Best cross-platform e-reader: BookFusion?

[peaceridge]

Interesting how people are different. I could care less about background textures - for me, the whiter the better and BookFusion is fine for that.

My show stopper for BookFusion is that there are no touch zones. I want to be able to touch either side for forward to next page and swipe to go back. I read really fast and touch is faster than swiping.

I do agree that I like Marvin's customization of data in headers and footers.

Originally Posted by one of the features sorely missing in BookFusion currently, when compared to Marvin and especially Moon: [I

background textures[/I].

Please take a look at Moon+ Reader: it's absolutely terrific and exemplary, in the way it makes it possible to set up background textures (custom-uploaded user pictures, too!) for reading your books.

BookFusion (as far as I can see) currently only supports solid background colors, and that's no match for Moon's and Marvin's background textures.

Those are a couple of missing features to start with (oh: and let's mention Marvin's fabulous feature of full customization of data in headers and footers!), and I'll get back to you with the list ASAP.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

Interesting how people are different. I could care less about background textures - for me, the whiter the better and BookFusion is fine for that.

For me, background textures simply interfere with reading. A simple white background is best. Not to mention that when you use night mode (white letters on a black background), background textures tend to the unviewable.

Originally Posted by peaceridge

My show stopper for BookFusion is that there are no touch zones. I want to be able to touch either side for forward to next page and swipe to go back. I read really fast and touch is faster than swiping.

A bit odd. I think that I also read very fast compared to the average reader and I find that I prefer swiping to touch to change pages.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Quote:
Originally Posted by peaceridge "My show stopper for BookFusion is that there are no touch zones. I want to be able to touch either side for forward to next page and swipe to go back. I read really fast and touch is faster than swiping."

A bit odd. I think that I also read very fast compared to the average reader and I find that I prefer swiping to touch to change pages.

As I said, interesting how folks are different. Poor ereader creators trying to satisfy everyone!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For me, background textures simply interfere with reading.

For me also. On eink I prefer white background in daylight or yellowish in a dim artificial light (I never use the night mode), but on my phone I like a beige background and black text. No textures.

[Quoth]

I used the pale beige on the older phone with rubbish backlight. My more recent LCD screens don't have the blue/purple/magenta casts and are fine at "white" and simply turning down the brightness to suit. The only gadget I have that gets close to decent auto-brightness is a Huawei Y6 phone (Lithium & Pocketbook both work well on it). Old & Android 5!, but bought recent, I think NOS intended for Poland. I removed some Polish Apps. My much newer Alcatel phone has to remain in the house due to all the 2FA/SMS authentication because if lost or stolen I can't have the same phone number ever.

[skillachie]

Hey Faterson,


When it comes to EPUB 3 I think we can say that BookFusion is the best cross platform solution for EPUB 3 books. *

You know, as I mentioned previously, I don't really care if Moon (or any other e-reader) "respects the CSS".

To me, that's a technocratic way of looking at things. Egotistic, if you will: publisher-oriented, rather than reader-oriented.

As I mentioned, the first thing I do after opening any EPUB book, is to override the publisher's settings and preferences.

So, why exactly should it be important for e-reader software to "respect the publisher's CSS" if I don't wish to see it anyway?

Nope: what I care about is a nice, elegant display of the e-books I read.

Because I spend dozens of hours reading a particular book by intently looking at it, a nice display of the text is my no. 1 priority when choosing e-reader software.

By default we try to follow the styles defined when the books are created. However, we do allow for customizing various options.
We have a full override publisher settings that will be released soon starting with iOS as well. This will allow readers to have full control over how the book is displayed despite the publisher recommended CSS styles

Can BookFusion be that new option that exceeds both Moon and Marvin in quality? Maybe. The future will show. Right now, BookFusion is below both Moon and Marvin, in my experience. (And I'll post a brief list of reasons as to why, later on in this thread.)

As mentioned, the Android app is currently being updated. However, with regards to the iOS app, there should only be very few gaps that we do not cover that Marvin does. *Can you share the items that you consider makes BookFusion below both Moon and Marvin?*

To each his or her own but, you know, to me a "fixed-layout e-book" is an aberration.

I define an e-book as: here is a freely reflowable text whose looks I can customize to my own (not the publishers') liking.

Yeah, there can be some components within e-books that require

Haha. fixed-layour e-books are eBooks too. Our iOS app has solid support for epub 2 and 3 fixed-layout epubs that I can guarantee will be better than Moon and Marvin. But this wont matter for your use case*

Upon highlights/annotations export, Moon+ Reader (and Marvin, and BookFusion...) converts all highlights to plain-text. (Moon and Marvin don't even respect paragraph breaks upon highlights export; BookFusion at least does that, but that's not enough.)

