iPad Bookmaster - ePub and PDF reader for iOS

[svenlind]

I have bought the Bookmaster CE. There are many things I like, especially the very easy access to OPDS and HTML and the general design and use of the app.

There is however one thing that I find irritating:
If you select a word for lookup in the dictionary, then you can't remove the mark after the lookup.
The word also appear in the "Vocab" list, and this can be convenient.

It would however be nice if you could remove the mark in the book and edit the Vocab list.

I am Danish and read many English books, I therefore use the dictionary a lot but I don't like to see a mark in the text for every lookup I have made.

Have I overlooked something?

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by svenlind

I have bought the Bookmaster CE. There are many things I like, especially the very easy access to OPDS and HTML and the general design and use of the app.

Great. Have you also tried "PC Upload"? It lets you import books to the app via Wi-Fi from your PC's by uploading book files via a web browser? This may become very handy, as you don't need to set up calibre or any other server on your computer.

Originally Posted by svenlind

There is however one thing that I find irritating:
If you select a word for lookup in the dictionary, then you can't remove the mark after the lookup.
The word also appear in the "Vocab" list, and this can be convenient.

It would however be nice if you could remove the mark in the book and edit the Vocab list.

I am Danish and read many English books, I therefore use the dictionary a lot but I don't like to see a mark in the text for every lookup I have made.

Have I overlooked something?

Every word/phrase you look up with the "Define" command when the word is selected automatically goes into the Vocab list. (The VOCAB list is one of the four segmented views including CONTENTS, NOTES, VOCAB and BOOKMARKS.)

In the VOCAB list, all words are automatically sorted alphabetically. To delete a word from the list, just swipe from right to left and tap Delete. (This gesture is pretty standard on apps designed for iOS 7.0 or later, such as Mail.)

Our research indicates that it helps users to learn and remember new words, if they can easily lookup them again in a vocabulary list AND in the context where they learn the words. Therefore, in BookMaster we have introduced the rather unique feature of such a "vocab mark" as a highlight mark displayed on the reading pages, so that you can look it up again simply by tapping it, without the extra step of selecting the word first.

However, if you don't want to see all those vocab marks highlighted, you can turn off "Display Vocabulary" in the menu under the "brightness" icon.

Is this existing solution good enough for you?

Perhaps you want a faster way to delete a vocab mark on the spot rather than going through the Vocab list?

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Great. Have you also tried "PC Upload"? It lets you import books to the app via Wi-Fi from your PC's by uploading book files via a web browser? This may become very handy, as you don't need to set up calibre or any other server on your computer.

Duly noted.

In the VOCAB list, all words are automatically sorted alphabetically. To delete a word from the list, just swipe from right to left and tap Delete. (This gesture is pretty standard on apps designed for iOS 7.0 or later, such as Mail.)

Thank you

However, if you don't want to see all those vocab marks highlighted, you can turn off "Display Vocabulary" in the menu under the "brightness" icon.

Is this existing solution good enough for you?

Thank you for your reply. This is really good enough.

I certainly overlooked something

[sbaylor]

A new version (1.3) of BookMaster SE and BookMaster CE has just been released an hour ago. According to Apple, the new versions should be available on the App Store everywhere (regions/countries) within the next 24 hours.

Thanks to the valuable user feedback on this thread, the following new features have been added
- an option to make the bookshelf transparent
- an option to control screen brightness with a vertical swipe
- a bolder Sans Serif font for both EPUB text and heading

Your feedback of v1.3 will be appreciated. Of course, you may also send email to our Support Team if you prefer.

*Other feature requests on this thread have been noted and will be taken into consideration in future releases.

[Cesca]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

A new version (1.3) of BookMaster SE and BookMaster CE has just been released an hour ago. According to Apple, the new versions should be available on the App Store everywhere (regions/countries) within the next 24 hours.

I updated my CE version & started a new book on my mini. I love the vertical swipe to control brightness!

[odamizu]

Yes, yes, yes! Totally loving the vertical swipe to control brightness. Especially happy that it only adjusts the brightness within BookMaster instead of for the entire device (unlike Marvin and Hyphen). Well done!

Also appreciate the bolder Helvetica. Yay!

[Cloudmaker]

Thanks for this great app! Have downloaded it yesterday and found it very useful and user friendly.

Got some questions:
1. I downloaded my books from Calibre via OPDS and found that series field and book # in series are empty. But once I tap "Restore all from book" in book tags editor, they appeared again. Why does Bookmaster ignore these fields by default in just imported books? And is there any way to implement "Restore all from book" method in bulk?
2. Are there any plans to implement online translation service? Google or Bing? It would be very convenient to read books in foreign languages with translation service at fingertips.
3. Any chance for pop-up footnotes, right in the text? Like in iBooks?

