New Reader with great pdf-support: Mantano Reader (like aldiko+ezpdf)

[sherbs]

At present I use Moon+ for books (epub) and ezPDF for mags. I was hoping Mantano could replace both. Alas, it doesn't seem so.

I find the interface messy and find myself switching all the time between main page, filter and views. It seems any organisation will have to be done manually as the only stock option appears to be to sort the whole collection rather than sort them into categories. I would have to create collections for authors which in most readers is a standard category.

All my books are tagged with Calibre but none of the tags come through to Mantano. How do I use 'series' as advertised, also, although I can add tags, I can't find a way to filter by them.

As far as pdfs go, it just doesn't render as well as ezPDF, fonts are not nearly as sharp.

[wbhuang]

because the biggest bug still exists(when turning to next page in fitting horizionally mode,you read from the middle of it,not the begining) and I can't find a way to get around it after trying v1.5.2 all day , I decide to downgrade to v1.2.4 until this bug is fixed.

This bug seems to be caused by differences in horizonal reading mode from previous versions. Mantano now seems to focus on big screen tablet which rarely uses horizional mode . Reading experience for smaller devices is deteriorating

[loyukfai]

Originally Posted by wbhuang

because the biggest bug still exists(when turning to next page in fitting horizionally mode,you read from the middle of it,not the begining) and I can't find a way to get around it after trying v1.5.2 all day , I decide to downgrade to v1.2.4 until this bug is fixed.

I don't agree it's the biggest bug.

This bug seems to be caused by differences in horizonal reading mode from previous versions. Mantano now seems to focus on big screen tablet which rarely uses horizional mode . Reading experience for smaller devices is deteriorating

This is one update, could we have a little patient and see what they will do about it?

BTW, I've subscribed this thread for updates and discussions about Mantano. Comparisons between different readers are fine but for pure talks about another reader, please start another thread. You sound like a salesman coming here to promote another product.

Cheers.

[GregoryP]

Originally Posted by sherbs

It seems any organisation will have to be done manually as the only stock option appears to be to sort the whole collection rather than sort them into categories. I would have to create collections for authors which in most readers is a standard category.

All my books are tagged with Calibre but none of the tags come through to Mantano. How do I use 'series' as advertised, also, although I can add tags, I can't find a way to filter by them.

This is probably just a visual issue with the latest version : you can select the type of filter. The default is collections, but if you click on collections you can select tag, author, series, etc. We used the Honeycomb spinner drawable to display this spinner, which was probably not the best idea as we have quite a few people not noticing that you can change the filter type. This will have to be fixed in an upcoming release.

This bug seems to be caused by differences in horizonal reading mode from previous versions. Mantano now seems to focus on big screen tablet which rarely uses horizional mode . Reading experience for smaller devices is deteriorating

Actually, the problem is that we added code to keep the current zoom/scroll level of the page because quite a few people were using the zoom to crop the page (instead of the built-in crop features). This helps them, but the side-effect is that while the previous version automatically returned to the top of the page, the current doesn't anymore. This clearly needs to be fixed in an update as it is an undesirable side-effect.

Yes, I bought mine through Amazon. Waiting for the update.

Amazon takes forever to validate applications... No idea when it'll be released, and the bad news is that Amazon will probably release version 1.5.0 instead of directly jumping to 1.5.2 :/

[ghostyjack]

I'm having serious issues with reading books on My Galaxy Tab (original 7 inch one) with Mantano.

Tap the screen for page turns is highly unresponsive, I might need to tap it several times before it registers. Also using the volume controls is not much better, I tap it and I normally have to wait for up to 5 seconds before the page changes.

The book I'm currently on has a paragraph that filled the entire screen with a small font size and now page turns has completly stopped on it and it goes no further. I've had to switch back to Aldiko just to complete the book.

This reader renders books far better than than any other reader I've tried on Android but this issue I have makes it unusable.

I hope the dev's can sort out the performance issues soon as the one before 1.5 was perfectly acceptable with its performance for me and I didn't back it up so can't revert back to it.

[sherbs]

The default is collections, but if you click on collections you can select tag, author, series, etc

OK, I tried pressing 'Collections' once but nothing happened so I thought it was just the title. Now I've tried again and there is some good stuff in there. Still think some of it should be nearer the front rather than clicking through various menus.

I see series will have to be entered manually.

Any chance pdf rendering will be improved? I'm talking tablet size here.

Cheers.

[GregoryP]

I see series will have to be entered manually.

We import them from ePub files. However, if your ePub files were imported prior to this release, then the corresponding metadata wasn't imported. We might need to add an option to update the metadata from the file in order to fix this.

Any chance pdf rendering will be improved? I'm talking tablet size here.

We found a bug which slows down rendering when using "fit", so that should be easily fixed. Could you describe the way you use PDF viewing to see what we can do ?

[sherbs]

Could you describe the way you use PDF viewing to see what we can do ?

For me, PDF viewing is mainly magazines on a 10" tablet (Eee Pad), full screen in portait as I like to see the whole page. I'm not much bothered about highlighting and annotating etc as I'm just reading so, for me, it's all about how closely reading the PDF compares to reading a real mag.

For sharpness of text and images, at the moment you can't beat ezPDF but then page turning is slow. Mantano is a bit quicker at page turning but then text isn't as sharp. Compare the same page of a retail mag (an ad with graphics and small print eg) in both apps and you'll see what I mean.

If I've got to choose between speed and rendering, speed would have to come second. I really want both though!

Cheers.

[mvo]

The more I use Mantano the more I like it - particularly for ePub files. I have just upgraded to 1.5.2 and noticed the Collections feature and that there are "sub" collections. Horray Now, how to get books into collections...

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by mvo

The more I use Mantano the more I like it - particularly for ePub files. I have just upgraded to 1.5.2 and noticed the Collections feature and that there are "sub" collections. Horray Now, how to get books into collections...

I keep checking Amazon for the new version. I know they said they don't know when but I can't wait for the new stuff.

[Eskarina]

Originally Posted by GregoryP

We import them from ePub files. However, if your ePub files were imported prior to this release, then the corresponding metadata wasn't imported. We might need to add an option to update the metadata from the file in order to fix this...

Thanks for this tip. I'd played around with the updated version and was delighted when I saw that you can browse books as series then got confused when it only showed 2 series. I deleted all my books and re-imported them (took ~ 30s) and got all my series information. Yay!

[Sweetpea]

I only have two books in my library atm, so no need for collections yet, but as soon as I'll copy my entire library over, I'll have to see about that. I really like the idea of sub collections, actually...

[citac]

Just a quick question: I tried to re-download Mantano after a firmware update, but kept getting a parsing error; SlideME shows their minimum OS is Android 2.1 while I have 2.0 - will the app be made available to Android 2.0 users?

[sherbs]

I've re-imported my books and the series show. Great.

Now, the books are also tagged with series number. Is there a way to use this tag to sort them chronologically? I'm hoping I don't have to rename the titles so that they show in order.

Cheers.

[loyukfai]

Seems JPEG2000 is still not supported... : (