[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Let me see, pages and pages of lists with no indication of when the entries were added or updated or even if they are still valid. It is like a bibliography without any annotations compared to an annotated bibliography. Even just a short one line annotation per entry and a date would help considerably.

thanks for the information. There are about a dozen or so of pages out of more than 1000 that are lists. I will look into what it takes to add some of this data although most of the entries on the lists (except the one for libraries) points to pages in the wiki itself. This is the preferred method so you can find out all you need to know within the wiki. However, since anyone can add entries the links are often first and then fixed later with pages.

It is, of course, difficult to ensure that all links are current however, the idea is that if you find a bad link to can indicate this either by editing the page or using the talk page to identify it so we can fix it. We do need some help to make things better.

Dale

FYI: Here is the Wiki Reader Software page I was referring to.

[Philantrop]

Originally Posted by kguil

Hope you enjoy it!

kguil, as mentioned on Twitter before, Marvin is fairly nice and has some strong features. I've taken the liberty to add it to the ebook reader software comparison on Wikipedia (link below in my signature). If you find any factual errors, please by all means feel free to correct those.

What I'd really love to see in Marvin are the following features, sorted in descending priority for me:

- Universal app for both iPad and iPhone
- Cloud synchronisation for booksmarks & current reading position
- Support for importing books via OPDS catalogues (you're probably referring to that when talking about Calibre server, I hope)
- Multi-column support (on the iPad) in landscape mode
- Progress indicator per book in the library view
- Disable/override the publisher's formatting (CSS) - sometimes books are horribly formatted and having a way to completely (or partly) ignore what someone else thought looks good would be nice.
- Sharing excerpts via Facebook (& Twitter)
- Importing books via WebDAV - there's life beyond Dropbox. ;-)

Of course, if you made all the "no"s in those tables into "yes"s, I'm sure we'd all be thrilled. ;-)

What I personally wouldn't invest much time in is adding support for more ebook formats - epub is the industry standard and anything else can be either converted into it or there are already specialised apps for them.

Keep up the good work and thanks for a nice reader!

[kguil]

Hi Philantrop,

Many thanks for doing this.

Just a few comments regarding the Wikipedia entry (I'll reply separately to your feature requests).

- The app is called 'Marvin' not 'MarvinApp'.
- Marvin supports progress in library too. The library can be viewed in condensed or expanded mode (switch using the top right button or by pinching). In expanded mode you can see your progress as a percentage. The progress is also shown for the current book on the home screen.
- Brightness control can be accessed using vertical swiping as well as from a brightness menu. Vertically swiping using 2 fingers changes the screen's warmth (the idea is to provide a more 'eInk-like' experience.
- Marvin allows Wikipedia lookups in Deep View.
- (Browser and manual downloading) ePub downloads from Mobile Safari can be opened in Marvin.

I'll go over to Wikipedia and update the page.

Kris

Originally Posted by Philantrop

What I personally wouldn't invest much time in is adding support for more ebook formats - epub is the industry standard and anything else can be either converted into it or there are already specialised apps for them.

Keep up the good work and thanks for a nice reader!

Not really. We might like ePub the best, and there is certainly a lot of people who want it to be the standard, but it isn't, at least not in the USA. Amazon far out sales all the other eBook stores combined in the USA to the tune of 2 to 1, in other words mobi7 and/or KF8 format books make up 2/3 of the market in the USA. It is true that mobi7/KF8 can be easily converted to ePub, but it would be nice to have a 3rd party app that can render them natively and kick Amazon in the backside as far as features go.

[Philantrop]

kguil, ah, good remarks, indeed. I knew I'd miss a few things. :)

One minor thing (which is not obvious from the article, indeed): Browser/manual downloading refers to in-app functionality. Some ebook readers have an internal browser that allows for downloading ebooks from (almost) any site. Or an internal server to upload ebooks into the app.

Personally, I don't like either method and just use Safari (because iBooks doesn't have an OPDS import option), indeed. :-)

[kguil]

Hi Philantrop,

Regarding the feature requests:

- An iPhone version of Marvin definitely coming as well as iCould sync (position, bookmarks, highlights, etc...). I can't promise that it will arrive soon. First I'd like to make the iPad version as stable and feature-complete as possible. I'm expecting to start working on this in January.

