[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[Faterson]

I tried searching for the topic via Google, but the only relevant search result that came up was our conversation right here in this thread.

You might perhaps ask www.abbyy.com directly whether they support this. They're a big-shot company (even though Russian) and in theory, it should be in their interest to make the cooperation of their dictionary apps with e-reader apps such as Marvin as smooth as possible. So if there are no Lingvo URL launch schemes today, perhaps there'll be some tomorrow if there's enough interest in them from 3rd-party developers.

[kguil]

Thanks for helping me out Faterson. I've worked with Abbyy in the past and they're very helpful.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Faterson

As to SugarSync, I use it for book management, too. Overall, I prefer Dropbox as cloud service, but am (therefore) always running out of space there. I have SugarSync mapped to the Calibre folder on my desktop and notebook PCs, so all books are always nicely available on all my PCs and mobile devices. I see no pressing need for Marvin to integrate SugarSync directly. I can just open the SugarSync app on my iPad or iPhone, browse to the Calibre folder, and side-load any book into Marvin that way. [Although there's a nasty bug in the SugarSync app where the "Open in..." button not always works for all EPUB files; then you need to copy the download link and open it via Safari; I complained about this to SugarSync support many months ago, but it appears they're ignoring the bug instead of fixing it.]

Thats why I stopped using Sugarsync for a long time. I may have to look at it again. I've just got an exported book folder which I copied to box.net: I grabbed that 50GB deal when it was going late last year (IIRC). It would be nice to have the calibre folder mapped somewhere, currently its only on my Macbook Pro, but I also have a netbook I use at times.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

Thats why I stopped using Sugarsync for a long time.

I plan to re-open that SugarSync support ticket and keep pestering them until they fix the bug. It's embarrassing for them to do nothing about fixing it for many months after acknowledging it. No big deal for me -- I got used to opening all SugarSync EPUB files via the Safari detour, but they can't expect the mass of users to be doing that forever.

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

It would be nice to have the calibre folder mapped somewhere, currently its only on my Macbook Pro, but I also have a netbook I use at times.

It works really well, even across platforms. I have a Windows desktop PC and MacBook Air. Calibre is installed on both. Thanks to SugarSync, whatever book I add to Calibre on either of the computers, "automagically" appears in Calibre on the other computer, too, as well as on all mobile devices thanks to the SugarSync app. It's great to have the entire Calibre library at your fingertips no matter where you are and what device you're using, without ever having to launch two devices simultaneously for synchronization or books download purposes.

[artbatista]

Another suggestion.

It's been my experience that Marvin does not save the user's format and font settings from one book to the next.

Do you think you can make those sticky?

As it is now, I have to set line spacing, indent, font, font size, etc. on every book I open.

Could you make those a global default, perhaps?

Cheers

Art

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by artbatista

It's been my experience that Marvin does not save the user's format and font settings from one book to the next.

Can't confirm this here. I've just loaded a new e-book into Marvin, and its format and font settings are the same as with the previous book I've just finished reading.

An interesting thing happens when I open a Russian e-book in Marvin. Neither of Marvin's preferred 6 fabulous fonts (Arvo to Volkhov) is available with Russian letters, so I have switched to Verdana for that Russian e-book. When I return to an English e-book, it still displays in Volkhov. That is, the font setting for individual books seems sticky, which suits me perfectly.

PS: My current favourite Marvin font is Volkhov, and given its Russian name, it's too bad it's not available for reading Russian texts (if activated, it gets replaced by, I guess, Helvetica as the default font).

[kguil]

@artbatista: Fonts, their sizes, indentation, etc... are saved on a per-book basis. However, when opening a new book, Marvin will inherit the settings from the last book (if it exists) opened.

I did this because many people share iPads for reading and different people (reading different books) have different preferences.

The greatest variation (and I think this is what you're noticing) would be in font sizes. In some books a certain font size looks big and the same size looks smaller.

@Faterson: You'll notice that in the font list, the starting ones are in red and the others are in black. The black ones are stock iOS fonts and are likely unicode-complete. The red ones have more limited character sets and are mostly suitable for latin languages. I looked around for good looking complete fonts but the licensing costs made it out of the question, at least for now (Volkhov is indeed designed by a Russian team

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by kguil

Volkhov is indeed designed by a Russian team

I find it all the more astonishing they wouldn't include letters from their own native language in the font. I hope that this is only temporary and that you'll be able to update the Volkhov font with more letters (ideally, the entire Unicode range) in future. I also very much like the Arvo font (it's similar to my favourite Kindle app font, the recently added Caecilia).

One suggestion from the Stanza group on Facebook: when sorting books by author's name, could you please also make the books sortable by the author's last name as specifed in the e-book's Calibre metadata? Stanza can do this. Right now, Marvin sorts books by the writers' first names, which is inconvenient for many users.

[kguil]

Got it.

