iPad Bookmaster - ePub and PDF reader for iOS

[adrian1944]

One more vote for the vertical swipe to control brightness which i use a lot in marvin

adrian

[pugsley]

Originally Posted by adrian1944

Can someone help with basic details that are not on iTunes, the developers webpage or this forum as yet

What is the difference other than price between the two versions

Can you import books from dropbox

Can it link directly to calibre, are those calibre tags showing in the gallery

adrian

From the itunes page -
Which edition of BookMaster is best for you?

* BookMaster CE reads DRM-free EPUB.
* BookMaster SE has two additional features:
1. Become an OPDS/HTML webserver for your own books to share with others
2. Read PDF files with a viewer like Modern Book, and note highlights as images

It imports from Calibre via OPDS.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by adrian1944

One more vote for the vertical swipe to control brightness which i use a lot in marvin

adrian

Over the last few days, there seems to be sufficient interest as expressed in this forum for BookMaster to add a convenient feature to control reading screen brightness with a vertical swipe gesture. Thus, I'd like to outline this planned feature with a little bit more details, in order to solicit more feedback.

BookMaster CE has three reader views:
(a) Classic Book View: a leather-bound book with realistic page-curl animation
(b) Modern Book View: an unbound book with realistic page-slide animation
(c) Modern Scroll View: a vertical scroll with top and bottom rollers

The planned feature will be available for (a) Classic Book View and (b) Modern Book View, but not for (c) Modern Scroll View, as the vertical swipe gesture is already used to indicate vertical scrolling.

Moreover, BookMaster SE has an addition view for PDF, where the vertical swipe gesture is already used for other purposes.

The vertical swipe gesture should be a single-finger swipe. A two-finger swipe may be easily misrecognized as a pinch-and-spread, a convenient gesture for changing to a new font size for all 3 EPUB views.

Of course, this proposed feature can be turned off by the user, if she does not like it, for whatever reasons.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by adrian1944

...
Can you import books from dropbox
...
adrian

Yes, you can import books from dropbox easily.

First, add www.dropbox.com as a user-defined HTML webpage by
- Go to the Websites tab in Exchange (which is behind Library/Bookshelf) View
- Tap Edit, tap "Add HTML site", and enter www.dropbox.com
(Note that installation of Dropbox app is not required.)

Second, tap this new HTML entry, and login.

Third, tap the book file on Dropbox that you want to download.

That's it. To download additional books, all you have to do is just repeating the third step.

Easy enough? Well, I'll make it even easier for you by eliminating the first step by adding Dropbox as a built-in entry within the next 24 hours.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by adrian1944

...
Can it link directly to calibre, are those calibre tags showing in the gallery

adrian

As long as calibre supports OPDS (originally motivated mostly by downloading to Stanza app), it will continue to work with BookMaster without any special driver or plugin.

Calibre tags will be imported as BookMaster tags. The management of tags is very powerful compared with all other reader apps. The more books you keep in the library, the more useful it is.

Moreover, BookMaster SE can serve as an OPDS (and HTML) server, so that your iPad can become kind of "mobile calibre", which other devices running iOS, Android, Mac or Windows can get books from.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by Cesca

I use Dropbox to store my books and themes. Haven't tried Airdrop for books yet. I like having the same books on both my iPad Air and Mini and I would find it really convenient if Bookmaster could synch my position in the book, so that if I'm reading on the mini, then come home and continue reading on the Air, my last read position would be saved in Bookmaster as it is in Marvin or iBooks. Any way to accomplish that would be great!

Syncing the reading progress (position) of one or more books across two or more devices is perhaps the most frequent usage scenario. We are thinking of getting started with a simple scheme first, i.e., treating reading progress marks like themes so that you can transfer them via Dropbox, AirDrop, email, etc.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by odamizu

...
I purchased BookMaster CE and like it quite a bit. Right now it's my preferred ereading app for iPad. On iPhone I use Bluefire Reader.

Any plans for a BookMaster iPhone app?
...
Thanks!

May I ask why you prefer BookMaster CE over other reading apps on iPad? Is there a killer feature or just the overall usage experience? Which app(s) used to be your favorite reading app(s)?

We do have plans for an iPhone version. However, we feel that we have not been doing a good job on spreading the words about the existing iPad version. A lot of nice features remain hidden gems to most of our target audience. In the short term, we want to give a higher priority to the non-trivial task of spreading the words via our website and forums like this one.

Your feedback would be highly appreciated.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by odamizu

...
Two other options on my wish list include semi-bold fonts (I have bad eyes, need lots of help to see) and an option to remove headers and footers as I find those distracting.

Thanks!

About your two requests:

1. Semi-bold fonts:
Out of the 23 built-in fonts provided by BookMaster, Gentium Book Basic (vs. Gentium Basic), Hoefler Text, Iowan Old Style, Vollkorn, Roboto are fonts with thicker strokes. Apparently you want some fonts with even thicker strokes. Can you give me one or more font names as examples?

2. An option to remove headers and footers:
When the header and the footer on each page is not displayed, do you care if the resultant empty space is NOT used for displaying the body? On an iPad (vs. iPhone), the percentage of space taken by the header and the footer is very small, thus usually users don't care to "reclaim" the space. May I ask how many lines per page on average do you use for reading with BookMaster?

[pugsley]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Over the last few days, there seems to be sufficient interest as expressed in this forum for BookMaster to add a convenient feature to control reading screen brightness with a vertical swipe gesture. Thus, I'd like to outline this planned feature with a little bit more details, in order to solicit more feedback.

