Marvin 3.0

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

It really doesn't matter how much bloviating a certain individual does about this matter...that individual will never be happy unless, and until, he gets everything that he wants, how he wants it.

I did wonder how much substance there was to his rather melodramatic complaints. I don't think he does his case much justice by how he puts it.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

There is one specific case that FOR TECHNICAL REASONS cannot be honoured.

Of course it can be honored. If you believe that screaming a falsehood in capital letters will make it true, too bad. The rest of your post, as usual, are just an avalanche of personal insults because, as usual, there is no substance to what you're saying and you're not discussing the issue at hand at all, so you can only resort to personal insults.

The bottom line to this authors sorting issue is: Marvin 2 can do it, so of course Marvin 3 should do it as well. I'm utterly baffled as to why Kris refuses to implement a fix, and why this particular sorting issue has always posed problems for Kris, even in Marvin 1 and Marvin 2 – see the needlessly doubled "'Author..." and (nonsensically labeled) "Author sort..." options there. Now Kris has correctly (finally!) removed that doubling of sorting menu options in Marvin 3, but in doing so, he has also killed Marvin 2's functionality in being able to sort authors sensibly and intelligently, according to their last names. And no, not even a thousand blog posts can justify that, although Kris is certainly welcome to try and justify the unjustifiable. I'd appreciate a lot more, though, if he spent that time by implementing a fix instead.

[randyman]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

…there is a great feature of the MR forum that allows you to ignore certain individuals.

The feeling of satisfaction I have just now…

is on a par with how it felt to see Ramsey face his karma on last night’s Game of Thrones.

Very, very satisfying. Thanks, Turtle.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Of course it can be honored. If you believe that screaming a falsehood in capital letters will make it true, too bad. The rest of your post, as usual, are just an avalanche of personal insults because, as usual, there is no substance to what you're saying and you're not discussing the issue at hand at all, so you can only resort to personal insults.

Now that Marvin 3 is out and everyone can test what you're saying, please give us an example of 2 books that you say sort incorrectly relative to each other. Post their full dc:creator elements from their OPF files, which you can easily get from something like Sigil.

[kguil]

@Faterson - Author/author sort is honoured everywhere except in the authors list. And as I tried to explain to you - twice, with examples - during the beta (and failed miserably) it *is* for technical reasons. Do you honestly believe that I spent a year working on something and I'm just "refusing" to finish it off for kicks? I don't have anything else to add to this matter except to reiterate that when I have the time, I'll write a blog post to explain this in technical detail.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

please give us an example of 2 books that you say sort incorrectly relative to each other.

I never said anything of the sort. What I've been saying all along is that in the comprehensive authors listing, authors are sorted in the crude way, according to their first names. In Marvin 2, you could choose to have "Ernest Hemingway" sorted according to "E", or according to "H" – just as you prefer. Marvin 3 has removed the sensible, smart, and standard latter option, which I find unacceptable. Or, have you ever encountered a real-life encyclopedia where authors would be sorted based on their first names? Would you be looking for Shakespeare under "W" in an encyclopedia or, in fact, in any standard alphabetic listing?

Originally Posted by kguil

Author/author sort is honoured everywhere except in the authors list.

Which is exactly the failure I'm objecting to, and that I find unacceptable. If Marvin 2 allowed for smart sorting of authors, so should Marvin 3.

Originally Posted by kguil

And as I tried to explain to you - twice, with examples - during the beta (and failed miserably) it *is* for technical reasons.

And I also tried to explain to you – and more than twice, and not only during the most recent Beta cycle (and I failed miserably as well) – why those alleged "technical reasons" are imaginary. I have received no reply whatsoever from you, Kris, to my most recent, extremely detailed message on this subject, from a couple of weeks ago, where I asked you to state a specific scenario where a problem would occur if Marvin 3 offered the same authors sorting options as Marvin 2 does. You haven't replied to that message so far, and I'm convinced (until persuaded otherwise by specific and understandable examples given by you) that such a scenario doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by kguil

Do you honestly believe that I spent a year working on something and I'm just "refusing" to finish it off for kicks?

Nope, I honestly believe that you are mistaken on this issue. Yep, you're the programmer here, and I'm not, but I'm a logician among other things, and I believe I'm seeing a logical flaw in your approach to this issue. And not just this year: as I mentioned, your approach to sorting issues has, in my opinion, been flawed in all Marvin versions – Marvin 1 and Marvin 2 included. (The proof of that is the unnecessary doubling of sorting menu options, "Authors..." and "Author sort...", in Marvin 1 & Marvin 2; the "Author sort..." label has always been nonsensical.)

So my honest appraisal, Kris, is that you're simply "not getting it", and haven't been getting it since Marvin's inception. I hope that my saying this doesn't offend you, Kris; it's simply my sincere appraisal of the situation. None of us is perfect, each of us commits errors (certainly I do, every day), and each of us can unintentionally overlook certain things. It's perfectly possible that it's me who's not "getting it" here; but you'd have to state some specific examples proving why it's me who's supposedly "not getting it". So far, you haven't – at least not understandably to me, and that's why I asked you to rephrase the supposedly problematic scenarios you talk about. I'm convinced that there are none.

Again, I must say that the root of this controversy goes back to your unfortunate decision to shut down a standard Beta-testing process, and favor isolated conversations between yourself and individual Beta-testers instead. I'm positive that if a standard discussion of this authors sorting issue had taken place among all Beta-testers, we would have collectively arrived at a satisfactory solution a lot sooner, and definitely prior to the public Marvin 3 release.

Originally Posted by kguil

when I have the time, I'll write a blog post to explain this in technical detail.

