[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[kguil]

Humler, Terisa, Rachel - thanks a lot. Humler all those items are on my to do list and I'll be working on them ASAP.

[Faterson]

Monumental release!

Kris, congratulations on Marvin 1.2! Paragraph spacing works like a charm, and it's the most important new feature for me. All of my books, including the most malformed and mangled ones, now look stunningly beautiful in Marvin.

Version 1.2 is a milestone. You accomplished more in 2 months, than all those mega-corporations in years. Anyone else would have called this "Version 2", but if you insist on calling it 1.2... alright.

I know that version 1.3 with more improvements is upcoming, as well as the iPhone version afterwards. No matter how much I love my Stanza on the iPhone, Marvin will be just so much better. And the iCloud sync with the iPad Marvin will make it irresistible. I have quite a few wishes left for Marvin functionality on the iPad, but they all fall into the "low/medium importance" category. The basics are all there in Marvin 1.2, and they work much better here than in any other competing e-reader I've ever seen.

Thank you again for this fantastic product.

[kguil]

Thanks Faterson.

[ProfCrash]

OPDS? Huh

I love the double column, I used it while getting the little guy back to sleep.

[kguil]

ProfCrash, do you need help with OPDS?

[ProfCrash]

What is it? Consider me not tech savy and sleep deprived as only the parent of a 7 month old guy can be.

[Faterson]

OPDS catalogues are a fast, direct way of loading books into e-readers. Various OPDS catalogues are available publicly online, but also your own private Calibre installation makes its books available for download from an OPDS catalogue. Here's the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPDS

[Faterson]

PS: Now that I think of it, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to rename the OPDS menu option to Catalogs.

You know, OPDS really sounds intimidating for the regular user, not everyone knows what this means, whereas every book reader knows instantly what Catalogs are. "OPDS" is a "techie" designation -- and any "techie" user knows anyway that what Marvin offers are OPDS catalogs, because that's the type of catalogs offered by e-readers.

For this reason, I think the "OPDS" monicker is not needed in Marvin menu. The other two options in that menu pop-up, Dropbox and Web Browser, are perfectly understandable for everyone, so if the third menu item below that said Catalogs instead of OPDS, I think it would be more user-friendly.

[kguil]

What about "OPDS Catalogs"?

[Faterson]

In my opinion, the "OPDS" part can be left out completely. If there were 2 different types of catalogs available in e-readers, then yes, specifying "OPDS" would be useful. But because there is only one type, OPDS, why state it explicitly, when the general public has no idea what OPDS is, anyway? Calling it "OPDS" has zero informational value, but it has quite high potential "confusing" value. This also happened in the Facebook Stanza group -- when I mentioned that Marvin, too, now offers OPDS catalogs, long-time Stanza users asked me "what the hell is that?"... even though they've been using OPDS catalogs in Stanza for years.

In fact, Stanza is the model of user-friendliness in this regard. Stanza offers the menu button Get Books. (Could the button label be any clearer?) And after you go there, the very first button says, Catalog. And under that button are all the OPDS catalogs, but it's really not necessary to call them that.

[kguil]

Maybe "Catalogs (OPDS)"? I'm reluctant to drop "OPDS" because I think it is relevant to some people (at least to myself). What do others think?

[Wickedkitten]

actually forget it, I don't want to clog up the threat with tit for tat nonsense. We will just agree to disagree and move on,

[Philantrop]

"OPDS catalogues" would be completely fine. The term "OPDS" should stay because it makes clear what kind of catalogue it is.

[denisea]

kris, thanks again for 1.2, I'm excited about exploring it and finally letting go of stanza on my iPad. would you mind pointing to (or providing) directions on how to connect to calibre via opds catalog through marvin. when I enter the same addresses and credentials I had in stanza I get an error message. I am able to connect via the web interface, so I know it isn't that my calibre server is down.

again, thank you! long live marvin!

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by denisea

I am able to connect via the web interface, so I know it isn't that my calibre server is down.

Just add /opds to the address you use for Calibre's web interface, and it will work.

For example, to access my Calibre via Marvin's web browser, I use the address:

194.569.0.524:8080

So, to turn that address into an OPDS catalog address, simply attach /opds at the end, like this:

194.569.0.524:8080/opds

PS: my IP address invented in the examples above