[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[snarko]

Hmm...very nice.

Except it seems to ignore some layout aspects of the epub. The most obvious with my brief tryout: Every paragraph is indented, even if it should not be, and a blank line is displayed between each paragraph.

Is this something that will be fixed/changed in a future update?

Otherwise, very very nice.

[edbro]

Originally Posted by snarko

Hmm...very nice.

Except it seems to ignore some layout aspects of the epub. The most obvious with my brief tryout: Every paragraph is indented, even if it should not be, and a blank line is displayed between each paragraph.

Is this something that will be fixed/changed in a future update?

Otherwise, very very nice.

The indent can be adjusted all the way down to zero. The extra line between paragraphs I'd also like to see fixed.

[snarko]

re: paragraph indent, when I said "even if it should not be", I meant because the epub was designed to _not_ indent the first paragraph after a chapter or section break (for example). IOW, not all paragraphs should necessarily have the same, or any, indent.

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by Faterson

It was a long wait, but here it finally is: what looks like the definitive Stanza replacement. I must have tested and needlessly bought about two dozen reader apps so far, but none of them could really compete with Stanza. Marvin can.

The story of my life. I must have spent $20-$30 buying different readers. What a waste.

Art

[artbatista]

Came across a problem. I was reading a book and pressed the home button to check my emails. When I went back to Marvin, it started loading and then it closed back to the desktop.

After several tries I rebooted the iPad to see if it would clear up, but Marvin still closed before opening the library.

I ended up having to remove and reinstall Marvin and download all the books again.

I think the library may have been corrupted, as the crash was happening before loading the book I was reading.

Cheers

Art

[kyteflyer]

Here comes another request, Kris...

I use dropbox for a number of other apps as well, all of which require the folder be kept on my main hard drive. I don't want to add books as well (I had, when I had the folder on an external, but the other apps complained!). Any chance of having Box.net and Sugarsync added as book sources for integration?

[kguil]

@snarko I'll have a better look at the paragraph indentation problem and should have it fixed with the update after the holidays. Paragraph spacing control will come with that update too.

@artbatista I've been made aware of that problem mid last week. I know about it and it has been fixed in the update that you should have later *this* week. In this update there is also a special "diagnostics mode" that will help me track down similar problems in the future. Do you remember whether this problem happened after you tried creating a summary?

One more thing... In iPad Settings -> General -> About -> Diagnostics and Usage -> Diagnostics and Usage Data, you should see a Marvin-related crashlog. Can you copy the text, paste it in an email and send it to support@marvinapp.com please? It will help a lot.

@kyteflyer Other cloud services are on the to-do list.

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by kguil

@artbatista I've been made aware of that problem mid last week. I know about it and it has been fixed in the update that you should have later *this* week. In this update there is also a special "diagnostics mode" that will help me track down similar problems in the future. Do you remember whether this problem happened after you tried creating a summary?

One more thing... In iPad Settings -> General -> About -> Diagnostics and Usage -> Diagnostics and Usage Data, you should see a Marvin-related crashlog. Can you copy the text, paste it in an email and send it to support@marvinapp.com please? It will help a lot.

@kyteflyer Other cloud services are on the to-do list.

I just sent the crash log. Hope it helps.

I had done a Deepview earlier today on this book (6-7 hours ago), but no summary, nor anything other than reading the book after that Deepview run erlier today.

Lease let me know if I can help in any other way.

Art

[artbatista]

I have a suggestion, and even to me it sound dubious, but I'll ask, all you can do is say no.

😇

On the Sync to the cloud theme, and this would be after the iPhone version comes out, would it be possible to propagate, not only the sync data, but the actual books in the library to other devices signed on to the same iCloud account?

So if I download a book to the iPad, Marvin sends the book to icloud, and next time I open Marvin on my iPhone, it downloads the book and the sync data.

It would be so nice to only have to download the book once to one device and have it propagate to your other devices.

iBooks already does this with iTunes purchased books.

Art

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by artbatista

On the Sync to the cloud theme, and this would be after the iPhone version comes out, would it be possible to propagate, not only the sync data, but the actual books in the library to other devices signed on to the same iCloud account?

So if I download a book to the iPad, Marvin sends the book to icloud, and next time I open Marvin on my iPhone, it downloads the book and the sync data.

I think this should be optional, not automatic. I may not wish to have the same books fully loaded on all iOS devices. The Kindle app does this nicely: it lists all your (Amazon-purchased) books on all of your Kindle devices, but to actually download a book, you need to push a cloud icon. So, I think simply syncing the list of all your books should be enough to start with, with the actual download of the book(s) made optional, and I agree it would be useful.

By the way, Marvin's description in the App Store says it needs iOS 5 to run. Luckily, that's not true, as Marvin also happily runs on my iPad 1 where the highest possible iOS version is 4. Please, Kris, continue supporting all iPads. Marvin also looks great on iPad 1, although I definitely prefer it on the iPad 3 due to the crispness of fonts on the Retina display.

As to SugarSync, I use it for book management, too. Overall, I prefer Dropbox as cloud service, but am (therefore) always running out of space there. I have SugarSync mapped to the Calibre folder on my desktop and notebook PCs, so all books are always nicely available on all my PCs and mobile devices. I see no pressing need for Marvin to integrate SugarSync directly. I can just open the SugarSync app on my iPad or iPhone, browse to the Calibre folder, and side-load any book into Marvin that way. [Although there's a nasty bug in the SugarSync app where the "Open in..." button not always works for all EPUB files; then you need to copy the download link and open it via Safari; I complained about this to SugarSync support many months ago, but it appears they're ignoring the bug instead of fixing it.]

[kguil]

@art Got it. Checking it out. Regarding the iCloud syncing, that requirement is on the table.

@Faterson - That's odd but interesting. Marvin uses some features specific to iOS 5. Is it stable?

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I think this should be optional, not automatic. I may not wish to have the same books fully loaded on all iOS devices. The Kindle app does this nicely: it lists all your (Amazon-purchased) books on all of your Kindle devices, but to actually download a book, you need to push a cloud icon. So, I think simply syncing the list of all your books should be enough to start with, with the actual download of the book(s) made optional, and I agree it would be useful.

(

Indeed, you are right. iBooks actually shows the cloud icon and clicking on it downloads the book. I would go a step farther and have an option in the library to upload to iCloud.

That way only the books you want to propagate go to iCloud.

It doesn't even have to be iCloud. There's no reason Marvin can't create a "sync" directory in Dropbox.

Cheers

Art

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by kguil

@Faterson - That's odd but interesting. Marvin uses some features specific to iOS 5. Is it stable?

Yes, very stable in my experience so far. Although it appears to do more frequently than iPad 3 what I mentioned in my first post: if you re-open it after a certain while, it launches on the Marvin home-page instead of in the book where you left off. If you only leave Marvin for a moment or two, it comes back to the book directly. Marvin looks really great on iPad 1, too, our eyes are just pampered with Retina displays by now, on which it looks even greater.

[kguil]

@Faterson that is because the iPad 1 has much less memory than the 2/3/4 and when an app is put in the background, iOS will kill it to reclaim memory more often.

[Faterson]

Yes, other apps do that, too. No big problem with it, and you could help us avoiding it by adding the "Launch Marvin where I left off last time" option to Marvin's general settings.