Marvin 3.0 feature requests

[Der]

In addition to being able to minimize the vertical margins (please! ), I'd also be interested in the ability to slow down Siri in the text-to-speech. In Settings -> General -> Accessibility, there is a slider for controlling how rapidly Siri speaks. I don't know if this control is usable by third-party developers, but if it is....

Oh, and as long as I'm on the subject of accessility...VoiceOver support could be improved by having no unnamed buttons.

[democrite]

Hey Kris,

If you haven't see this, Nook Android:



I am strongly convinced a dropdown with the most used settings would be both simple and clear for the average user, plus make the most often used settings most quickly available. In this screenshot, themes are immediately identifiable, and a long press could be used to customize + reset to default. I might choose how ever many themes would fit in a row, plus a last icon that is either settings or a + to add more or place theme addition and re-ordering in ePub preferences, then the row becomes scrollable if there are more. Other less used settings could be an icon, that shows a detail screen in the popup, and perhaps other less used settings like # of columns, justify, hypenation, … moved to ePub settings. Advanced ePub settings could also be a gear icon in the same popup and then the other in-book menu limited to what aren't ePub settings, like share, open in (SxS, …), etc. Lock-orientation, I'm not sure, perhaps it's unneeded and one could rely on the control center.

Other issues relating to needed margins on all sides, it is difficult as well to activate notification center or control center without triggering brightness adjustment. If it's possible to have the gesture be hold a finger or thumb somewhere on the screen, and then use another to slide, that could work.

Plus, all settings screens could use a search, as with iOS Settings and OS X Sys Preferences. Perhaps iOS doesn't have any built-in method to implement search, but very possibly they later will.

[moosejons_dad]

I don't know if this was discussed previously but I found using my iPad mini and iOS 9 that the page numbers are duplicated. Sometimes duplications occurred at the end of a chapter and the beginning of the next and now I am finding that the duplication to occur within the same chapter. Is anybody else experienced this problem?

[Faterson]

Yes, I confirm I'm seeing this. Not just duplication of page numbers, but sometimes also the opposite – jumps by 2 or 3 (instead of 1) when you flip the page, or even (on the 13-inch iPad Pro) jumps by 4 pages with a single page flip. I must say this only seems to occur in malformatted EPUB files, and it only occurs with the "pages in book" data – whereas "pages in chapter" seems to be 100% reliable. I reported this bug to Kris a week ago or so.

And no, I don't believe Jon's beloved "ADE-style page numbers" is the solution. Adobe? Now I'm shuddering... Please let's stay away from "anything Adobe". On the other hand, if Kris implements "ADE-style page numbers" later on to humour Jon and perhaps other Adobe fans, I have nothing against that, as long as the ADE-style would remain purely optional in Marvin. I would not switch to ADE-style page numbering even if it were available in Marvin right now. Like Kris himself, I very much prefer the "real-life" calculation of "pages left" that Marvin 3 attempts to do currently, even though it is buggy. But it's very nice to see that the same book may have 450 "pages"/screens on the 8-inch iPad mini, but only 280 "pages"/screens on the 13-inch iPad Pro, because that (unlike ADE-style page numbers) actually corresponds to the real-life sizes of those reading devices.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Yes, I confirm I'm seeing this. Not just duplication of page numbers, but sometimes also the opposite – jumps by 2 or 3 (instead of 1) when you flip the page, or even (on the 13-inch iPad Pro) jumps by 4 pages with a single page flip. I must say this only seems to occur in malformatted EPUB files, and it only occurs with the "pages in book" data – whereas "pages in chapter" seems to be 100% reliable. I reported this bug to Kris a week ago or so.

And no, I don't believe Jon's beloved "ADE-style page numbers" is the solution. Adobe? Now I'm shuddering... Please let's stay away from "anything Adobe". On the other hand, if Kris implements "ADE-style page numbers" later on to humour Jon and perhaps other Adobe fans, I have nothing against that, as long as the ADE-style would remain purely optional in Marvin. I would not switch to ADE-style page numbering even if it were available in Marvin right now. Like Kris himself, I very much prefer the "real-life" calculation of "pages left" that Marvin 3 attempts to do currently, even though it is buggy. But it's very nice to see that the same book may have 450 "pages"/screens on the 8-inch iPad mini, but only 280 "pages"/screens on the 13-inch iPad Pro, because that (unlike ADE-style page numbers) actually corresponds to the real-life sizes of those reading devices.

