Marvin 3.0

[quiris]

It would be nice to hide some fonts (or fold "App Fonts" and "System Fonts" lists) from entire list of available fonts. Scrolling to custom installed fonts or clicking headers "App Fonts" and "System Fonts" is tiring

[Chaotic]

Just purchased Marvin 3.0 and I am ridiculously excited. I've been familiarizing myself with the new app and I just wanted to thank Kris for all the hard work. Well worth the (super reasonable) price, let me tell you.

[kguil]

@quiris In the next update (coming soon), custom fonts will be moved to the top of the list. In the meantime, you can use the down arrows next to each font section to navigate faster.

@Chaotic You are very, very welcome. Thanks for your support!

[JBaby]

Kris, M3 is awesome! It was an insta-buy! Auto-scroll FTW!!! I would like to know how syncing works though. I thought it was supposed to be automatic.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by 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?

Originally Posted by chrisridd

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?

Those books have broken metadata, and every application out there will incorrectly sort them as a result. In the book list.
That is why metadata maintenance is required when you have books from incompetent sources.

Author sort exists in order to be respected. If the book's metadata is going to lie about the author sort, it could lie about the author as well, and claim the book was written by Isaac Vainio, and then what should Marvin use?
If a book doesn't have an author sort value, you could do worse than defaulting to standard English and swapping around the last name and the first thru second-last (might be the same) name(s).

Given, that author sort is a non-existent metadata field that really just means "how to generate a lastname-based sort order for the author field", the only reason it is visible in a metadata editor like calibre is for the explicit purpose of modifying it.

And that I believe, is exactly what Marvin does in the book list.

...

However.
In the specific case of a listing of available authors, you probably don't want to show multiple versions of the same author just because they are clearly different authors based on the incompetent author sort value.
And you cannot use the author sort value as a sorting key, because there are multiple versions of it. (In the book list, the multiple versions apply to different books, obviously.)

So there are really only two viable solutions:

• Sort by author.
• Generate a sort order independent of author sort, which doesn't exist anyway and isn't applicable regardless.

Oh, @Faterson, guess which one calibre uses? calibre doesn't use {author_sort} to generate an author listing in the Tag Browser. It uses the same algorithm usually used to "Set author sort from author", to derive a sort key for the Tag Browser. Irrespective of what may or may not exist in the big master table of {author_sort} values.

...

@kguil could do the same thing in Marvin. But as @chrisridd pointed out, that is non-trivial to implement across cultures and languages. Case in point -- calibre just assumes standard American English names.
And whatever algorithm used, that would cost additional processor cycles each and every time a new author got added, require an additional cache, and still not make everyone happy.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by JBaby

I would like to know how syncing works though. I thought it was supposed to be automatic.

Still nothing in that regard in Marvin 3. It's a bit easier to sync manually now (using AirDrop, for example, instead of emailing annotations back and forth between devices), but there's still no automatic syncing of highlights, annotations and bookmarks for now. This has been, from my and many other users' perspective, Marvin's no. 1 missing feature for almost 5 years now – ever since Marvin was born. We've just got to be patient.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

In the specific case of a listing of available authors, you probably don't want to show multiple versions of the same author

I absolutely do want it. I'm convinced that this is the only way out of this mess. If you see multiple versions of the same author in the comprehensive authors list, this signals to you that some of the "author sort" meta-tags need to be fixed. So, you just fix them, and the issue is resolved.

That's how Marvin 2 does it. Right now, Marvin 2 shows me 7 books by "Agatha Christie" and 1 book by "Agatha Christie", both of them sorted under "C". This is a clear indication that there's something wrong with the meta-tags of that single Agatha Christie book. So, all I need to do is to adjust the meta-tags for that book, and then I will finally arrive at 8 books by a single author, "Agatha Christie".

I'm convinced that Marvin 3 should treat authors sorting in the same way. The status quo, I believe, is untenable and unprofessional. When you tell your software to sort authors according to their last names, but Marvin 3 ignores that preference and sorts them in the crude way anyway (Hemingway under "E"), it's just unacceptable.

[eschwartz]

Maybe, maybe not.

But it would be nice if we could all admit that there is genuinely a not-very-wonderful position here, and there are things to be said for both sides, and @kguil is within his rights to disagree with you about whether the solution is worth it.


