[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[MeSue]

Hey, Marvin fans... you might want to add your Marvin ratings and reviews on Goodreads to get the word out about it to more people.
http://www.goodreads.com/ereaders/438-marvin-for-ipad

[Turtle91]

Thanks Susan - just commented!

[Faterson]

I'm the last one to criticize (not being a Goodreads user myself), but perhaps a separate (second) review might be more beneficial than just a comment on a review.

Meanwhile, I have resubmitted my 5-star review for Marvin, Version 1.2, but it doesn't show up in the atrocious App Store even after many days. (My previous 5-star review for Marvin 1.1 never showed up there.) Nor is my 5-star rating for Marvin taken into account. Instead, my own App Store shows a single 2-star rating, 0 user reviews.

Boooooh, Apple, shame on you.

[Turtle91]

Yeah...it probably would. I only saw the comment key...not the "review" button. I'm not familiar with goodreads either!

[Kretzer]

Trying to open a very basic epub in Marvin, I found that it consistently cut off half of the lowest line. This stayed the same when I changed the font size and finally reset all the settings.
In Stanza, Bluefire and iBooks that didn't happen.

The book is a legal text that I formatted with Sigil. It has no CSS at all, so far I only marked the different levels of the headings (hierarchy is very important in the administration ).
Is this a problem of my inexpertly produced file or something Marvin does?

screenshot

[kguil]

Hi Kretzer. Sorry about that. Is the text in the public domain? Could you sent me an email or a PM with the book?

[Kretzer]

Sure, my reading app has this cool sharing feature!

Yes, it is in the public domain, but it is officially only available as pdf and .doc

[kguil]

Thanks.

[Faterson]

This issue came up during beta-testing, but in each successive Beta version, Kris reduced the issue, until apparently all the beta-testers' books were displaying correctly for us, so that it was reasonable to suppose that the issue was completely resolved. There can still be a "rogue" book or two, however, where the issue may unexpectedly rear its ugly head again, although as you say, Kretzer, there is no reason for this to be happening, based on the EPUB's code.

This is, in fact, no Marvin issue, but apparently an iOS (WebKit) bug -- sometimes, it can also be encountered (or intentionally reproduced) in Stanza, iBooks or other iOS e-readers. Only yesterday, I was posting to the Marvin betagroup two screenshots from Stanza on the iPhone, to illustrate the opposite of what you are reporting here: one and the same book (the same EPUB file) displays perfectly fine in Marvin for iPad, but in Stanza for iPhone, the same e-book has bottom lines cut off, both in Day Mode and Night Mode. Enjoy the two Stanza screenshots below. This is the first time in years I've seen this happening to such a critical degree in Stanza. The book is completely unreadable in Stanza on iPhone, so I had to switch to Apabi Reader for this particular book on the iPhone.

What happens is that the entire screen content is pushed downwards on the screen, resulting in a tall, empty top margin on the screen, and therefore not enough space left at the bottom of the screen for all lines that should be there. Just out of curiosity, Kretzer, have you tried adjusting paragraph spacing for this particular book? If so, does the issue go away, does it get worse, or does your preferred paragraph spacing make no difference?

[Kretzer]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Just out of curiosity, Kretzer, have you tried adjusting paragraph spacing for this particular book? If so, does the issue go away, does it get worse, or does your preferred paragraph spacing make no difference?

Now I tried with different paragraph spacing, and it always seams the same, also in landscape mode, but it never happens on all the pages.
It definitely looks better with smaller spacing, though ...

On a related note: If I don't want the headings to sit at the bottom of the page, can I set that in my file or is it the reader that has to handle this?
I am just starting to get into the formatting details, it's an interesting exercise.

[kguil]

Hi Kertzer. The position of the headers depends on how they are in the ePub. When you have a moment, do send me a copy of the book at support[at]marvinapp.com. I'd like to squash that bug.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I'm the last one to criticize (not being a Goodreads user myself), but perhaps a separate (second) review might be more beneficial than just a comment on a review.

Meanwhile, I have resubmitted my 5-star review for Marvin, Version 1.2, but it doesn't show up in the atrocious App Store even after many days. (My previous 5-star review for Marvin 1.1 never showed up there.) Nor is my 5-star rating for Marvin taken into account. Instead, my own App Store shows a single 2-star rating, 0 user reviews.

Boooooh, Apple, shame on you.