You don't get it at all. So don't berate a feature you have no understanding of. I have a Kobo Aura H2O and it uses ADE as the ePub reading software. having ADE page numbers in Marvin would mean that switching to/from iPhone/iPad to my H2O means all I need to do is go to the same page and I am where I left off. No need to search for some text so I can find my place.

I like having the number of screens left in a chapter. I am not asking for that to be removed. But there is room in the footer for adding in ADE page numbering. So this way everyone wins (and for me if it pisses you off, it's a double win).

[democrite]

I imagine page numbers would go something like this: 1. If there some already defined page numbering scheme that matches print, such as ADE page-map, daisy, or ePub 3, use it. 2. If not, calculate page number by number of screens, unique per device, margins, and font-size. Anything else is likely not possible or would be very difficult. The calculated ADE page numbers excludes images, as mentioned in other threads, and even if it were possible to calculate in iOS, it'd possibly be a pain to get reliably and likely would be nearly or impossible to get right. iOS does not have the ADE engine; it's a web view like Safari and Chrome.

[Faterson]

I fully understand ADE-style page-numbering. Really, what is there not to understand? And I repeat I'm not interested in it, because it's divorced from real life. I, too, read the same e-books on various platforms (Moon on Android for me), but still I'm not interested in ADE page numbers. I don't mind finding my reading location manually, using the "percentage in book" data. Really, given all the functionality gaps that Marvin and Moon still have today, making such a fuss over cross-platform reading location syncing seems overblown to me. I could name dozens of concerns that seem more urgent to me to fix both in Marvin and Moon.

Therefore, please don't assume that everyone is like you. What you're suggesting is for us to be flipping pages on our reading devices, often without the page number changing at all, just because Adobe doesn't consider that to be a page flip. It's just been reported as a bug by moosejons_dad, and I agree. Can anything be more divorced from real life?

But, again, I don't believe user preferences in software must be mutually exclusive. I'm all for Marvin giving each of us the option to choose whatever page-numbering style we prefer. You would pick ADE-style page numbering in Marvin, and I would not. That's it. That would be a true win-win situation – not the one you seemed to allude to, with imposing your own preference on all Marvin users.

As to cross-platform comparability of reading location – yeah, that's a real issue, but the solution does not, in my opinion, lie in something as arbitrary as ADE page numbers are. I like the percentage option a lot better – with two decimal numbers, however (72.48%). Kumabjorn started a thread recently where we concluded (I think) that cross-platform cooperation of e-reader software is pretty much a pipe-dream nowadays – unfortunately.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I like having the number of screens left in a chapter.

That's just your preference. I like seeing both pages left in chapter and pages ("real-life" pages, not ADE pseudo-pages) left in book displayed in the footer. I'm ecstatic that Marvin 3 finally makes this possible – it's one of the best improvements versus Marvin 2 for me.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I am not asking for that to be removed.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but Kris has confirmed that headers and footers customization via templates and placeholders is coming to Marvin 3, so you'll be able to put whatever you want in your headers and footers. If Kris makes it possible for you to put ADE-style page numbers in there, that's great! Any single solution is bad, because every Marvin user is different. Each of us would like to see something different in our headers and footers.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

for me if it pisses you off, it's a double win

No doubt. You've always been one of the "friendliest" MobileRead posters (not). Try not to get yourself banned outta here for the umpteenth time this time around, though, because you do have valuable input to bring to Marvin development.

[Kumabjorn]

Granted this is not a problem for most users. It has to do with selecting text from books in Japanese. They will sometimes contain what is called ruby or furigana small "super scripts" in order to aid the reader with unusual character, especially convenient when it comes to names. For someone doing research using Japanese books these names is something you often want to highlight so you can find them again, or perhaps add a note with some relevant data. However, Marvin won't allow the "text holders" (blue bars with a dot at the end) to scroll past characters with added furigana. Hence, I can't highlight the whole word and highlighting only one character might make me miss it when I later look for it.
I wanted to add a screenshot in the hope that it makes the problem clearer. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to do that from an iPad. There is no paste command available under Safari.