See, that is something that is truly unacceptable. No e-reader software can aspire to be called "professional" if it mangles highlights (converts them to plain-text) upon their export.

That's because features like italic or bold are ways of communicating the writer's meaning. If you remove the author's emphasis from his or her text, the exported text is no longer authentic. It can no longer be used in any scholarly or professional setting.

This is interesting, we support exporting highlights to CSV,Markdown, PDF & HTML. And typically maintain the format of the highlight.*
We can definitely*have this fixed in short order. *Can you DM or email support@bookfusion.com with an example highlight. Screenshot of the highlight you made in the book and then screenshot of the exported highlight*

BookFusion developer, if you're perhaps lurking around here and reading this, I think PocketBook can really be a serious competitor for you.

Because whereas BookFusion limits you to 10 books for free usage (used to be 25, now only 10), PocketBook Cloud pretty much gives away 2 GB of free storage to every user, with no usage limitation at all.

Plus, of course, you can also purchase an e-ink PocketBook to give your eyes some rest, whereas there is no e-ink BookFusion e-reader.

So, I think BookFusion really needs to be a lot better than PocketBook, to counter all those advantages PocketBook is offering over BookFusion.

*There might be overlap now but based on, based on where we are headed, we won't*be competing and will be providing significantly more value than just storage and a basic reading interface. As a result the amount of storage will not be a competing factor. *At the end of the day, folks can always use Dropbox or Google Drive if they care only about getting more space.*
With regards to e-ink, the BookFusion Android app currently works on Likebook and Onyx Boox devices based on feedback from some of our readers. *We have not officially made optimizations for these devices yet but will do once the refresh of the Android app is complete.*

Right now, in terms of quality, BookFusion and PocketBook strike me as pretty similar. Meaning: perhaps tolerable, but not outstanding. They also share some of the same flaws: the main flaw being the impossibility to annotate image-based PDF files in any way. But whereas such a flaw can be tolerated in completely free software such as PocketBook, it's hard to justify paying a three-digit annual subscription price and still encounter such functionality gaps.

As mentioned, you can start annotating image-based PDFs today using area/image based highlights on the Web. *You can do this by right clicking on the area you would like to highlight. *Let us know if you like this functionality and we can prioritize getting it into iOS and Android much faster.*

For every dissatisfied geek user of corporate software, there are hundreds of happy users of that same software, with modest demands. So, corporations don't give a damn about geeks of the variety frequenting these MobileRead boards.

That's the sad state of affairs among e-reader apps, and that is, I believe, the reason why, in my estimation, no professional-grade e-reader app currently exists on this planet.

Nope, not a single 5-star app. Moon+ Reader Pro with its 4 stars might currently be the best of them all (as I perceive it).

We are trying to take a different approach, providing readers with the very best reading experience by going beyond what we are all so familiar with today. *If readers genuinely*love using our platform then we believe everything*else will fall inline.*

[skillachie]

So it's there on the web for now. Curiously, that's where it's probably least needed (I don't really use the web/desktop for reading books; only for processing annotations made earlier on handheld devices), but I get that you need to start implementing new features somewhere, so it's perfectly OK and understandable if a new feature is first only available on the web, and only later on iOS and Android. I'll be patient!

By the way, it goes (yet again) to the credit of Moon+ Reader that it at least attempts to make the annotation of image-based PDF files possible, but this functionality in Moon is rather unpolished. For example, the thickest drawing line supported by Moon is still too thin for highlighting in certain books. So, there can be pitfalls when implementing this feature.

Yup we started with the Web and then plan to have them in iOS and Android. You read a lot of non-fiction correct? We have a few features planned around knowledge management that will benefit non-fiction readers.

We will release support starting with iOS later this year.

Nope, I didn't use the same ones, and that's one of the features sorely missing in BookFusion currently, when compared to Marvin and especially Moon: background textures.

Please take a look at Moon+ Reader: it's absolutely terrific and exemplary, in the way it makes it possible to set up background textures (custom-uploaded user pictures, too!) for reading your books.

BookFusion (as far as I can see) currently only supports solid background colors, and that's no match for Moon's and Marvin's background textures.

Marvin lags behind Moon in that it doesn't make custom background textures possible, only those provided by the app, but at least there's something other than solid-color backgrounds... I kept requesting custom background textures from Kris, but this feature simply never got implemented in Marvin while it was still in development.

