MapleRead - eBook Reader and Server for iOS

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by slantybard

I have noticed a bug in the sorting of books. When you choose to sort by author, MR sorts authors alphabetically (as desired) but sorts all the authors that start with a capital letter alphabetically followed by all the un-capitalized authors alphabetically.

Ie: A, B, C,......Z, a, b, c,.....z

Yes, I know authors should be capitalized, but many fanfic authors do not capitalize their names.

You can use the Calibre eBook editor to fix the author's name in the metadata of the OPF.

[Schwarzenegger]

Just got MapleRead CX paid version after some technical problems with Marvin (also paid version). I find navigating through icons and command buttons very confusing and so far I am not getting what I need. First I like to get all my books listed by tag. All I have been able to get so far is a list of tags and how many books with each tag. pressing a tag does not give me the books in this tags set but it removes the tick mark. The reason for this invention escapes my simple mind. Getting to the books with this tag is still a mystery to me. Somehow I got to a list for a specific tag. I found out that I have 3 books under A, 5 under B etc. Useful stuff I am sure but for me a useless gimmick. And the greatest feature when reading a simple ebook is the page numbering in a wonderful but mysterious set of pages but the number of book pages must be there somewhere . E.g I may be on page 17/51 where 51 is the number of pages in this particular set while the book has 300 pages. After page 51 the page numbering starts again. So after 51/51 we get 1/68 .I don't know which set I am in so don't know where I am in the book nor do I know how many pages in the book.
Have I downloaded the wrong app?
Cheers,

[JSWolf]

What's on the agenda for MapleRead fixes/updates?

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by Schwarzenegger

Just got MapleRead CX paid version after some technical problems with Marvin (also paid version). I find navigating through icons and command buttons very confusing and so far I am not getting what I need. First I like to get all my books listed by tag. All I have been able to get so far is a list of tags and how many books with each tag. pressing a tag does not give me the books in this tags set but it removes the tick mark. The reason for this invention escapes my simple mind. Getting to the books with this tag is still a mystery to me. Somehow I got to a list for a specific tag. I found out that I have 3 books under A, 5 under B etc. Useful stuff I am sure but for me a useless gimmick. And the greatest feature when reading a simple ebook is the page numbering in a wonderful but mysterious set of pages but the number of book pages must be there somewhere . E.g I may be on page 17/51 where 51 is the number of pages in this particular set while the book has 300 pages. After page 51 the page numbering starts again. So after 51/51 we get 1/68 .I don't know which set I am in so don't know where I am in the book nor do I know how many pages in the book.
Have I downloaded the wrong app?
Cheers,

In MR, to see a selection of books with only one tag, you need to tap on the "tags" menu and have only the tag(s) you want to see selected. I find the easiest way is to choose "none" and then choose the tag(s) I want to see.

For the page numbering, MR shows the page you are reading in the chapter. If the book has no chapters set in the ePub, then the ePub conversion often makes chapters to prevent problems with file sizes (ie a single chapter with 1000 pages would cause problems with memory storage in various readers/reading software).

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can use the Calibre eBook editor to fix the author's name in the metadata of the OPF.

Yes, I could if I wanted to change the author names. However, I like to leave the author names as posted online (ie lower case or upper case as chosen by the author). I would suggest that the author sort ignore upper and lower case or allow upper and lower case to be mixed together in MR.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by slantybard

Yes, I could if I wanted to change the author names. However, I like to leave the author names as posted online (ie lower case or upper case as chosen by the author). I would suggest that the author sort ignore upper and lower case or allow upper and lower case to be mixed together in MR.

When have you seen a name that's properly written in all lower case? You haven't because a person's name in all lower case is incorrect.

[MartyTX]

Originally Posted by Schwarzenegger

... I may be on page 17/51 where 51 is the number of pages in this particular set while the book has 300 pages. After page 51 the page numbering starts again. So after 51/51 we get 1/68. I don't know which set I am in so don't know where I am in the book nor do I know how many pages in the book ...

If you set the upper/lower margins to be quite small, the page numbers "17/51" are replaced with a thin progress bar that represents the whole book. When I was evaluating the CX free version, I found the bar to be more useful than the numbers.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by slantybard

I have noticed a bug in the sorting of books. When you choose to sort by author, MR sorts authors alphabetically (as desired) but sorts all the authors that start with a capital letter alphabetically followed by all the un-capitalized authors alphabetically.

