New Reader with great pdf-support: Mantano Reader (like aldiko+ezpdf)

[Blossom]

I just love the Mantano Cloud feature! I was reluctant to try it because it cost a little extra and I had a Kindle Fire so I mainly used my Kindles to sync back and forth. After buying a non Kindle android device I started using Mantano again as the Kindle For Android app is just pretty watered down when you are use to a Kindle Fire.

I love Mantano! It just keeps getting better and better. I decided to give the 10 day trial a run. I think by day two I was hooked and the bought the basic plan for $10/yr. I can't see me ever needing more.

Not only does it upload my books to the Cloud and then adds to all my devices. I can access the cloud on my web browser and edit collections or download my books. It also imports collections just like a Kindle. You can delete a book from all devices too! How I wish my Kindles did this! It also syncs last page read, bookmarks...etc from the app. I am on cloud 9! WTG Mantano!

I really hope Mantano gets the Kindle Fire fix. I'd love to have the latest version although older versions work okay with the cloud. I am using 3 different ones and they all sync fine together. I do wish there was a search feature on the Cloud's website but the $10 a year to me is well worth it.

I am noticing selecting text seems to be harder on the latest version. I hope they get all the kinks worked out.

[pixiestyx]

Hrm. Have noticed that with the latest update to the Essentials version that the white screen bug seems to be back with a vengeance. Previously I had managed to avoid it most of the time by backing out of Mantano before letting the tablet rest, now that does not seem to make a difference.

[citac]

I am having trouble with fics downloaded from archiveofourown.com, specifically with bold on the summary page and italics in the text, where anything directly after bold/italics gets shifted all the way to the lef. A screenshot is attacheed and the tablet is Gtablet since my Asus Transformer is damaged at the moment. Version of Mantano is the latest paid edition. What is the cause of this?

The fics are downloaded via the fanfictiondownloader plugin for calibre. This never happens when I open the fics in another reader.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by citac

I am having trouble with fics downloaded from archiveofourown.com, specifically with bold on the summary page and italics in the text, where anything directly after bold/italics gets shifted all the way to the lef. A screenshot is attacheed and the tablet is Gtablet since my Asus Transformer is damaged at the moment. Version of Mantano is the latest paid edition. What is the cause of this?

The fics are downloaded via the fanfictiondownloader plugin for calibre. This never happens when I open the fics in another reader.

Try reconverting it in Calibre. Go in the look in feel box and checked the options in there. That should fix it.

[Movendi]

This app is nice but some things i think the developers should consider:

Epubs don't continously scroll smooth. It just abruptly changes to the next page when you click previous/next page. However when reading a pdf it scrolls nicely as if you're scrolling a website on chrome. Why would they change this functionality for epub???

Highlighting is still buggy and stubborn to capture the first letter in a paragraph, and usually hard to see where the highlight should end even with the magnifying glass. I think if they push the magnifying glass a little more out the way from the finger that should fix it.

DIY cloud. I can understand they want to tie in their product with their own services but what about the people that already have their own cloud services. I have a dropbox account and don't feel like spending more money on another cloud service. It would be great mantano can work by integrating with dropbox (last read position across any device, synchronize bookmarks/highlights/annotations and backup to dropbox)

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by Movendi

Epubs don't continously scroll smooth. It just abruptly changes to the next page when you click previous/next page. However when reading a pdf it scrolls nicely as if you're scrolling a website on chrome. Why would they change this functionality for epub???

Of course it changes pages, it's a book. ePub pages will normally reflow to fit the screen size, therefore what is visible on screen is the whole page. You don't expect to see the whole chapter of a paper book to be one massive page, so why would you expect an ebook reader to behave differently?

Granted, they could include an option I suppose for allowing this behaviour, but I'm not sure how popular it would be.

You do expect this in a PDF due to the fact that for the most part that are not reflowable. So a PDF page could be a fixed size, like A4, which would not well fit on a small screen device like a phone or a tablet.

This would mean that to see the whole page on the screen, you would need to zoom out to a point where it would most likely be unreadable. So you zoom in and see a section of the page, then scroll to the next section until you have read the whole page, you then move on to the new page.

The behaviour for both ePub and PDF as it is now, to me is very sensible and how I (and I imagine a large majority) would use it.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ghostyjack

The behaviour for both ePub and PDF as it is now, to me is very sensible and how I (and I imagine a large majority) would use it.

Ditto. The only time scrolling is acceptable for my use is if reflow isn't possible. Besides, I don't think I'd describe it as "abruptly changing to the next page." There's clear, visible indication that the current "page" is changing even without having the page-turn animations enabled.

[Movendi]

Originally Posted by ghostyjack

Of course it changes pages, it's a book. ePub pages will normally reflow to fit the screen size, therefore what is visible on screen is the whole page. You don't expect to see the whole chapter of a paper book to be one massive page, so why would you expect an ebook reader to behave differently?