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

2. Are there any plans to implement online translation service? Google or Bing? It would be very convenient to read books in foreign languages with translation service at fingertips.

This is a feature I too would like very much.

If you touch a word in Bookmaster and select "Define" then you get a dictionary
look-up. Here you can also select "Search Web". That will activate the browser to do a Google lookup. Fine!

If there was a user defined option there to specify another user defined look-up that would be very nice.

Let me illustrate with an example. I subscribe to an online dictionary ordbogen.com

Say you want to know the meaning of "horse" then you can send this to a browser:

http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word=horse&dict=auto

It could be generalized in Bookmaster as (example) an option

http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word=%s&dict=auto

In the bottom of the look-up window you could have three options.

Manage Search Web Search Google


Where Search Web is user defined.

I hope I have made myself clear

[Cloudmaker]

Yes, thanks for the tip.
This is useful for a single word. But when it comes to a phrase or sentence, then Google translation would be the best choice. A small pop-up window, just like Marvin does.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

Thanks for this great app! Have downloaded it yesterday and found it very useful and user friendly.

Got some questions:
1. I downloaded my books from Calibre via OPDS and found that series field and book # in series are empty. But once I tap "Restore all from book" in book tags editor, they appeared again. Why does Bookmaster ignore these fields by default in just imported books?

Thanks for catching this bug. We've verified that this bug can happen to EPUB and PDF. It will be fixed in the next release of the apps.

Technical details for those who want to dig a little bit deeper:
In general, the value of Series (Volume or "Series Number") embedded inside an EPUB can be different from its value as embedded in the corresponding OPDS entry (as generated by calibre, or Feedbooks, etc.), and the two are encoded in different formats. When both are present, the OPDS value overrides the EPUB value.

For example, an OPDS entry generated by calibre may contain the following line:
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">TAGS: Fiction<br/>SERIES: Harry Potter [3]<br/>In this third installment in the projected seven-volume series, Sirius Black, imprisoned for killing 13 people with one curse, escapes from Azkaban.</div>

As far as we know, the above way the Series and Volume values are encoded is calibre-specific, and it is not part of the OPDS standard. The current version (v1.3) of BookMaster simply does not deal with the above calibre-specific convention properly in all cases, and fails to extract the Series and Volume values properly, and thus treats them as if they were empty strings.

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

And is there any way to implement "Restore all from book" method in bulk?

No, there isn't. However, you can achieve the same effect (for books with the intended Series and Volume values) by importing the books without going through calibre or other OPDS server. Delete the books and try importing them via "PC Upload".

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

2. Are there any plans to implement online translation service? Google or Bing? It would be very convenient to read books in foreign languages with translation service at fingertips.

Yes, although we have reservation about the quality of such services. Of course, you can do the online translation service even today with cut & paste across apps, I know that it's not convenient. But if enough users ask for it, we can certainly accomodate it. Any one else interested?

Any other suggestion for online translation service websites for any language other than the following two?
translate.google.com
www.bing.com/translator

What language to what other language translation are you most interested in?

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

3. Any chance for pop-up footnotes, right in the text? Like in iBooks?

Would you mind sending us such a sample EPUB by email?
See maplepop.com

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Thanks to the valuable user feedback on this thread, the following new features have been added
- an option to make the bookshelf transparent

It's so nice to have this new feature and to have each of my book set pair with its own scene. Thank you! I already wrote a review in the App Store.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by Cloudmaker

2. Are there any plans to implement online translation service? Google or Bing? It would be very convenient to read books in foreign languages with translation service at fingertips.

Originally Posted by svenlind

This is a feature I too would like very much.

If you touch a word in Bookmaster and select "Define" then you get a dictionary
look-up. Here you can also select "Search Web". That will activate the browser to do a Google lookup. Fine!

If there was a user defined option there to specify another user defined look-up that would be very nice.

Let me illustrate with an example. I subscribe to an online dictionary ordbogen.com

Say you want to know the meaning of "horse" then you can send this to a browser:

http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word=horse&dict=auto

It could be generalized in Bookmaster as (example) an option

http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word=%s&dict=auto

In the bottom of the look-up window you could have three options.

Manage Search Web Search Google


Where Search Web is user defined.

I hope I have made myself clear

Yes, you have made yourself very clear!

Just checked that iOS 9 has no built-in English-Danish or Danish-Danish dictionary, and your strong desire of an online dictionary makes more sense to me now, as you told us earlier that you are Danish.

Yes, we are interested in doing a good job of integrating multiple online dictionaries with BookMaster. But we need everyone's help to tell us about his/her favorite online dictionary website(s), and which language to which language lookup you are most interested in.

Thanks in anticipation!

[Cloudmaker]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

What language to what other language translation are you most interested in?

I'd vote for English-Russian dict.