[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[maxjens]

Originally Posted by Meemo

And I'm still dealing with having two separate files for almost every author in Dropbox - there's a Lastname/Firstname folder for each author, as well as a Firstname/Lastname folder.

In calibre you can search your library with the following statement

Author:"~,"

It will return all author names with a , in it.

Then select them all and bulk edit the metadata in Bulk, and do a search and replace. In de image supplied you can see what should be in all the fields. All the names will be corrected.

Now all your books are having the correct author name (fn ln) and the correct author sort name (ln, fn).

Trouble is that your books were allready in Calibre so duplicates will still be there.

To mitigate this i first load books in a temporary library, then do the above. After that i export them to the final library. All duplicates will be gone, depending on yours settings in Calibre.

[SharonK]

Originally Posted by Faterson

SugarSync is even smarter than Dropbox in this regard: it lets you just specify any folder from your computer that should be mirrored in SugarSync. So, you need to change absolutely nothing: you simply instruct SugarSync to monitor your Calibre "Books" folder, and that's it!

If anything is unclear, just ask.

I'm trying to get SugarSync working and may have missed something. I installed the program on my computer and selected the Calibre folder to sync. Then I went into SugarSync on my iPad. When I click on Calibre there's nothing there. And I can't seem to get back to the list of SugarSync files because there's no back button. Oh boy do I feel dumb at the moment. But I love the fact that the program doesn't move the actual folder.

Sorry, one more question. Do I search for the books in SugarSync and open to Marvin, or add SugarSync to Marvin and search there.

[Faterson]

By "Calibre folder" you mean the "Books" folder, right?

Don't worry, all the books will appear there. But SugarSync has been known to take much longer than Dropbox for the initial synchronization. Afterwards, the synchronization is a lot more prompt. For me, the first-time sync took a few hours, before the books were mirrored online. What does your SugarSync icon in the Mac OS/Windows status bar look like? If it's a green circle, then the books are still only being uploaded. If it looks like a little green bird -- only then are all of your files in sync and ready to be accessed online.

SugarSync isn't integrated directly within Marvin. So what you do is, you open the SugarSync app on your iPad, open Calibre's "Books" folder, and inside there, every writer will have his/her own folder, and then each work inside the writer's folder will also have its own folder. To me, that's very easy to browse, so I can quickly locate any book I need to load into Marvin.

I can also recommend you the excellent, free Documents by Readdle app. It allows you to access both Dropbox and SugarSync (and other cloud services) from the same place (one app). So, if you for some reason don't like the SugarSync app, you can also just open Documents by Readdle and access your SugarSync files from there, loading them into Marvin that way.

[SharonK]

Originally Posted by Faterson

By "Calibre folder" you mean the "Books" folder, right?

Don't worry, all the books will appear there. But SugarSync has been known to take much longer than Dropbox for the initial synchronization. Afterwards, the synchronization is a lot more prompt. For me, the first-time sync took a few hours, before the books were mirrored online. What does your SugarSync icon in the Mac OS/Windows status bar look like? If it's a green circle, then the books are still only being uploaded. If it looks like a little green bird -- only then are all of your files in sync and ready to be accessed online.

SugarSync isn't integrated directly within Marvin. So what you do is, you open the SugarSync app on your iPad, open Calibre's "Books" folder, and inside there, every writer will have his/her own folder, and then each work inside the writer's folder will also have its own folder. To me, that's very easy to browse, so I can quickly locate any book I need to load into Marvin.

I can also recommend you the excellent, free Documents by Readdle app. It allows you to access both Dropbox and SugarSync (and other cloud services) from the same place (one app). So, if you for some reason don't like the SugarSync app, you can also just open Documents by Readdle and access your SugarSync files from there, loading them into Marvin that way.

Once again you have helped me solve the problem. After you told me how to know the entire library was in sync, I went out to SugarSync on my iPad to check. Sure enough I have missed something. Down on the left hand side it says "My SugarSync". I was clicking there and finding nothing. This time I noticed my computer listed at the top. Clicking on that brought all my books up, so I'm good to go. I also already own Documents by Readdle so I can compare the different ways they download. Once again, thank you so much. If it weren't for the great people on the forum who help, some on us might still be lost.

