Moon+ reader pro idiot guide please

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

the fairly "standard" formatting experience that most ebooks I purchase already conform to fairly well.

Really?! My experience is that most e-books, including those sold commercially, are atrociously formatted. Seeing them as set up by their publishers, would likely give me massive headaches, which is why I consider extensive layout customisation options such as those offered by Moon+ Reader to be of primary importance among e-reader app features.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I already have apps that do what I prefer.

Can you give a few examples of such apps? I might check them out. I have a manually crafted EPUB test file I use to test e-reader apps, which is exactly how I know how rare it is to encounter an app offering "publisher fidelity" by default. Not even market leaders like Kindle do that.

[DiapDealer]

I don't want to get into a "my app is better than your app" kind of of thing. That's not my intent. I use Mantano Premium because of all the apps I've tested, it seemed to do the best job of rendering the epub (a well-formed, validated epub with epub2-compliant css) as it was created to be displayed. It's not perfect, there are quirks, but it's in the ballpark. I'm not looking for a totally homogenized reading experience across all books anyway. There are few things I like to be consistent, yes, but other than that. I'm perfectly OK with subtle, stylistic, typographic differences. In fact I encourage it.

I'm all for having the ability to override just about everything and everything a user might conceivably want to customize. I just don't believe all of that extra flexibility should (or needs to) come at the expense of NOT being able to display the epub as its creator intended (should a user desire to do so). That's what I'm up against with Moon+.

Originally Posted by Faterson

Really?! My experience is that most e-books, including those sold commercially, are atrociously formatted. Seeing them as set up by their publishers, would likely give me massive headaches

That's not been my experience. Most of the stuff I buy is relatively close to what I want (no extra paragraph spacing, first-line indent on paragraphs). The only things I typically might want to override are top & bottom page margins, left-right page margins, and the basic font. If it's anything more atrocious than that, I'm going to edit the ePub in question and "fix" the atrocities anyway. The problem I have, is that after I go to the trouble of fixing an ePub and editing it to be the exact way I want it (a validated, compliant, nothing fancy, cleanly formatted epub mind you), Moon+ seems incapable of displaying it the way I intend the ePub to render. Many other epub reading apps (including ADE or most other RMSDK-based apps/devices) are able to do a decent job of rendering it as it was intended.

I don't care if people want to override anything and everything they want in an epub to customize their experience--that's great. But it just doesn't make sense to me that an epub reading app would be incapable of displaying a properly formatted epub at least close to the way it's creator intended. Especially when all of the CSS overrides have supposedly been turned off. *shrugs*

So .... Moon+ is clearly not for me. Lesson learned. I suggest we all get back to reading in whatever way makes us most happy. Deal?

[Faterson]

Absolutely! Incidentally, I have also purchased Mantano Premium, but for now, have settled for Moon+ Pro as my primary reader on Android, precisely because of its (as I see it) more plentiful layout customisation options. The top feature I was missing in Mantano when I last tested it, if I remember correctly, was paragraph spacing. That setting is a must for me. In contrast, the only missing formatting setting I've seen in Moon+, is the size of the first-line indent. It's only "yes or no" in Moon+, but I'd like to specify its exact size (I prefer 0.35cm). That's regrettable, but not as big a deal as a missing paragraph spacing setting.

By the way, there may be a connection: from debates with app developers, I gather that paragraph spacing is perhaps the most difficult layout setting for a software developer to implement properly in an e-reader app. Which is why you see this formatting option -- crucial to me -- offered in relatively few e-reader apps; it's tough to implement. All sorts of issues with cut-off lines at the bottom or top of the screen can occur. I understand that some apps' ignoring (at least partially) the publisher's CSS, particularly the top and bottom margin specifications inside CSS, might be connected precisely to those apps being able to customise paragraph spacing. In other words: if you don't allow the adjustment of paragraph spacing, it may be easier for you to fully adhere to the publisher's CSS. To me at least, however, the ability to customise paragraph spacing is far more important than 100% adherence to the publisher's CSS; after all, my and the publisher's typographic tastes are likely to differ markedly, anyway.

[davire]

Dear Faterson, I have read your discussion with DiapDealer about the possibility or not of reading the epubs in "the way the publisher formatted them".

I would like to use Moon+ Reader, but I'm not able to configure it in order to see the "extra blank space" left between paragraphs when there is a "change of scene" inside a chapter.

If I switch to "Preview mode with publisher formattings" I see this spaces, but in the normal view not.



Do you know how to set Moon+ Reader to see them?

Thanks,

[Faterson]

I believe, davire, you may be using spacing between paragraphs that is so huge (looks like a full empty line) that the difference compared to that intentional section break all but disappears. Try reducing your paragraph spacing to, say, an empty half-line (that's the paragraph spacing I prefer); perhaps the section break will become more prominent then?

The trouble with switching away from publisher's mode, is you are essentially thereby giving permission to Moon+ to reformat the entire book according to your customised instructions. This usually works out fine, but in your particular book, it produced an undesirable effect. The flaw could be in Moon+'s parsing of the book, or in non-standard coding of the book itself (just because the section break looks fine in publisher's mode, doesn't guarantee it's coded properly; for example, it could be an amateurish sequence of <br><br><br> tags). Try reducing paragraph spacing in the book to see if it helps any.