BookFusion must match Moon's functionality in this respect if it hopes to compete with Moon.

It seems impossible for me to overstate the importance of custom background textures – as mentioned earlier, you spend dozens of hours intently looking at the book while reading it, so it makes a huge difference whether what you're looking at is pleasant to look at or not. And sorry, but I just find allsolid-background colors too dull and unattractive; it's "custom background textures or bust" for me.

This is quite interesting, we support fully custom colors beyond even the default themes but as you pointed out those are not textures but images.

I thought custom background images/textures were more of a distraction. But each reader has their preference, we did not have this scoped for this year to be honest but have added it to the backlog for us to look into further. Any feature we support will always be supported on all platforms (iOS, Android and Web).

Also, I don't think BookFusion currently makes it possible to use custom fonts. Yeah, there's a pretty nice selection of fonts in BookFusion, but custom fonts are custom fonts. Once again, Moon+ Reader absolutely shines in this department, and you can load as many custom fonts in Moon as you wish. I expect nothing less from BookFusion.

Yup we provide a good set of defaults. However, we will not be able to support all the possible font types and plan to add support for custom fonts. We will likely start with picking up the system installed fonts first. That way, you could install the fonts on the device and have them available in BookFusion also.

I'd point out that it's important for an e-reader app not only to support custom background textures, but also to make it very easy to save all those customized themes, and to switch among them on demand and on-the-fly very quickly.

Marvin is not very good in this (it only allows you to save no more than five customized themes), but once again, Moon+ Reader's treatment of custom themes is superb, pretty much flawless, so I would recommend for @skillachie to take a good look at Moon's treatment of custom themes and, if possible, replicate that functionality in BookFusion.

Fully agree with this. We do not allow you to save the custom themes or settings now but we already have this scoped and planned. It will be rolled out to iOS first. The beauty is that these settings will then be synced across Android, iOS and Web

So, for me to become an annual BookFusion subscriber on a higher tier, introducing custom background textures, and custom fonts, and customized headers and footers (long-established Moon and/or Marvin features), plus fixing current bugs (such as the forceful conversion of highlights to plain-text upon export), plus adding currently missing functionality (such as annotating image-based PDF files: already available on the web in BookFusion) – all of those (and more, to be specified later in a list) are a must for me, if I am to switch to BookFusion "full-time".

Got it. The only one that seems not planned for the short term is customized headers and footers, would love to understand more about this particular use case. What are the changes that readers typically make in these headers and footers and why would it be a deal breaker

[skillachie]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

Interesting how people are different. I could care less about background textures - for me, the whiter the better and BookFusion is fine for that.

My show stopper for BookFusion is that there are no touch zones. I want to be able to touch either side for forward to next page and swipe to go back. I read really fast and touch is faster than swiping.

I do agree that I like Marvin's customization of data in headers and footers.

You are correct that we do not have custom touch zones. Currently we have some defaults

- Tap right edge/swipe right to move forward
- Tap left edge/swipe left to move backward


However, I have observed that it requires moving your thumb/hand to a different location on the device but with your custom touch zones and gestures you can move forward and backwards from the same location on the screen.

We do not have support yet but this is one of the most requested features. https://bookfusion.hellonext.co/p/cu...ap-zones-areas We have added it to the backlog of items to work on.

[skillachie]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

As I said, interesting how folks are different. Poor ereader creators trying to satisfy everyone!

Yup pretty challenging, then ensuring that the same experience is seamlessly synced across iOS, Android and Web.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by DNSB

when you use night mode (white letters on a black background), background textures tend to the unviewable.

Not true at all. I use many, many background textures in dark mode. For an example, you can take a look again at that tweet of mine from July. The second screenshot on the left shows one of Marvin's dark background textures.

Moon is a lot better than Marvin in themes (Marvin only allows you to save five themes, which is very restricting), so I use at least 15 (!) dark background textures in Moon, along with about 15 light background textures.

My favorite dark background texture in Moon is solid black with little red flames here and there all over the screen. It's my default night mode in Moon. Fabulous experience, reading books like that!

In fact, I have just found a similar screenshot from Stanza (!) way back in 2010:



The "little red flames" are a lot more subtle in my current dark mode background textures I use in Moon, almost imperceptible in a screenshot, but they are definitely there, it's really different from a solid-black background, and they enhance my reading experience considerably.

