Marvin 3.0 feature requests

[democrite]

Hello,

I thought a new thread for feature requests would be helpful, so the other threads could be less about that and more for help for others. Anyone, feel free to post here if you want to make it sort of an official thread. Or it could just be me since I likely will post many.

Just wanted to mention a few things before I forgot.

- I tried Deep View and like it very much. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for other languages? A small thing compared to what's more immediate but would be great. The left and right navigation arrows in the toolbar, perhaps a button on the top right that shows a list might be easier to navigate, if that is meant for sections.

- While using Deep View, I tried the web option. Safari showing up was missing the return to Marvin that often appears in other apps, but I forgot, tapping something else did close it. Though afterwards, there were some screen artifacts like the selection bar still appearing, but the selection gone.

- I've been using OPDS a lot, and thought a search by pulling down the list would work easier and could then also be a live search, if possible, plus I could edit and refine. Perhaps download could be one screen, with a button bar for Dropbox, OPDS, Web, etc, and it'd make it quicker to do all your downloading from one place, and then close when done.

[Faterson]

GitHub is far more efficient for tracking feature requests and bug resolutions:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues

There are hundreds of issues already recorded there. However, Kris asked us not to contribute there for now, as he intends to open a new GitHub for Marvin 3, which I wouldn't do if it were up to me, but it's certainly up to Kris to decide.

I hope the new (or old) GitHub will soon "(re)open for business", because I can contribute dozens of issues right away. I wouldn't want to post them here on MobileRead, because utter chaos would be the result. Compared to GitHub, I don't find the MobileRead forums an efficient tool for tracking feature requests and bug resolutions. It's just too chaotic here, trolls and personal attacks abound, and email notifications are spotty and unreliable. In contrast, email notifications from GitHub are rock-solid.

As to Deep View and OPDS, I haven't used either in Marvin other than for brief trials. Deep View really can't do anything in non-English texts, it appears, and even in those, it appears to lack precision.

[democrite]

Starting to more use bookmarks and thought a long press in the corner could show a list. That could make navigation quite quick for those.

An icon in the same place when toolbar is shown would be handy too. That could mean making it look more like a bookmark. I'm not for borrowing everything from iBooks, but if there isn't an imaginable better way yet, well then. A drop down for options, like iBooks or PDF Expert, perhaps with tabs also would decrease thumb mouvement and maybe make it clear pressing again in the same place is additional way to close. Looking at more interfaces, saw an Android Nook earlier and some things are slightly interesting.

Edit: When selecting an annotation, buttons for Deep View and search might be handy. And, I'm not sure how Skim does it, perhaps by storing in memory, after an initial search, subsequent are nearly instant. Maybe possible for newer devices. The search window, and perhaps other places with long lists, could use an invisible scrubber, invoked when holding and scrolling the edge. In thousand page works with hundreds of search results, very helpful.

Edit 2: Tried page accessories. Perhaps it could be changed by long pressing the footer and then removed from the ePub menu. Perhaps other things could use the same treatment. I was thinking that maybe like other mid-complexity apps in OS X, it appears or tries to be simple for the typical, but for those that experiment or know how OS X works, there's much hidden but still accessible for those that want it. Such things could also clean up the UI to make what is more frequently used easier and quicker to get to.

[democrite]

Noticed something else that I was curious about and wasn't sure until I tried. Sometimes selections change or are difficult or I want to later change, or it is quicker to add to rather than redo. If a new annotation overlaps an old, would it be better to merge?

Edit: tried again and it prompted to merge. It doesn't seem to always and it doesn't merge but just perhaps replaces and uses the new selection.

[Faterson]

That's an unfortunate development in recent Marvin versions. Here, Marvin 1 was the smartest of all, because it allowed highlights (especially of different colors) to overlap, which indeed is often a practical necessity. Unfortunately, Marvin 2 destroyed that functionality, and Marvin 3 is no improvement in this regard.

[democrite]

Another small thing. When adding via iTunes, M3 prompts to import and then afterwards shows status and errors. Perhaps that could be done in the background, and the success status unneeded, much like Music and other apps often don't report when something has been successfully added? Perhaps errors could be show in some log, like maybe an icon in the top right that appears only when there's an error log that hasn't been cleared.

