[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[kguil]

Thanks Andy. Idea noted. I'll check what the DB API lets me do.

[andy88]

Hi Kris,

One more feature suggestion that I thought of was -

It will be nice for Marvin to have metadata downloading capabilities of books from Amazon and Google. For example, it could download metadata information of books; retrieving "automatically" the title, author, cover page and etc.

Currently, I use Calibre to edit the ebooks first before uploading them to Dropbox and then downloading them to Marvin.

That'll be so good to have on the Marvin App !


All the best,
Andy

[Philantrop]

No, no, no! That's *exactly* what Calibre is *made* for and Marvin should *never* replicate such foreign functions.

[kguil]

Andy, keep in mind that whenever metadata is changed in Marvin, those changes only apply to the book in Marvin's library. The updated metadata is never 'inserted' into the book per se - Marvin never modifies your ePubs. So if for instance, you remove the book from Marvin that info is lost even if you pull the ePub out of Marvin before.

Whilst I understand your point, using Calibre as the 'master' repository will result in your library being much better organised and properly tagged across any reading device.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Philantrop

No, no, no! That's *exactly* what Calibre is *made* for and Marvin should *never* replicate such foreign functions.

I agree 100%. Duplicating what Calibre does with the Modify ePub plugin is a waste of code and bloats the app. Also, Marvin's metadata mods only apply to the copy of the ePub in the library. It does not actually change the ePub.

[andy88]

Originally Posted by kguil

Andy, keep in mind that whenever metadata is changed in Marvin, those changes only apply to the book in Marvin's library. The updated metadata is never 'inserted' into the book per se - Marvin never modifies your ePubs. So if for instance, you remove the book from Marvin that info is lost even if you pull the ePub out of Marvin before.

Whilst I understand your point, using Calibre as the 'master' repository will result in your library being much better organised and properly tagged across any reading device.

Agree with you on that. My mistake.

[kguil]

No problem Andy. I'm working on something that might meet your requirements half way though (much more advanced Marvin/Calibre integration).

[kguil]

The crash when deleting collections has been fixed and the update will be released within a few days. Also fixed some other annoyances: http://marvinapp.com/whatsnew.html

[andy88]

Nice work Kris. Awaiting your next update.

[chilady1]

Forgive me for this question, but struggling to find an answer.

I have downloaded Marvin and I absolutely love this app but having a hard time understanding how to integrate with Calibre via OPDS.

When I had Stanza - I was able to view my entire library via the setup and wondering how I can do this with Marvin. I have gone to the Marvin website and perhaps I am missing it but the instructions are not clear to me as to how to do this. In addition, when I had Stanza I was able to see my entire library but I believe Marvin has an API restrictions of only 1000 viewable, is this correct?

Lastly, once I get everything set up properly will I be able to see my Collections as they exist in Calibre? Again, I was able to view books in Stanza via Author, Title or Series but not sure how to do this with Marvin.

Sorry for the 20,000 questions and again, if someone can point me to where I can find instructions that would be great! Thanks All!

[ProfCrash]

Loving collections. Thanks!

[eVeNtInE]

Originally Posted by kguil

@eVeNtInE The version after 1.2 will support something even better than translate and Wiktionary. You'll be able to create your own button with custom behaviour including access to external dictionary apps if they have a custom URL scheme (more on this later).

Sorry to be a bother, but any update on when this feature might arrive?

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by eVeNtInE

Sorry to be a bother, but any update on when this feature might arrive?

Not before the summer, possibly later. I'm eagerly waiting for that feature, too, but I hope you will agree that it's even more important now, for all of us, for Kris to make Marvin for iPhone available, which is what he is going to focus on in the upcoming months.

As it is, Kris has done an astounding amount of work since December 2012 when Marvin first came out -- far more, and much higher-quality work than multi-billion mega-corporations like Apple and Amazon have done in years. So, let's not put too much pressure on Kris.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by chilady1

I have downloaded Marvin and I absolutely love this app but having a hard time understanding how to integrate with Calibre via OPDS. When I had Stanza - I was able to view my entire library via the setup and wondering how I can do this with Marvin.

If you read some of my earlier posts in this mega-thread, you know I consider the desire to "integrate Calibre with Marvin" to be old-fashioned and inefficient.

