[Faterson]

Originally Posted by DNSB

when you use night mode (white letters on a black background), background textures tend to the unviewable.

Not true at all. I use many, many background textures in dark mode. For an example, you can take a look again at that tweet of mine from July. The second screenshot on the left shows one of Marvin's dark background textures.

Moon is a lot better than Marvin in themes (Marvin only allows you to save five themes, which is very restricting), so I use at least 15 (!) dark background textures in Moon, along with about 15 light background textures.

My favorite dark background texture in Moon is solid black with little red flames here and there all over the screen. It's my default night mode in Moon. Fabulous experience, reading books like that!

In fact, I have just found a similar screenshot from Stanza (!) way back in 2010:



The "little red flames" are a lot more subtle in my current dark mode background textures I use in Moon, almost imperceptible in a screenshot, but they are definitely there, it's really different from a solid-black background, and they enhance my reading experience considerably.

Originally Posted by peaceridge

As I said, interesting how folks are different. Poor ereader creators trying to satisfy everyone!

They definitely don't have to! Look at corporations like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, you-name-it: are they trying to satisfy everyone? Absolutely not! They don't give a damn about satisfying power users and their advanced demands, because they very well realize that power users are a tiny minority, so that ignoring their demands will not affect their bottom line in any significant way.

The result of catering only to the masses of average users with modest demands, of course, is that as of 2022, not a single professional-grade e-reader app exists on this planet.

Originally Posted by skillachie

When it comes to EPUB 3 I think we can say that BookFusion is the best cross platform solution for EPUB 3 books.

That's impressive, and congrats on that! (Although I rarely if ever read EPUB 3 books.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

with regards to the iOS app, there should only be very few gaps that we do not cover that Marvin does.

Oh, there are quite a few, I'm afraid. I'll try to produce the list for you ASAP.

However, off the top of my head, the following 3 are must-have features/fixes for me:

1. custom background textures
2. custom fonts
3. stop converting highlights to plain-text upon export

Until, at the very least, these 3 are implemented/fixed in BookFusion, I can't seriously consider switching over to BookFusion from Marvin (and Moon).

As to customizing headers and footers, that's more a "nice-to-have" rather than "must-have" feature (after all, it's only available in Marvin, not in Moon), but if you wish to make the convincing claim to be a viable Marvin successor/replacement, you should definitely offer every Marvin feature, plus more (implementing/fixing many features that Marvin never got around to implementing/fixing).

Originally Posted by skillachie

This is interesting, we support exporting highlights to CSV,Markdown, PDF & HTML. And typically maintain the format of the highlight.

Unfortunately not. I made several tests, and only paragraph breaks are retained by BookFusion upon highlights export. Formatting features like italics and bold are gone. (In Marvin & Moon, paragraph breaks are gone, too.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

We can definitely have this fixed in short order.

That would be great! However, I must perhaps curb your optimism, because when we discussed this with Kris repeatedly and when he tried to fix this in Marvin, it was very difficult to accomplish, Kris said. And given that practically all e-readers do this (I have yet to encounter e-reader software that does not convert highlights to plain-text upon export!), I believed what Kris was saying. If, however, Kris was mistaken and it is an easy fix, that would be fantastic!

Originally Posted by skillachie

Can you DM or email support@bookfusion.com with an example highlight. Screenshot of the highlight you made in the book and then screenshot of the exported highlight

Please take a look at this screenshot, illustrating this bug in BookFusion:



In top-left, you can see the highlight as made in the book. You can see the use of italics in it.

Top-right is how BookFusion publishes the highlight using the share feature. The highlight is at this address:

https://www.bookfusion.com/quote/592753-c1dd6504

As you can see, both italics is removed, and the paragraph break is gone. (That's how Marvin and Moon mangle highlights upon export as well.)

Second from bottom in the screenshot is how the highlight appears in the highlights list in BookFusion's web interface. The paragraph break is preserved here, but italics is, once again, gone.

Finally, at the bottom of the screenshot, is how BookFusion exports the highlight into HTML. It's currently fake HTML, in fact (just as it's fake in Marvin and Moon, despite being called "HTML"), because the only thing that's HTML about it are the trappings around the highlight. The highlight itself (the thing that matters most!) is, once again, forcibly converted into plain-text – the opposite of HTML. The paragraph break is at least preserved (unlike in Marvin and Moon), but stripping basic, meaning-carrying formatting such as italics or bold from the highlight is a big no-no. No software can aspire to be called professional that does this, so it's definitely something that needs to be fixed. I do believe Kris when he told me he did his best to fix it in Marvin, but eventually he was unable to do so. Hopefully you guys at BookFusion will be more successful!

Originally Posted by skillachie

At the end of the day, folks can always use Dropbox or Google Drive if they care only about getting more space.

For me, space is not a concern. I use my 2 TB Dropbox account for long-term storage of books. I only need enough storage for the books I'm currently reading (and I tend to read around 12+ books simultaneously), so the storage demands for that are very low.

However, I worry about data security and syncing volatility in BookFusion. That would be another of my major concerns, perhaps preventing me from switching to BookFusion full-time. I'll expound on this later on, but briefly: I would appreciate if in addition to your in-house syncing solution, you also made it possible for us to perform manual, on-demand backups of books in our BookFusion to Dropbox or Google Drive.

You know, errors can sometimes occur, and Dropbox provides 30 days of version history for me. So, if something goes wrong in the book I work on, I can always return to the previous version of that book (of annotations on that book) as stored in my Dropbox. I guess BookFusion supports no version history, and why would you? But I'd hate to lose this feature (I really do experience data losses occasionally, especially when annotating PDF files), so I would really appreciate if you also made it possible to back up our books from BookFusion to Dropbox on-demand. (Ideal would be how GoodReader for iOS does it: you tap a single button, and the entire folder of books gets backed up to Dropbox or Drive.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

With regards to e-ink, the BookFusion Android app currently works on Likebook and Onyx Boox devices based on feedback from some of our readers. We have not officially made optimizations for these devices yet but will do once the refresh of the Android app is complete.