[democrite]

While I love being able to long hold and drag to change brightness, I'm starting to think the gesture would be better used for annotations. If brightness might be changed only with a change of one's setting, like room or lighting, or every few hours, anotations could be used more frequently. If that is the case, maybe a two finger drag, unless that gesture would be good for something else, would work. Long hold is in many apps reserved for text selection so it looks to ne more natural; if not for annotations, then at least selecting a word since sometimes getting the precise zone for a word is tricky.

[Kumabjorn]

Now that I got the hang of highlights and annotations, may I suggest a little pen icon or asterisk or something that will differentiate between a highlight and a note? Just looking at the text you have no way of knowing if a note is hiding under those primary colors.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

[democrite]

Good idea. Yes please. Maybe some distinguishing mark like an underline (maybe not), an overlay, or highlight style would work but I agree an icon, in the margin I think is the best place, looks to be the easiest and quickest way to identify them. I was going to suggest the minimum margin size, at least in landscape 2-columm be one less than now, but with an icon, 3 less than the current max seems about right. As for type of icon, a pen could work but I believe a plain or sort of plain square, like iBooks and Google Play Books, to simulate a post-it, is most easily distinguishable.

That could relate to my earlier suggestion of no confirmation to remove annotations. A highlight is easily re-added, but a confirmation to delete a note yes.

[pwalker8]

My request is to put in some sort of visual clue for books that are in the reading list, being read, et al. like the earlier versions of Marvin had. Of course, I would still like manual sorting of the reading list, but I've mentioned that in the past and don't want to be obnoxious about repeating myself.

[brokeass]

Would be very nice to have a reference to page numbers in the journal, or even a means of linking back to the portion of the text where it is found. Unless this is already possible, and I have overlooked it?

Otherwise, enjoying Marvin 3 so far!

[democrite]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

My request is to put in some sort of visual clue for books that are in the reading list, being read, et al. like the earlier versions of Marvin had.

I think on Facebook someone asked. Might be coming, didn't keep track of it though i'd like it as well (as an option). If that comes, wanted to mention, I found the M2 marker with an asterisk a bit unelegant. Perhaps some bookmark icon in the corner, perhaps as big as possible while still being able to identify the book by cover, with colors used to indicate type would look great.

For something else, I'm starting to find accidental taps for page turns can be quite frequent and easy to trigger. Even if I got used to limiting myself to certain gestures, they'd still be possible and there are possibly others who have more trouble. I'm starting to believe the best design choice is to limit page turn taps to the margins. That could make the minimum horizontal margin be similar to normal vertical. In that case, the smaller vertical might need to be removed as to not look strange. Some might complain, but so far, I believe it to be an ok and maybe needed compromise because of the accidental taps.

[Loosheesh]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Now that I got the hang of highlights and annotations, may I suggest a little pen icon or asterisk or something that will differentiate between a highlight and a note? Just looking at the text you have no way of knowing if a note is hiding under those primary colors.

As (similarly) requested here, in another thread:

Originally Posted by Loosheesh

In M2, highlighted text would have a light underline to let you know there were annotations attached - it doesn't seem to be available with M3; any possibility of getting it back?

[democrite]

Tried something new, new request. Diacritic insensitive search please. Eventually, if possible, insensitive only for searched words without diacritics, so jaune could find jaune and jaûne but jaûne only jaûne.

And. I'm not sure how much this increases memory usage. Swapping between files can occur often looking up footnotes. If there were two views with one having the previous opened file, switching between in the common case of notes would be really quick.

While I'm thinking of notes, if annotations were possible in ePub 3 notes, that'd be amazing.

And found something else. Perhaps a different default color for links like footnotes? The accessibility feature of inversing colors is fairly significant and I think a color that works well with it, rather than switching themes, is a good idea.

With inversed colors, one of the highlight colors is also difficult to distinguish.

[MSWallack]

Perhaps I just haven't figured it out yet, but there are two things that I'm missing in M3

1) Is there a way to remove a book from the recently opened list? If I accidentally tap on a book and it opens, it shows up on that list. I like to keep that list clean with only the books that I've really been reading.

2) In Marvin 2, there was a home page that showed a large cover of the book being read and then a few smaller covers of the recently read books. I really liked that page. Is there something similar in M3 that I just haven't found?