Originally Posted by peaceridge

As I said, interesting how folks are different. Poor ereader creators trying to satisfy everyone!

They definitely don't have to! Look at corporations like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, you-name-it: are they trying to satisfy everyone? Absolutely not! They don't give a damn about satisfying power users and their advanced demands, because they very well realize that power users are a tiny minority, so that ignoring their demands will not affect their bottom line in any significant way.

The result of catering only to the masses of average users with modest demands, of course, is that as of 2022, not a single professional-grade e-reader app exists on this planet.

Originally Posted by skillachie

When it comes to EPUB 3 I think we can say that BookFusion is the best cross platform solution for EPUB 3 books.

That's impressive, and congrats on that! (Although I rarely if ever read EPUB 3 books.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

with regards to the iOS app, there should only be very few gaps that we do not cover that Marvin does.

Oh, there are quite a few, I'm afraid. I'll try to produce the list for you ASAP.

However, off the top of my head, the following 3 are must-have features/fixes for me:

1. custom background textures
2. custom fonts
3. stop converting highlights to plain-text upon export

Until, at the very least, these 3 are implemented/fixed in BookFusion, I can't seriously consider switching over to BookFusion from Marvin (and Moon).

As to customizing headers and footers, that's more a "nice-to-have" rather than "must-have" feature (after all, it's only available in Marvin, not in Moon), but if you wish to make the convincing claim to be a viable Marvin successor/replacement, you should definitely offer every Marvin feature, plus more (implementing/fixing many features that Marvin never got around to implementing/fixing).

Originally Posted by skillachie

This is interesting, we support exporting highlights to CSV,Markdown, PDF & HTML. And typically maintain the format of the highlight.

Unfortunately not. I made several tests, and only paragraph breaks are retained by BookFusion upon highlights export. Formatting features like italics and bold are gone. (In Marvin & Moon, paragraph breaks are gone, too.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

We can definitely have this fixed in short order.

That would be great! However, I must perhaps curb your optimism, because when we discussed this with Kris repeatedly and when he tried to fix this in Marvin, it was very difficult to accomplish, Kris said. And given that practically all e-readers do this (I have yet to encounter e-reader software that does not convert highlights to plain-text upon export!), I believed what Kris was saying. If, however, Kris was mistaken and it is an easy fix, that would be fantastic!

Originally Posted by skillachie

Can you DM or email support@bookfusion.com with an example highlight. Screenshot of the highlight you made in the book and then screenshot of the exported highlight

Please take a look at this screenshot, illustrating this bug in BookFusion:



In top-left, you can see the highlight as made in the book. You can see the use of italics in it.

Top-right is how BookFusion publishes the highlight using the share feature. The highlight is at this address:

https://www.bookfusion.com/quote/592753-c1dd6504

As you can see, both italics is removed, and the paragraph break is gone. (That's how Marvin and Moon mangle highlights upon export as well.)

Second from bottom in the screenshot is how the highlight appears in the highlights list in BookFusion's web interface. The paragraph break is preserved here, but italics is, once again, gone.

Finally, at the bottom of the screenshot, is how BookFusion exports the highlight into HTML. It's currently fake HTML, in fact (just as it's fake in Marvin and Moon, despite being called "HTML"), because the only thing that's HTML about it are the trappings around the highlight. The highlight itself (the thing that matters most!) is, once again, forcibly converted into plain-text – the opposite of HTML. The paragraph break is at least preserved (unlike in Marvin and Moon), but stripping basic, meaning-carrying formatting such as italics or bold from the highlight is a big no-no. No software can aspire to be called professional that does this, so it's definitely something that needs to be fixed. I do believe Kris when he told me he did his best to fix it in Marvin, but eventually he was unable to do so. Hopefully you guys at BookFusion will be more successful!

Originally Posted by skillachie

At the end of the day, folks can always use Dropbox or Google Drive if they care only about getting more space.

For me, space is not a concern. I use my 2 TB Dropbox account for long-term storage of books. I only need enough storage for the books I'm currently reading (and I tend to read around 12+ books simultaneously), so the storage demands for that are very low.

However, I worry about data security and syncing volatility in BookFusion. That would be another of my major concerns, perhaps preventing me from switching to BookFusion full-time. I'll expound on this later on, but briefly: I would appreciate if in addition to your in-house syncing solution, you also made it possible for us to perform manual, on-demand backups of books in our BookFusion to Dropbox or Google Drive.