[DiapDealer]

That's one of those things that I found to be "all or nothing" with Moon+. I use the css margin-top property to assign extra space for scene-breaks, first paragraphs and such. But when applying any Moon paragraph-spacing overrides, I found that it wanted to use that setting for ALL paragraph spacing... regardless of any extra margin-top the original CSS may have specified.

[Faterson]

Ah, so that's a book of your own making. Yes, I can confirm similar issues with e-books created by myself; properties like margin-top, margin-bottom frequently get disrespected by all kinds of e-reader software. The best e-reader I know, Marvin for iOS, also used to have this particular issue, but after users complained, Marvin's developer fixed it so that now, margin-top and margin-bottom settings seem to be consistently respected even when outside of Marvin's "publisher mode", and even after the user adjusts the default paragraph spacing. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to notify the Moon+ developer of this issue.

PS: Ah! That's DiapDealer replying now, not davire. In any case, I'd try reducing paragraph spacing first, in davire's book, to see what happens.

[DiapDealer]

This only issue with margin-top being ignored that I'm aware of is the margin-top assigned to the first element following a "soft" page break--achieved using the page-break-(before|after) css attribute. That's mainly because the wording of the epub2 spec implies that honoring it in that situation is not required. Everybody's learned to deal with or work around that one.

I've personally never really run into too many devices/apps that had trouble with honoring the margin-top -bottom attributes outside of that situation.

Margin-top -bottom is the preferred method of creating differing amounts of spacing between various sections in an epub document, after all. It's easy to quickly adjust in one or two places in the stylesheet instead of having to search for empty paragraphs sprinkled throughout the document and add/remove them later to change the spacing. *shrugs*

[Faterson]

Absolutely, margin-top and margin-bottom is the way to go. Like I mentioned, earlier this year users discovered that Marvin for iOS misbehaved in this regard, they reported it to Marvin's developer, Marvin then got fixed, and it now handles margin-top and margin-bottom correctly.

I haven't encountered the flaw described by davire in Moon+ so far. Unless we take a look at the book's code, we can't be sure whether the misbehaving "change of scene" break is due to a Moon+ malfunction, or due to non-standard code inside the e-book. If the former, I would report the issue to the Moon+ developer.

[Josieb1]

Does anyone know if it's possible to tap forward on the left please, not the right? I want to use Moon+ on a Nook HD to replace my Kindle Keyboard and it's so handy just holding it in the left hand and using the same hand to tap forward.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

Does anyone know if it's possible to tap forward on the left please, not the right? I want to use Moon+ on a Nook HD to replace my Kindle Keyboard and it's so handy just holding it in the left hand and using the same hand to tap forward.

Yes. Under settings - Control Options - Tap Screen left - Page down and Tap Screen right - Page up

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Yes. Under settings - Control Options - Tap Screen left - Page down and Tap Screen right - Page up

Thank you, sorry I should have spotted that.

[booklover6]

Does anyone have an idea why a particular document's italics don't work in Moon+, but the same epub's italics work correctly in Mantano Essentials? I tried it on 2 devices, and they don't appear as italics. (Incidentally, the italics don't work in Coolreader either. They do work on the Paperwhite and Kobo). For some reason the font I like looks better in Moon+ than in Mantano. And there are other reasons why I prefer Moon+. But this book can't be read in Moon+!

Oddly enough, on my new Nexus 7, the same book does show italics. Though they are not in the same font. That doesn't bother me. I'm just happy they are there. The ads were so much more annoying, though, that I had to buy the pro version. For what this app does, it's worth it.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Does anyone have an idea why a particular document's italics don't work in Moon+, but the same epub's italics work correctly in Mantano Essentials? I tried it on 2 devices, and they don't appear as italics. (Incidentally, the italics don't work in Coolreader either. They do work on the Paperwhite and Kobo). For some reason the font I like looks better in Moon+ than in Mantano. And there are other reasons why I prefer Moon+. But this book can't be read in Moon+!

Oddly enough, on my new Nexus 7, the same book does show italics. Though they are not in the same font. That doesn't bother me. I'm just happy they are there. The ads were so much more annoying, though, that I had to buy the pro version. For what this app does, it's worth it.

The developer is aware of the custom font italics don't show the correct font in Kit Kat but he doesn't seem to want to look into it or fix it. I suggest you email him and tell him the issue. If you mention the Nexus 7 make sure to tell him it's the 2013 model and be sure to include the build # of your Android found under settings.

Mantano is the only app that displays correctly external style sheets. This is why it works. Moon+ will only display some simple styles and ignore others.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Blossom

The developer is aware of the custom font italics don't show the correct font in Kit Kat but he doesn't seem to want to look into it or fix it. I suggest you email him and tell him the issue. If you mention the Nexus 7 make sure to tell him it's the 2013 model and be sure to include the build # of your Android found under settings.

Mantano is the only app that displays correctly external style sheets. This is why it works. Moon+ will only display some simple styles and ignore others.

I don't have the italic problem with Moon+ and I think it's related to what font you use. I use Roboto regular and italic looks good. If you choose the default fonts it seems to work too - the generic sans, serif, and mono at the top of the list of fonts. When I tried any other font except Roboto regular it seems to use Roboto for italic. Roboto is the default system font on my Nexus 7 so that makes sense - if it can't find the italic you want it defaults to the system font.

I'm not saying it's not a problem, you should be able to choose what font you want. But if you have to have serif or sans serif fonts you can try the generic fonts at the top of the font list.