[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[ChristopherTD]

I have an ebook that seems to be immune to Marvin font sizing. Is there a quick trick to get around this, before I delve into tweaking it with Calibre?

[kguil]

I'm some rare cases Marvin is not able to override the CSS in the book. Would you mind sending me a PM or an email so I try and fix it?

[Turtle91]

As a maker-of-ePubs-padiwon, I'd be interested in learning more about how devices override the css in the epub, and how to prevent that in some cases.

If I could see the CSS too, that would be great.

[kguil]

Hi Turtle, at some point, I'll be setting up a blog and I'll be posting something there.

[oooclll]

I've been using marvin for a couple of weeks now and I'm really enjoying it. After almost a year my iPad is finally starting to fulfill the task I bought the thing for.

As nice of as app it is however, I am finding it lacking in a few features that that prevents me from recommending it wholeheartedly. I've emailed Kris about them earlier, but I want to discuss one of those features here because I have not seen it mentioned it by anyone else.

It is about the way in which to get books to marvin. Marvin makes it easy to download books from Dropbox by it's in-app search. But it is still a manual process. I feel very strongly that this is not how the cloud should work at all. Synchronization with dropbox should be automatic. When I delete a book from dropbox (i.e. deleting it from calibre and having it removed from my calibre library that I sync to dropbox), it should disappear from marvin automatically. When I add a book in dropbox it should show up in marvin automatically. When I change the cover of a book in dropbox it should change in marvin automatically. When I add a tag to a book it should be updated in marvin automatically.

That is how the cloud should work. Why? Because people can have tons of books and its tough work organizing and controlling them all. I can't do it manually for every device I own. It's a nightmare.

For all the advantages that marvin has over reading systems like kindle and nook and kobo and google play books, this is one major area where it falls short. Every single one of those systems synchronizes your library (at least the ones bought from them) across your reading devices. Its the one thing they all get right. I wish marvin would do it too.

-oooclll

[Rhialto]

Exactly.....

The other issue I have with Marvin is how much longer it takes than iBooks (direct comparison since I have the same 1000 books in each app) to open.

Other than that its a decent reader.




r

Originally Posted by oooclll

It is about the way in which to get books to marvin. Marvin makes it easy to download books from Dropbox by it's in-app search. But it is still a manual process. I feel very strongly that this is not how the cloud should work at all. Synchronization with dropbox should be automatic. When I delete a book from dropbox (i.e. deleting it from calibre and having it removed from my calibre library that I sync to dropbox), it should disappear from marvin automatically. When I add a book in dropbox it should show up in marvin automatically. When I change the cover of a book in dropbox it should change in marvin automatically. When I add a tag to a book it should be updated in marvin automatically.

That is how the cloud should work. Why? Because people can have tons of books and its tough work organizing and controlling them all. I can't do it manually for every device I own. It's a nightmare.

For all the advantages that marvin has over reading systems like kindle and nook and kobo and google play books, this is one major area where it falls short. Every single one of those systems synchronizes your library (at least the ones bought from them) across your reading devices. Its the one thing they all get right. I wish marvin would do it too.

-oooclll

[SharonK]

Originally Posted by Kretzer

But did you know you can also sync directly between calibre and Marvin? If you don't need all your library on the internet that's the easiest way.
All you have to do is to ad calibre to the list of servers in Marvin: Tapping on the cloud icon at the bottom, you can choose "Web Browser" oder "OPDS Catalogs". Both works, OPDS gives you a more structured list. There is a "tap here" line that opens a window to enter the address for your calibre server.
You find the address in calibre when you click on the "connect/share" button, there it says stop or run Content server. (I think by default this is activated in calibre). You'll have to type in all those digits and points in Marvin, but only once, then you can save it as a favourite.

That's the way I do it and it works just fine.
I like Dropbox for many things, but I prefer to keep my ebook library locally and just carry the few dozen books I need at a time.