You know, errors can sometimes occur, and Dropbox provides 30 days of version history for me. So, if something goes wrong in the book I work on, I can always return to the previous version of that book (of annotations on that book) as stored in my Dropbox. I guess BookFusion supports no version history, and why would you? But I'd hate to lose this feature (I really do experience data losses occasionally, especially when annotating PDF files), so I would really appreciate if you also made it possible to back up our books from BookFusion to Dropbox on-demand. (Ideal would be how GoodReader for iOS does it: you tap a single button, and the entire folder of books gets backed up to Dropbox or Drive.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

With regards to e-ink, the BookFusion Android app currently works on Likebook and Onyx Boox devices based on feedback from some of our readers. We have not officially made optimizations for these devices yet but will do once the refresh of the Android app is complete.

Well, if you could add PocketBook to the mix (if PocketBook permits you to do so), that would be fabulous.

Originally Posted by skillachie

you can start annotating image-based PDFs today using area/image based highlights on the Web. You can do this by right clicking on the area you would like to highlight. Let us know if you like this functionality and we can prioritize getting it into iOS and Android much faster.

Annotating image-based PDF files is another must-have feature for me, if I am to become a paying annual BookFusion subscriber (in a higher tier).

I don't consider it a "must-have feature" for Moon (or Marvin), because those are free to use after the initial, low one-time payment. So, I'm OK with reverting to Adobe Acrobat for PDF files for now. However, if I am to pay a subscription for an e-reader app, I'd expect it to support PDF files fully.

The way you've implemented it now in the web app is better than nothing, but it's not ideal. We really need freehand drawing – please take a look at how Acrobat, or GoodReader, or even Moon support it.

The trouble with your current implementation is that it assumes that I always wish to highlight a rectangle. It always starts with a rectangle in BookFusion. But that's not my (and many other people's) typical use. I typically wish to highlight a few lines of text.

So, say, if I need to highlight 2 lines of text and the first two words on the following line (because the sentence to be highlighted ends there), this currently can't be done in BookFusion. Because it's not a rectangle, you see? I'd have to make one rectangle highlight for the first two lines, and then another mini-rectangle just to highlight the two words on the following line. That would be extremely awkward and time-consuming. It's not true highlighting at all...

I also frequently need to draw arrows in image-based PDF files, to point to this or that area of the page, and this currently can't be done in BookFusion either, because an arrow is no rectangle, either.

Originally Posted by skillachie

You read a lot of non-fiction correct?

Right. I try to keep it balanced: out of the 12+ books I always read simultaneously, I strive for around 6 of them to be non-fiction, and 6 of them fiction. (I also try to mix up genres, languages and centuries/years of origin as much as possible; the 12 books I'm currently reading are in English, German, Slovak, Czech, Russian, Polish, and French.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

We have a few features planned around knowledge management that will benefit non-fiction readers.

Can't wait to see that!

Originally Posted by skillachie

we [...] plan to add support for custom fonts. We will likely start with picking up the system installed fonts first. That way, you could install the fonts on the device and have them available in BookFusion also.

I'm not sure this will be an option on the iPad/iPhone. You know how despotic Apple are – any such "installation" is likely blocked on the system level. I remember Kris struggled with this considerably in Marvin, but eventually he managed to implement custom fonts in Marvin as well (just barely – before Marvin development ceased).

As to Android, it seems very simple there, based on how Moon+ Reader does it. You simply load your TTF files into any folder on your device, and then you point Moon+ Reader to that folder, and with a single tap of your finger, Moon+ Reader enables all of those fonts in all of your books. It's simply amazing!

And because Moon makes it possible to store an unlimited amount of custom themes (not just 5 like Marvin!), it's a breeze (just 2 taps!) when you wish to cycle through all the available fonts in Moon, along with the color and background combinations you set up for them.

Really, Moon+ Reader can serve as the perfect role model for you guys at BookFusion, when it comes to themes management, custom background textures and custom fonts.

Originally Posted by skillachie

Fully agree with this. We do not allow you to save the custom themes or settings now but we already have this scoped and planned. It will be rolled out to iOS first. The beauty is that these settings will then be synced across Android, iOS and Web

Well, that would certainly be a nice bonus! Not strictly necessary, but very nice to have.

What's important, though, is to make the number of themes to be saved unlimited (not just 5 like in Marvin), and to make it possible to switch/cycle through the saved themes on-the-fly, very quickly. (Just 2 taps are needed for this in Moon; keyboard shortcuts would be nice for this on the desktop.)

