MapleRead - eBook Reader and Server for iOS

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

...
- Added options to show/hide independently the header, footer and progress bar in Modern Book viewer
...

Thanks! This upgrade in particular makes a big difference to me.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Thank you for an excellent new update.
As I have mentioned earlier I am particular fond of the context menu customization.

I do have a small problem here. I have set Set My Dictionary to:

http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word={word}&dict=enda

and I do get a translation in the small window in Maplereader.
The problem is that the service is a paid subscription and from time to time I have to login, and this I can't do in the small browser window in Maplereader.

I then tried to move the command to Set My Command. And now the translation appears in Safari and that is perfect for me.
Consequently I moved the Map command comgooglemaps://?q={word} to Set My Dictionary where it also works very well.

I will therefore suggest the following:

Make it possible to specify a new title in Set My Dictionary as in Set My Command

OR better

Make it an option to specify to use Safari in Set My Dictionary.

But again thank you for an excellent app.

There is a workaround now if you have Google Chrome installed on your iPhone/iPad. See my post #7 on another thread.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by cedhax

There is a workaround now if you have Google Chrome installed on your iPhone/iPad. See my post #7 on another thread.

As far as I can see your suggestion will open Chrome instead of Safari.
My problem was that Set My Command

opens a small local browser inside MapleReader where I can't make a login.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by svenlind

As far as I can see your suggestion will open Chrome instead of Safari.
My problem was that Set My Command

opens a small local browser inside MapleReader where I can't make a login.

Well, I had to try. Your suggestion works

[GERGE]

Would it be possible to enable ligatures?

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Would it be possible to enable ligatures?

Not every font comes with typographic ligatures. However, for those which do, I think the common ligature is enabled by default in iOS. One such example is the serif font Hoefler Text. This is obvious by looking at how fl is rendered in the font name itself in Text Font menu of MapleRead. Another example is the sans serif font Futura. (Do a text search on "fl" to see for yourself.) Moreover, how prominent the ligature effect is depends on the two adjoining letter and the particular font design.

[Faterson]

Hi,

I've just purchased MapleRead SE earlier today. Mostly out of curiosity, because so many users have been praising MapleRead, but also to reward your obviously hard and passionate work with at least this small purchase price.

Congratulations on an outstanding reading app! For now, I'll be sticking to Marvin as my main e-reader, although it has one monumental flaw (among many lesser ones) that MapleRead does not have: no annotations syncing.

First off, the thing I like most about MapleRead: terrific themes treatment. I love all the parchment backgrounds, and whatnot. An unlimited amount of user-defined themes, etc. Just great. For many years, I begged Marvin's developer to give us an unlimited amount of user-defined themes, but nope. The only thing we got was an increase from 3 to 5 themes in Marvin 3, but no user-customizable background pictures, etc.

As of right now, I still prefer Marvin, despite its many flaws, over MapleRead (or Hyphen, which is another worthy competitor, though I'd rank it at #3 currently). Below is a listing of what I find to be MapleRead's biggest flaws as of this moment. If you could fix these issues later on, I'll be very grateful.

1. Multiple highlight colors are a must. Three priority levels are no adequate replacement.
2. The killer feature (for me) in Marvin 3 is the customization of headers and footers. Alas, it's buggy there, too (displaying phantom pages instead of actual page numbers, i. e., screen flips and/or ADE-style page numbers), but at least it's customizable.
3. In MapleRead, the headers and footers are placed inelegantly and inefficiently on the screen, especially compared to Marvin. Please see the two screenshots attached to this post, displaying the same book. It would be hard to deny that Marvin uses the screen real estate more efficiently, right? No matter what I tried in MapleRead, the header still leaves too much space above it, and the footer too much space below it, so that quite a lot of screen real estate seems to be wasted. Also, in MapleRead, the header and footer seem to merge with the book text – are not distinctly set apart from it, the way they are in Marvin.
4. Highlights are corrupted upon exporting them. This is a flaw shared with Marvin, Hyphen, and likely all other e-readers out there. I understand that this is very tough for app developers to get right, but there's no way around it, if it's to be done properly. Right now, highlights are corrupted in that they do not preserve basic and fundamental text formatting features such as paragraph breaks, italics or bold. I tried it with your Alice test e-book, and upon exporting a highlight from it that contains italics or multiple paragraphs, everything gets converted to plain-text and merged into a single paragraph. That's just unacceptable, if you need to deal with literature on a scholarly level, as I do.
5. Please allow us to add our own fonts.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Hi,

I've just purchased MapleRead SE earlier today. Mostly out of curiosity, because so many users have been praising MapleRead, but also to reward your obviously hard and passionate work with at least this small purchase price.
...

