They Are Soooo UGLY! - Page 2

Faterson · 09-25-2013, 01:06 PM

To me, the dealbreaker in Mantano Premium is its inability (so it seems!) to adjust paragraph spacing. I just can't stand zero paragraph spacing in e-books, but Mantano Premium seems to be enforcing it.

This is no coincidence. Paragraph spacing is absolutely the toughest formatting customisation issue for e-book software to handle. That is why low-quality e-readers -- and that includes Kindle and iBooks -- do not allow you to adjust paragraph spacing. Marvin 1.0 was missing that feature, too. Kris then went through the nightmare month of January 2013, putting in 20-hour workdays (or so it seemed), trying to get paragraph spacing right. And he did.

Also, as mentioned earlier, Mantano Premium seems to be conflating "publisher settings" with user-side preferences. I can see no button there for switching between the two views -- but there is such a button in Marvin and Moon+ Pro. I like it how Moon+ Pro calls that button a "Preview" button -- that clearly suggests to users they should not be using that view for actually reading books in Moon+ Pro. This has led to some confusion in Marvin when folks activate "publisher settings" and then they complain they're unable to "customise" them. Well, they no longer would be publisher settings once they're customised, right?

Faterson · 09-25-2013, 02:07 PM

In terms of Moon+ Pro, here is my current recap of where it seems to be lagging behind Marvin:

no option to customise the size of 1st-line paragraph indents
missing back/forward navigation buttons when reading books – at least I can't find them. Marvin is missing the forward button(s), which is bad enough (see GitHub #50), but a missing back button is truly troublesome; you can't even briefly look at a different section in the book without losing your current place...
rendering fidelity (even if you completely disable the "Override CSS" option in Moon+ Pro, its rendering fidelity is lower compared to Marvin -- though the books look very nice in both e-readers, and, in fact, to me they currently look even nicer in Moon+ Pro than in Marvin, thanks to the background texture options)
no true full-screen mode, at least not on the new Nexus 7; the bottom Android bar with the 3 standard menu buttons keeps popping into view whenever you touch the screen; seemingly the only way to avoid that, is turning pages using the volume button (see here)

I have e-mailed the above issues to Moon+ Pro's support email address; let's see how much "customer support" one can buy along with a €3.80 app, although to be honest, that is such a low price I am surprised any customer support is explicitly offered as a "Pro bonus". I remember I was pleasantly shocked

, back in December 2012, after receiving a reply from Kris within a couple of hours after sending a support query to him. I thought, "What's this? Amazon keeps ignoring my issues for years and years, and the developer of a free app responds within a couple of hours?!"

kyteflyer · 09-25-2013, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MeSue

...but I never found one that I liked more than iOS and I never could get the hang of selecting text. Drove me batty.

On Android, I always have a keyboard that resembles iOS. None of them actually resemble the functionality but at least the looks were there. There was also a launcher that made it look like iOS and I liked that better as well.

Faterson · 09-25-2013, 06:50 PM

I'd say that text selection is one of the greatest advantages of Android compared to iOS. It works 100% smoothly in Moon+ Reader, as opposed to the nightmare that text selection is in Marvin/iOS, due to Apple's WebKit "paragraph snapping" glitch/pseudo-feature. See GitHub #34.

In Moon+ Reader Pro, selecting text works in the way preferred by many users: simply tap any word and drag your finger across the screen in any direction -- the text will automatically become highlighted. No need to use the selection "lollypops"!

There are also no issues with selecting text across paragraph boundaries, and when you come to the bottom of the screen, Moon+ employs a ridiculously sensible solution for the "highlight across screen boundaries" issue: it starts scrolling vertically, until you let go with your finger, finishing the highlight!

So, in this respect at least, Android crushes iOS.

Below, some more fun with background textures in Moon+ Pro. I promise, these are the last background screenshots I'll be posting here -- and the ones below are some of my custom backgrounds I have kept in a special folder for inclusion in Marvin as soon as that becomes possible.

jswinden · 09-27-2013, 02:15 PM

The kindle app, which is rather lackluster on any device, including the eInk Kindles, looks best on the iOS version. I stick with Kindle apps for the ecosystem which Marvin cannot yet supply. I had a Fire HD last year and the Kindle for iOS app was better, so the Fire HD got returned.

And I agree, the Android apps just didn't cut it for me. I gave it over 2 years but got tired of settling for second and third rate crap.