Originally Posted by skillachie

The only one that seems not planned for the short term is customized headers and footers, would love to understand more about this particular use case. What are the changes that readers typically make in these headers and footers and why would it be a deal breaker

It's not a deal-breaker for me, as explained above. But, if you wish to say with sincerity and confidence, "BookFusion is better than Marvin now", you should match Marvin feature for feature, and then go beyond it.

You can take a look at how I customized my headers and features in Marvin in that July tweet of mine. Please see the second screenshot on the left – that's Marvin. As you can see there, in my footers, I inserted data such as pages remaining in chapter and in the book, plus percentage read in the current chapter and in the entire book. Kris even made it possible to specify whether the percentage should use 0, 1, or 2 decimal numbers – a very nice touch! In my header, I decided to put the author's name, the book title, and the current chapter title. It would be very nice to have these headers & footers customization options in BookFusion.

Originally Posted by skillachie

https://bookfusion.hellonext.co/p/cu...ap-zones-areas

Oh, this is wonderful, @skillachie! You even have a public road map and feature requests tracker!

Not sure if anything like this is available for Moon+ Reader.

There used to be something similar in GitHub for Marvin, but I'm not sure it was transparent enough. As Beta testers, I'm afraid we were frequently left guessing and in the dark as to which features were on the radar and "coming up next" in Marvin's development. That lack of transparency may have contributed to the toxic atmosphere and endless squabbling in the Beta group. That lack of transparency has made it possible for certain individuals to spew lies, even nowadays, 10 years later, as to what was or wasn't planned to be included as part of Marvin's feature set.

Hopefully, you can be spared all of that, @skillachie, and the atmosphere created by everyone wishing to contribute to BookFusion's development will be harmonious and always friendly.

[DNSB]

I'm not sure how background textures make for a better reading experience. Anything that distracts and gets between me and the words on the page is not needed. Do you actually take the time while reading to go "Wow! Those little red flames on every page make this history textbook so much more fun to read!" or "When I was reading Mother of Demons, that textured background made it so much easier to read!"?

Black text on a plain background, white or lightly coloured text on a black background are my preferred choices.

You are welcome to your choices but please don't assume that your peculiarities are shared by the entire world.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Anything that distracts and gets between me and the words on the page is not needed.

Background textures don't distract me at all. If anything, they motivate me to continue reading the book. They make the page more beautiful to look at. And that's crucial, as already explained by me several times.

Look at this background texture from Moon+ Reader as an example:



That's absolutely beautiful – makes for a far more elegant reading experience than any dull solid-color background.

I will never go back to reading books with a solid-color background. That's just dull, boring, demotivating and unattractive to me.

That's why I say custom background textures are among must-have features for me, if I am to switch to BookFusion as my main (or only) e-reader.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Black text on a plain background, white or lightly coloured text on a black background are my preferred choices.

That's perfectly fine. Those are your personal choices, and mine are different. Each of us is different.

Originally Posted by DNSB

You are welcome to your choices but please don't assume that your peculiarities are shared by the entire world.

I never assume anything of the sort, unlike many participating in these discussions (see some earlier posts in this thread).

However, if BookFusion's ambition is to be a competitor, even a successor and replacement for Marvin and Moon+ Reader, BookFusion can't simply pick and choose among Marvin's and Moon's features, and disregard all the others.

Especially not long-established features that have been around for decades. For heaven's sake: custom background textures were supported by Stanza (!) back in the 2000s. (See the screenshot in my previous post.)

So, this is a non-negotiable item for me: it's "custom background textures or bust" for me. Just because you or others in this thread don't happen to be using the feature doesn't mean it can be thrown in the trashcan.

I don't use Calibre, for example. Am I arguing for BookFusion to stop supporting Calibre because of that?

Not in the least. I know many people use Calibre, so of course I understand BookFusion needs to support it.

Bottom line: If BookFusion wishes to compete with Moon+ Reader and Marvin, it needs to support every feature that they do, and more. It's as simple as that.

[Sirtel]

Hmm... background textures motivating someone to read is one of the weirdest things I've heard. I understand their visual attraction, although I don't use them myself. But what motivates me to read is the book itself. If I feel bored or unmotivated, I'll ditch the book and start another.

Of course it's no skin off my nose whether BookFusion and other apps support background textures or not, as I read 99% of the time on my eink readers anyway. If they're important to other users, fine. More features is always better than fewer.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I don't use Calibre, for example. Am I arguing for BookFusion to stop supporting Calibre because of that?

I seem to remember you used Calibre in the past. What changed?

[JSWolf]

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