I see. You are a self-confessed MapleRead newbie, but a Marvin old-timer.

Originally Posted by Faterson

1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
4. Highlights are corrupted upon exporting them. This is a flaw shared with Marvin, Hyphen, and likely all other e-readers out there. I understand that this is very tough for app developers to get right, but there's no way around it, if it's to be done properly. Right now, highlights are corrupted in that they do not preserve basic and fundamental text formatting features such as paragraph breaks, italics or bold. I tried it with your Alice test e-book, and upon exporting a highlight from it that contains italics or multiple paragraphs, everything gets converted to plain-text and merged into a single paragraph. That's just unacceptable, if you need to deal with literature on a scholarly level, as I do.
5. ...

I won't call it a flaw. I will call it a missing feature. Anyway, I have yet to see any EPUB reader that fully supports this "missing feature". As EPUB is based on HTML, I have yet to see any web browser (desktop or mobile) that supports this "missing feature". Why? Don't be too harsh!

However, not everything you stated in #4 above is correct. MapleRead highlights do preserve the "newline" characters between adjacent paragraphs. It does not unconditionally merge everything in a single paragraph. I have tried it so many times myself that I know that's not the case. Even their sample note lists and screenshots clearly show that's not the case. See the screenshot of FAQ How to export my notes? on their website.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by cedhax

I won't call it a flaw.

It's definitely a major flaw. Sorry, but it's really unacceptable – to expect the user to manually check and fix all the errors and distortions in highlights/annotations upon their export.

Originally Posted by cedhax

Anyway, I have yet to see any EPUB reader that fully supports this

Just because everyone fails, is no excuse for MapleRead to fail as well.

Originally Posted by cedhax

As EPUB is based on HTML, I have yet to see any web browser (desktop or mobile) that supports this

Eh?! What has that got to do with "web browsers"? It's not about web browsers – it's about exporting annotations from EPUB files. Precisely because EPUB files are HTML-based, there should clearly be a way to determine whether a word appears in the book in italics or bold (etc.), whether what is highlighted are 2 or 3 separate paragraphs, or a single paragraph, and so on. Of course there is a way to determine that – otherwise, MapleRead and all the others would also be incapable of displaying those fundamental formatting features properly.

So, what is needed – and sorry, it's a non-negotiable – is for the e-reader app to faithfully also export what it faithfully displays. As I mentioned, I realize that this is no easy thing to achieve, because a text property like "italics" can be marked up in an EPUB file in many ways (think of all the CSS variations...), but that doesn't mean developers should just give up and be content with the corruption of highlights/annotations upon export. That's unacceptable for professional-grade software, and will never be acceptable. I'm not being harsh, cedhax – just describing some basic requirements in straightforward language.

On the positive side: MapleRead does at least preserve new-lines in user-written annotations. (I believe here is where Marvin and others fail – merging the entire annotation into a single line upon export.) For user-written annotations, cedhax, it's OK to talk about "new-lines", because annotations are composed in plain-text. And in plain-text, a standard paragraph break is "hitting the Enter key twice" – that is, two successive new-lines. But none of this applies to book texts which are, typically for 2017, no longer plain-text (as in Project Gutenberg in the 1990s), but rich-text. Therefore, paragraph breaks from the book text should be exported as paragraph breaks (not "new-lines") in exported highlights.

That means: the exported highlights/annotations file must be rich-text, not plain-text. This is the great irony: Marvin allows you to export annotations via (among other options) a HTML file (which is a fabulous Marvin "killer feature" that MapleRead would do well to emulate), but the highlights inserted into that HTML file are... plain-text , which just makes no sense whatsoever...

