Marvin 3.1

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

back when Marvin 2 was being actively worked on, syncing annotations/bookmarks and ADE page numbers were mentioned as necessary and they still don't exist.

Exactly. The Marvin 2 days were the last time Marvin was being truly actively developed. But that was years ago.

Please understand, everyone: I absolutely appreciate and bow down to Kris for having brought us this miracle called Marvin. When Stanza died, I was devastated, and thought I'd be stuck with crappy software like Kindle or iBooks forever. Now, Marvin, despite all its shortcomings, is far and away superior over Stanza, so it's a genuine accomplishment.

Nevertheless, Stanza had huge flaws, and Marvin has huge deficiencies/functionality holes as well. (Just look at Marvin's GitHub, neglected for a couple of years now, for the dozens of unresolved issues/requests.)

Then, last year, we got a brief spell of Marvin 3 being developed, but we never really got full-fledged Beta-testing like back in Marvin 2 and Marvin 1 days. It really seemed to me that Kris was rushing the release of Marvin 3 out of the gate, and it's his call to do this or not. Marvin 3 is a definite improvement over Marvin 2, but we have lost some Marvin 2 features in the process, and they still haven't been restored half a year later.

You can't be serious, guys, if you think that a few cosmetic fixes and GoodReads integration constitutes active development of an app for half a year. Let's be real. This 3.1 release is a "token update", just so no one can say there hasn't been any update at all. We got a similar "token update" back in 2015, when basically the only thing added to Marvin in one year was the cloud picker.

I don't blame Kris, nor do I demand anything from him. I have nothing but gratitude and respect for Kris. All of us have our real lives to take care of, and our various life priorities. If this is as far as Marvin will go, we'll need to accept that. And move on to another app later on, that will cater to those needs Marvin still isn't meeting today. Again, you can't be serious if you believe that an e-reader in 2017 that fails to sync annotations between devices can in any way be called "satisfactory" or "complete". Or, that when I read the final chapter of a book, Marvin claims that I have both 7 and 12 pages left in the book. That's a glaring bug if there ever was one.

Originally Posted by svenlind

declaring Marvin dead

Please read more carefully. I said "half-dead" and "seems to be dying" – very different from "declaring dead".

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I note that the author hasn't posted much here over the past several months.

It's night and day compared to the frenzy of development back in the heyday of Marvin 1 and Marvin 2. But, again, we need to accept if Kris has different priorities in life now. To be honest, I'm stunned that any mobile software developers can make a living with producing these apps. In the desktop environment, any silly little utility is unabashed to charge dozens of dollars, yet superb e-reader software like Marvin, Hyphen, or MapleRead is only supposed to cost a couple of bucks? Given this state of things, I'm not surprised if app developers just give up, and we'll be stuck with default, impotent corporate software of the Kindle and iBooks ilk.

[JSWolf]

My problem is that I pointed out a rendering bug and it's not been acknowledged. This is something important to fix. Bugs in rendering should take top priority. But it's been ignored which doesn't give me hope for Marvin's future. All I want is to know that's it's been acknowledged and will be fixed.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My problem is that I pointed out a rendering bug and it's not been acknowledged. This is something important to fix. Bugs in rendering should take top priority. But it's been ignored which doesn't give me hope for Marvin's future. All I want is to know that's it's been acknowledged and will be fixed.

Did you email Kris?? or just expect him here on MR?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Did you email Kris?? or just expect him here on MR?

I posted on MR and on Github. I would have thought by now the post on Github would have been acknowledged.

[Turtle91]

Well, multiple times Kris has mentioned that Github is not being used for Marvin3...sooo I wouldn't expect any response from that. And....according to the sticky he has asked that you email him with bug reports......sooo, I'm not surprised you haven't heard a response from him.

Although, you could try semaphore from the top of Mt Everest if you think that will work better than the method he has expressly set up for that purpose...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Well, multiple times Kris has mentioned that Github is not being used for Marvin3...sooo I wouldn't expect any response from that. And....according to the sticky he has asked that you email him with bug reports......sooo, I'm not surprised you haven't heard a response from him.

Although, you could try semaphore from the top of Mt Everest if you think that will work better than the method he has expressly set up for that purpose...

It's also a bug for Marvin 2. So Github should be appropriate.

[Turtle91]

I doubt he is doing any active development on an older version of Marvin - just maintenance - that's what new versions are for...

[Ferante1]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Again, you can't be serious if you believe that an e-reader in 2017 that fails to sync annotations between devices can in any way be called "satisfactory" or "complete".

To be honest, I'm stunned that any mobile software developers can make a living with producing these apps. In the desktop environment, any silly little utility is unabashed to charge dozens of dollars, yet superb e-reader software like Marvin, Hyphen, or MapleRead is only supposed to cost a couple of bucks?

Not syncing highlights is a horrible, blood-curdling problem for all of us who read not for entertainment alone. However! - Marvin can send a "journal" with all your highlights to yourself, or even export it to your other devices (Contents screen/Main menu/Export/Marvin-Marvin). And if you need to see the context around the highlight, you can search for the highlighted passages in the book. All this is a great relief to me and 100% solves my issue.

2) For those for whom this does not do the job, I have an idea.

Obviously, money/time is the issue here. What Kris is making from Marvin, apparently is not worth his time to develop the app. He's got to eat too! Then why don't we ask Kris what would it take for him to develop the Highlight feature? A precise number.

Then: set up a GoFundMe page, make an announcement to all Marvin fans, and - job will get done faster than you can count to 5!

Say, Kris costs his time for this at $2000. Even if you reach only 200 people who'd give life and limb to have the Highlights sync, they'd each need to contribute only $10 to get it done! (If the magic number is not reached, all will get their money back).

Kris happy, we - deliriously happy. Any takers?

[diremommy]

Can someone please tell me exactly what setting I have ticked that causes Marvin to always start up one page behind where I left off? I'm sure it's something simple that I'm missing, but I just can't find it. Every time I turn off the tablet, or hit the home button to do something else, then open the app again, the book I'm reading is one page behind.

[Turtle91]

Marvin is so smart and intuitive that it knows you need to review the previous few paragraphs to "get you back in to the story". Isn't that awesome!!

Seriously though, I'm not sure that there is such a setting. I haven't seen that particular problem either. Maybe try switching to "scroll mode" then back to page (or vice versa if you use scroll) to get it to reset??

[MartyTX]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Seriously though, I'm not sure that there is such a setting. I haven't seen that particular problem either. Maybe try switching to "scroll mode" then back to page (or vice versa if you use scroll) to get it to reset??

Or try another SWAG: Change each of these one "click" up or down and see if a "reset" of some sort is triggered: text size, line spacing, paragraph spacing.

I haven't seen your particular problem either.

[diremommy]

Guess I'm just unique, it figures!

[MSWallack]

Don't worry, diremommy, I've seen this problem too. Not all the time. But often enough.

[Jsolomon]

I see this problem all of the time. It is clearly a bug. Unfortunately it probably won't be fixed anytime soon given how quiet Kris is being.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Jsolomon

I see this problem all of the time. It is clearly a bug. Unfortunately it probably won't be fixed anytime soon given how quiet Kris is being.

Perhaps following the bug report procedure would find a quicker response than waiting for him to show up here?