Cool Reader on Android

[Buggins]

Cool Reader 3 Android port is available on Market

CoolReader is free, cross platform, open source (GPL2) e-book viewer.

Supported formats

• FB2 - full support, including images, styles, footnotes, tables
• TXT, TCR - automatic reformatting of paragraphs, with heading detection
• HTML - partial support, but includes css styles, tables, lists, etc.
• EPUB - supported styles, images, tables, TOC. Not supported: SVG, embedded fonts, MathML
• RTF - limited support, no images, styles supported partially
• CHM - limited support

Features

• View as paper book pages or scroll
• One or two pages in landscape mode
• Internal file browser to open books
• Configurable font face, size, style, interline space, text color, background (solid color, tiled or stretched image)
• External fonts, background images, CSS styles
• Book coverpages in file browser
• Supports install on SD (Android 2.2+)
• Customizable tap zone actions
• Customizable key actions (including volume keys)
• Can lock sensor screen and trackball
• Can set custom display backlight brightness

Project page on SourceForge
Manual Wiki
Russian forum

Please post your objections and feature requests under this topic.

[kennyc]

Thanks!

[Carl314]

What does "css styles" mean? Only inline CSS? Virtually all of my e-books use CSS style sheets, which Cool Reader does not appear to support.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Carl314

What does "css styles" mean? Only inline CSS? Virtually all of my e-books use CSS style sheets, which Cool Reader does not appear to support.

In the orginal coolreader that is in hanlin readers you can set a css style sheet by format so that you don't ha ve to set css or modify css for different books but set the ident etc once and then you can make it ignore the css in the ebook.
I think maybe he is talking about that
Here is an topic I found talking a bit about that
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77130

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Carl314

What does "css styles" mean? Only inline CSS? Virtually all of my e-books use CSS style sheets, which Cool Reader does not appear to support.

I mean default styles for formats.

When opening file, CoolReader loads corresponding .css file (e.g. txt.css for txt, epub.css for epub, rtf.css for rtf) from /.cr3/, or from package if external file is not found.
This loaded style is used as base style.
If some additional style is defined for document (e.g. element style attribute specified, or document specific stylesheet), additional styles override base styles.

If document specific style is not loaded/used, it's a bug. Could you provide some samples of such files?

Supported subset of CSS is described on SF Wiki

TXT files are actually being converted internally into fb2 like XML format.
So you can define style p {} for paragraphs and title {} for headings.

Sample .css files can be found in SourceForge GIT repository.

[SlowRain]

I always like it when authors reach out to their audience, and I likewise appreciate it when app developers reach out to their users.

For me, the reading-software benchmark is still Mobipocket. It was absolutely perfect...until Amazon bought them and razed them in order to develop their Kindle.

Some of the features they had in addition to the current Cool Reader features were:

- offline dictionary support
- note taking and highlighting
- export notes
- a desktop version, and the ability to sync the two
- option to hide all progress indicators

[Carl314]

Buggins - I see you're the developer. Do you have any intention of adding full css support? While using one unified style sheet for all epubs is not feasible given how different epub formatting is in different books. As an example, many Overdrive epubs don't even use <p> or <h1-6> tags - all formatting is buried in custom styles, and the books use <div> and <span> tags instead.)

Reading those books in an app without css support is an exercise in futility.

The newest version of Aldiko is bloated and slow, as the devs are more interested in drm support than a streamlined app. The market is ripe for a competing product to step in.

Cheers, Carl.

[Buggins]

New version uploaded to SourceForge

TXT paragraphs / headings detections fixed for some types of TXT formatting.

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Carl314

Buggins - I see you're the developer. Do you have any intention of adding full css support? While using one unified style sheet for all epubs is not feasible given how different epub formatting is in different books. As an example, many Overdrive epubs don't even use <p> or <h1-6> tags - all formatting is buried in custom styles, and the books use <div> and <span> tags instead.)

Reading those books in an app without css support is an exercise in futility.

The newest version of Aldiko is bloated and slow, as the devs are more interested in drm support than a streamlined app. The market is ripe for a competing product to step in.

Cheers, Carl.

Most of CSS text formatting already supported.
They already cover most of required styles for EPUB.
I'm adding support of new properies from time to time.

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by SlowRain

- offline dictionary support
- note taking and highlighting
- export notes

Will be implemented in a week.

Originally Posted by SlowRain

- a desktop version, and the ability to sync the two

There is a cross platform desktop version, but synchronization is not yet supported. I'll consider implementation of this feature.

Originally Posted by SlowRain

- option to hide all progress indicators

What do you mean? Page header show at top of page? It can be turned off in Settings.

[Carl314]

Originally Posted by Buggins

Most of CSS text formatting already supported.
They already cover most of required styles for EPUB.
I'm adding support of new properies from time to time.

OK, Cool Reader does not appear to apply the CSS file within the epub itself, unless I'm missing a setting. Using one unified css file for all epubs doesn't work when each individual epub has unique formatting defined in its CSS.

I am looking forward to annotations and highlighting, however. Perhaps once you implement those, I can see if there is a suitable workaround to the CSS issue.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas.

Carl.

[Buggins]

Originally Posted by Carl314

OK, Cool Reader does not appear to apply the CSS file within the epub itself, unless I'm missing a setting. Using one unified css file for all epubs doesn't work when each individual epub has unique formatting defined in its CSS.

I am looking forward to annotations and highlighting, however. Perhaps once you implement those, I can see if there is a suitable workaround to the CSS issue.

It looks like internal .CSS is not used by some reason. It's a bug.
Could you provide sample .epub with such problem?

[Carl314]

OK - here's a link to a sample epub file with a CSS sheet embedded in it: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13349902/Test-small.epub

Cheers, Carl.

[Carl314]

One feature request - custom catalog support via OPDS.

Cheers, Carl.

[SlowRain]

Originally Posted by Buggins

Will be implemented in a week.

There is a cross platform desktop version, but synchronization is not yet supported. I'll consider implementation of this feature.

All of that sounds very, very good. I look forward to trying it out.

Originally Posted by Buggins

What do you mean? Page header show at top of page? It can be turned off in Settings.

Most readers have the ability to hide the progress bar, but then they put a percentage indicator on the bookmarks or notes. If I make a note or bookmark and see that it is at the 80% mark, I know that the book is close to the end. It ruins the last-page effect for me. I want the option to hide all progress indicators.