iPad Bookmaster - ePub and PDF reader for iOS

[thomasmorus]

Hallo Sbaylor

Some additonal request/ideas

Author/Author sort: I really like your Author field functions, especially the grpouping and that all authors are recognized. At the same time, to reduce the number of authors I would like a function so that only the first Authors are used, manig you can either show all authors differently in the Author Sort list or switch to a view which uses only the first author in the list

Book List View
I would like to show additonal Metadata Information in the book list view depending which view you are using, like show the set when you are in the all books view, or show the series name and number in the author view, or the author name

Unkown Series: Please get rid of the "Unknown Series" insert in the series view for books w/o any series information


Thanks for your support and best regards

Thomas

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

...
Concerning the Time stamp: I would be OK with the Time last edited on calibre; the problem with the timestamp at the moment is with the first load: Everytime you have to relaod yall your books all of them are under the same time - which renderes the Date added function useless (I have about 2000 books on Calibre; starting using calibre in 2008). I always was able to hold on to the orignall calibre libaery database but had to reload books to the Ipad (due to changing of device or reader apps) multible times, and therefore alwayse lost the time sorting function!
...

I did some follow-up experiments on calibre after my reply in post #89. Unfortunately, the update time-stamps cannot really be used as a proxy of "Date/Time Added". Even a minor change, such as the series number, on ONE book is sufficient to cause the update time-stamps of ALL books to the present time. Thus, you still won't get anything close to what you want--original Date Added to calibre.

There is nothing wrong with calibre per se, as the update time of each entry in any OPDS catalog (generated by calibre or not) is not necessarily the last modification time.

If you do want this feature badly enough, I do have a suggestion. Talk to the calibre developers (active on mobileread.com) and suggest them to include the value of the "Date" field of each book as part of its corresponding OPDS entry. As far as I know, this field is not part of the OPDS standard, but they have already done something similar for Tags, Series and Number by embedding them inside a standard <content> element.

Note that this suggestion is not app-specific. If there are enough calibre users who express their common wish for this feature AND calibre supports it in the future, BookMaster will support it too.

thomasmorus, please start another thread in calibre forum if you like to do so. Thanks.

[thomasmorus]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

I did some follow-up experiments on calibre after my reply in post #89.

Note that this suggestion is not app-specific. If there are enough calibre users who express their common wish for this feature AND calibre supports it in the future, BookMaster will support it too.

thomasmorus, please start another thread in calibre forum if you like to do so. Thanks.

Will so, now that I unterstand Thema Problem.
One other question: How can youmark a Book als read without opening the Book?
I have about 4000 Books transfered now and the apps is working markedly sower then be or, especially during startup?


Best regards

Thomas

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by tbergman

It seems to be the Long Press that causes me problems. My thumb just naturally ends up resting on the page Can that be disabled?
...

Originally Posted by tbergman

It would be great if you could add an option to allow disabling the long press gesture.
...

The next release, version 1.4, will add a gesture setting to turn off user selection by long press on EPUB pages. Hope your thumb will like it.

BTW, v1.4 is now waiting for App Store review.

[sbaylor]

1. Author/Author sort:
Only using first authors does sound a bit strange to me, especially when you have a digital instead of physical library, and your app is smart enough to pick out all authors of each book.

You said that your motivation for this feature is to reduce the number of authors in the "Arrange by Author" list. But how much percentage reduction are we talking about?

You've talked about owning over 4000 digitlal books. How many unique authors are there? How many first authors are there? Is the percentage difference between these two numbers really large enough to be worth the trouble?

2. Book List View:
We'll consider this suggestion.

3. Unknown Series:
You see, for each book set selected, no matter how you arrange the BookMaster Library, you can see the same set of books. Removing "Unknown Series" will break this nice property.

Perhaps a better name than "Unknown Series" is needed, as many books don't belong to any series in the first place. Any name suggestion from anyone?

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

Hallo Sbaylor

Some additonal request/ideas

Author/Author sort: I really like your Author field functions, especially the grpouping and that all authors are recognized. At the same time, to reduce the number of authors I would like a function so that only the first Authors are used, manig you can either show all authors differently in the Author Sort list or switch to a view which uses only the first author in the list

Book List View
I would like to show additonal Metadata Information in the book list view depending which view you are using, like show the set when you are in the all books view, or show the series name and number in the author view, or the author name

Unkown Series: Please get rid of the "Unknown Series" insert in the series view for books w/o any series information


Thanks for your support and best regards

Thomas

[sbaylor]

You can't mark a book as "read" without opening it. When you close the book, that time is remembered automatically as "Date Last Read" with a pie-chart showing the reading progress (0-100%). If the book is never read, then there is no pie-chart.