BookMaster CE has three reader views:
(a) Classic Book View: a leather-bound book with realistic page-curl animation
(b) Modern Book View: an unbound book with realistic page-slide animation
(c) Modern Scroll View: a vertical scroll with top and bottom rollers

The planned feature will be available for (a) Classic Book View and (b) Modern Book View, but not for (c) Modern Scroll View, as the vertical swipe gesture is already used to indicate vertical scrolling.

Moreover, BookMaster SE has an addition view for PDF, where the vertical swipe gesture is already used for other purposes.

The vertical swipe gesture should be a single-finger swipe. A two-finger swipe may be easily misrecognized as a pinch-and-spread, a convenient gesture for changing to a new font size for all 3 EPUB views.

Of course, this proposed feature can be turned off by the user, if she does not like it, for whatever reasons.

Perfect!

[markom]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Over the last few days, there seems to be sufficient interest as expressed in this forum for BookMaster to add a convenient feature to control reading screen brightness with a vertical swipe gesture. Thus, I'd like to outline this planned feature with a little bit more details, in order to solicit more feedback.

BookMaster CE has three reader views:
(a) Classic Book View: a leather-bound book with realistic page-curl animation

...

I'd like to see iOS pdf/epub reader with these two page animations/transitions included.

1) Realistic one, as it really should be (Samsung also has something similar in their note taking app).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VSpg8EIXNY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK-PmDoYT9I

2) Transition similar to Flipboard app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT6uxdXiDBE

There seems to be AFKPageFlipper (ULView subclass) available and author claims it is very fast to execute in both portraite and landscape on iPad/iPhone.

http://code4app.net/ios/Page-Flipper...03fab84b000000

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDMzODcyNjQ4.html

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by markom

I'd like to see iOS pdf/epub reader with these two page animations/transitions included.

1) Realistic one, as it really should be (Samsung also has something similar in their note taking app).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VSpg8EIXNY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK-PmDoYT9I

2) Transition similar to Flipboard app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT6uxdXiDBE

There seems to be AFKPageFlipper (ULView subclass) available and author claims it is very fast to execute in both portraite and landscape on iPad/iPhone.

http://code4app.net/ios/Page-Flipper...03fab84b000000

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDMzODcyNjQ4.html

Thank you for your concrete suggestion! We'll certainly consider it for future releases.

By the way, as of today is there any iOS reading app with the page turn animation as listed in (1) above?

[markom]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Thank you for your concrete suggestion! We'll certainly consider it for future releases.

By the way, as of today is there any iOS reading app with the page turn animation as listed in (1) above?

Maybe Google Play Books has something similar for iOS as for Android (can't check it from my country currently) and probably no one else.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goog...400989007?mt=8

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

May I ask why you prefer BookMaster CE over other reading apps on iPad? Is there a killer feature or just the overall usage experience? Which app(s) used to be your favorite reading app(s)?

I really like the Classic Book theme and page-curl animation. There's something about it that makes me ridiculously happy. The page formatting options also suit me well. After I've set everything to my liking, the page-look is more pleasing to me than any other iPad app (which is a little weird because the other apps have similar options, and yet the end result is somehow not the same). Before BookMaster I used Bluefire Reader as my main reading app for both iPad and iPhone. Bluefire is still my main reading app on iPhone. My main problem with it is the font I prefer, Arial Rounded MT Bold, doesn't have italics.

I wanted to like Marvin, but the page-turn options bothered my eyes and the fact that changing brightness in the app reset brightness for the entire device bugged me. I think Hyphen has a lot of promise, but the page-turn options give me a headache, making it unusable for me.

We do have plans for an iPhone version. However, we feel that we have not been doing a good job on spreading the words about the existing iPad version. A lot of nice features remain hidden gems to most of our target audience. In the short term, we want to give a higher priority to the non-trivial task of spreading the words via our website and forums like this one.

I think developing an iPhone app goes hand-in-hand with promoting the iPad version. I prefer to have one ereading app on all my devices, especially if it can sync between devices. The fact that BookMaster only works on my iPad and I have to use a different reading app on my iPhone is not ideal. If Hyphen or Marvin improve their page-turn options, I will probably switch to one of them for all my iDevices.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

1. Semi-bold fonts:
Out of the 23 built-in fonts provided by BookMaster, Gentium Book Basic (vs. Gentium Basic), Hoefler Text, Iowan Old Style, Vollkorn, Roboto are fonts with thicker strokes. Apparently you want some fonts with even thicker strokes. Can you give me one or more font names as examples?

I currently use Arial with BookMaster, which I like and it's okay. But a tiny bit heavier would be better, like Helvetica Neue Medium (on Hyphen) or Arial Rounded MT Bold (on Bluefire Reader).

2. An option to remove headers and footers:
When the header and the footer on each page is not displayed, do you care if the resultant empty space is NOT used for displaying the body? On an iPad (vs. iPhone), the percentage of space taken by the header and the footer is very small, thus usually users don't care to "reclaim" the space.

I don't care about reclaiming space used for headers/footers. I'd be happy to have blank space where the headers/footers are now. Also, I don't mind having a page numbers at the bottom, but I find having 4 headers/footers, one in each corner, distracting.

May I ask how many lines per page on average do you use for reading with BookMaster?

20-21 lines per page

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by markom

Maybe Google Play Books has something similar for iOS as for Android (can't check it from my country currently) and probably no one else.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goog...400989007?mt=8

Thanks!