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

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by Jabby

Does Mantano have a two page landscape mode and is there any way to add fonts.

Thanks everybody.

I was able to add and use my favorite fonts. Almost. It looks like Mantano uses its own embedded italic font - probably the same for bold and bold/italic. I didn't check. Works better than I would have expected. The only problem I noticed was an occasional line spacing problem.

I thought, at first, that the trial version didn't have a two page mode. It didn't work with my 7 or 8 inch tablets but did on my 10 inch. It may have to do with screen resolution. In any event, the way it was implemented makes it unusable to me. All of my reading is done on either my 7 incher or my 8 incher in two page landscape mode (Cool Reader).

In the brief time I used Mantano I noticed several bugs. Since I won't be using Mantano I didn't bother to quantify them.

Mantano is off to a good start and hope I will want to buy a copy in the future.

Thanks again and regards - John

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by SCION

Are you referring to PDFs?

No, with ePub. Again, depending on font size, I can get 1, 2 or 3 columns in landscape, and 1 or 2 columns in portrait. But this is on a 1280x800 screen so a smaller screen may not support columnar display at all, or in fewer font sizes, etc.

I'm sure there are those who would like to have independent control over margins, line spacing and number of columns, but I don't want to be forced to do so, and hope Mantano doesn't do away with the 'automatic' mode which seems to work very nicely most of the time.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by tomsem

No, with ePub. Again, depending on font size, I can get 1, 2 or 3 columns in landscape, and 1 or 2 columns in portrait. But this is on a 1280x800 screen so a smaller screen may not support columnar display at all, or in fewer font sizes, etc.

I'm sure there are those who would like to have independent control over margins, line spacing and number of columns, but I don't want to be forced to do so, and hope Mantano doesn't do away with the 'automatic' mode which seems to work very nicely most of the time.

Thanks for clarifying.

My tablet is 1280x800 and the font has to be tiny to show in two-page mode. I can't imagine it being any smaller than that to accommodate 3 columns.

[Eskarina]

It looks like Mantano uses its own embedded italic font - probably the same for bold and bold/italic.

Cool reader is the only epub reader I've so far tested that uses the entire font family of a custom font. It also has a setting where you can darken your fonts in increments so your books always look fabulous. Even though Coolreader has no library management, I'm having a hard time letting go of it.

My tablet is 1280x800 and the font has to be tiny to show in two-page mode. I can't imagine it being any smaller than that to accommodate 3 columns.

My vision is not bad (20/25), I don't wear reading glasses and I have trouble with the text that small - I can read it but it's certainly not comfortable. [Shrugs] Maybe tomsem has super vision.

Aldiko handles 2 column landscape the same way as Mantano. However, the font size where aldiko switches to 2 column is usually larger than for Mantano. On my 3.5 inch phone, I've noticed on some books, Mantano never actually switches over to 2 column while on landscape while on some, it does. Weird.

ETA:

Originally Posted by SCION

I'm using this setup with a public DropBox folder.

Thanks for this SCION! Using the directions from this site, I was able to access my Calibre library through Mantano.

Also, thanks for the K, I'm going to hit you with some as soon as I get some more!

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by Eskarina

Cool reader is the only epub reader I've so far tested that uses the entire font family of a custom font. It also has a setting where you can darken your fonts in increments so your books always look fabulous.

Where is the font darkening setting? What is it called? I can't seem to find it.

Regards - John

[Eskarina]

Originally Posted by Jabby

Where is the font darkening setting? What is it called? I can't seem to find it.

Regards - John

Coolreader introduced a setting called font gamma (near the bottom of the first screen of the options menu) a couple of months ago. Not knowing a thing about typography I played around with it and noticed that my font got "darker" when I increased it and lighter when I decreased it. This was good enough for me so I used to set it at 1.2 back when I was using Goudy Old Style. Now that I use Minion Pro which is a shade darker than Goudy, I just leave it at the default setting (1.0).

What I'd love to know about is the custom opds catalog the latest update was supposed to support. I think I'll head over to their forum and ask.

[loyukfai]

Originally Posted by GregoryP

We need to take a look at that. In theory it should be supported, but some people seem to be reporting that it isn't.

