[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[edbro]

I have really learn to love the Deep View feature. It is great to keep track of who's who in a book with a lot of characters. I'd really like to see the ability to jump to the passage that Deep View brings up. Often the little snippet that deep view shows isn't enough to give the information needed.

[kguil]

I'm working on that. It won't exactly take you to the exact passage but it will be very, very close to what you're asking for.

[icallaci]

I am seriously considering dumping my Sony ereader and reading exclusively on my iPad just so I can use Marvin 100% of the time. It is the best software for reading, period. And the responsiveness of the developer (Kris) is amazing. Before I retired I did software development in a much smaller environment, and I was nowhere near as accommodating.

[kguil]

Thanks icallaci. I really appreciate your feedback.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kguil

I think it is very interesting to know how big a book is relative to another so this is something that I will actively investigate. It's just that I haven't found a way yet. Maybe I'll have "a moment of clarity" after this evening's party

My old eBookwise eBook reader showed the spine of the eBook in the library view with the width of the spine related to the length of the book just like a real book would be.

Dale

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

My old eBookwise eBook reader showed the spine of the eBook in the library view with the width of the spine related to the length of the book just like a real book would be.

Dale

The problem Kris runs against is that to determine the book length, he would have to open and read the book, paginate it, etc, probably a lengthy process.

In a proprietary device, you can do whatever you want.

As I understand it, Apple's terms forbid this in the background, though I see iBooks clearly doing exactly that in the background. Change the font size, and iBooks does it again, in the background, and calculates the new number of pages.

I guess Apple cheats......

Art

[kguil]

The problem the way I see it is that if the formatting (font sizes, margins, etc...) between 2 books is different, then one book might appear to be "thicker" than the other when in fact it wouldn't be the case.

Another way... even if iBooks says that a book contains 300 pages, and another contains 600, the second book is not necessarily longer than the first because its font may be much larger.

I have an other idea though...

[Richard Moody]

To see product development like this must be an exemplary way for future app development!

Happy Christmas Kris et al....

[kguil]

Thanks Richard, same to you and all your loved ones.

[Faterson]

Art, let's not confuse 2 things here. Calculating the exact number of screens needed to display a book is one thing, and roughly indicating the length of a book is another thing.

The first is difficult to accomplish, and I don't need and don't expect Marvin to accomplish it. (It now does it on a chapter-by-chapter basis, which is fine with me.) The second should not be as difficult to accomplish, because Marvin already is, in fact, doing this. Otherwise, there'd be no way for Marvin to show, as it does now, that you're "16% in the book".

I'm a bit surprised by the difficulties here. I would go by the number of words in a book. It's not an exact criterion because the average number of words per sentence differs between various languages, but for the very limited purpose of showing the appropriate number of dots in Marvin's Library view, "number of words in a book" as criterion should do. I'm reminded of the old Mobipocket Reader software for desktop PCs that even shows "Estimated Reading Time" for every book in Library view. It probably calculates that on the basis of a criterion such as "number of words in a book".

Isn't an EPUB file something like a HTML file? To get the number of words in a HTML-formatted book, you simply need to strip all HTML tags. Whatever remains (plain-text), is the number of words in the e-book, and based on that, a very long e-book might get 25 dots in Marvin's Library view, a moderately long book 15 dots, and a booklet of a few pages perhaps only 3 or 5 dots.

[kguil]

Faterson, I know exactly what you're after. I already have all the framework to extract things like word and sentence counts from a book... it is exactly what I use for Deep View.

My concern is the extra few seconds per import. Give me a few days to experiment and I'll come back with some concrete options.

[Faterson]

Regarding dictionary lookups:

On second thought, a dedicated (but optional) Wiktionary button in Marvin might be useful. I've just tried reading a Polish e-book in Marvin. Looking up Polish-English translations in the Collins Polish-English dictionary (within the Lingvo app) works reasonably well:

1. tap & hold a word in Marvin
2. press the Copy button
3. four-finger swipe to the right to open Lingvo
4. read the translation there
5. four-finger swipe to the left to return to Marvin

However, there is no Polish-Polish dictionary in the Lingvo app... and the only one I found in the App Store is an offline version of the Polish Wiktionary. So, why not make Wiktionary directly accessible from within Marvin? The Polish Wiktionary only contains about 28 thousand terms (while top-notch dictionaries might offer up to 70-100 thousand terms), but it's definitely better than nothing.

Russian or German work particularly well within Lingvo. You can, for example, set up the Collins Russian-English dictionary as the Lingvo default, but Lingvo will automatically show you not just the Russian-English translation of a term, but right below that, also the term's definition from the Russian-Russian dictionary. That's the best of both worlds at a single glance! And, as Kris mentioned, he might succeed in merging steps no. 2 and 3, above, into a single press of a button.

[Faterson]

Bug report:

On Marvin restart, the Library view always defaults back to Added, even if a different view (such as Opened) was active in Library when Marvin closed previously.

Also, whenever a new book is imported into Marvin, the Library view switches to Added automatically. I don't think this should be enforced.

[kguil]

Faterson:

A feature that I'm adding to Marvin is that, if you know the URL scheme for a dictionary app, you'll be able to create a custom "tap and hold" menu button in Marvin to take you to the definition of the selected text to a dictionary app of your choice. I'm still waiting for a reply from Abbyy regarding whether they have a URL scheme for Lingvo. If the Collins dictionary has one such as scheme, you'd be able to add a custom button in Marvin for it too.

Regarding the library sort bug, that is the way I had made it (it is by design). However, now that you mention it, I realise it was a lazy and somewhat stupid choice. I've already fixed Marvin to remember your last chosen sort order and default to it.

[Faterson]

Thanks, Kris!

(The Collins dictionaries are sold as in-app purchases within the Lingvo app, so if Abbyy makes that URL scheme available, that will be all that is needed to access them.)