Being on the subject of highlights a real beneficial tool would be the ability to search for highlights by color. For example I might highlight places in pink, then being able to accumulate those in one color search would be productivity enhancing.

Edited: Graphic uploaded

[JSWolf]

Are embedded fonts when not using publisher layout going to be addressed? This has been an issue since Marvin 2 and it's still an issue now.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I wanted to add a screenshot in the hope that it makes the problem clearer. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to do that from an iPad. There is no paste command available under Safari.

These MobileRead forums don't support pasting screenshots anywhere, not even on the desktop computer. Instead, below the window where you're typing your post, you can see a Manage Attachments button. Press that, and it will allow you to submit a screenshot, even from a handheld device.

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Being on the subject of highlights a real beneficial tool would be the ability to search for highlights by color.

That is already possible – just press the top-right-corner button when viewing the annotations list, and you can filter annotations by colour.

However: this functionality is still useless for my purposes, because I typically need to search for highlights of multiple colours. So, in order for this filtering functionality to be truly useful (for me), it should allow us to filter out highlights of multiple colours (any combination of available highlight colours), not just a single colour. (I submitted that request to Kris several weeks ago.)

[Kumabjorn]

@Faterson
Appreciate the assistance. Wanted to send you some karma but system said I needed to spread it more widely.

[democrite]

It's something that I've thought about on and off over the years, but more recently since you Kris have provided places for people to offer feedback and are open to hearing it. If Apple long resisted larger screen sizes for iPhone and made a particular choice for its initial size, it is perhaps because certain parts of the UI are more easily accessible. On newer devices, the top toolbar perhaps remains difficult to use for some average hand size, or is at least more difficult than the bottom area, hence the older preference of bottom toolbars. If rumors are true, that may be also one of the reasons Apple is considering removing the home button.

I saw Maps in iOS 10. The persistant swipeable bottom panel is pretty interesting. Initially, I might think it's better reserved for UIs where there is no other toolbar. I'm not sure if it has its place in Marvin but perhaps for something like search. As you've added a bottom right search icon to return to search results, have you considered a bar that also includes previous/next buttons? One could also swipe up to more easily access search results, though I'm not sure if that is a good idea considering search will possibly be later accessible through a top toolbar button.

I was looking at various iOS readers and found this yesterday in Kobo:



I think panels that are more easily dismissable than by clicking the top left, for instance Deep View and search on iPad, where one can tap anywhere outside the panel to hide, may have their use for other things. TOC and annotations? Maybe. The size of the panel could be a bit bigger, maybe a bit more like app details on the App Store viewed on iPad, and perhaps match the aspect ratio in portrait either on iPad or iPhone as well if it finds use there. Such panels would reduce screen space for an element, for instance for long TOCs, but it is it worth it? Maybe.

[brokeass]

Adding a feature request for future expansions of annotation functionality, where possible:

- underline capability, with different colouring (not sure if this works in epub)
- page numbers number on journal entry

- select highlight colour without the whole entry window popping up
- a clear/delete highlight button on small context menu instead of bringing up the whole journal window (cf. PDF Expert)

These are just a couple of issues I feel will help with establishing flow when studying. Especially having the journal window pop up all the time feels kind of distracting/disturbing, when all I want is to change colour or delete highlighting.

Are these things feasable?

[alok]

Please allow downloading in the background. When I tried to import 100 books from Dropbox once I got Marvin, it took a fair while to download, and I could be reading in that time.

[petzi]

I noticed that after some update (I believe with 3.0.3) the numbers for references are drastically bigger now. Yes, it is easier now to tap them, but from my point of view it disturbs the reading experience. The line with the footnote now stands out of the text and is emphasized. This looks not nice aesthetically nor does it meet the importance of the footnote or reference link. (A reference is just a reference; many people even do not worry to look them up).

And it is not consistent as the attached picture with footnote and reference numbers demonstrates. And as it one of the use cases mentioned in the rationale for using both apps together, one could use Marvin and Marvin SxS in order to look up the footnote, so no tapping at all would be needed.

I therefore suggest to provide an option for the user to toggle between small or big reference notes.