Thanks for the information. I'll see if I can figure it out.

[kguil]

Rhialto, the next update contains substantial performance improvements when loading (5-10 times faster). It should be available in about a week. The update following that will also improve loading times of the library page.

[kguil]

oooclll: Apple, B&N, Kobo etc... control everything from cloud storage to the front-end component. It is my understanding that their synchronisation systems work only for purchased books.

Achieving the same level of functionality is much, much more difficult using Dropbox APIs only. I will investigate this idea and see if I can come up with something.

[oooclll]

Originally Posted by kguil

oooclll: Apple, B&N, Kobo etc... control everything from cloud storage to the front-end component. It is my understanding that their synchronisation systems work only for purchased books.

Achieving the same level of functionality is much, much more difficult using Dropbox APIs only. I will investigate this idea and see if I can come up with something.

I can understand that it is much harder to do when you don't control the cloud storage directly. If all users were like me I can tell you that it would be worth the effort if it were possible to implement. Who knows what other users are like though :-/. I can say however that I tired to get my two siblings to adopt Marvin (they use the Kindle app) but they are having a hard time swallowing the need to manually manage their books. Though in the end the subject/tag will do it for them I think. 100s of un categorizable books is their major headache with the Kindle (I don't get why they implement it on the Kindle hardware but not on the iPad app, oh well)

Is the Dropbox API somewhat as expressive as say a local OS filesystem API? In which case it should be feasible at least... Either way, as a fellow software engineer, I know that synchronization is tough and dirty job. I hope you end up finding it worth your time though.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kguil

oooclll: Apple, B&N, Kobo etc... control everything from cloud storage to the front-end component. It is my understanding that their synchronisation systems work only for purchased books.

Achieving the same level of functionality is much, much more difficult using Dropbox APIs only. I will investigate this idea and see if I can come up with something.

It is possible to do but you have to have a dedicated folder in dropbox. It would be a folder in Apps called Marvin. Forcing the user to keep track of what he or she wants to sync with Marvin. Today I can drag any book to marvin or to some other app if I wish, I can even have the same book in two apps to compare. Maybe you could still accept books from anywhere in dropbox but sync to the ones in Apps\Marvin.

Syncing is can be automatically or initiated manually, personally I would prefer manually but once the command is given all the files in the folder would be sync'd. I know this works for updates but I am not sure how Dropbox would know about deleted files. You might have to do that manually.

Dale

[kguil]

That is an idea for a starting point. The biggest problem is that Marvin cannot access the metadata of a book unless it downloads it entirely first (and a dedicated, specialised, cloud server would do exactly that). As a matter of fact, Marvin cannot even tell whether a file is really an epub before it downloads it all. For large libraries this can be a problem.

Determining if there is an updated book in DB (say the cover has changed in Calibre) of one already in the library is even more difficult. I don't think it is impossible though. I need to put more thought into this.

[Philantrop]

Whatever you decide, Kris, please, please, please keep any such (auto-)sync functionality strictly optional. Like Dale, I really greatly prefer manual synching and hate the mess iBooks and Kindle produce.

[kguil]

Definitely.

[oooclll]

I would be happy with full syncing an Apps/Marvin folder through the Dropbox Sync API. But I really only use my iPad for reading and I am happy to hand over 30-40GB of storage to Marvin. I can see that is probably not palatable to others.

I would also be happy with a daemon running on my computer that keeps track of the epub and extracts metadata and cover pages etc to a catalog file that Marvin would download. But again I can see that this is inelegant, synchronization will happen only in when the computer is running...

I would also be happy with a Calibre plugin that does the same thing.

Or to to keep track of epubs in dropbox without downloading to the iPad you could consider something like this:
http://wappwolf.com/dropboxautomator
Either to use it directly or implement something like that yourself. Though I am sure that it involves a heavy server-side component. I am sure they sync the dropbox to their servers to achieve this.