Would it help if I edited my above post, to clarify that I meant the rhetorical "you"?

[dandelioncottage]

I'm having trouble with syncing too--it seemed automatic in M2, but isn't working for me now.

Originally Posted by JBaby

Kris, M3 is awesome! It was an insta-buy! Auto-scroll FTW!!! I would like to know how syncing works though. I thought it was supposed to be automatic.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Faterson]

Ah, if you guys mean simple location syncing, that works a lot better for me in Marvin 3 than in Marvin 2. iCloud is used in Marvin 3, as opposed to Dropbox in Marvin 2. In Marvin 3, just tap the button in the right corner of the bottom toolbar, and that will give you a very nice listing of possible locations to sync to. That's a lot more elegant solution, to me, than the rather haphazard method of location syncing in Marvin 2, and I'm also landing in the proper locations now in Marvin 3, unlike (frequently) in Marvin 2.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

But it would be nice if we could all admit that there is genuinely a not-very-wonderful position here, and there are things to be said for both sides, and @kguil is within his rights to disagree with you about whether the solution is worth it.

Absolutely. What we need to do here, is to choose the lesser of two evils, because a perfect solution doesn't exist. So, what's the lesser evil here?

1. The user instructs Marvin to sort by authors' last names, but Marvin 3 ignores that and sorts authors by their first names anyway.
2. In the comprehensive authors listing, some authors (if the "author sort" meta-tags for some of their books are incorrect) may appear with double, triple, etc. entries – thus signaling to the Marvin user that his/her meta-tags need to be fixed.

Option 1 is the status quo in Marvin 3. Option 2 is my proposal to fix it. Which of the two is the lesser evil? Would anyone really argue it's option no. 1?

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Would it help if I edited my above post, to clarify that I meant the rhetorical "you"?

Nope, not necessary. I've always known and appreciated you as a fair debater, eschwartz. Unlike some hyper-politically-correct posters around here, I never assume ill will on the part of fellow MobileRead contributors. But you've really gotta be thick-skinned to participate here on MobileRead, because ill will is going to be imputed to you by others all the time...

[Grendel_]

@fatterson Ive seen you mention that you arent a programmer. @kguil is. he said its not possible. i think he would know whats possible or not in his program. why do you keep arguing with him when you say you don't program?

[Faterson]

Because the solution is a matter of logic, not programming. I wouldn't know how to implement the solution, because I'm no programmer, but I believe I do know what the best solution to this authors sorting problem is. Please see my posts above for details.

[Grendel_]

so it is still a technical problem. your answer would require artificial intelligence to understand your logic argument. the programmer says he cant do it. he has better understanding of his implementation than you do. arguing with him about logic isnt getting the technical limits overcome

[Faterson]

Nope, you're mistaken. And the programmer never said it's impossible to implement my proposed solution – he couldn't say that, because of course it is possible to implement, since it's implemented in Marvin 2. Rather, Kris has so far refused to even consider the solution proposed by me, sticking to the preconceived notion that a solution doesn't exist. As I said, the misunderstanding of authors sorting goes back to Marvin 2 and Marvin 1. But in Marvin 2 and Marvin 1, at least, through a lucky coincidence in their development, I'd say, it was possible to arrive at the desired authors sorting. This is no longer possible in Marvin 3, and all we're left with is a clear-cut bug.

[dandelioncottage]

When I click on the Sync button at the bottom of a book, I get an error message that I'm not signed in to iCloud, although checking on Settings on any of my devices shows that they are all signed in. So I'm not able to sync between devices. Do I need to upgrade to iCloud Drive to make syncing work in M3? Thanks!

Originally Posted by Faterson

Ah, if you guys mean simple location syncing, that works a lot better for me in Marvin 3 than in Marvin 2. iCloud is used in Marvin 3, as opposed to Dropbox in Marvin 2. In Marvin 3, just tap the button in the right corner of the bottom toolbar, and that will give you a very nice listing of possible locations to sync to. That's a lot more elegant solution, to me, than the rather haphazard method of location syncing in Marvin 2, and I'm also landing in the proper locations now in Marvin 3, unlike (frequently) in Marvin 2.