- Yes, OPDS and Calibre Server support are coming after the holidays - not the one next week.

- Multi-column: coming too. Probably with the Calibre+OPDS update.

- Progress in library: it is already there (as a progress bar and percentage). You might be viewing the library in condensed mode (shorter rows). Use the button at the top right of the screen or pinch in/out to switch between condensed and expanded viewing modes.

- Disable/enable CSS: That's tough but I'll look into it. Once of the very early design choices I made was for the layouts to be as faithful as possible to what's in the book. Nonetheless, I'll check it out.

- Twitter+FB: Coming for sure. Probably with Calibre+OPDS update or straight after that.

K

[kguil]

@Philantrop
Regarding, browser/manual downloading I'm building some special "iOS App URL Schemes" that will do exactly what you're after.

@jswinden
I've been planning to natively support mobi for a long time. The format specification in the Mobileread wiki seems to be the most comprehensive one there is around but would still require lots of reverse engineering. Do you know of a definite mobi file format reference?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Not really. We might like ePub the best, and there is certainly a lot of people who want it to be the standard, but it isn't, at least not in the USA. Amazon far out sales all the other eBook stores combined in the USA to the tune of 2 to 1, in other words mobi7 and/or KF8 format books make up 2/3 of the market in the USA. It is true that mobi7/KF8 can be easily converted to ePub, but it would be nice to have a 3rd party app that can render them natively and kick Amazon in the backside as far as features go.

The problem with Amazon is DRM. A 3rd party app doesn't support DRM for Amazon and no matter how feature rich it is there are problems if the book won't load. Everything that is KF8 begins as an ePub so the publisher can easily make it available outside of Amazon.

Dale

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The problem with Amazon is DRM. A 3rd party app doesn't support DRM for Amazon and no matter how feature rich it is there are problems if the book won't load. Everything that is KF8 begins as an ePub so the publisher can easily make it available outside of Amazon.

Dale

Pretty easy to strip the DRM. You would have to do that to convert it to ePub anyway. And yes some publishers also make their books available in ePub, but not all.

Originally Posted by kguil

@Philantrop
Regarding, browser/manual downloading I'm building some special "iOS App URL Schemes" that will do exactly what you're after.

@jswinden
I've been planning to natively support mobi for a long time. The format specification in the Mobileread wiki seems to be the most comprehensive one there is around but would still require lots of reverse engineering. Do you know of a definite mobi file format reference?

There are actually two formats now in use. The older mobi7 with limited formatting and the newer KF8 which is very similar to ePub. Unfortunately I've never really found a definitive guide for either, but I'm sure someone around here probably has.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kguil

@Philantrop
Regarding, browser/manual downloading I'm building some special "iOS App URL Schemes" that will do exactly what you're after.

@jswinden
I've been planning to natively support mobi for a long time. The format specification in the Mobileread wiki seems to be the most comprehensive one there is around but would still require lots of reverse engineering. Do you know of a definite mobi file format reference?

MOBI format is not publicly released. However, you are correct in that we have the definitive documentation in our wiki. If you look in the mobi forum of our site you will also see reverse engineered tools to take a mobi or a KF8 apart and convert it to ePub. These are also in the wiki. Using one of those freely available sources it should be relatively easy to support either format.

Dale

[kguil]

Thanks Dale.

[artbatista]

Problem with Dropbox support:

Only 1000 books?

I know it's the API that limits this, but when you have 5000+ books in you collection, it kinda makes this feature useless, specially since there does not seem to be a way to select which 1000 books. Newest 1000 maybe would be ok, but I hope you see my point.

Waiting for opds support on baited breath....

Art

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Not really. We might like ePub the best, and there is certainly a lot of people who want it to be the standard, but it isn't, at least not in the USA. Amazon far out sales all the other eBook stores combined in the USA to the tune of 2 to 1, in other words mobi7 and/or KF8 format books make up 2/3 of the market in the USA. It is true that mobi7/KF8 can be easily converted to ePub, but it would be nice to have a 3rd party app that can render them natively and kick Amazon in the backside as far as features go.

And Amazon will license their DRM to all and sundry, just like that?

How is an indie gong to support Amazon formats without the DRM support from Amazon?

If you take the trouble to remove DRM from MOBI/KF8 books, converting to EPub is pretty much a given then.

Cheers

Art