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Originally Posted by kguil
Thanks for your feedback Jon,
Some comments...
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0. Please do not wait uil version 1.2 to fix the paragraph spacing. Do so now and release a new version. As it is now, no ePub is readable using Marvin because of the paragraph spacing. That is one thing that is needed so I can start to use Marvin to actually read. I do not read with paragraph spaces as they take me out of the book every time I finish a paragraph.
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I understand. Unfortunately, Marvin isn't currently in a state to be submitted yet (It's in the "middle" of a build). I'm expecting to submit to Apple by today week.
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So the best we can do then is once you are done is hope Apple isn't too slow about getting the update released. Please keep us updated as to when the next version is sent to Apple so we can begin to wait.
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1. Respect an indent of 0. Don't override that.
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Thank you!
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2. I'd like to have the ePub's formatting used as an option. I do format my ePub the way I like it to look and if I could use that, that would be great.
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I'll be working on that soon.
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Thank you!
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3. Use more of the screen. When in full screen mode, get rid of the book's title at the top. Use that space for more text. There is room for at least one more line of text at the bottom of the screen when the progress bar is not showing.
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I'm already working on a prototype to do that.
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Thank you!
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Also, the left/right margins are too large and will be even worse on an iPhone. Please go out to the edges.
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Technically, the left/right margins already go all the way down to zero. Some ePubs have CSS that overrides my minimum margin settings. Internally, I'm trying to strike a balance between respecting the original layout of the book and provide customization. If I aggressively override what the ePub says I'll run into other formatting problems. I'll look into it more deeply.
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Too large was not the right way to say it. But any chance of reducing the margins to use as much of the screen for the book's text would be a major help on an iPhone.
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4. Make all of the various options have an off switch that uses the ePub's default for each of the options. That would mean that if I prefer how the ePub is coded, I can have it like that for each of the options.
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To be honest, I'd rather have a global "user publisher's layout" per book rather than fine-grained on/off switches. I don't want to alienate non-advanced users with too many options.
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How about an advanced option with all the different advanced options and a simple layout for those that find the advanced options too much?
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5. A true full screen mode where the text goes to all four edges of the screen.
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Thank you!
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6. Embedded fonts should be supported.
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Working on it, including user loaded TTFs and OTFs.
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Thank you! I have some eBooks that have embedded fonts that are subsetted so they don't include characters in the fonts that are not in the ePub. If you would like, I can send you an ePub that has this (using Charis SIL) as the font so you can test that this works as well. It's using the new font subsetting that Calibre now has.
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7. Show how many pages are left in the entire ePub instead of just 4 pages left in chapter.
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As discussed earlier in this thread, there is a technical limitation to doing this properly. The book needs to be prerendered for this to happen (ideally in the background not to keep the user waiting). However, there are certain tasks that Apple are not happy about me backgrounding. I don't want to risk getting rejected from the app store. As a compromise, I added estimates of percentage in the book.
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I know there is a bar to show progress, but can you also show page numbers for the entire book something like this...
page 139 3 pages left in chapter 138 pages left in the book 277 total pages
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8. The way the search works should (IMHO) be changed to search the entire ePub and not just the current chapter. Take a James Patterson book (for example), it can have over 100 chapters. The way search works, I'd have to hit the arrow to move on way too many times. Just have the search search forwards or backwards until it wither finds what's being searched for or ends up not finding it.
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You're right. Search needs to be improved.
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I look forward to that.
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9. Savable options. Save the options so they can be recalled later. Be able to save multiple option sets.
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This isn't too difficult to do and a good idea. I just need to come up with a good UI to do this such that it won't be confusing to casual users.
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I did come up with an iea for that that would be simple. Just use 3-5 save sets and all one has to do is select which numbered save set to save to and which to restore from. No need for filenames and other complex things. Just a click of the button or two to save, delete, or restore a save set.
I was editing my message when you replied. So here is what I added between when you replied and when I finished my edits.
1. ToC (ncx) support.
Is there a way to go back to the beginning of an ePub without having to flip pages to get there?
I have more suggestions...
1. In the font section, please allow the user deigned fonts for serif, sans-serif, and monospace. I have a book I am reading that uses sans-serif and they get overridden at present. The CSS code is "font-family: sans-serif". They are coming out as serif because of the chosen body font.
2. The gestures that allow us to go back/forward should go to the beginning of the chapter not to the last page and then onto the chapter's first page. Also, make gesturing to goto bookmarks separate from chapters.
3. I have figured out how to get true smallcaps as long as you have them for a given font. I have a smallcaps version of Charis SIL and what could be done is to have the CSS define "font-family: monospace" or "sans-serif" and in the font selector, select the smallcaps font for monospace or sans-serif and it's a go.
4. Be able to pull ePub out of iBooks and Blurefire. That would be a very neat trick to be able to copy eBooks from other reading apps into Marvin.