Thread: Which Reader for which Platform to support?
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Old 06-15-2025, 06:09 AM   #4
JSWolf
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Slevin#7 View Post
This topic has certainly been covered countless times, but I'd still like to take the liberty of asking for your opinions here.

I want to provide eBooks for a private community, which should be readable on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux. Which readers would you recommend to be supported?

I've tried several readers and I am very disappointed with almost all of them for their unwillingness to adhere to EPUB standards: stylesheets are completely ignored, books are consistently displayed differently than intended, you can find basically every conceivable manifestation of crap in one or the other reader.

Let's start with

1. iOS:
Apple Books is fairly usable. Which secondary application should be supported?
ADE certainly not, nothing works there at all.
PocketBook ignores margins for p-tags, I don't know if you can enforce that. Also, graphics are split, which seems to be a problem in general (solutions like float don't let the graphics get centered, for example).
Yomo is similar to PocketBook, but in addition also ignores h1-6 formatting.

2. Android:
Google Play Books is better than nothing, but not perfect either.
Which app would be your number 2 for Android?

3. Windows:
Calibre seems to work reasonably well.
Thorium as an alternative works, but for chapters in separate HTML files that contain graphics, a vertical scrollbar may got displayed on all chapter pages (probably cannot adapt larger images correctly to the viewport).
Any other recommendations here?

4. Mac:
Which reader would you recommend for MacOS (Calibre and Thorium)?

5. Linux:
Which reader would you recommend for Linux (Calibre and Thorium)?

I'd like to thank you very much for all your recommendations.
For Windows, MacOS, & Linux, why not just use calibre and then everyone on those platforms will be using the same program.

As for iOS, I'm using BookFusion. It works well and there is an Android version. So those on iOS, iPadOS, and Android can all run the same program.

That's all of the platforms you've listed sorted.
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