Marvin as a cloud front-end

[taguntumi]

Love the app. I imagine one version will make Marvin easier to update?

What I would love to see is a move away from the library is on the device to a model where Marvin is a viewer of the library in a cloud storage location, this is surely more realistic than you keep all your ebooks on your phone which seems to be the current approach. You could then download local ones as you need - multiple books if necessary.

Real automatic syncing where it always goes to the furthest page across your devices.

Thanks


Ian

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by institute

OK. Had Marvin for iPad and bought the 5.99 theme pack to support development. About a week ago I bought the iPhone version for 5.99 and again bought the theme pack for it, at 5.99. So I paid the full load.

Now I have updated to the new Universal version of Marvin but it wants me to pay for the theme pack again? Is there a way to restore one of the two the packs I have already purchased? Thanks.

Do not worry; you will not be charged again. (Kris might let you know details, but you can restore your purchase 100%.)

Originally Posted by taguntumi

What I would love to see is a move away from the library is on the device to a model where Marvin is a viewer of the library in a cloud storage location

Great idea. Absolutely: the cloud is the future. I regard keeping all books locally on a device (never mind if iPad or iPhone) as obsolete. Instead, I keep all my books in Calibre, and Calibre's Library is mirrored in the cloud in my SugarSync account. I only load a few books into my Marvins (and their libraries) on demand.

Originally Posted by chilady1

When I went to Marvin's blog and followed the App store link from there it provided Marvin (free edition) which I believe is the new Universal edition of Marvin.

Nope, the free version should be a different one. App Store can be pretty chaotic for a few days whenever changes like these occur, so we might need to give it some time until everything settles down.

Congrats to Kris on the baby Marvin's 1st birthday! There's still a long way ahead in improving the app, but even in its current state, it is, hands down, the finest e-reader software I've ever encountered on any platform.

[Philantrop]

Originally Posted by taguntumi

What I would love to see is a move away from the library is on the device to a model where Marvin is a viewer of the library in a cloud storage location

This has been possible by several means for a long time already. :-)
You can use

- Dropbox to access the most recent 1000 books (Dropbox API limitation),
- use the OPDS function to access *any* OPDS-compatible feed (OPDS being the de-facto standard), e. g. Calibre server and
- the built-in web browser allows you to access almost any website (e. g. some random cloud service) which stores your ebooks.

Time to celebrate, eh? ;-)

Originally Posted by taguntumi

Real automatic syncing where it always goes to the furthest page across your devices.

Synching is always just one tap away (the cloud icon in the lower left corner when you're reading). I agree, though, that an *option* for automatic synching would be nice.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Philantrop

This has been possible by several means for a long time already. :-)
You can use

- Dropbox to access the most recent 1000 books (Dropbox API limitation),
- use the OPDS function to access *any* OPDS-compatible feed (OPDS being the de-facto standard), e. g. Calibre server and
- the built-in web browser allows you to access almost any website (e. g. some random cloud service) which stores your ebooks.

That's not what taguntumi and myself have in mind, Wulf. We'd like to have the same very nice user interface offered by Marvin's Library now, except that (most of) the book files themselves could be (optionally!) stored in the cloud, instead of locally as now. Look at the Kindle app: two Library divisions there -- one for "files on device", another (with the same interface!) for "files everywhere" (device + cloud). That's what I'd like to see in Marvin, too.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Kindle is a primitive app, so with the limited functionality the Kindle library provides, it's easy for them to achieve what taguntumi and myself would like to see in Marvin. (The Dropbox, OPDS and web browser interfaces are completely different things.)

I have posted taguntumi's suggestion to GitHub:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/226

Originally Posted by Philantrop

Synching is always just one tap away (the cloud icon in the lower left corner when you're reading). I agree, though, that an *option* for automatic synching would be nice.

You bet! The best proposal on this, by far, was made by our fellow user Artbatista several months ago, see here:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/112

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by chilady1

Great idea but way too confusing for me to keep them both straight!

Here is where the theme colours (both in terms of user interface, and inside the books) come in handy. On my iPad 3, the universal Marvin runs in the default red interface, and the books are typically metallic_gold-on-black there. In "the other Marvin", the interface is purple, and the books are typically asparagus-on-black. Impossible to confuse the two Marvins then! The only confusing aspect are two identical Marvin icons in the iOS environment, but I can live with that.

By the way, this again shows the value of taguntumi's Library proposition: if Marvin's Library were (also) cloud-based, then I would automatically get to see the same books in both Marvins (in both of their Libraries). As it is now, I need to load every book manually into each of the two Marvins on iPad, then again on iPhone, and finally on iPad 1. That is 4 repetitive, manual steps that a cloud-based Library could reduce to a single step. (I'm not counting the "push cloud button to download book" action as a manual step, because that's trivial and non-time-consuming.)

[taguntumi]

Originally Posted by Faterson

That's not what taguntumi and myself have in mind, Wulf. We'd like to have the same very nice user interface offered by Marvin's Library now, except that (most of) the book files themselves could be (optionally!) stored in the cloud, instead of locally as now. Look at the Kindle app: two Library divisions there -- one for "files on device", another (with the same interface!) for "files everywhere" (device + cloud). That's what I'd like to see in Marvin, too.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Kindle is a primitive app, so with the limited functionality the Kindle library provides, it's easy for them to achieve what taguntumi and myself would like to see in Marvin. (The Dropbox, OPDS and web browser interfaces are completely different things.)

I have posted taguntumi's suggestion to GitHub:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/226



You bet! The best proposal on this, by far, was made by our fellow user Artbatista several months ago, see here:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/112

Exactly. At the moment Dropbox is a source of books but the main library is deemed to be on the device, I'd like to see that switched. I am using Calibre but finding it bit clunky I probably need to play with it a bit more.

With regard to syncing, my point was two fold. It would be great if it was automatic, but also if it was more reliable as it sometimes asks me if I want to go to a page from another device which is earlier than the page displayed on the current device.

Thanks



Ian

[Philantrop]

Originally Posted by taguntumi

Exactly. At the moment Dropbox is a source of books but the main library is deemed to be on the device, I'd like to see that switched.

That should be strictly *optional*. I exclusively use Calibre server (headless) on one of my servers and I wouldn't want a mixed up library.

Originally Posted by taguntumi

With regard to syncing, my point was two fold. It would be great if it was automatic, but also if it was more reliable as it sometimes asks me if I want to go to a page from another device which is earlier than the page displayed on the current device.

That's a feature (one I don't like either - it should never sync backwards, that just doesn't make much sense), not a bug. Some people seem to think synching backwards is just the thing.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Philantrop

That should be strictly *optional*.

Of course. Ian and myself might put our main Libraries in the cloud, and you might not. No problem.

Originally Posted by Philantrop

That's a feature (one I don't like either - it should never sync backwards, that just doesn't make much sense), not a bug.

I can't quite agree -- a purported feature behaving, in effect, like a bug might as well be called a bug. Besides, some of the current syncs may be performed against the will of the user at inopportune moments (your nightly reading situation you once described), putting the "last read" position backwards without the user realizing it happened. We really need syncing configurability along the lines proposed by Art (he also mentioned the aspect of backwards syncing; you might simply disable such syncing, and that's it).

[MeSue]

Originally Posted by Philantrop

That's a feature (one I don't like either - it should never sync backwards, that just doesn't make much sense), not a bug. Some people seem to think synching backwards is just the thing.

There are fringe cases for syncing backwards – for instance, a complete works collection, instructional book, recipe book, short story collection, or other type of book which you might not be reading from front to back.

[Faterson]

More on this:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...64#post2694564