[Faterson]

Here's an interesting observation I have made regarding the difference between how Marvin performs on iPad 3 (Retina display) and iPad 1 (non-Retina): the difference goes beyond the obvious "slightly blurry font" (iPad 1) versus "perfectly sharp font" (iPad 3).

The way colours are interpreted by iPad 1 and iPad 3 is also strikingly different. The colour saturation on iPad 3 is far greater than on iPad 1.

My current preferred Night Mode setup in Marvin is Volkhov font, black background, and... then I thought I would choose one preferred font colour, but precisely because iPad 1 and iPad 3 interpret the same colours differently, I ended up with two favourite font colours: one colour for iPad 3, and another colour for iPad 1.

For iPad 3, I like the "Fulvous" (orange variety) colour on black background. I find that this combination is as soothing as can be, for the reader's eyes in a dark environment. (More soothing than white on black.) It also seems to save and extend the iPad's battery life! And, because of the quality of the Retina display, the font still displays with perfect sharpness on iPad 3.

It's different on iPad 1. When I choose "Fulvous on Black" there, it's just not legible enough for me. The font is slightly blurry, of course, but it's not just that: the "Fulvous" colour on iPad 1 just isn't as distinctive as on iPad 3.

And so, for iPad 1, I chose the "Citrine" font colour instead. It's perfect for iPad 1's screen. If I activate "Citrine" on iPad 3, however, wow! It really looks diferent. It has a greenish tinge there, and literally radiates from the screen, so it doesn't seem as soothing and as suitable for iPad 3 as for iPad 1. Simply put, "Citrine" is a lot brighter colour on iPad 3 than on iPad 1.

This is why I have asked Kris (via email a few days ago) to make it possible for us to save more than just 3 custom themes in Marvin. Given the plentiful colour options and the different ways of interpreting colours between various iOS devices, I think there can be many more than just 3 favourite Themes for any reader. (I also asked Kris to associate Themes with specific font types and font sizes, if possible -- that's how Themes are treated by Stanza and other e-reader apps.)

To conclude this post and illustrate the above points, here are a few screenshots of the Night Mode setup in Marvin on my iPads right now. You may not find many differences between them when comparing the screenshots right here in this forum post -- but that's because the screenshots already are distorted for you by whatever display you are viewing this MobileRead forum on. In real life, I assure you the difference between looking at "Fulvous on Black" or "Citrine on Black" on iPad 3 versus iPad 1, is striking and very noticeable. You can click the thumbnails below to view the screenshots in their original iPad 3/iPad 1 resolutions. (The story is Glenn Dixon's Nero Wolfe fan fiction.)

"FULVOUS ON BLACK" ON IPAD 3 (Retina) VS. IPAD 1 (non-Retina)



"CITRINE ON BLACK" ON IPAD 3 (Retina) VS. IPAD 1 (non-Retina)

[kguil]

There are even more differences between the 3 and 4.

You might want to try out the warmth and tint controls to "tune" the screen.

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by kguil

@artbatista: Fonts, their sizes, indentation, etc... are saved on a per-book basis. However, when opening a new book, Marvin will inherit the settings from the last book (if it exists) opened.

I did this because many people share iPads for reading and different people (reading different books) have different preferences.

The greatest variation (and I think this is what you're noticing) would be in font sizes. In some books a certain font size looks big and the same size looks smaller.

That's exactly what I see. Must be the ebook CSS coursing this then. Here are two books opened without changes to the settings. By the way, this also what happens in Stanza.

[kguil]

@artbatista So far, I haven't found a way to fix this font size consistency problem across books without compromising the rendering fidelity. I'll look into it after I've covered some more wish list items.

[kguil]

Oh, by the way...

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by kguil

There are even more differences between the 3 and 4.

That's surprising. But it's why I never considered buying the iPad Mini -- very difficult to go back to non-Retina displays once your eyes get used to the perfect sharpness of Retina screens. (I mostly use iPad 1 as a secondary screen -- for example, the same book displayed in Marvin on the two iPads, but iPad 3 shows the book's original language version, and iPad 1 shows the same book's translation, in case I don't understand something in the original language. That's another way of avoiding those pesky dictionary lookups in external apps!)

Originally Posted by kguil

You might want to try out the warmth and tint controls to "tune" the screen.

I forgot to mention I prefer to use both "Fulvous" and "Citrine" at about 70% screen brightness. Tuning tint seems to do nothing in my setup. And I like to keep warmth all the way down at zero, at least in Night Mode (I still prefer hardware Kindles for daytime reading), because there's nothing more soothing to the eyes than pitch-black background (is there)? Even so, I'd welcome some structured backgrounds in Marvin in addition to solid-colour backgrounds, and Kris has already said he will enable them later. Here is my favourite structured Stanza background.

Originally Posted by kguil

Oh, by the way...

That's marvelous. Merci beaucoup!