[mariosipad]

I collect my e-books with Calibre on my desktop but I connect Marvin with OPDS Catalogs to my (headless Debian) server running COPS = Calibre OPDS (and HTML) PHP Server.

Today I noticed that COPS was missing a feature which is available with a direct link to Calibre OPDS.

I can not search in COPS, the magnifying glass icon is missing.

Kris, can you make Marvin even more awesome by adding the search options in COPS? I would be gratefull.

I have added two screen(prints):
1 - Calibre with magnifying glass
2 - COPS without magnifying glass (you can check it with this link to the COPS OPDS Catalog. Add to Marvin).

[kguil]

Hi Mario, I'll look into it.

[wwat]

kguil,

I was wondering whether you had plans of providing the ability to index ebooks?
I envision that the indexing function would create a hyperlinked list of words that would show chapter and page number etc just like a real book. This would be so helpful and is one of the aspects of a real book I most miss when using the eReader.

Thank you.

[kguil]

Hi wwat. Right now the closest thing Marvin can do, similar to what you need, is deep view. Indexing by page numbers is a bit more difficult since they'll change whenever you change your layout (such as font size). I'm also working on some ideas to make indexing easier.

[wwat]

I'm aware of the deep view feature but that just doesn't meet my needs for what I'm doing.

Indexing and providing interesting ways to search the whole book (and by chapter etc) using booleans with a list feature where you are presented with a list of hits that match the search etc.
A dynamically sortable index with hyperlinks would also be phenomenal. - I know these are not small requests but they would make your product stand right out in front for study material and research purposes


The page numbering is not so important.

thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Originally Posted by kguil

Hi wwat. Right now the closest thing Marvin can do, similar to what you need, is deep view. Indexing by page numbers is a bit more difficult since they'll change whenever you change your layout (such as font size). I'm also working on some ideas to make indexing easier.

[kguil]

Hi wwat, I took note of your feature requests and will experiment with some ideas. Within a couple of versions I'll be making a number of improvements to Marvin's search tool and will keep your ideas in mind to improve it.

[wwat]

Thank you very much for considering this feature request. I have sent an email with some further information.

[Kretzer]

Originally Posted by wwat

I'm aware of the deep view feature but that just doesn't meet my needs for what I'm doing.

Indexing and providing interesting ways to search the whole book (and by chapter etc) using booleans with a list feature where you are presented with a list of hits that match the search etc.
A dynamically sortable index with hyperlinks would also be phenomenal

wwat, I'm curious: What would you actually get from an index, i.e. a fixed list of words? I know they are useful in printed books, but printed books don't have search functions. And indices are often frustrating, when they don't show the terms you are looking for.

Search functions are in many ways superior to "old school" indices, because they are more flexible, as you said, you can search for parts or combinations of words.

I would really appreciate being able to search the entire book, though. Didn't you say, Kris, that this is on the roadmap for one of the next updates?

[kguil]

Kretzer, definitely. One other thing you'll be able to do is save search results and bring them up/switch to them on demand.

[wwat]

Originally Posted by Kretzer

wwat, I'm curious: What would you actually get from an index, i.e. a fixed list of words? I know they are useful in printed books, but printed books don't have search functions. And indices are often frustrating, when they don't show the terms you are looking for.

Hi Kretzer,

Sometimes you don't know what you are looking for, you don't know the word for the idea or theme so it helps to have a few pages of words, hyperlinked back to the word in the book, that you can quickly scan through. Kind of like you don't know what you don't know if that makes sense. This is especially true with difficult scientific or religious texts.

A synonym search criteria function would also be helpful, often you see this in the index of a book where it lists a word and next to it, it says 'see such and such a word'. That would certainly be a challenge though.

Having said that I could get by with a really good search system and the ability to save searches.

[maxjens]

Kguil, in my use of Marvin i noticed that i mostly navigate between my library and the book i am currently reading. This now takes several steps, book - home screen - library - home - book.

If you go from book to home you do that screen flip. Could you perhaps add a button to flip between book and library and back. Or introduce a swipe that does the same.