09-25-2013, 01:06 PM	#16
Faterson pokrývač škridiel Posts: 1,525 Karma: 3300000 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Device: 3iPad, SamsungNote & Tabs, 2OnyxBoox, Huawei 8″, PocketBook	To me, the dealbreaker in Mantano Premium is its inability (so it seems!) to adjust paragraph spacing. I just can't stand zero paragraph spacing in e-books, but Mantano Premium seems to be enforcing it. This is no coincidence. Paragraph spacing is absolutely the toughest formatting customisation issue for e-book software to handle. That is why low-quality e-readers -- and that includes Kindle and iBooks -- do not allow you to adjust paragraph spacing. Marvin 1.0 was missing that feature, too. Kris then went through the nightmare month of January 2013, putting in 20-hour workdays (or so it seemed), trying to get paragraph spacing right. And he did. Also, as mentioned earlier, Mantano Premium seems to be conflating "publisher settings" with user-side preferences. I can see no button there for switching between the two views -- but there is such a button in Marvin and Moon+ Pro. I like it how Moon+ Pro calls that button a "Preview" button -- that clearly suggests to users they should not be using that view for actually reading books in Moon+ Pro. This has led to some confusion in Marvin when folks activate "publisher settings" and then they complain they're unable to "customise" them. Well, they no longer would be publisher settings once they're customised, right? Last edited by Faterson; 09-25-2013 at 02:17 PM.

09-25-2013, 02:07 PM	#17
Faterson pokrývač škridiel Posts: 1,525 Karma: 3300000 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Device: 3iPad, SamsungNote & Tabs, 2OnyxBoox, Huawei 8″, PocketBook	In terms of Moon+ Pro, here is my current recap of where it seems to be lagging behind Marvin: no option to customise the size of 1st-line paragraph indents missing back/forward navigation buttons when reading books – at least I can't find them. Marvin is missing the forward button(s), which is bad enough (see GitHub #50), but a missing back button is truly troublesome; you can't even briefly look at a different section in the book without losing your current place... rendering fidelity (even if you completely disable the "Override CSS" option in Moon+ Pro, its rendering fidelity is lower compared to Marvin -- though the books look very nice in both e-readers, and, in fact, to me they currently look even nicer in Moon+ Pro than in Marvin, thanks to the background texture options) no true full-screen mode, at least not on the new Nexus 7; the bottom Android bar with the 3 standard menu buttons keeps popping into view whenever you touch the screen; seemingly the only way to avoid that, is turning pages using the volume button (see here) I have e-mailed the above issues to Moon+ Pro's support email address; let's see how much "customer support" one can buy along with a €3.80 app, although to be honest, that is such a low price I am surprised any customer support is explicitly offered as a "Pro bonus". I remember I was pleasantly shocked , back in December 2012, after receiving a reply from Kris within a couple of hours after sending a support query to him. I thought, "What's this? Amazon keeps ignoring my issues for years and years, and the developer of a free app responds within a couple of hours?!" Last edited by Faterson; 09-25-2013 at 02:09 PM.

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09-25-2013, 06:50 PM	#19
Faterson pokrývač škridiel Posts: 1,525 Karma: 3300000 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Device: 3iPad, SamsungNote & Tabs, 2OnyxBoox, Huawei 8″, PocketBook	I'd say that text selection is one of the greatest advantages of Android compared to iOS. It works 100% smoothly in Moon+ Reader, as opposed to the nightmare that text selection is in Marvin/iOS, due to Apple's WebKit "paragraph snapping" glitch/pseudo-feature. See GitHub #34. In Moon+ Reader Pro, selecting text works in the way preferred by many users: simply tap any word and drag your finger across the screen in any direction -- the text will automatically become highlighted. No need to use the selection "lollypops"! There are also no issues with selecting text across paragraph boundaries, and when you come to the bottom of the screen, Moon+ employs a ridiculously sensible solution for the "highlight across screen boundaries" issue: it starts scrolling vertically, until you let go with your finger, finishing the highlight! So, in this respect at least, Android crushes iOS. Below, some more fun with background textures in Moon+ Pro. I promise, these are the last background screenshots I'll be posting here -- and the ones below are some of my custom backgrounds I have kept in a special folder for inclusion in Marvin as soon as that becomes possible.

09-27-2013, 02:15 PM	#20
jswinden Nameless Being	The kindle app, which is rather lackluster on any device, including the eInk Kindles, looks best on the iOS version. I stick with Kindle apps for the ecosystem which Marvin cannot yet supply. I had a Fire HD last year and the Kindle for iOS app was better, so the Fire HD got returned. And I agree, the Android apps just didn't cut it for me. I gave it over 2 years but got tired of settling for second and third rate crap.

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