Sorry i don't think you understood what i'm trying to achieve. I read books with vertical scrolling. Now if you open up any pdf reader and disable "continous scrolling" and press previous/next page button it will move up or down entirely by one page. BUT if you enable "continous scrolling" you can scroll an inch below the last paragraph, and see the first paragraph of the next page AND also seeing the previous page ontop of that. Basically you can see the bottom half of page 1 and the top half of page 2 on the same screen. That's what mantano does with its PDF's, but not on epub.

Moon Reader can "continous scroll" with any filetype and with text reflow. You can scroll slowly to read the next paragraph of the next page and it won't suddenly change to the next page. It's like scrolling a very long webpage but it still shows which page of the book you're on.

But on mantano, let's say you're at the last paragraph of one page, and you're ready to read the next but you're only choice is the press next page. But now you can't see the previous paragraph. However with "continuous scrolling" on most pdf readers you can still see the above paragraphs. Even in mantano this works with pdf but strangely enough not on epubs!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Movendi

Even in mantano this works with pdf but strangely enough not on epubs!

It's not strange at all. The vast majority of reading apps (Moon Reader notwithstanding) behave this way. Vertical scrolling of an ePub is just not something that's very common in most reading apps.

It's perfectly fine to wish Mantano could vertically scroll epubs, but it's another thing entirely to think it's common at all.

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by Movendi

Sorry i don't think you understood what i'm trying to achieve.

No, I understand what you mean, but as DiapDealer said, this behaviour in Mantano is not strange at all, it is the standard approach to ebook reading emplyed by all readers. Moon+ may have this option, but ever for it, it's not the default, the page-by-page view is.

I think one of the biggest reasons for this is the fact we are reading a book. With paper books, you have to turn pages to see the next part of the text. Having a chapter as one massive page (or, god forbid, the entire book), would make reading on page very unwieldy. And as we have been reading books in this fashion for such a long time (since scrolls went out of fashion), we tend to accociate reading with pages.

I personally would not enjoy reading a book in this vertical-scrolling fashion, I tried it and keep losing my place.

Reading by a page at a time also works to help bring new users over to ebooks, as they can transition to the non-paper format without having to read books in a different way (other than the obvious fact that the book is not in paper form).

Due to these - and I'm sure other people will have many more reasons for not wanting to read in vertical scrolling mode - this will not be a very common option for quite some time to come, if it ever does.

I would suggest leaving a suggestion on the Mantano site for this, if it is popular or easy enough, they may implement it. But due to the lack of popularity, don't expect them to rush out and do it, if they like the idea, they will get round to doing it eventually.

Also, because of the way PDF's have been used over the years, most people don't tend to treat them in the same way as you would a dedicated ebook format. The original PDF readers always had the vertical scrolling because it was neccessary for a fixed page-size document. So for most people, that's how PDF's are supposed to behave.

[DiapDealer]

Besides, I do believe Mantano will "paginate" a reflowable PDF if it can (and you want it to). The only reason it scrolls non-reflowable PDFs is because that's frankly the only thing you can do with them.

[skdutta]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I just love the Mantano Cloud feature! I was reluctant to try it because it cost a little extra and I had a Kindle Fire so I mainly used my Kindles to sync back and forth. After buying a non Kindle android device I started using Mantano again as the Kindle For Android app is just pretty watered down when you are use to a Kindle Fire.

I love Mantano! It just keeps getting better and better. I decided to give the 10 day trial a run. I think by day two I was hooked and the bought the basic plan for $10/yr. I can't see me ever needing more.

Not only does it upload my books to the Cloud and then adds to all my devices. I can access the cloud on my web browser and edit collections or download my books. It also imports collections just like a Kindle. You can delete a book from all devices too! How I wish my Kindles did this! It also syncs last page read, bookmarks...etc from the app. I am on cloud 9! WTG Mantano!

What I need is the bookmarks or annotations getting updated inside my book (means within the pdf or epub file), otherwise, in order to see the annotations you have to use mantano forever. This is inconvenient! I am not sure that they have a solution for this though!

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by Blossom

My problem with Moon Reader is that it's never read external style sheets correctly so you lose formatting. This may have been fixed by now.

This! I'm testing epubs I've created in a number of popular apps. Moon+ has the option to use publisher style sheets, but it just doesn't always read them right.

Further, selecting to enable publisher styles seems to DISABLE recognition of cover and title page images if they are in svg wrappers and I see completely blank pages! This is the ONLY app of the many I've used for testing that seems to have this problem, so I'm pretty sure it's not the code, which I found here on MR.

So I'm sticking with Mantano for my reader app.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by graycyn

This! I'm testing epubs I've created in a number of popular apps. Moon+ has the option to use publisher style sheets, but it just doesn't always read them right.

Further, selecting to enable publisher styles seems to DISABLE recognition of cover and title page images if they are in svg wrappers and I see completely blank pages! This is the ONLY app of the many I've used for testing that seems to have this problem, so I'm pretty sure it's not the code, which I found here on MR.

So I'm sticking with Mantano for my reader app.

That is what I use too. I have the cloud so I can sync back and forth as well.

[jillmess]

Another update out, but if you use night mode make sure you have a backup before updating. Night mode is now white on black only and, on my tab at least, has an annoying white line down both sides of the screen.

Jill