Any news...?

FWIW, Adobe Desktop Editions 1.8 preview supports JPEG2000 images. Not sure but it seems to be using RMSDK 9.3, and Mantano is using 9.2, would that be the issue...?

BTW I'm talking about JPEG2000 in PDF.

Originally Posted by loyukfai

The app still defaults to SD install, can you change it to Auto...?

Also this..?

BTW, I would like to propose some more things.

1. To have a more intuitive and quicker method to access the freehand/drawing annotation function.
   
   Ice Cream Sandwich specifically claims to have support for stylus, I guess it means that the system will be able to tell the app whether the input is from the digitizer or from the capacitive screen. For those devices with both, it would be useful if the software automatically switch to freehand annotation when the active stylus is in range.
   
   However, most devices don't have a digitizer and there are capacitive styli, which I don't think the system will be able to distinguish (between the hand and the stylus). So there's still a need for a simpler approach to doing freehand annotations.
   
   Right now, one has to make 3 clicks, switch to another interface, do the annotations, and then save it, and return to the reading interface.
   
   
2. Another thing is to have a transparent option for the drawing annotation function.
   
   I scanned a couple of books and stored them in PDF format, but since the content is actually stored as images (JBIG2 for B/W and JPEG2000 for greyscale/colour), the normal highlight function doesn't work. I can make use of the drawing function but needs some transparency on the ink.

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by Eskarina

Coolreader introduced a setting called font gamma (near the bottom of the first screen of the options menu) a couple of months ago.

Think I'll play with it awhile.

Thanks - John

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by SCION

Thanks for clarifying.

My tablet is 1280x800 and the font has to be tiny to show in two-page mode. I can't imagine it being any smaller than that to accommodate 3 columns.

I can use 4 sizes in 2 column mode. The largest of these I would not consider 'tiny', though it is small. Only the smallest text size goes to 3 column mode, and yes, that I would say is definitely 'tiny' (with letter forms somewhat degraded).

I could easily see the phase shift between 1 and 2 column taking place at larger text sizes, however (maybe 3 or 4 sizes larger). On a large screen in landscape mode, there are too many words in a line long before it finally switches to 2 column mode. And the shift between 2 and 3 column mode might happen with text 1 or 2 sizes larger, for the same reason (too many words on each line). But it is somewhat subjective, and therefore something one would like to adjust if it could be done easily with some gesture.

Maybe a 2 finger drag up/down gesture could be added to retain the current column setting while adjusting text size (for devices that support multitouch).

[loyukfai]

It seems that in the drawing annotation interface one cannot zoom in and out...?

Cheers.

[Section8]

I just updated mantano to 1.6.4 and it looks like calibre/opds download is fixed and working. Also I'm now getting book covers instead of blank thumbnails in the opds list. Great!!

[Eskarina]

Just downloaded version 1.6.4 and yep, the Calibre catalog with the content server is now working with covers and all. Thanks Mantano team!

On a related issue, does anyone know how to get the book description to show up while using Calibre2opds + dropbox? Thanks.

[blak4dr]

Same for me with 1.6.4 and calibre. Mantano has just turned from excellent to awesome
Merci à l'équipe de développement !

[GregoryP]

You're welcome

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I can use 4 sizes in 2 column mode. The largest of these I would not consider 'tiny', though it is small. Only the smallest text size goes to 3 column mode, and yes, that I would say is definitely 'tiny' (with letter forms somewhat degraded).

I could easily see the phase shift between 1 and 2 column taking place at larger text sizes, however (maybe 3 or 4 sizes larger). On a large screen in landscape mode, there are too many words in a line long before it finally switches to 2 column mode. And the shift between 2 and 3 column mode might happen with text 1 or 2 sizes larger, for the same reason (too many words on each line). But it is somewhat subjective, and therefore something one would like to adjust if it could be done easily with some gesture.

Maybe a 2 finger drag up/down gesture could be added to retain the current column setting while adjusting text size (for devices that support multitouch).

The best solution is to have a menu item to select two column mode. Then you will be able to pick the font size that suits your eyes.

If Mantano used this method, I would be an immediate buyer.

Regards - John