Leafmark — I built an EPUB reader because I never got over Marvin

[AkiraT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have found some issues.

Boldness should be called font weight. 125% does nothing. The foot weight should also have fine granular control. This following post from another thread describes how the font weight should work.


Next issue is that when adjusting the font size. line height, and margins, I cannot see the text on the screen on my iPhone.

Line height is too large. There is no way to make it any smaller.

Margins should allow the text to go all the way to edge of the screen. Also, margins should have a more fine adjustment instead of .50x to .75x.

When displaying the cover, it's not properly displayed in landscape. In landscape, there is white space above and below the cover.

Landscape doesn't work. There should be a setting for columns and a setting for the space between columns. As it is, There white space above and below the page. There's too much white space on the left/right side of the screen. It should be over to the left side of the screen and go fully to the right side (depending on L/R margin settings).

In portrait, there is too much white space at the bottom of the screen.

There should be an option for a header showing how many pages are left in the chapter and a setting to show a footer with how many pages read and how many pages in the book. The page numbers should use ADE (RMSDK) page numbers.

When using import font, do you have to import a ZIP file containing all the fonts or do you import the fonts one at a time?

And speaking of fonts, you should allow choosing from all of the system fonts that come with iOS/iPadOS.

Thank you for taking the time to go through Leafmark this carefully. I appreciate you writing all of this up.

On the font import question, no ZIP is needed. The picker takes .ttf, .otf and .ttc files directly, and you can select more than one at a time.

The quote about font weight was helpful. I had not thought about it that way. Adjusting all the variants makes more sense than what I am doing
now. I have renamed the control to Font Weight and made it finer-grained, and I am digging into why 125% does nothing.

One thing I want to be sure I understand. On your iPhone, the text is not visible while you adjust the settings. Is the text itself gone, or is
the settings panel covering it? A screenshot would help.

Line height and margins are already reworked for the next build: line height goes lower and adjusts in finer steps, and margins now go all the
way down to zero with finer steps too. The system font list is in as well. Landscape layout is what I am working on next, and the header and
footer page counts are on my list. I will report back here once the build is out.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AkiraT

Thank you for taking the time to go through Leafmark this carefully. I appreciate you writing all of this up.

On the font import question, no ZIP is needed. The picker takes .ttf, .otf and .ttc files directly, and you can select more than one at a time.

Thanks.

The quote about font weight was helpful. I had not thought about it that way. Adjusting all the variants makes more sense than what I am doing
now. I have renamed the control to Font Weight and made it finer-grained, and I am digging into why 125% does nothing.

I know why the font weight at 125% does nothing. It;s because of the way it's implemented. It's implemented such that it ups the weight based on the fonts. 125% would be (I think) semibold. When the weight is increased, it's increased because it's now using the bold version of the font instead of programmatically increasing the weight of all of the fonts as they are used. The regular version should be used with the app adding weight to that. But as it's programmed, you only get regular (no weight added) or bold. But I expect that the next release will work properly for the font weight.

One thing I want to be sure I understand. On your iPhone, the text is not visible while you adjust the settings. Is the text itself gone, or is
the settings panel covering it? A screenshot would help.

The problem is that the settings are on top of all of the text so I cannot se what effect changing some of the settings are making without closing the settings.

Line height and margins are already reworked for the next build: line height goes lower and adjusts in finer steps, and margins now go all the
way down to zero with finer steps too. The system font list is in as well.

Very nice!

Landscape layout is what I am working on next, and the header and
footer page counts are on my list. I will report back here once the build is out.

When you have landscape sorted, I'll test it with my 12.9" iPad Pro which is where I'll need it the most.