Why? Because it's so much easier just to instruct cloud software like Dropbox or SugarSync or Box.net, to mirror your entire Calibre "Books" folder online -- so that you always have access to any of your Calibre books on any of your traditional computers or handheld devices. There is no need to set up any direct connection between Calibre and Marvin any longer! And no need to be running your iPad and a different computer (with Calibre) at the same time. The other computer can be switched off, but you still have access to all of your Calibre books -- isn't that cool?

If, however, you insist on being "old-fashioned" , you can still do it "the old way", and easily set up a direct connection between Calibre and Marvin. Here is how:

1. In Calibre, push the "Connect/share" button. Then press "Start Content Server". Then push the "Connect/share" button again. Write down the IP address you will see there: it will have (for example) the format 1xx.xxx.x.xxx.
2. Then in Marvin on your iPad, push the "OPDS Catalogs" button. Then press "Tap here to add a new catalog". In the "Name" field, enter (for example) Calibre. In the "Address" field, enter the IP address you wrote down earlier, but (!!!!!) add something more to it, namely :8080/opds. So, the entire thing you should enter there, is:
   
   1xx.xxx.x.xxx:8080/opds

That's it! Your Marvin should now be connected to your Calibre, so you can browse your Calibre contents as you wish.

(But, as said, you can also just forget all these setups, and use the easier Dropbox/SugarSync way instead.)

Originally Posted by chilady1

In addition, when I had Stanza I was able to see my entire library but I believe Marvin has an API restrictions of only 1000 viewable, is this correct?

No, that's incorrect. There are no such restrictions regarding Calibre.

(There is one such limit, but only for the internal Dropbox access from within Marvin. However, you can easily get around that restriction, too, by opening books from the Dropbox app on your iPad, instead of from within Marvin.)

Originally Posted by chilady1

Lastly, once I get everything set up properly will I be able to see my Collections as they exist in Calibre? Again, I was able to view books in Stanza via Author, Title or Series but not sure how to do this with Marvin.

You can do all of that in Marvin, and much more. When you import a book from Calibre to Marvin (either via Dropbox/SugarSync, or using OPDS/web browser), then Marvin preserves all the Calibre meta-tags. So that you can then sort your books in Marvin using Calibre's Author, Title, Series (and many other custom) tags, just like we used to do it in Stanza.

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by chilady1

Forgive me for this question, but struggling to find an answer.

I have downloaded Marvin and I absolutely love this app but having a hard time understanding how to integrate with Calibre via OPDS.

When I had Stanza - I was able to view my entire library via the setup and wondering how I can do this with Marvin. I have gone to the Marvin website and perhaps I am missing it but the instructions are not clear to me as to how to do this. In addition, when I had Stanza I was able to see my entire library but I believe Marvin has an API restrictions of only 1000 viewable, is this correct?

Lastly, once I get everything set up properly will I be able to see my Collections as they exist in Calibre? Again, I was able to view books in Stanza via Author, Title or Series but not sure how to do this with Marvin.

Sorry for the 20,000 questions and again, if someone can point me to where I can find instructions that would be great! Thanks All!

The 1000 files API restriction applies to Dropbox, and it's a Dropbox restriction, not Marvin's.

With Marvin's OPDS browser I can see my entire 6000 books collection. Maybe I can guide you on how to set up access to your Calibre catalog thru Marvin's OPDS browser.

1.- From the library or home pages, click on the "Cloud" icon at bottom right.

2.- From the pop-up menu select "OPDS Catalogs"

3.- At the resulting pop-up, click on the line at the bottom that reads (in blue): "Tap here to add a new catalog"

4.- Now you will get a drop-down menu. This is where you add your Calibre server info.

----Name: Whatever you want to call your sever. I call mine "Home" . This is what will show up in the servers selection list.

----Address: the address of your calibre server. It goes in the form of "HTTP://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1234/opds/". The xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx if the IP address of your server, but it could be an Internet address name instead of an IP address. The ":1234" represent the port of you calibre server. I have mine as the standard port 80 so I don't need that part, but calibre uses port 8080 by default, so you need whatever your calibre server is set to listen to. If you don't know the port then it's probably the default (8080).

----Username/password: if you have set password protection in calibre, enter the username and password here, otherwise leave blank


5- select "SAVE"

At this point you are done!

Now click on "FAVORITES" at the bottom of the page and you will see an entry you just created, (the "Name" above)

You can now browse you calibre server, just like you did in Stanza.

Let me know if I can help further.

Cheers

Art