologize for any delay there

how can I help you today?

no prob

sec going back to privacy

how are you Mark?

OK, and you?

not bad, i have a side freelance project i talked to you about a couple of months ago

so 2 things on this

first FYI it's a rewrite, last updated 4 years ago and even then it was just emergency bug fixes

so, first of all i restructured the project for AS

but one thing to keep in mind that i can't change the fact that the lite and full versions are 2 different package names

OK

so the thing with this app - a toddler card game - it has heavy resources - supports 17 languages, each gameboard has 12 cards, each card has 5-6 different mp3's - in each language

oof

I hope those MP3s are small

the lite version has 2 different gamboards, the full has 6...so 300 something mp3's for each language in full

yeah they're pretty small, like 9-10k each. it's just saying 'cat' or 'bell' in the language

the original (current in store apk) is 350MB!

so i have a few choices. organize the languages in their separate raw folders, and hopefully with dynamic delivery this will work

or make each language a library...

i mean most parents will not want all the languages

what do you think?

personally, I would focus first on just trying find ways to get the audio size down

for example, you could run an experiment: make a list of all the words, and make a single MP3 recording of you reading each of those words in sequence

see how big that file is compared to the sum of all the individual MP3 files

if the single file is significantly smaller, you could try using that one file, and seeking to the correct millisecond offset to play that one word, stopping playback after a particular duration

this would be the audio equivalent of a sprite file for images, where you pack all the images into a single image file and use the pieces as needed

i would think that would be resource-consuming

oh i didn't know

it's just one thought

would i be able to join all the files together though?

I'm sure there are desktop tools for that

i don't know 17 languages yet. i'm impressed with myself that i know 2±

!

ok

basically, shrinking the data requirements in general benefits everyone

and what do you think of the split apk/dynamic delivery/library ideas?

I am not a fan of app bundles, but that is because I am security nut -- for the purposes of a flashcard app for toddlers, they should be fnie

er, fine

if you organize the MP3s by locale in raw resources, I would expect the app bundles to be able to handle them the same way they handle string resources by locale

I can't guarantee that they do, as I have not run that particular experiment, but it seems likely

exactly

the advantage of app bundles is that the user does not have to get involved

i hope it is simple as it seems - that when i change the locale, the language will download automatically

right

yes i hope so

I assume that the "library" approach means you would have the user download a ZIP file or something containing the MP3s for a language

yes

that implies that the user has connectivity when they first run the app, which may or may not be the case

with app bundles, they should get their current locale(s) downloaded at the point of installation

i guess i would check for device default for first install

and then manage it through SplitInstallManagerFactory

yeah, good point, maybe for first install i could only have english as default

I have not used that, so I cannot really comment on it

ok, one sec i want to remember my 2nd question - i've been at my 'regular job' a few days and need to remember exactly

oh yes

because the app has 2 packages (boooo), if a user buys the full version, i can't smoothly convert him to full

they will simply receive the full version and have to uninstall the free on their own right?

i'm trying to think of a way to work around this.

also complicated cause now the app owner wants me to add the option of a subscription

yes, though you could point out "hey, you are running the full app and no longer need the free one! would you like to uninstall it?" when they launch the full app

true

so if someone unsubscribes from the full then....?

I don't know what "unsubscribes" would mean in this case

i guess they would reinstall the free

to cancel subscription

I have not worked with Play Store subscriptions, or even used one as a user, so I have no idea how those work, sorry

ok no prob

I assume that the full app at the moment is a traditional pay-up-front paid app

at the moment yes

i'm sorry i forgot about another q i have regarding flavors

is it ok?

go right ahead!

thank you:

i'm a bit confused how to structure them....

at the moment i made a main, full, lite, and even 2 - another full version with different content

in the past, the full and lite and 2 inherited from the main

so i thought, so as not to duplicate resources in lite and full,

to put the resources in the main, and have full and lite take them from main

OR just have the java classes in main, and have full take resources from lite and full

I do not know how that second one would work

if the first option the 2 app would have to override the main resources

if there is a fairly clean separation between the different sets of resources, and there is a simple set of rules for combining them for a given flavor, you might consider putting the resources in library modules

then, have a flavor depend on the right set of library modules to pull in the necessary resources

then that would cancel the app bundle idea

I don't think so

app bundles certainly allow you to use library modules

oh i didn't think of that

a library module is no different than any other dependency, other than it happens to be in source form in your project

i only know of putting for example raw-en, raw-he, etc

besides, things like Instant Run depend a lot on specially-constructed library modules

right, but I assume that you need some amount of language separation for all of those flavors

i would looooove for my local proj to ignore compiling resources til i need them. it's hard to run when they are all in the editor

I do not know enough about your flavors and your resources to give you a specific solution -- I am merely mentioning that library modules is another tool in your toolbox

ok, thanks so much for the support

OK, that's a wrap for today's chat

as usual, the transcript will be posted to https://commonsware.com/office-hours/ shortly

the next chat is Tuesday at 7:30pm US Eastern

have a pleasant day!