[AkiraT]

Quick progress update. v1.6 is submitted to Apple and should be out shortly. What's in it:

- The appearance panel now opens compact at the bottom, with the text visible behind it, so you can see changes as you make them. This was the "settings cover the text" problem — thanks for confirming what was happening.
- Line height goes lower and adjusts in 5% steps. Margins go all the way to zero, also in 5% steps.
- All iOS system fonts are in the font picker.
- Landscape: text now fills the screen width, with a proper two-column layout and a visible gap between the columns. I would really appreciate that 12.9" iPad Pro test once it lands.
- Optional page numbers: pages left in the chapter (header) and "Page X of Y" (footer). These use synthetic pages of about a thousand characters — the closest a Readium-based app can get to ADE numbers. If the numbering feels off compared to ADE, tell me which book and I'll look at it.
- Highlight exports are now named "Book Title - Author.txt".

On font weight, you were right about how it works. The engine can only pick from the faces a font actually ships (regular, bold) or fake-bold them, so in v1.6 the slider works properly with multi-face fonts. The build right after v1.6 goes further: gradual thickening that works with any font, including single-face imported ones. That part is already done and tested — it just missed this submission. I have also proposed the same fix upstream to the Readium toolkit, so other reading apps can benefit too: https://github.com/readium/swift-toolkit/pull/854

One correction to an earlier post of mine: font import takes .ttf and .otf files. I said .ttc as well, but collections are not supported. Sorry about that.

The Old Man — thanks again for the kind words. If you have a minute, an App Store review would genuinely help a one-person app get found. No pressure either way.

[The Old Man]

positive Review submitted yesterday.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AkiraT

Quick progress update. v1.6 is submitted to Apple and should be out shortly. What's in it:

- The appearance panel now opens compact at the bottom, with the text visible behind it, so you can see changes as you make them. This was the "settings cover the text" problem — thanks for confirming what was happening.
- Line height goes lower and adjusts in 5% steps. Margins go all the way to zero, also in 5% steps.
- All iOS system fonts are in the font picker.
- Landscape: text now fills the screen width, with a proper two-column layout and a visible gap between the columns. I would really appreciate that 12.9" iPad Pro test once it lands.
- Optional page numbers: pages left in the chapter (header) and "Page X of Y" (footer). These use synthetic pages of about a thousand characters — the closest a Readium-based app can get to ADE numbers. If the numbering feels off compared to ADE, tell me which book and I'll look at it.
- Highlight exports are now named "Book Title - Author.txt".

On font weight, you were right about how it works. The engine can only pick from the faces a font actually ships (regular, bold) or fake-bold them, so in v1.6 the slider works properly with multi-face fonts. The build right after v1.6 goes further: gradual thickening that works with any font, including single-face imported ones. That part is already done and tested — it just missed this submission. I have also proposed the same fix upstream to the Readium toolkit, so other reading apps can benefit too: https://github.com/readium/swift-toolkit/pull/854

One correction to an earlier post of mine: font import takes .ttf and .otf files. I said .ttc as well, but collections are not supported. Sorry about that.

The Old Man — thanks again for the kind words. If you have a minute, an App Store review would genuinely help a one-person app get found. No pressure either way.

If you can do 1000 characters, then you can do 1024 uncompressed characters as RMSDK does it.

Adobe's Reader Mobile SDK (RMSDK) uses 1,024 characters (including spaces) or 1,024 bytes of uncompressed text to calculate the equivalent of a single eBook page.

Thanks for the fixes you've mentioned. I quite like that you've submitted the proper way of doing the font weight to the official git. This will make the app even better. Once my iPhone gets updated, I'll download it on my iPad and test it out there.

[AkiraT]

The Old Man — just saw it, thank you. Much appreciated.

JSWolf — thanks, and thanks for the RMSDK reference. I went and checked the implementation: the synthetic pages are in fact split at 1,024 bytes, the same page size RMSDK uses — "about a thousand" was me being imprecise, sorry. One honest caveat: the split uses the archive entry length, so for compressed entries it counts stored bytes rather than uncompressed text, and the numbering can still drift from ADE on some books. If you spot a book where it looks off, I'd love to hear which one. Looking forward to the iPad test.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AkiraT

The Old Man — just saw it, thank you. Much appreciated.

