Marvin 3.0

[randyman]

Just downloaded Marvin 3; first act: transferring 1.5GB Marvin 2 library, about 750 epubs. (I did it before I even got out of bed!)

Went flawlessly. Everything looks beautiful, and it's very peppy! It's only been a few minutes, so I'm still finding my way around. (Edit: about a half-hour later, I’ve pretty much familiarized myself with where everything is. Lots I haven’t tried yet, like the comic formats, but getting acclimated doesn’t take long at all.)

First tasks: find in-app purchases, to pay for the full version. (Why, it‘s right there when you start to read!) Then I'll side-load the fonts I've selected to try out.

(Edit: Just side-loaded a few fonts. Easy as pie. Works perfectly – what a pleasure.

Don’t get me wrong; Marvin 3 comes with a great collection of fonts. My long-time preference has been Iowan Old Style. But with a lifetime of doing graphic design work, I have a huge collection of my own; it’s a thrill to be able to access my personal favorites.

I was wondering how Kris was going to handle this; for any given font family, he lets you specify a regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic font. This is great, because for say, Adobe Garamond, I can select either the fully bold pair or the semi-bold pair from the font family – thus controlling the own-screen weight to my satisfaction. Really well implemented – and once you do it, it’s always there for you to select instantly.)

Thanks, Kris, for all your hard work… this is the start [continuation] of a beautiful relationship. Woohoo!

[Grendel_]

My first post here. Wanted to say thankyou to @KGUIL for such a great app. It is way better than any reading app ive ever used.

after reading through this whole thread @faterson just don't admit when hes wrong! hes like my four year old lol

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by randyman

Just downloaded Marvin 3; first act: transferring 1.5GB Marvin 2 library, about 750 epubs. (I did it before I even got out of bed!)

Went flawlessly. Everything looks beautiful, and it's very peppy! It's only been a few minutes, so I'm still finding my way around. (Edit: about a half-hour later, I’ve pretty much familiarized myself with where everything is. Lots I haven’t tried yet, like the comic formats, but getting acclimated doesn’t take long at all.)

First tasks: find in-app purchases, to pay for the full version. (Why, it‘s right there when you start to read!) Then I'll side-load the fonts I've selected to try out.

(Edit: Just side-loaded a few fonts. Easy as pie. Works perfectly – what a pleasure.

Don’t get me wrong; Marvin 3 comes with a great collection of fonts. My long-time preference has been Iowan Old Style. But with a lifetime of doing graphic design work, I have a huge collection of my own; it’s a thrill to be able to access my personal favorites.

I was wondering how Kris was going to handle this; for any given font family, he lets you specify a regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic font. This is great, because for say, Adobe Garamond, I can select either the fully bold pair or the semi-bold pair from the font family – thus controlling the own-screen weight to my satisfaction. Really well implemented – and once you do it, it’s always there for you to select instantly.)

Thanks, Kris, for all your hard work… this is the continuation of a beautiful relationship. Woohoo!

Hi randyman - If you have time could you give me a tutorial of side loading fonts? I really need a bold font to be able to read while working.

Thanks in advance.
Trice

[kguil]

@randyman, @Grendel_ Thanks a lot for your kind words.

@Maillemom I'll be posting several tutorials over the next days and weeks on Marvin's blogs. I'm just dealing with the flood of feedback and messages I'm receiving right now.

[randyman]

Originally Posted by Maillemom

Hi randyman - If you have time could you give me a tutorial of side loading fonts? I really need a bold font to be able to read while working.
Trice

No problem – it’s very, very simple – especially if you’ve been using iTunes to transfer your epubs to your iPad or iPhone.

If you’re used to that procedure, all you have to do is drag your individual font files – Open Type, Post Script, or True Type (other fonts may be supported; I don’t know) into the same iTunes window where all your epub documents are listed.

Make sure you drag them as individual files; not enclosed in a folder or archive. Then just sync your iPad or iPhone as usual, to transfer the files.

Go to your device, and shut down Marvin if it’s already running. Open it again, and open EPUB Book Settings. Scroll down to Custom Fonts, and click Manage.

Press the red “+” button. Now you can assign individual fonts to the four available categories. Make sure they’re all from the same family. Repeat this procedure for each family you’d like to add.

That’s it! Now your new fonts will be available in any epub you open.

In your particular case, where it sounds like you want everything to show up bold, you’ll need to assign bold fonts to the regular and italic categories – not just the bold and bold-italic categories. This will make everything show up as bold whenever you assign this particular font. (I haven’t tried this myself; I’m just guessing that Marvin won’t care if you do this. I could be wrong!)

If you’re not familiar with transferring files via iTunes, there is a help screen available from the drop-down menu at the top right of any collection or list screen. Just head down to Get Books From and press iTunes drag-and-drop; it will explain the procedure.

Remember, you should be using the latest OS version, the latest version of iTunes, and the latest firmware on your devices.

I hope this helps; good luck! If you have issues, just post again. We’ll get it happening. Kris is going to be very busy for a while, and I’m sure forum members will be happy to help as best we can.

[dandelioncottage]

When I try to sync a book between Marvin 3.0 on my iPad Pro and iPhone 6 Plus, I get an error message telling me I'm not signed in to iCloud. But iOS Settings show that all my devices are signed in. What am I missing?

[randyman]

Originally Posted by dandelioncottage

When I try to sync a book between Marvin 3.0 on my iPad Pro and iPhone 6 Plus, I get an error message telling me I'm not signed in to iCloud. But iOS Settings show that all my devices are signed in. What am I missing?

Just a guess – Marvin uses your iCloud Drive to transfer epubs. Make sure the epub you want to transfer is on your iCloud Drive, and then select cloud picker from the Get Books From menu on the target device.