Ie: A, B, C,......Z, a, b, c,.....z

Yes, I know authors should be capitalized, but many fanfic authors do not capitalize their names.

Originally Posted by slantybard

Yes, I could if I wanted to change the author names. However, I like to leave the author names as posted online (ie lower case or upper case as chosen by the author). I would suggest that the author sort ignore upper and lower case or allow upper and lower case to be mixed together in MR.

Keen observation. Good suggestion. Very easy to do. Will change in the next version of MapleRead. Thanks.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

...
Yes, in the next version of MapleRead, we're going to have new options to let you show/hide header and footer independently without any other side effect.
...

Moreover, there will be a new and independent option to show/hide the progress bar (the graphical representation of % into book) at the bottom of the screen. (Note that currently the progress bar is automatically shown while the header/footer is automatically hidden, only if the top & bottom page margins are too small, as specified by the user.)

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If we do get the option to use our own choice of fonts, I'll have a go at making a version of ChareInk that's suitable for LCD meaning I'll check the weight and see if I should maybe lower the weight.

Along with user-defined themes, user-defined scenes and many other customization features, it seems natural to support importing of user-defined fonts too.

Moreover, some users have emailed us to express their wish to see more Chinese and/or Japanese fonts. These font files are typically pretty large, typically on the order of 10MB each. It seems too much to always bundle them with the app. Supporting user-defined fonts is one (though not the only one) solution.

The developer team is inclined to support user-defined fonts in some future release of MapleRead. It's going to take some work.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Along with user-defined themes, user-defined scenes and many other customization features, it seems natural to support importing of user-defined fonts too.

Moreover, some users have emailed us to express their wish to see more Chinese and/or Japanese fonts. These font files are typically pretty large, typically on the order of 10MB each. It seems too much to always bundle them with the app. Supporting user-defined fonts is one (though not the only one) solution.

The developer team is inclined to support user-defined fonts in some future release of MapleRead. It's going to take some work.

I think supporting user installed fonts is the best solution to the Chines/Japanese font issue. Those that want can have and those that do not can not have to have.

Another thing, all the non-system fonts could be moved to the user font area so we can keep or delete as we want.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think supporting user installed fonts is the best solution to the Chines/Japanese font issue. Those that want can have and those that do not can not have to have.

I'm not sure if that's always the best solution for all users who want more choices of Chinese/Japanese fonts. Some of them may just want to have more choices, but don't know where to find those font files. For example, iBooks offers on-the-fly download of a few Chinese/Japanese fonts when you open a Chinese/Japanese book.

Another thing, all the non-system fonts could be moved to the user font area so we can keep or delete as we want.

Not sure what you mean. If you mean fonts like "Gentium Book Basic" that is bundled with the app, and you want to delete them to save storage space, then it won't work as you wish. I don't think any app can delete any of its bundled files, due to iOS restrictions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cedhax

Not sure what you mean. If you mean fonts like "Gentium Book Basic" that is bundled with the app, and you want to delete them to save storage space, then it won't work as you wish. I don't think any app can delete any of its bundled files, due to iOS restrictions.

Yes, any of the bundled fonts that are not included with iOS could be in the user font area and then we can delete if we do not want.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes, any of the bundled fonts that are not included with iOS could be in the user font area and then we can delete if we do not want.

It seems that you do not get the point in my previous post. Even if the font names that you don't want were deleted from the menus, the bundled font files themselves could not be deleted to reduced storage space. But if you didn't care the storage space issue in the first place, then you could have asked sbaylor for a feature to dynamically remove all font names that you don't like, bundled or not, built-in or not.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cedhax

It seems that you do not get the point in my previous post. Even if the font names that you don't want were deleted from the menus, the bundled font files themselves could not be deleted to reduced storage space. But if you didn't care the storage space issue in the first place, then you could have asked sbaylor for a feature to dynamically remove all font names that you don't like, bundled or not, built-in or not.

I get it. This is not about removing names from a menu. It's about moving the bundled fonts to a user accessablefont directory that we can use to install the fonts of our choice. Then if there are any fonts that came with MapleRead, those fonts could be removed. Now do you get it or are you still lost?