Thank you, but I would much rather see you fix Marvin 3 instead of writing blog posts about why you won't fix it. As mentioned: if Marvin 2 could sort authors in a smart and intelligent way, certainly Marvin 3 should do it. There's no way of justifying that it does not do it.

[glemmatim]

Holy shit what a great update! I immediately purchased the full version.

One small question about the new version (I bet you get those a lot haha): Is there still a way for me the view the location of a highlight.

In marvin 2 this was achieved by pressing the highlight itself. Im I missing something and if not, will this feature return?

Thanks for the great update anyway.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I never said anything of the sort. What I've been saying all along is that in the comprehensive authors listing, authors are sorted in the crude way, according to their first names.

So please give actual details (dc:creator elements as I described) of two books that are ordered incorrectly.

[Faterson]

Chris, what about actually reading what I'm replying to you? As I've just replied to you, it's not books that are sorted incorrectly in Marvin 3. So why are you asking me to give you examples of books? Books are sorted fine in Marvin 3.

It's authors who are sorted incorrectly in Marvin 3, and only authors, and only in the comprehensive authors listing. But they are correctly sorted in Marvin 2, so Marvin 3 should definitely sort them correctly as well.

[glemmatim]

Maybe I should elaborate a little. What I like to do is make highlights while reading the book (non-fiction). After all the reading is done I like to use the highlight to go through the important parts of the book.

Because the highlighted text is kind of short, the highlight text itself is not enough. In earlier versions I could just tap the highlight and get al the contextual information again.

Is there any way how I can achieve this in Marvin 3?

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by glemmatim

One small question about the new version (I bet you get those a lot haha): Is there still a way for me the view the location of a highlight.

In marvin 2 this was achieved by pressing the highlight itself. Im I missing something and if not, will this feature return?

This is a terrible flaw in Marvin 3 indeed. The Journal in Marvin 3 is dead – it features no hyperlinks, so you can't revisit the original location of a highlight, annotation, or vocabulary item, by tapping it in the Journal. During Beta-testing, I tried to persuade Kris that this was unacceptable, but here we are... Marvin 3 has been released with a dead Journal like that.

PS: What is still working is that on the in-book annotations tab (but only there), pressing the highlight still opens the original book location. So that's fine. But I really don't see the point of a "Journal", introduced in Marvin 3, if it features no tappable hyperlinks whatsoever...

[chrisridd]

OK, I think I see what you mean. I haven't used Marvin very much so far, nor with many books, so this is not really something I've used. Also there's a lot of text in your posts to read through to find the cogent points.

I'd agree though, sorting "Ernest Hemingway" before "Bill Shakespeare" seems odd. How would you solve it though? Splitting names up algorithmically is non-trivial (maybe impossible) with names from different cultures. EPUB avoids this problem IMO by using opf:file-as values to let the application know how to sort, but in this case you're talking about multiple books by the same author which may have different opf:file-as values. How would you choose to sort that author?

[Faterson]

Chris, I assure you that I always try to write as succinctly as possible. Heaven knows I'm busy, and every minute is valuable.

But as you can see, some issues can be pretty complex. Not everything can be covered in 5 lines of text. Repeatedly insulting and dismissing fellow MobileRead posters can be done in 5 lines or fewer, as we've seen. But not when you're sincerely trying to get to the bottom of a software issue instead of sucking up to the developer all the time. My main goal here is to improve Marvin – not to suck up to Kris.

The solution is very easy: just respect the meta-tag field, currently (unfortunately) titled "Author sort" in Marvin. (This has been mechanically copied from Calibre's user interface by Marvin; "author sort" is programmer's jargon instead of standard English, but whatever...) Whatever is in that meta-tag field, determines how authors are sorted. That's it, issue solved.

Now, if that meta-tag field happens to be empty, use the data from the other, "Author" field, for sorting purposes, but do not fix it automatically. So, if the "Author" field contains "Ernest Hemingway" and the "Author sort" field is empty, Hemingway would be sorted according to "E" – thereby signaling to the Marvin user: "Oops! Something must be wrong with my meta-tags, because I'm seeing Hemingway sorted under E. Ah, yes, my 'Author sort' field for that book is empty – so, let's just put 'Hemingway, Ernest' there, and everything will be fine. Yep, issue solved!"

That's my solution in as brief a nutshell as I can currently put it. (I should have departed for lunch a while ago.) If there is interest, I can upload my extremely detailed messages on this subject, that I sent to Kris over the last few weeks, to an impromptu webpage, so that everyone can examine the issue in more detail. (All of this should have taken place in a Beta-testers' group prior to a public release, of course...)

[kguil]

@glemmatim - When you tap on a highlight, tap on the pencil that shows in the popup to open it.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Faterson

The solution is very easy: just respect the meta-tag field, currently (unfortunately) titled "Author sort" in Marvin. (This has been mechanically copied from Calibre's user interface by Marvin; "author sort" is programmer's jargon instead of standard English, but whatever...) Whatever is in that meta-tag field, determines how authors are sorted. That's it, issue solved.

Calibre fills the "Author sort" field from the opf:file-as attribute I was mentioning.

Clearly there's a simple way to handle an author without an opf:file-as attribute.

What there is not is a simple way to handle the same author with different opf:file-as attributes.

eg:

book1 by "Ernest Hemingway" author sort "Hemingway, Ernest"

book2 by "Ernest Hemingway" author sort "Hemingway, E"

book3 by "Ernest Hemingway" author sort "Heminway, Ernest"

book4 by "Ernest Hemingway" no author sort

If Marvin saw these 4 books by the same author which of the "author sort" values would it use?