medard,
If you were using Cool Reader 3 on a rooted T1 or T2, you could do this, If you like
(I never used this myself, so now I am looking what I have on T2):
If I call the list of the last read books (I mapped it to a button - use it a lot) , I can use a long tap on any book in the list.
Then I get this screen, where I can do:
- to go to the folder of the book
- to remove the book from the last read list
- to delete the book from T2
- to rate the book 1-5 stars
- to mark the book as:
* No mark
* To read
* Reading
* Finished
- to read, enter, edit metadata: title, author, series, number, I see more fields here, maybe annotation.
- I see some slider here too, maybe indication of progress, not sure. something (I never used any of this, except going to the folder, removing from the list).
I get almost the same screen from the internal file browser on any book, not just in the last read list, but then the options to go to the folder of the book and to remove the book from the list are missing, otherwise - the same.
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As to some characters displayed as some kind of X:
that probably because the font does not have glyphs for the characters or has wrong ones.
If you use Cool Reader 3, you can install your own fonts and use them. Fonts that do not show X.
As to displaying a book in a better way, Cool Reader displays books pretty well, for example it shows footnotes nicely on the same page where the reference in the text is.
You can regulate so many things in the Cool Reader's settings, besides you can remap the keys and the touch zones of the screen to access the stuff you need immediately:
font: face, size, embolden, antialiasing, interline space, hyphenation dictionary, floating punctuation, kerning, image scaling, font gamma, min space width, font hinting, fallback font
then, you can:
- to enable or disable the internal document styles (I have it mapped to a button too - with one click I can see the difference)
- to enable or disable the embedded fonts
- lots of additional options for .css, including various default paragraph options, the already mentioned footnotes, etc.
Then you have various e-ink refresh options, title bar options (you can change it any way you like: is it shown at all, and if it is, what exactly is placed on it and how it is separated from the rest, etc.
Margins, orientation - of course.
Then, you can remap the keys and the tap zones any way you like. I have disabled all the tap zones (I hate touch screens) - I allow to invoke dictionary by touching the screen, that's it.
You can handle various selection types and what to do with them.
And you can configure dictionaries to be used with Cool Reader.
I am using GoldenDict, and with it - almost 10 GB of various dictionaries.
Anyway - lots of possibilities in Cool Reader. I don't know what Lopatin did with the mainstream Cool Reader - he has even more such stuff, but I don't need it.
Another great thing about Cool Reader: you can use profiles for settings.
So, for example, I have a profile for portrait and for landscape orientation, because I use different margins in portrait and in landscape (obviously!).
I can access and switch profiles from a remapped button as well.
(there are 5 button on T1/T2 but each has 3 ways of clicking them: short, long and double clicks. So 15.)
Dictionaries on android readers is a weak spot - nobody wants to make dictionaries fully e-ink oriented or to recognize T2 buttons.
GoldenDict is better than others, but still not perfect.
I hope that things will improve now that more android e-ink devices are showing up.
So you see how important it was (still is) to get a rootable T2.
Previously it was easy - you could just order one blindly, then it became more difficult: you still could order one blindly, but from US stores only (I got two T2s from Europe last year, and 2 more from US this year - all good, of course).
Now there are no more safe options. Even the red ones ordered from US turn out to have 1.00.04 firmware. Although I haven't heard that B&H were selling with bad firmware, but they ran out of the black ones - discontinued.
You need to check the firmware version before you pay money (or use your right to return it, until you get the good one).
It is still possible to get wide varieties of firmware revisions.
I never heard about straight from the box 1.00.05 - only when you yourself update to it (my sincere condolences) - but I might be wrong.
But you can assume that 1.00.04 is bad (there was a good 1.00.04 firmware for a while, but then they changed it without giving it a different version number), and all the lower numbers are good.
Anyway, especially when buyng on e-bay - demand the firmware number. Or, if the device was ever jailbreaked - then it is OK. You can get into the recovery mode and flash an image with an older firmware into it.
If T3 is ever rooted, it might be no worse than T2, probably better.
But will it ever be?
I assume it will be more difficult to root, as T2 was more difficult than T1.
And boroda may lack motivation to do it. And it seems that on our planet Earth only boroda is able to hack them
BTW. I was praising Cool Reader a lot here. But you need to be aware of one thing.
Text rendering quality.
There are three renderers most frequently encountered on T2:
1. Adobe renderer. It renders epubs and pdf when the native Sony reader is used.
It IS NOT used for txt and fb2 (fb2 - on T2 with installed AMR or on the Russian model)
2. Cool Reader renderer. Cool Reader is using its own renderer, not satisfied with the quality of generic renderers.
3. Generic android renderer - used pretty much by the rest of the readers and by Sony native reader for txt and fb2.
Many consider Adobe renderer to be the best. Adobe has lots of experience in this area, obviously.
But the Cool Reader renderer is also quite good. I'd rather use Cool Reader than sacrifice it for a dubious rendering quality increase that I may not notice.