two versions of last page read ?

[stumped]

I got very confused with moon+ reader, CC, and Moon+ backup to dropbox interactions recently.

leaving aside the dropbox backup one, which was probably a red herring, is it that case that:

a book opened via READ in CC will go to the last page read when the book was accessed via that route

but the same book opened by opening moon+ reader then tapping the book on the shelf will go to the last page read via that route

i.e. there are two versions of "last page read", one held by CC, and one held by moon, and there is no auto sync between the two ?.

when I close a book that was opened for reading in CC, I am returned to the CC shelf, not to the moon reader shelf, so I guess moon reader does not record that activity?

( there's also the "last page read" which moon sends to its dropbox backup for syncing across devices , but on a single device it should not need to restore from there - also, I suspected dropbox sync and not CC at first, so I disabled the former)

i was finding myself re-reading chapters that I'd already read, but I think its because of flipping between the two ways to open a book outlined above.

can you confirm please and also explain how/ where CC keeps it's last page read records - thanks.

it this is all "by design" can you point me at any relevant older discussion of the pros/ cons/ alternatives please

I suspect bookari/mantano as the same "double bookmark" issue

and I also supsect, but ran out of testing patience, that the first time a book is opened via CC. it will go to the last page read in moon reader, if CC has no last page record of it's own to refer to ?

[chaley]

CC doesn't keep any last read positions or any other information from inside the book (bookmarks, annotations, etc). Those are solely in the hands of the reader apps. When you "read" a book via CC, it launches the reader app and gives it the name (path) of the file in CC's library. What happens then is up to the app.

I use moon+ pro. For me, when I launch moon+ from CC I get the last page read. The same thing happens when I read the book using one of CC's desktop widgets; and when I manually launch moon+, select the book in the "Recent list" and then read it (although I never actually do that). I don't use the moon+ "library" and I don't know how using that feature will affect the reading position stored by moon+.

My guess is that you have two copies of the same book, one in the moon+ "library" and one in CC's storage. Opening one will get you the reading position last used for that copy. Opening the other will do the same, but for the other copy.

[stumped]

ok - well I will test again. could you also test using " the shelf" in moon pro please, to reproduce.

{I did look for possible other copies in other locations, but did not find any. I am not that hot at searching android though}

here is what i did last time: opened a book via CC which happened to be at chapter 16. that book was in download/cc which is also the "shelf" location for moon
closed that. opened same book but by launching moon and going to shelf and advanced to chapter 20 via TOC.
closed that, went back to CC and opened book - i was back at chapter 16
closed that, went back to moon reader shelf and opened book - I was back at chapter 20 !

so I will go find a book that has never been on the tablet, get it via CC, than try to reproduce the above...

[stumped]

well I reproduced it.
the book I used for this test is A B C - by Samuel Delaney, a book that has never been on the tablet.
grabbed it via content server , opened it, went to chapter one of 1st story ( A )
exited, opened moon - imported books to shelf, which scanned the download/cc location and imported it.
opened book and moved to chapter 1 of story B.
closed it- i.e. exiting both the book and moon reader
went back to CC and opened the book again from there - I was back at story A
[ i had not actually forced an exit from cc beforehand ]
so there's for sure some last page location caching going on somewhere under he bonnets!
one more time around. this time I opened via CC, got book a, completely exited book AND cc, went back in via Moon + shelf - was back in book B !

so please look again, and look closely at the "shelf" mechanics in Moon if you can - thanks.
my app versions are whatever is in google store as at today
on the shelf in moon I am seeing 40% read, which matches being on story 2 of 3.
CC says the full path is /storage/emulated/0/download/cc
moon says the path is /sdcard/download/cc
but that's another way of describing the same location I think. I do have an actual SD card but neither app is set to use it, and when I poke around in ES file explorer, both those paths lead to the same place ?
I can prove that another way. I go to CC and choose to delete the book, then I go back to moon and try to open it from the shelf - I get file does not exist.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by stumped

ok - well I will test again. could you also test using " the shelf" in moon pro please, to reproduce.

No. I don't use moon+ shelves and don't even know how to get a book onto a shelf. And in any event, this isn't a CC bug. CC is not responsible for moon+ behavior and, as I said, CC doesn't keep reader positions.

It is worth noting that most CC+moon+ users do not use the moon+ library manager.

{I did look for possible other copies in other locations, but did not find any. I am not that hot at searching android though}

here is what i did last time: opened a book via CC which happened to be at chapter 16. that book was in download/cc which is also the "shelf" location for moon
closed that. opened same book but by launching moon and going to shelf and advanced to chapter 20 via TOC.
closed that, went back to CC and opened book - i was back at chapter 16
closed that, went back to moon reader shelf and opened book - I was back at chapter 20 !

Are you using moon+ "auto import"? Who knows what that really does? Who knows where moon+ stores reading positions for "imported" books?

so I will go find a book that has never been on the tablet, get it via CC, than try to reproduce the above...

I suspect that the root of the problem is that the moon+ library manager is making assumptions about its environment.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by stumped

so please look again, and look closely at the "shelf" mechanics in Moon if you can - thanks.
my app versions are whatever is in google store as at today

Sorry, but CC does absolutely nothing with reading positions. I don't have the time or interest to figure out what strange things moon+ does with them with imported books.

The easy solution: use one or the other, not both.

