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Old 06-11-2020, 04:49 PM   #1
Tazling
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Thumbs up Kudos for Marvin!

I've never dropped by here before, because I've never had the slightest problem with Marvin... but was involved in a Calibre discussion "next door" and thought I would take a moment to say Hats Off! to the Marvin devs.



It is hands-down the nicest e-reader I've ever used. The customisations are useful and sensible (I favour a nice semi-antiqued buff page colour), the touchscreen controls are intuitive and quickly become reflex. The connection to DropBox is transparent and makes it simple to add to my iPad library.

And with advancing years, I'm grateful for the ability to pick my font size :-)

I can't imagine anything that would make it better, actually. With PDF Expert for pdf files and Marvin for epubs, I'm in e-reader bliss. (I know Marvin can display PDFs also, but PDFE has more sophisticated zooming and scrolling last time I tried, which makes it easier to read pre-formatted pages in smaller print).

Hmm, is there really nothing I can suggest that would make Marvin niftier?

Certainly not as far as the reading experience goes. Library maintenance, maybe...

Perhaps another level of grouping higher than Author, so I could divide my library into Genres? That would make the list smaller to scroll around in. Another feature (asking a lot I know) would be the ability to fix metadata booboos right in Marvin instead of having to go back to Calibre or other tools, fix original file, re-download via DB... Super basic metadata editing (just title, series, number, author) would be handy. The ability to fix annoying typos while reading would be more than wonderful, it would make me do a little dance of joy :-). but those things would be just further icing on an already delicious cake.

Anyway I have only good things to say about Marvin. I rave to people about it. What a successful app. High quality and very reasonable price. It has become an integral part of my iPad and an essential part of every day. Bedtime reading with the screen brightness down to minimum, anytime reading on the road or a boat trip, toting a library that would occupy several packing crates if it were paper... bookfiend heaven.

Marvin sets the standard for e-readers imho. Keep up the not just good, but superb work.

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Old 06-11-2020, 09:27 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tazling View Post
I've never dropped by here before, because I've never had the slightest problem with Marvin... but was involved in a Calibre discussion "next door" and thought I would take a moment to say Hats Off! to the Marvin devs.



It is hands-down the nicest e-reader I've ever used. The customisations are useful and sensible (I favour a nice semi-antiqued buff page colour), the touchscreen controls are intuitive and quickly become reflex. The connection to DropBox is transparent and makes it simple to add to my iPad library.

And with advancing years, I'm grateful for the ability to pick my font size :-)

I can't imagine anything that would make it better, actually. With PDF Expert for pdf files and Marvin for epubs, I'm in e-reader bliss. (I know Marvin can display PDFs also, but PDFE has more sophisticated zooming and scrolling last time I tried, which makes it easier to read pre-formatted pages in smaller print).

Hmm, is there really nothing I can suggest that would make Marvin niftier?

Certainly not as far as the reading experience goes. Library maintenance, maybe...

Perhaps another level of grouping higher than Author, so I could divide my library into Genres? That would make the list smaller to scroll around in. Another feature (asking a lot I know) would be the ability to fix metadata booboos right in Marvin instead of having to go back to Calibre or other tools, fix original file, re-download via DB... Super basic metadata editing (just title, series, number, author) would be handy. The ability to fix annoying typos while reading would be more than wonderful, it would make me do a little dance of joy :-). but those things would be just further icing on an already delicious cake.

Anyway I have only good things to say about Marvin. I rave to people about it. What a successful app. High quality and very reasonable price. It has become an integral part of my iPad and an essential part of every day. Bedtime reading with the screen brightness down to minimum, anytime reading on the road or a boat trip, toting a library that would occupy several packing crates if it were paper... bookfiend heaven.

Marvin sets the standard for e-readers imho. Keep up the not just good, but superb work.

Welcome to MR!

It's really good that you enjoy Marvin - as I do. Kris, the developer, hasn't been very active on here (that we know of) so it may be a while before he responds... The last response was a couple years ago...

As far as your requests:
"Perhaps another level of grouping higher than Author" - you can add your books to "collections" - just long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Organize in collections'.

"the ability to fix metadata booboos right in Marvin" - just long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Metadata and cover'. This allows you to change the info in Marvin... you would still need to somehow transfer it back to your library management program.

"The ability to fix annoying typos while reading" - absolutely 100% agree here. The work-around I have been using is to highlight the offending word/passage and highlight it. Then you can send the annotations by long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Share or send'. This is definitely not perfect, but it helps.
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Old 06-12-2020, 02:41 AM   #3
Tazling
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Originally Posted by Turtle91 View Post
Welcome to MR!

It's really good that you enjoy Marvin - as I do. Kris, the developer, hasn't been very active on here (that we know of) so it may be a while before he responds... The last response was a couple years ago...

As far as your requests:
"Perhaps another level of grouping higher than Author" - you can add your books to "collections" - just long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Organize in collections'.

"the ability to fix metadata booboos right in Marvin" - just long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Metadata and cover'. This allows you to change the info in Marvin... you would still need to somehow transfer it back to your library management program.

"The ability to fix annoying typos while reading" - absolutely 100% agree here. The work-around I have been using is to highlight the offending word/passage and highlight it. Then you can send the annotations by long or hard tap on the book in your library then select 'Share or send'. This is definitely not perfect, but it helps.
WOW! more than half of what I dream of is already implemented, I just didn't know how to find it :-). (who reads manuals, after all?)

I will explore Collections right away!

It's a little worrying that the dev has been off the radar for so long ... please tell me Marvin is not becoming an orphan!
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Old 06-12-2020, 10:45 AM   #4
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Some will call it abandonware....I just call it 'complete' lol
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Old 06-13-2020, 01:34 AM   #5
Tazling
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there went most of a night's sleep :-)

Cleaning up the metadata quickly became obsessive... but now my Marvin index is sane and uncluttered at last.

I hope if the dev really is walking away, he/she/they will release the code into the wild so some committee of dedicated coders/users can keep up the maintenance under GPL or similar. Seems like Apple is bound to break it one day with one of their silly iOS upgrades...

Anyway, it's still working just great so... enjoy it while it lasts!
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Old 06-13-2020, 11:51 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tazling View Post
Cleaning up the metadata quickly became obsessive... but now my Marvin index is sane and uncluttered at last.

I hope if the dev really is walking away, he/she/they will release the code into the wild so some committee of dedicated coders/users can keep up the maintenance under GPL or similar. Seems like Apple is bound to break it one day with one of their silly iOS upgrades...

Anyway, it's still working just great so... enjoy it while it lasts!
It hasn't been updated since 2017. I doubt releasing the source code will help with maintenance (for public releases anyway).

That's why I'm very careful when updating iOS. I have an iPad for beta testing which is updated first. If everything works OK, that's when I update my other iOS devices.
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Old 06-15-2020, 07:00 AM   #7
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It hasn't been updated since 2017. I doubt releasing the source code will help with maintenance (for public releases anyway).

That's why I'm very careful when updating iOS. I have an iPad for beta testing which is updated first. If everything works OK, that's when I update my other iOS devices.
If it isn't updated, then eventually, as the API's change over time, it will stop working. Apple usually does a good job of marking apps that use API's that are about to be depreciated (i.e. no longer supported). If we get to that point with Marvin, I'll just choose a different reader app to use. There are several that are currently actively being supported.

One of the big reasons that Apple started pushing developers into the subscriber business model is that it's pretty tough to make ends meet when you get $5 once per customer. There is a lot of apps out there that I like to call hobbyware, i.e. written by some developer in his or her spare time because they enjoy doing it. Shareware can have the same issue.
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