Cool Reader on Android

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

I think buggins the coolreader developer and others that work on it might not be commenting in this thread much but are surely reading it as over the last few days any bugs and errors reported are getting patched.
Looking at the commit log summary http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...gine;a=summary
I think your css margins problem might get a fix in the next release

I've merged patch for CSS (patch from SourceForge tracker, by flobber)
Fixed version - 3.0.56-50

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Jabby

v3.0.56-42 has problems as well It won't allow access to the external sd card. Since I keep my books there I can't open any books.
I dropped back to v3.0.55-50 and all is well.

I am running on a 9.7" Coby with ICS 4.0.3. Allwinner A10 processor.

However, v3.0.56-42 runs OK on my Archos 80 G9 with ICS 4.0.3. OMAP4 processor.

There has been one problem for a while across all my tablets. I can't enter other than whole percentages in the "go to" function. 34.4 fails 34 works.

Regards - John

P.S. Any idea when we will get the mirrored margins?

Try 3.0.56-50

[Buggins]

Uploaded on Market as 3.0.57-1

[Rand Brittain]

All these updates make me really happy, and I'm almost totally happy with how CoolReader works on my Sony Reader, but I can't make the jump to using it until the bug with the margins on the first item after a page break is fixed. Buggins, is there any chance of that bug being fixed soon?

[TJay]

I have to say that I continue to love CoolReader (and thanks for continuing to look out for us Nook Simple Touch users!).

Quick question, since I don't know if it's me or my unit or whatever:

Over the last two updates, when I go to "Open File" to pick a book in my catalog, I can never get a "full" rendering of ALL the covers in my catalog. Let me explain. I currently have "medium" cover size selected. When I select "Open File", 4 or 5 book covers are rendered in the first page of this catalog/list. I press Page Down (or swipe down), then the next 4 or 5 book covers are rendered. BUT just then (!), as soon as that SECOND page's covers are rendered, CoolReader takes me back to the FIRST page of the catalog. So now I press Page Down again and go to the SECOND page which has all the covers rendered. So I then press Page Down again and go the THIRD page. Whammo. The third page's covers begin to render, but Cool Reader kicks me back to the first page of the catalog again. I can now page down without issue to the second and third pages of the catalog and have all the covers on the pages effectively rendered. You can guess what happens with the fourth page (and fifth, etc.).

However... at about the 6th or 7th page, CoolReader's catalog then encounters a different problem. NOW, when it kicks me back to the first page of the catalog, the first page begins to "lose" some of its covers, having to re-render 1 or 2 of them again, while the rest on the page remain "o.k". Then the whole process starts again, with the SECOND page "losing" a couple of covers, etc.

I think this anomaly started happening when one of the updates included the much-wanted feature of scanning and showing all the covers in one's library without having to open each book first. Again, not sure if it's me doing something wrong, if this is just an anomaly on the Nook Simple Touch (running Android 2.1), or if it's Cool Reader, or....

Just FYI: My library in Cool Reader numbers just under 100 books, all in a single folder. Current version as of this post is 3.0.57-1.

Anyone know what the issue might be?

(lastly: MUCH obliged to Buggins for including the new feature of being able to mark one's books "Finished" or "To Read". Awesome feature and fits right into the similar 'GoodReads' model. Thanks!)

[Dopedangel]

Just noticed the chapter marks in the progression bar for epubs in the latest version were the chapter marks there before or is it something new.

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Just noticed the chapter marks in the progression bar for epubs in the latest version were the chapter marks there before or is it something new.

It's a fix posted on SourceForge tracker by one guy.
EPUB TOC support, patch by Daniel Savard

[Buggins]

Update 3.0.57-4

Fixed Android 1.5 support.
Fixed mount points detection.

[sun4384]

Is there any plan to support "display:inline-block", "font-variant:small-caps", and "float:left/right" CSS properties in Cool Reader? Often is the case that these are necessary and there is no alternative way to replace them in formatting. I'm using Nook Simple Touch, and really like Cool Reader's capability to utilize the whole screen, but absence of support for those properties troubles me somehow...

P.S. how about "height:100%"? this is so necessary for cover pages...

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by sun4384

Is there any plan to support "display:inline-block", "font-variant:small-caps", and "float:left/right" CSS properties in Cool Reader? Often is the case that these are necessary and there is no alternative way to replace them in formatting. I'm using Nook Simple Touch, and really like Cool Reader's capability to utilize the whole screen, but absence of support for those properties troubles me somehow...

Support of these rendering options is non trivial (except small-caps).
It will be implemented, but not in nearest future.
(I can implement small-caps, if it's useful).