[stumped]

PS if this is a " feature" of how the noon+ shelf works than I should fail to reproduce it if I switch to bookari instead. I was all set to try that, but then I realised that CC will always use moon as the reader. I guess I@d have to go change android settings somehow to have it test with bookari for me instead, i on't see an open with setting in CC - so I think I will wait for your feedback on the previous post.

it's no problem to live with the "features" as-is so long as I can understand what is happening.

PS I did look at the moon reader widget but that uses " recents" not shelf, and I prefer the "shelf" concept. Bookari also has a "bookshelf". i like the reader's "shelf" because they show reading progress, though moon does not update its shelf read % unless you exit and re-launch the app. bookari updates its shelf every time you exit a book. CC does not report reading progress % anywhere that I could find ?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by stumped

PS if this is a " feature" of how the noon+ shelf works than I should fail to reproduce it if I switch to bookari instead. I was all set to try that, but then I realised that CC will always use moon as the reader. I guess I@d have to go change android settings somehow to have it test with bookari for me instead, i on't see an open with setting in CC - so I think I will wait for your feedback on the previous post.

There are two ways to test with a different reader.

1. Go to CC's Settings / Other and "Clear default reader apps". CC will then ask you for the app when you read a book until you select a new default.
2. Open the book's "details" in CC, tap the three dots, then choose "Open book with ...". You will get a list of all the apps CC can find that claim to know how to open that book format.

it's no problem to live with the "features" as-is so long as I can understand what is happening.

PS I did look at the moon reader widget but that uses " recents" not shelf, and I prefer the "shelf" concept.

I was talking about CC's desktop widgets, not the moon+ variety.

As far as I know, most CC users don't use any of the moon+ lists: recent, shelf, or otherwise, but I admit I have no way to verify that assertion.

Bookari also has a "bookshelf". i like the reader's "shelf" because they show reading progress, though moon does not update its shelf read % unless you exit and re-launch the app. bookari updates its shelf every time you exit a book. CC does not report reading progress % anywhere that I could find ?

No, CC doesn't report reader progress because it has no idea what it is. Only the reader app knows.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by stumped

CC does not report reading progress % anywhere that I could find ?

CC isn't a reader so it has no reading progress to report.

I agree with the assessment that once someone decides to use CC to manage their books there is no longer any reason to open any reader app directly. I use CC widgets to launch all of my recently opened/read books.

[stumped]

unless, like me , they want to see a % read indicator for several epub books-in-progress ( like I can do with my amazon books on a dedicated kindle ). I guess there's no easy way to implement that. CC would have to go read records created by various reader apps. Moon pro does record that info somewhere as it is shown on its "recent" screen.

I will probably open from CC initially then resume from Moon+ recent screen, as a working compromise. That bypasses any use of the reader's own "shelf" and thus bypasses the original issue

Also, FYI,one of my tablets is a Fire HDX, & Amazon don't do widgets, so I can't mimic your setup. I can , I think, do the sync via dropbox thing with Moon+ but I have no real need to

[stumped]

i will offer just one suggestion for getting reading progress into CC. If I am the only person wanting it then I accept it will never happen, however...

..Moon reader can put that info into dropbox and CC can already connect to dropbox.
when I turn on moon reader's dropbox sync I see that moon writes to dropbox/apps/books/.moon+/cache with 2 entries per book -
booktitle - author.po and booktitle - author.an
both are 1kb files

so CC could potentially read and display what's in those,?
e.g. looking at two .po files in notepad++ I see 16% and 65.3% at the end of the strings, and i'd wager that's the read progress values
1460487918082*7@0#0:16.0%
1460487918082*20@0#0:65.3%
the opening number is the same for both books so it's maybe the moon+ theme identifier.
7@0 20@0 could be chapter and position in chapter, I usually bookmark at a chapter start. each book is uniquely identified by its file name, which was passed to moon by CC when book was first opened ?

( the .an file is gibberish in notepad, and not needed for read progress reporting )

those file pairs may also exist also in local storage, I have not looked

a later generalisation would be a preference to select from list of supported readers for reading progress reporting, and support coud be developed one reader at a time , if there is sufficient demand

[jackie_w]

I think many users would like some kind of "universal progress indicator". Unfortunately, the reality is that there are currently no published standards on how/where progress data should be stored. Consequently every Android reading app does it differently and could change their methods at the drop of a hat. Trying to pull it all together would be a support nightmare, like trying to herd cats.

[stumped]

yes, I appreciate that, but reading back over the debate about cloud storage, there was much discussion which ones to support and how, but that eventually worked out OK. there was a vote on what to support ?
I think, could be wrong, that Moon is the most popular paid epub reader app , [ google play says 500k - 1M installs ] and it appears to write easy to find & understand files, so start with only that one ?

[theducks]

@stumped
If there were STANDARDS with enforcement like Video Discs... (no meet, No use Logo. 'Guido'!... )
Half the inter operability problems users have would be gone

Look at Metadata Standards (and most are wishy-washy)
Series (name) is not a Standard
(Reading) Progress is Logical (Notice I called it Progress. Media type independent: Text, audio or video)

[chaley]

@stumped: there be dragons here. First, adding this for one reader app would create an immediate demand for all others. People whose favorite app BlatReader isn't supported will leave 1-star reviews, and those matter immensely.

Even considering just Moon+, there are enormous complexities. I would be required to support both Dropbox and Google Drive. Users who do not sync would still want reading progress, so I would also need to dig it out of the database. I would need to deal with Moon+ changes and compatibility between them. I would be almost certainly required to sync that information back to calibre. And then would come the requirement for CC to update the Moon+ data so it syncs without using the cloud.

I am not going to jump into this tar pit.