JSWolf — thanks, and thanks for the RMSDK reference. I went and checked the implementation: the synthetic pages are in fact split at 1,024 bytes, the same page size RMSDK uses — "about a thousand" was me being imprecise, sorry. One honest caveat: the split uses the archive entry length, so for compressed entries it counts stored bytes rather than uncompressed text, and the numbering can still drift from ADE on some books. If you spot a book where it looks off, I'd love to hear which one. Looking forward to the iPad test.

Using compressed bytes will have the page numbers off. They have to be uncompressed bytes.

[AkiraT]

v1.6 is live on the App Store. Everything from the update above made it in: the compact appearance panel, finer line height and margins, system fonts, the landscape layout, optional page numbers, and the export naming.

JSWolf — whenever you get a chance to try it on the 12.9" iPad Pro, I'm all ears.

On the page-number calculation, I dug into it, and it turns out to be the opposite of what we both assumed: RMSDK itself uses the compressed byte length. The MobileRead wiki documents ADE computing page numbers from the compressed size of each resource at 1,024 bytes per page, and Readium
originally used uncompressed lengths — then switched to the compressed entry length specifically to align with RMSDK.
The discussion is here: https://github.com/readium/architecture/issues/123 (it cites https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Ado...s#Page_numbers).

So the caveat in my earlier post was wrong, in the good direction: Leafmark uses Readium's default strategy, which means the page numbers are computed the same way ADE computes them. If you find a book where the numbers still disagree with ADE, I'd genuinely like to see it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AkiraT

v1.6 is live on the App Store. Everything from the update above made it in: the compact appearance panel, finer line height and margins, system fonts, the landscape layout, optional page numbers, and the export naming.

JSWolf — whenever you get a chance to try it on the 12.9" iPad Pro, I'm all ears.

On the page-number calculation, I dug into it, and it turns out to be the opposite of what we both assumed: RMSDK itself uses the compressed byte length. The MobileRead wiki documents ADE computing page numbers from the compressed size of each resource at 1,024 bytes per page, and Readium
originally used uncompressed lengths — then switched to the compressed entry length specifically to align with RMSDK.
The discussion is here: https://github.com/readium/architecture/issues/123 (it cites https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Ado...s#Page_numbers).

So the caveat in my earlier post was wrong, in the good direction: Leafmark uses Readium's default strategy, which means the page numbers are computed the same way ADE computes them. If you find a book where the numbers still disagree with ADE, I'd genuinely like to see it.

I did get the new version on my iPhone. I'll install it on my iPhone later today.

[AkiraT]

Small update: Leafmark is on Product Hunt today - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/leafmark

Happy to answer anything over there too.

[The Old Man]

I think eventually the app will need a way to display Series, Collections and a way to sort and display the books by title and author. I really don’t need this as I only keep less than a dozen books in the app and load/delete them when necessary.

[AkiraT]

That's fair feedback even though you don't need it yourself — thank you. Collections are already on the roadmap (Marvin's smart collections cast a long shadow), and title/author sorting is a lighter lift that should come sooner. Right now the library is import-order only, which works fine at a dozen books and clearly won't at a hundred.

[JSWolf]

Since I updated to the newest release, on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, the app is unusable.

I'll report what's wrong later when I have the time.

[The Old Man]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Since I updated to the newest release, on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, the app is unusable.

I'll report what's wrong later when I have the time.

Same on the iPad Mini depending on the book. Click a link to a note and the return arrow distorts the deeply showing parts of two pages. Not sure what’s happening but the app is now unusable.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

Same on the iPad Mini depending on the book. Click a link to a note and the return arrow distorts the deeply showing parts of two pages. Not sure what’s happening but the app is now unusable.

I'm getting worse. The page is off to the right and some of the text is off the screen. Also I'm getting a page that's displaying 1/2 of 2 pages on the screen. It's unreadable. I'll have to reload another book to test this again as I deleted the app to reinstall it.