Originally Posted by cedhax

However, not everything you stated in #4 above is correct. MapleRead highlights do preserve the "newline" characters between adjacent paragraphs.

Not true, cedhax. And, please, don't confuse paragraph breaks with new-lines. That is definitely not the same thing. If there are clear, multiple paragraphs in the book as displayed by MapleRead – then in the exported highlights, there must likewise be multiple paragraphs, not multiple "new-lines".

And, although the "new-lines" might appear upon export from the Alice sample book provided by MapleRead, that definitely doesn't work in all e-books I tested in MapleRead. For an example, please see the first screenshot attached to this post. That's an official EPUB release I purchased via Lulu – and all multiple-paragraph highlights get merged into a single paragraph (no new-lines anywhere) by MapleRead upon export.

In the meantime, I have discovered one more major shortcoming of MapleRead (you may wish to be "politically correct" and call it a "missing feature" instead, but that doesn't make the issue any more palatable...): MapleRead, unlike Marvin (and, apparently, Hyphen), does not support the higher resolution on the 13-inch iPad. That's a major drawback, in my eyes, because the interface of apps only optimized for 10-inch screens looks really terrible on that gorgeous, expansive (also expensive...) 13-inch iPad screen. Therefore, MapleRead should cater to the 13-inch iPads as well. You can take a look at the second screenshot attached to this post – it shows the multi-tasking screen on the 13-inch iPad, with the same book opened in MapleRead, Hypen and Marvin. It would, I think, be difficult to deny that Marvin's display of the book is the most elegant of all three. And MapleRead's display is the least elegant of the three... (The lack of distinct separation between book text and headers/footers once again comes into play.) Among other things, when an app isn't optimized for the 13-inch screen, the fonts employed in such an app seem slightly grainy/blurry upon viewing. And that's hardly acceptable for MapleRead in the long run, right?

Originally Posted by cedhax

I see. You are a self-confessed MapleRead newbie, but a Marvin old-timer.

A Mobipocket Reader old-timer, to be precise. Then Stanza. Then Marvin. And I'm sticking with Marvin as my main e-reader app for now, because although it's marred with many flaws or shortcomings, other apps seem to have even more of those, although they may be superior over Marvin in certain aspects (such as MapleRead's annotations syncing, fabulous themes treatment, the "curl" option for page flips, etc.). That's the sad state of things in the world of e-books (not just on Apple's platform) as of 2017.

The good news is, MapleRead (and Hyphen, and Marvin itself) can all become better than the current Marvin. So, there is always some hope. Although it might be an unrealistic "hope against hope" because, as someone (an app developer) remarked in this forum subsection a few weeks ago, it's likely impossible to earn a livelihood by developing a top-quality e-reader app... The world at large is content with mediocrity – and when it comes to catering to the mediocre, the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft will always gladly deliver.

[AndyG]

Is iPad Pro 12.9 support planned please?

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by AndyG

Is iPad Pro 12.9 support planned please?

MapleRead does support iPad Pro (12.9 inch). It just doesn't support it at its native resolution yet.

Besides Faterson, AndyG is presumably also an iPad Pro (12.9 inch) user . Can we hear from other MapleRead SE users who also own iPad Pro (12.9 inch)?

[AndyG]

For what it's worth not having "native support" is the same as not having support at all as far as I'm concerned, since zoomed text in a reading app is awful. I bought your app but then claimed a refund once I found this was a problem I'm afraid, but I would consider re-buying if/when you fix it.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

MapleRead does support iPad Pro (12.9 inch). It just doesn't support it at its native resolution yet.
...

Not yet, but it will come sooner than originally planned, given the perceived interest of the user community so far.

[cedhax]

I understand that MapleRead (SE and CE) already works at the native resolution of iPad Pro (9.7 inch). The new iPad Pro 2 (9.7-inch and 12.9-inch versions) release date is rumored to be this coming March. Therefore, I think there is a good marketing reason for MapleRead to support at native resolution of all iPad (Pro) models ASAP.

[sbaylor]

@cedhax - This is an interesting viewpoint. I'll keep it in mind.