In general, the more books you have in the Library, the longer it takes to startup the app (from the time you tap the icon to the time the Library view is fully rendered). But it should not be much longer. Please tell us the exact number of seconds of the startup process you encounter, your iPad model, and the number of books of each format (EPUB vs. PDF).

Thanks.

P.S. If you prefer to give more information in private, feel free to send us email.

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

Will so, now that I unterstand Thema Problem.
One other question: How can youmark a Book als read without opening the Book?
I have about 4000 Books transfered now and the apps is working markedly sower then be or, especially during startup?


Best regards

Thomas

[tbergman]

That's great news. Can't wait to try it.

Thanks,

Tom

Originally Posted by sbaylor

The next release, version 1.4, will add a gesture setting to turn off user selection by long press on EPUB pages. Hope your thumb will like it.

BTW, v1.4 is now waiting for App Store review.

[thomasmorus]

Concerning books with multiple authors
About 25% ,as I have a lot of anathologies

As this is my 3rd ebook reader apps I am using, I would really appreciated a feature to easy mark books as read

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

...
As this is my 3rd ebook reader apps I am using, I would really appreciated a feature to easy mark books as read

BookMaster already keeps track of the last time you read (close) a book as "Date Last Read". Following your line of reasoning, by marking multiple books as "read" without actually opening/reading/closing them in one batch operation implies giving them the same "Date Last Read" timestamp -- the time when the action is taken (now?) and the same reading progress (100%?). Is that really what you want?

IF what you really want is just to be able to put aside the books you have finished reading or don't want to finish anymore, so that you can focus on the rest, THEN there is already an easy solution. Just create a book set and name it as, say, "Books Read Before", and copy those books you want to mark as read from "All Books" to "Books Read Before".

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Perhaps a better name than "Unknown Series" is needed, as many books don't belong to any series in the first place. Any name suggestion from anyone?

I think "No Series" as suggested is a better name than "Unknown Series". I vote for it.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by cedhax

I think "No Series" as suggested is a better name than "Unknown Series". I vote for it.

Or even simpler "none"

[MSWallack]

I certainly prefer "no series" or "none" to "unknown series". If the point is that the series must have some sort of entry, why not just use "-"?

[sbaylor]

I'm very pleased to announce two pieces of good news
#1 Version 1.4 of our BookMaster (SE and CE) apps are now available on the App Store
#2 The re-designed website for BookMaster is now available at https://www.maplepop.com


#1 Version 1.4
This is a major release laying the groundwork for future sync services via our own secure cloud service.
- Book reading progress is supported now; more attributes will be supported later.

Other changes include:
- Added a system setting to choose between app-specific or system brightness control
- Added a gesture setting to turn off user selection by long press on EPUB pages
- Added San Francisco font for both EPUB text and heading (iOS 9 required)
- Turned the current book set label into a toggle button that hides and shows the library search bar
- Added support of downloading themes and scenes from OPDS catalogs
- Enhanced support of calibre-specific extension to OPDS catalog for importing book series and volume
- Addressed issues with the behavior of popover views when the device is rotated with unlocked orientation
- Addressed issues with import/download queue status management
- Addressed issues with concurrent downloading of multiple copies of a new book
- Addressed issues with the book cover image picker built as a specialized browser
- Addressed issues with some gesture conflict when an EPUB page is turned
- Addressed issues with EPUB page display when column rule is on and the font size is very small
- Fixed minor UI inconsistency in various places

Thanks for users at this forum who have requested features or reported issues that are now taken care by this release. Your feedback of the new implementation would be appreciated.


#2 New Website
This re-designed website contains a lot of useful information including screenshots to illustrate the feature-richness of this app. It should be very helpful for both new and old users to discover and re-discover BookMaster.

- The feature difference between SE and CE is now more clearly highlighted in Features.
- Some of the new features added in v1.4 and previous versions are illustrated in What's New.
- User reviews from various sources are collected in Reviews.
- Screenshots used for illustration in Features can be played as a slide show in Gallery.

I hope you'll like v1.4 and the new website.

[Cloudmaker]

Great update, thanks.
Is there any ETA on online (offline?) dictionary integration?

[peekpoke]

Any news on iPhone version now that v1.4 is out?