Originally Posted by sun4384

P.S. how about "height:100%"? this is so necessary for cover pages...

Can embedded display of coverpages on full page replace this property?
You can see how it's done for FB2 book covers. I can enable the same for EPUB.

[sun4384]

Originally Posted by Buggins

Support of these rendering options is non trivial (except small-caps).
It will be implemented, but not in nearest future.
(I can implement small-caps, if it's useful).

I hope at least "float:left/right" is implemented sooner than the others. It's so useful for dropcaps (with the combination of ":first-letter" maybe?) and floating pictures. small-caps can be useful in some cases like changing the way headings are shown at once instead of going through them individually and doing A<small>BCDEFG</small> things.

Originally Posted by Buggins

Can embedded display of coverpages on full page replace this property?
You can see how it's done for FB2 book covers. I can enable the same for EPUB.

Is it something explained in https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/FB2 using <coverpage> tags? Then wouldn't it make the cover page show twice because most ebooks have cover page included as the first page already?

However, it sounds like a neater and ideal solution to automatically detect cover page (which Cool Reader already does) and show it in full screen (ignoring margin settings) as the first page. If it Cool Reader can automatically skip the first <itemref> in the <spine> tag that has string "cover" in the idref, it would be perfect.

Still, there are some pictures that should fill up the entire page, automatically scaling up/down. I thought something like "<img alt="" height="100%" src="../Images/cover.png" />" would work with page break before and after, but it looks scaling up does not work.


Some bugs I encountered so far:

1. Margin property of h1 tag doesn't work. The other properties in that rule work though.

2. CSS rules having plus like "p+p {text-indent:1em;}" do not work at the very first time when a file is open. It somehow needs to be 'refreshed' to make it work properly like by changing the font size.

3. Selecting multiple CSS rules like "<div class="a b">...</div>" does not work.

4. It's mentioned before, but when there is a comment in CSS files, the very first rule right after the comment does not work.

5. There is no way to remove borders of tables. Also, when a table cell has only an image in it, it's treated as if there is nothing inside, and the cell is shrunk to minimum width, showing the image tiny. (I was trying to use tables as an alternative to display:inline-block.)

6. Also mentioned before, but in NOOK Simple Touch (or maybe in most E-ink based readers), dividing lines in the file/book browser, option menus, table of contents, ... are missing.


Some features I think is useful

1. It would be good to have "go to the first/last page" in the Go to menu.

2. It would be good if there is a way to customize what to show in file/book browser like the way title bar works. I think it's neat to show only title, author, and coverpage.

3. It would be good to be able to switch between simple view and cover page view in the file/book browser without going to the option menu. A toggle button on the top-right corner I guess will do the job. Just like that cover page image size can be changed too.

4. It would be good to have something like "icon view" in file/book browser, just showing cover pages and directories as icons. Currently, with small cover page size, my Nook shows seven items in the list. Icon view will show a lot more books with bigger size cover page images.


All in all, Cool Reader is one of the greatest app I have seen. This is the reason I bought Nook in the first place, and I hope the support continues to be stellar. Thank you very much for your effort.

[Mastiff]

I like Cool Reader, but is it possible in any way to get back the default menu when tap-holding in the book browser? Before I could delete a book with that menu, now I get sent into a kind of "about" page for the book and have to use the back button to get rid of the keyboard and see the icon at the top with the book and the stop sign and then click on that and finally confirm deletion. I liked the old way a lot better.

[sun4384]

Another bug found:
When a tag has style="..." attribute, it is applied to all the following tags of the same type. For example, in the following:

<div style="page-break-after:always">
<img ...>
</div>
...
<div>
<p> There shouldn't be a page break after me. </p>
</div>
<div>
<p> But there will be one... </p>
</div>

The style attribute in the first div tag affects all the following div tags.

[sun4384]

Another bug found: Image scaling mode does not work properly. Block image properties are applied to inline images, and inline image properties do nothing.

[goldberry]

I recently updated CR and an using 3.0.57-14 on a Nook Color.

I usually read my books then go to "open file" and long press on the book and then delete. Now I find a long press takes me to a screen to mark my reading status and rate the book.

I have no interest in rating and keeping the finished books in a library just want to delete it. If I need it back for any reason it is on my PC.

Any simple way within CR to delete a book?

If not can I go back to the previous version. If so how is best way to do that. Any download from market is just going to get me the latest version. If I can be pointed to an APK file for the older I guess I could load that and hopefully it would overwrite the current version.

Maybe CR's author can add a delete to the 4 marking options?

Love CR but just need the simple things it does well, give me a delete method please.