new to iPad, thoughts on readers? (Mantano?)

[inpariswithyou]

Hi.

I have a Galaxy Note 10.1, and I've been using that to read my books: I use Calibre Companion to sync and manage and Moon Reader to do the actual reading. I used Mantano for a while, but I got frustrated by the lack of updates and bug fixes.

It seems like neither Calibre Companion or Moon Reader is available for iPads, although Mantano is. Does anyone have any experience with Mantano for iPads? If not, what is your favorite eReader, and why?

A little about myself: I'm a neurotic for organization and aesthetics, so if I don't have a decent amount of control over things like tagging and metadata, or if the app is plain ol' ugly, I won't like it. I use PDFs and ePubs primarily. Annotation -- notes and highlights and bookmarks -- isn't required, but it's a nice touch.

Thanks!

[eschwartz]

Did you look at Marvin? Supposed to be the best iOS ereader app.

Very polished, and has tight integration with calibre.

The developer hangs out here on Mobileread.

[Valkrider]

Another Marvin recommendation

[kyteflyer]

Another vote for Marvin. It wipes the floor with Mantano. And you wont need calibre companion.

Marvin has its own forum here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=260

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by inpariswithyou

I use PDFs and ePubs primarily.

Are you wanting one app that does both? If so Marvin's out as it only does ePub. There is a free version of Marvin that does only one book at a time if you want to be able to check out how it works as a reader.

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

And you wont need calibre companion.

I like Marvin a lot, but I'd very much like to have Calibre Companion on iOS. Marvin's library is no where as flexible as CC if you have a lot of books and want to sort them multiple ways and a few other things.

[Poodlemom1]

If you have used the Andriod version of Mantano, you will not like the iOS version. The iOS is a stripped-down version. Your choice of fonts is default, monospace, sans-serif and serif. The User Manual that is included is for the Android version. I had to write them to find out how to adjust font size. I keep hoping they will improve it because I really liked the Android version when I used it on my Kindle Fire.

If you need a reader for DRM'd ePubs, Bluefire is much better option than Mantano. My only complaint with Bluefiire is that it doesn't have the 2-column option when reading in landscape.

My vote also goes to Marvin for DRM-free ePubs.

[Jessica Lares]

I recommend Cabinet for PDFs. You might like its options.

I use Marvin too.

[inpariswithyou]

So from what I'm seeing there's no real one-stop-shop for ereading on the iPad? I use probably 50/50 epub/pdf, so ideally I'd like to keep everything in one place.

Everyone seems to love Marvin, which is great. Has anyone ever asked why there's no PDF support, or if that will ever be a feature in the future?

[Valkrider]

PDF's are just images not actual reflowable text so it is different type of data that needs displaying.

Personally I would rather have 2 apps that do the job properly rather than having one app that has compromises.

Marvin & Adobe Reader work well for me.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Valkrider

PDF's are just images not actual reflowable text so it is different type of data that needs displaying.

They are very often non-reflowable text.

Text doesn't mean it has to be reflowable. And Marvin can render images in EPUBs.

[FlorenceArt]

MarginNotes handles both PDF and ePub. Not sure it could be a one stop shop though, it's not as refined as Marvin and still needs some work (it has improved a lot in the few weeks I've known about it though). I use it for non fiction books, where I am likely to take a lot of notes and the book itself has notes. MarginNotes displays them in the margin, as the name implies, and that's very useful.

For fiction I have switched recently to Marvin and am finding it very good. As for fiction PDFs, I'm afraid I treat them much like paper books. I occasionally buy or download one, but somehow I never get around to reading them.

[Valkrider]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

They are very often non-reflowable text.

Text doesn't mean it has to be reflowable. And Marvin can render images in EPUBs.

I don't understand what you are saying maybe it is a language thing.

[Jessica Lares]

PDFs are a whole other ballpark. Weekend Read will take a PDF of a script, and turn it into regular text you can manipulate on an iPhone. But that's a script, and they have simplistic formatting.

Otherwise most PDFs are made in stuff like InDesign and other publishing related software that are drag and drop based, and basically the computer reads it based on the layers, which is why converters have a hard time with them. Everyone does their PDFs differently.

It'd be interesting if Kris would just let us keep the PDFs in the Marvin library anyway, give us the annotation tools, and leave it as that. But I'm okay using another app otherwise.

[JSWolf]

If you need to deal with DRM, Bluefire is the best one on iOS. Marvin doesn't deal with DRM. So for example, most library (Overdrive) eBooks won't work on Marvin.

[ecoolman]

Originally Posted by inpariswithyou

It seems like neither Calibre Companion or Moon Reader is available for iPads, although Mantano is. Does anyone have any experience with Mantano for iPads? If not, what is your favorite eReader, and why?

Originally Posted by inpariswithyou

the app is plain ol' ugly, I won't like it. I use PDFs and ePubs primarily. Annotation -- notes and highlights and bookmarks -- isn't required, but it's a nice touch.

Hi there, after reading this thread, I decided to give Mantano for IOS a try. This is my favorite reader on the Android, and I also use Calibre Companion. I use both EPUB and PDF, about 50/50, and prefer a single reader application for both formats.

As of this writing, I've used the IPad version for just a few hours of reading, and can confirm that it is coming along, but not quite up to par with the Android version. What I've observed so far:

• the TOCs are not displaying properly on both EPUB and PDF. I admittedly only tried a few of each, but none were right - some had a partial TOC, some had only one TOC entry.
• The gestures are a little different, pinch to zoom is used to resize text instead of up/down swipe on the left side, and the swipe for brightness isn't implemented (or I didn't find it).
• The app crashed once while flipping pages, after about an hour of reading.
• There aren't nearly as many settings, the one setting I would like to see them add soon is the "keep alive", to prevent the screen from going to sleep while reading. (ok, so I'm a slow reader)
• There is no "search" on the OPDS feeds, where there is on the Android version (more on this below).
• on the IPhone, the app crashes if I try to download an book from an OPDS feed (more below).
• The user interface is mostly identical to the Android version, so I felt right at home with it (I do prefer the Mantano UI over all others I've tried).

Even with all the above bugs, I would say this is my favorite ereader I've found for IOS, and I find it easily worth the $5. I've only been using the IPad itself a short time though, so haven't done a thorough search (I normally use a 10" android tablet).

Something that occurred to me while playing with Mantano on the IPad is that I don't really need Calibre Companion, even on the Android. When you start the Calibre Content server, it exposes your library in OPDS format. The Mantano Feeds feature is an implementation of an OPDS consumer - here's how you can get your books from Calibre directly to the Mantano Bookshelf on both IOS and Android without Calibre Companion, just requires a one-time setup:

1. In Calibre, click the Connect/Share button, and start the Content Server.
2. Click the Connect/Share button again and take note of the address and port beside the "Stop Content Server" option.
3. On the Mantano Reader home screen, select the Bookstores tab, slide in the Navigation Drawer from the left side, and note the "+" sign beside the "My Feeds". Press that, and set the title to "Calibre Library", and set the URL to the address from step 2 above, in the following format:
   
   http://<IP Address>:<port>/opds
   
   for example:
   
   http://192.168.1.100:5555/opds
4. Now anytime you need to load a book from Calibre, just go into Bookstores, click Calibre Library, find your book, and select the format to download.

As mentioned above, on IOS, the "Search" function is missing for finding books within the feeds, but to work around that, create some saved searches within Calibre, then you can simply click on those saved searches from Mantano, under the "By Searches" section. As an example, I prefer to read PDFs on the tablets, and EPUBs on the phone, so I created a saved search for "format:EPUB" and "format:PDF" to quickly find the desired format on the device.