Well, if you could add PocketBook to the mix (if PocketBook permits you to do so), that would be fabulous.

Originally Posted by skillachie

you can start annotating image-based PDFs today using area/image based highlights on the Web. You can do this by right clicking on the area you would like to highlight. Let us know if you like this functionality and we can prioritize getting it into iOS and Android much faster.

Annotating image-based PDF files is another must-have feature for me, if I am to become a paying annual BookFusion subscriber (in a higher tier).

I don't consider it a "must-have feature" for Moon (or Marvin), because those are free to use after the initial, low one-time payment. So, I'm OK with reverting to Adobe Acrobat for PDF files for now. However, if I am to pay a subscription for an e-reader app, I'd expect it to support PDF files fully.

The way you've implemented it now in the web app is better than nothing, but it's not ideal. We really need freehand drawing – please take a look at how Acrobat, or GoodReader, or even Moon support it.

The trouble with your current implementation is that it assumes that I always wish to highlight a rectangle. It always starts with a rectangle in BookFusion. But that's not my (and many other people's) typical use. I typically wish to highlight a few lines of text.

So, say, if I need to highlight 2 lines of text and the first two words on the following line (because the sentence to be highlighted ends there), this currently can't be done in BookFusion. Because it's not a rectangle, you see? I'd have to make one rectangle highlight for the first two lines, and then another mini-rectangle just to highlight the two words on the following line. That would be extremely awkward and time-consuming. It's not true highlighting at all...

I also frequently need to draw arrows in image-based PDF files, to point to this or that area of the page, and this currently can't be done in BookFusion either, because an arrow is no rectangle, either.

Originally Posted by skillachie

You read a lot of non-fiction correct?

Right. I try to keep it balanced: out of the 12+ books I always read simultaneously, I strive for around 6 of them to be non-fiction, and 6 of them fiction. (I also try to mix up genres, languages and centuries/years of origin as much as possible; the 12 books I'm currently reading are in English, German, Slovak, Czech, Russian, Polish, and French.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

We have a few features planned around knowledge management that will benefit non-fiction readers.

Can't wait to see that!

Originally Posted by skillachie

we [...] plan to add support for custom fonts. We will likely start with picking up the system installed fonts first. That way, you could install the fonts on the device and have them available in BookFusion also.

I'm not sure this will be an option on the iPad/iPhone. You know how despotic Apple are – any such "installation" is likely blocked on the system level. I remember Kris struggled with this considerably in Marvin, but eventually he managed to implement custom fonts in Marvin as well (just barely – before Marvin development ceased).

As to Android, it seems very simple there, based on how Moon+ Reader does it. You simply load your TTF files into any folder on your device, and then you point Moon+ Reader to that folder, and with a single tap of your finger, Moon+ Reader enables all of those fonts in all of your books. It's simply amazing!

And because Moon makes it possible to store an unlimited amount of custom themes (not just 5 like Marvin!), it's a breeze (just 2 taps!) when you wish to cycle through all the available fonts in Moon, along with the color and background combinations you set up for them.

Really, Moon+ Reader can serve as the perfect role model for you guys at BookFusion, when it comes to themes management, custom background textures and custom fonts.

Originally Posted by skillachie

Fully agree with this. We do not allow you to save the custom themes or settings now but we already have this scoped and planned. It will be rolled out to iOS first. The beauty is that these settings will then be synced across Android, iOS and Web

Well, that would certainly be a nice bonus! Not strictly necessary, but very nice to have.

What's important, though, is to make the number of themes to be saved unlimited (not just 5 like in Marvin), and to make it possible to switch/cycle through the saved themes on-the-fly, very quickly. (Just 2 taps are needed for this in Moon; keyboard shortcuts would be nice for this on the desktop.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

The only one that seems not planned for the short term is customized headers and footers, would love to understand more about this particular use case. What are the changes that readers typically make in these headers and footers and why would it be a deal breaker

It's not a deal-breaker for me, as explained above. But, if you wish to say with sincerity and confidence, "BookFusion is better than Marvin now", you should match Marvin feature for feature, and then go beyond it.

You can take a look at how I customized my headers and features in Marvin in that July tweet of mine. Please see the second screenshot on the left – that's Marvin. As you can see there, in my footers, I inserted data such as pages remaining in chapter and in the book, plus percentage read in the current chapter and in the entire book. Kris even made it possible to specify whether the percentage should use 0, 1, or 2 decimal numbers – a very nice touch! In my header, I decided to put the author's name, the book title, and the current chapter title. It would be very nice to have these headers & footers customization options in BookFusion.

Originally Posted by skillachie

https://bookfusion.hellonext.co/p/cu...ap-zones-areas

Oh, this is wonderful, @skillachie! You even have a public road map and feature requests tracker!

Not sure if anything like this is available for Moon+ Reader.

There used to be something similar in GitHub for Marvin, but I'm not sure it was transparent enough. As Beta testers, I'm afraid we were frequently left guessing and in the dark as to which features were on the radar and "coming up next" in Marvin's development. That lack of transparency may have contributed to the toxic atmosphere and endless squabbling in the Beta group. That lack of transparency has made it possible for certain individuals to spew lies, even nowadays, 10 years later, as to what was or wasn't planned to be included as part of Marvin's feature set.

Hopefully, you can be spared all of that, @skillachie, and the atmosphere created by everyone wishing to contribute to BookFusion's development will be harmonious and always friendly.