Marvin for Android?

[drofgnal]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Yes, Marvin for Android would be great. I love Moon+ Reader Pro, but it's not quite on Marvin's level. I'd rate Marvin 3.5 stars, Moon+ Reader Pro 3 stars, and all other e-readers 2 stars or fewer. So, the overall situation is looking pretty bleak.

Given that Marvin for iOS itself hasn't really been developed in recent months/years, either, and must be considered an unfinished product at this stage (not quite "abandonware", I hope – that would devastate me), the idea of a Marvin for Android appears to be pure fantasy, unfortunately.

I see kguil's last post was 10/28/14, so abandonware appears to be a good term.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

I see kguil's last post was 10/28/14, so abandonware appears to be a good term.

Just because he doesn't post here as often as he used to does not mean Marvin is abandon-ware...it just means he doesn't post here as often as he used to.

Beware comparing mobileread forums with the end-all, be-all of reader software development.

Cheers!

[Faterson]

There's a difference between "not as often as previously" and "not at all". As far as I can see, there has been little to no activity in Marvin's GitHub, either, over the recent months, perhaps a year, which as you must know, is an official developer's tool. In Marvin's Beta-testing group, too, so active in previous years, there has been not a single message in 2015, as far as I'm aware.

I'm not saying whether that's good or bad, but those are the facts, and there's no use trying to cover them up.

[Turtle91]

Not trying to cover anything up. I just wonder... just because you don't receive emails from the beta testing group doesn't mean there isn't one. I'm not saying you were dropped from the group, I haven't received one either, but your logic isn't quite sound on that argument. I would simply think that there is no need for a "beta testing group" once a product is no longer in beta...

As I mentioned before, Kris had some personal issues to deal with. He is also working on other projects so I would not expect him to post in the Marvin forum... He does respond to emails - as I can attest from personal experience. He is still very interested in maintaining Marvin and has accepted bug reports from me.

The latest Change log for Marvin on the appstafarian website is August 8th, 2015.

So... your "facts" are simply your "perceptions".

Cheers!

[Faterson]

No, they are facts which for some mysterious reason you're trying to obfuscate. There is a dead Beta group – that's a fact. There have been no interactions on GitHub or MobileRead for many months – that's a fact. The 2015 Marvin update was a minuscule one – if that's the only thing 2015 brings for Marvin and if that's the rate of future updates, the issues collected at GitHub would be addressed by about 2177.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Not trying to cover anything up. I just wonder... just because you don't receive emails from the beta testing group doesn't mean there isn't one. I'm not saying you were dropped from the group, I haven't received one either, but your logic isn't quite sound on that argument. I would simply think that there is no need for a "beta testing group" once a product is no longer in beta...

The fact that there is a stable version of Marvin does not detract from the usefulness of beta-testing new pre-releases.

Calibre Companion has a very active beta group -- and an alpha group too, for that matter -- despite being quite stable AFAIK.

But chaley is still heavily involved in the MobileRead subforum, and frequently fixes bugs and adds new features.
Hence the need for beta-testing those changes.

As I mentioned before, Kris had some personal issues to deal with. He is also working on other projects so I would not expect him to post in the Marvin forum... He does respond to emails - as I can attest from personal experience. He is still very interested in maintaining Marvin and has accepted bug reports from me.

The latest Change log for Marvin on the appstafarian website is August 8th, 2015.

So... your "facts" are simply your "perceptions".

Cheers!

Whatever the reasons, it does appear that Marvin is essentially in stasis.
No big changes, and few minor changes save basic maintenance.


So I think it would be fair to say that whatever Marvin is now, that's what you're getting.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

So I think it would be fair to say that whatever Marvin is now, that's what you're getting.

I'd be cautiously more optimistic. Not as optimistic as to expect a Marvin for Android version, which is the subject matter of this thread – that really seems unrealistic, as things stand now.

My hope, however, is that one fine day, Kris will refocus his energies, once again pushing Marvin to the top of his priority list, instead of to the bottom where it resides now. I have no idea what the users' feedback to the Gerty and Sift apps may have been, but my guess would be, it likely wasn't 5% as enthusiastic as the reception Marvin got from users in late 2012. When Marvin came out, it was a revelation. When Gerty came out... well, it was a journaling app, but there are better journaling apps out there (such as Day One). When Sift came out... well, it was a mail app, but there are better mail apps out there (such as Mailbox). You can't say the same thing about Marvin, though – there is currently no better e-reader app on this planet than Marvin. I'm convinced that that's true, even though I'd only rate Marvin 3.5 out of 5 stars at this stage; yet nothing comes even close to Marvin on iOS, while on Android, Moon+ Reader does come close, but I believe it still lags behind Marvin, all things considered.

For these reasons, I'm convinced that Marvin – not Gerty or Sift – is the ideal "market niche" for Kris. The current corporate market leaders, Kindle and iBooks, are as crude pieces of software as it can get. Marvin could become the world's first professional-grade EPUB e-reader – suitable both for "regular folks" or avid book readers, and for literary scholars or others professionally working with literature.

But to get there, all those user feature requests and issues reported over at GitHub need to be accounted for. You can't oblige every feature request, naturally; but, at the very least, each feature request/issue report needs to be carefully considered. (Unfortunately, some have already been dismissed without due consideration, in my estimation.) You can't just summarily dismiss all those dozens of issues reported by many, many Marvin users (not just myself) over the last few years at GitHub, and declare the product to be almost finished. Nope, it's not finished. Not by a long shot.

[eschwartz]

If in the future, Marvin's status changes and it receives more focus than it seems to be getting now, then that would be great.

But at the moment, what you see is what you get.

Stasis *can* end. If it ends, then we can talk.

[crashnburn]

We had talked once over PM about something that might help bring more motivation & $$ towards his product. viz. I help startups.

Unfortunately, we both had become infrequent PM responders and we never moved discussion off the forum PMs.

Does anyone have a way to touch base with him? Maybe I can get him back on the horses if I can touch base with him and trigger those ideas/ thoughts in his head ?

[Turtle91]

Try sending an email: hello@appstafarian.com