I have never used a “sync library” function in Marvin, so I don’t know if there is one. There is a “sync location” function for individual books. I apologize if this post is misinformed or off-base.

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by randyman

No problem – it’s very, very simple – especially if you’ve been using iTunes to transfer your epubs to your iPad or iPhone.

If you’re used to that procedure, all you have to do is drag your individual font files – Open Type, Post Script, or True Type (other fonts may be supported; I don’t know) into the same iTunes window where all your epub documents are listed.

Make sure you drag them as individual files; not enclosed in a folder or archive. Then just sync your iPad or iPhone as usual, to transfer the files.

Go to your device, and shut down Marvin if it’s already running. Open it again, and open EPUB Book Settings. Scroll down to Custom Fonts, and click Manage.

Press the red “+” button. Now you can assign individual fonts to the four available categories. Make sure they’re all from the same family. Repeat this procedure for each family you’d like to add.

That’s it! Now your new fonts will be available in any epub you open.

In your particular case, where it sounds like you want everything to show up bold, you’ll need to assign bold fonts to the regular and italic categories – not just the bold and bold-italic categories. This will make everything show up as bold whenever you assign this particular font. (I haven’t tried this myself; I’m just guessing that Marvin won’t care if you do this. I could be wrong!)

If you’re not familiar with transferring files via iTunes, there is a help screen available from the drop-down menu at the top right of any collection or list screen. Just head down to Get Books From and press iTunes drag-and-drop; it will explain the procedure.

Remember, you should be using the latest OS version, the latest version of iTunes, and the latest firmware on your devices.

I hope this helps; good luck! If you have issues, just post again. We’ll get it happening. Kris is going to be very busy for a while, and I’m sure forum members will be happy to help as best we can.

Thanks so much. It seems so simple when I see it written out. Must be the reader in me!

Trice

[chrisridd]

I've found a bug. I am feeding Marvin 3 with epubs in my Dropbox account.

I added a book to Marvin from Dropbox. Looks good.

I opened the book in Sigil on my Mac and resaved it to Dropbox.

I opened Dropbox again from inside Marvin 3

The book had a grey icon (downloaded?) but the date/time corresponding to when Sigil saved the file.

I tapped on the book and got a Skip/Overwrite alert.

Tapped Overwrite.

Returned to Marvin's all books view and I see two copies of the book.

[dandelioncottage]

Marvin 2 always let me sync location of a book between devices without my having to do anything but click on the little Sync icon at the bottom of the book. Does Marvin 3 handle sync location differently? Thanks!

Originally Posted by randyman

Just a guess – Marvin uses your iCloud Drive to transfer epubs. Make sure the epub you want to transfer is on your iCloud Drive, and then select cloud picker from the Get Books From menu on the target device.

I have never used a “sync library” function in Marvin, so I don’t know if there is one. There is a “sync location” function for individual books. I apologize if this post is misinformed or off-base.

[randyman]

Originally Posted by dandelioncottage

Marvin 2 always let me sync location of a book between devices without my having to do anything but click on the little Sync icon at the bottom of the book. Does Marvin 3 handle sync location differently? Thanks!

Clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I think you'll need to wait for someone who's actually used this feature to chime in. Sorry! I feel pretty sure I misunderstood your original question.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

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?

All of them – just as I said. Only book 1 in your example has the correct "Hemingway, Ernest" value. The other 3 are errors, and so, Marvin would list 4 various writers in the authors list – the Marvin user would likely spot that anomaly in the Library immediately, and in this way, the Library would alert the Marvin user that the "author sort" meta-tags for books 2, 3, 4 need to be fixed (which is very easy to do in Marvin), so that all 4 books have the identical and correct "author sort" meta-tag "Hemingway, Ernest". Then – and only then – should Marvin recognize the 4 books as belonging to the same author.

That is exactly how Calibre treats authors sorting, and it's the only correct and sensible way. Any other approach creates inconsistency and chaos, such as can be observed in Marvin 3 right now.

Originally Posted by Grendel_

My first post here. [...]

after reading through this whole thread @faterson just don't admit when hes wrong! hes like my four year old lol

First, congratulations on you're speling and grammer. Second, congratulations on your first MobileRead post. What an impressive entry! You introduce yourself by personally attacking a forum member who's been here for 5 years and made over 1,200 posts, and who's been Beta-testing Marvin since Version 1. What a warm and fuzzy feeling it must have been to slam that person, right? Third and final, commiserations to the four-year-old.

Oh, and I'll be extremely happy to admit whenever I'm "wrong". But first, you'd have to show me where I'm wrong, right? But that might hurt the brain-cells, to be arguing based on facts. It's so much more convenient just to hurl personal insults, so why not stick to those, eh?

[mgbino]

Is anyone else finding Marvin SxS to be a huge battery drain compared to Marvin 2.0? I'm on a iPhone 6s+ (iOS 9.3.2), and I'm losing something like 1% of battery every couple of minutes and the phone is hot as anything. Once I force close SxS and switch back to Marvin 2.0, the battery goes back to its normal discharge rate.

[kguil]

@mgbino SxS is more or less an identical copy of M3 so battery drain shouldn't be any different. By any chance, how many books have you got in your SxS library? M3/SxS will index all your books (only once) in the background for Spotlight and to compute word counts. You might see increased battery usage until indexing is complete.

[mgbino]

Originally Posted by kguil

@mgbino SxS is more or less an identical copy of M3 so battery drain shouldn't be any different. By any chance, how many books have you got in your SxS library? M3/SxS will index all your books (only once) in the background for Spotlight and to compute word counts. You might see increased battery usage until indexing is complete.

The indexing is probably it. I have a huge ePub library. Thanks for the reply, I'll let you know if the drain eases up.