This *may* be because although people like you and I write reviews and rate things highly (I too rated 5, and wrote a review) others simply rate, and dont write. That way they can stay anonymous and not have to back up their low ratings. There are a lot of sociopaths in the world. The only solution is to get others to do it too.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Kretzer

If I don't want the headings to sit at the bottom of the page, can I set that in my file or is it the reader that has to handle this?

I don't use Sigil myself, but for example while creating an EPUB in Calibre, you can instruct it to insert a "screen break" before every heading. That way, you're guaranteed that a new chapter always begins on a new screen in Marvin and every other e-reader. You can instruct Calibre before which type of headings such a "screen break" should be inserted: only before big headings like <h1> and <h2>, or also before smaller headings of the <h3> and <h4> variety (which may not always look right).

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

This *may* be because although people like you and I write reviews and rate things highly (I too rated 5, and wrote a review) others simply rate, and dont write. That way they can stay anonymous and not have to back up their low ratings.

OK, but that still doesn't explain why my own rating and review are never accepted by the App Store? Forgetting for a moment about Apple's imbecilic geographical isolation of App Stores for every country: because I submitted a 5-star rating for Marvin 1.2 to my App Store many days ago, Marvin's average rating should be 3.5 stars right now, yes? If that jerk gave Marvin 2 stars and I gave it 5 stars, that's 3.5 stars on average. Instead, my review and rating never show up, and Marvin's average rating in my micro-country's App Store is, therefore, 2 stars, based on a single troll's rating.

How Apple can be so monumentally stupid in running the App Store in this way, is beyond me. I just discussed this with a friend from my own country yesterday -- that Apple is a legendary company especially when it comes to hardware, but in terms of software, they have little to be proud of, in my opinion (disregarding ancient history): witness the plethora of awful default iOS apps, as well as the excruciating App Store.

[Kretzer]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I don't use Sigil myself, but for example while creating an EPUB in Calibre, you can instruct it to insert a "screen break" before every heading. That way, you're guaranteed that a new chapter always begins on a new screen in Marvin and every other e-reader. You can instruct Calibre before which type of headings such a "screen break" should be inserted: only before big headings like <h1> and <h2>, or also before smaller headings of the <h3> and <h4> variety (which may not always look right).

Thanks. But I would not always want a screen break, only when the heading is low down on the screen, rather like some kind of orphan control. Ideally that would be adjusted to the level of the heading.

OK, but that still doesn't explain why my own rating and review are never accepted by the App Store? Forgetting for a moment about Apple's imbecilic geographical isolation of App Stores for every country: because I submitted a 5-star rating for Marvin 1.2 to my App Store many days ago, Marvin's average rating should be 3.5 stars right now, yes? If that jerk gave Marvin 2 stars and I gave it 5 stars, that's 3.5 stars on average. Instead, my review and rating never show up, and Marvin's average rating in my micro-country's App Store is, therefore, 2 stars, based on a single troll's rating.

This is strange, in my small country store it always says: "not enough ratings to show average", but the reviews do show up. Sometimes the ratings show up anyway ... Maybe there was some technical issue and you need to try again?

The country isolation must be due to legal differences, but there is no reason to keep the ratings and reviews separate (other than maybe language).
At least it's interesting to compare different countries, sometimes the ratings are very different even between Austria and Germany. Did you know you can change the country tag in the links and always get to the same app? Like "at" to "de" here: https://itunes.apple.com/at/app/marvin-ebooks-+-intelligence/id577374971?mt=8 ? That's the quickest way to look over the fence, but I don't think it works for all countries.

Re "trolls" and "jerks": I think people are entitled to freely express their opinion, even if it differs from ours, and even if indeed many reviews are stupid.

[Philantrop]

Alex, the most likely explanation is that your review somehow violated their guidelines. If you swore ("the fucking greatest app!"), added a link (even a "disguised" one; e. g. marvinapp.com/whatsnew) or something like that, your review will simply be rejected without any notice.

Suggestion: Here's my review from the German AppStore, try submitting that:

An amazingly well-done ebook reader with some unique features, e. g. DeepView which lets you analyse an ebook.
The developer is very responsive and picks up user suggestion eagerly, publishes them on his roadmap and implements them very, very quickly.
Now that 1.2 is out, Marvin undoubtedly is the most viable Stanza replacement on the iPad.
Once the iPhone version comes out (the dev is working on it), it's going to blow every other ebook reader out of the water.

I've helped testing Marvin 1.2 (for free, of course, and I'm not in any way related to its developer) and it was the best experience I've ever had working with an iOS dev.

So, the app is fantastic, its author a great guy and Marvin is free for the time being - if you have an iPad, go get it NOW! :-)