MapleRead - eBook Reader and Server for iOS

[sbaylor]

MapleRead 1.6 can now be downloaded from the App Store.

What's New in MapleRead 1.6

This is a major release with much improved sync capabilities and a simplified UI.

• Enable web access to synced data via web browsers from desktop and mobile devices
• Sync data across your devices running SE, CE or CX editions via secure cloud connection
• Sync reading positions, notes, vocab and bookmarks of books
• Sync data for all books in the library with one tap
• Sync data for the currently opened book with one tap
• Sync data for selected books in the library with the standard edit-select method
• Guarantee deterministic sync results
• Minimize sync traffic between cloud and device
• Enable flexible resolution of potentially multiple reading positions from synced devices

Other changes include:

• Adopted a new app icon for each of SE and CE
• Renamed Date Last Edited to Date Meta Altered for the last change of metadata
• Introduced Date Marked for the last change of notes, vocab and bookmarks
• Revised the meaning of Date Read to record when the book is last closed (vs. opened)
• Increased the number of time ranges for all book sorting by Date options
• Enabled brightness control by vertical swipe on left and right edges in Modern Scroll View
• Prevented unintentional display of toolbars on content scroll in Modern Scroll View
• Replaced checkmarking by highlighting of the entry in Table of Contents corresponding to the current EPUB page
• Enabled highlighting the entry in Table of Contents corresponding to the current PDF page
• Speeded up Table of Contents (TOC) display with current entry highlighting, especially for TOC with hundreds of entries
• Added display of note count per note list
• Enabled display of exact book file size (when Diagnostics is on)
• Made other minor enhancement and bug fixes

[romad]

Downloading now!

[cedhax]

I downloaded MapleRead 1.6 early this morning and have played around with the new sync features since then. It's marvelous!

I've tried sync on my two iPads and two iPhones, each with a different set of hundreds of books in its MR library. It indeed works very well as claimed, whether I sync one book, multiple books or all books in a batch. The synced results (notes and vocab) look correct to me. I feel now that I can freely and reliably pick up my reading with the associated notes on any of my iOS devices. I really like the fact that I can control precisely what and when I want to sync and know for sure right away that the sync completes or fails (e.g. when the network is down). This is in sharp contrast with some other apps which often make me wait for a non-deterministic amount of time between the changes on one device propagate to another device.

Last but not least, I really appreciate the fact that I can now browse my highlights/notes, one book at a time on its own web page stored on the cloud, when I'm using my Mac. (I do take a lot of highlights/notes when I read non-fiction books for study and research.) It feels so liberating!

It must been taken you guys a good deal of effort for such an excellent sync solution. It's well worth my wait. Bravo!

Originally Posted by sbaylor

MapleRead 1.6 can now be downloaded from the App Store.

What's New in MapleRead 1.6

This is a major release with much improved sync capabilities and a simplified UI.

• Enable web access to synced data via web browsers from desktop and mobile devices
• Sync data across your devices running SE, CE or CX editions via secure cloud connection
• Sync reading positions, notes, vocab and bookmarks of books
• Sync data for all books in the library with one tap
• Sync data for the currently opened book with one tap
• Sync data for selected books in the library with the standard edit-select method
• Guarantee deterministic sync results
• Minimize sync traffic between cloud and device
• Enable flexible resolution of potentially multiple reading positions from synced devices

...

[sbaylor]

@cedhax - Thanks!

Any more feedback (especially on sync) from other users will be appreciated.

[odamizu]

The streamlined sync process is much better. Thanks! Haven't had much chance to try out the syncing of notes, etc. but so far so good.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

Hello Baylor
is there any hange t integrate this date into BM; also my other topic is still open (concernin series when loading from Calibre OPDS feed

Thanks
Thomas

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Yes, we'll consider an enhancement to take care of <published> date, probably in the release after the upcoming one.

As for the series question, please see post #55. Please pick just ONE book and follow my suggestion there, and tell me what happens.

@thomasmorus -
Since MapleRead 1.6 was released 10 days ago, we're working on the next update version, which will add an option to allow you to treat the "Date" field of a book in calibre as "Date Added" in MapleRead as requested. Moreover, this option will only work for Calibre's OPDS Content Server.

For those who'd like to keep the current meaning of "Date Added" as the time when the book was first added to MapleRead (instead of calibre), there will be absolutely no impact as long as you don't turn on this new option.

Let me know if you have any related concern regarding this upcoming feature.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

@thomasmorus -
Since MapleRead 1.6 was released 10 days ago, we're working on the next update version, which will add an option to allow you to treat the "Date" field of a book in calibre as "Date Added" in MapleRead as requested. Moreover, this option will only work for Calibre's OPDS Content Server.
...

Restricting the scope of this proposed option only to Calibre's OPDS Content Server is a good idea.

As for the option, does it mean that I will be able to switch back and forth between these two interpretations of "Date Added"?

[ShellShock]

I bought MapleRead SE yesterday and so far I really like it. I have a possible feature request: in the standard Dropbox view (not Desktop version), would it possible to have a list of the most recent items? This would make it much easier to find recently added books.

I know I can do this through the Desktop version, but it takes a lot more clicks, and the font is very small.

Thanks

[romad]

Shellshock, in MapleRead SE on my iPad, in the Set view I just tap "Sort", then "Date Added" and they are right at the top. If you are in List view, they are categorized as: This Week, Last Week, Last Month etc. However, I can't find a Dropbox view in my copy of MR SE; how do you access it?

[ShellShock]

Dropbox is under Exchange, HTML, clouds.

[romad]

Ah, that is why; I don't sync/add books via those. I just use PC Upload or iTunes on MR SE.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

I bought MapleRead SE yesterday and so far I really like it. I have a possible feature request: in the standard Dropbox view (not Desktop version), would it possible to have a list of the most recent items? This would make it much easier to find recently added books.

I know I can do this through the Desktop version, but it takes a lot more clicks, and the font is very small.

Thanks

Thank you for your suggestion. We'll consider your suggestion when we have better Dropbox integration.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by cedhax

Restricting the scope of this proposed option only to Calibre's OPDS Content Server is a good idea.

As for the option, does it mean that I will be able to switch back and forth between these two interpretations of "Date Added"?

Yes. We think that this should be helpful even for those who prefer either interpretation of "Date Added".

[slantybard]

Hi sbaylor, I tried to use the latest cloud sync (thanks for the bulk sync - it's way better than syncing each book individually) and see that the sync is not working between my iphone and ipad. I suspect that this is because the hashes are different for each file (downloaded from OPDS content server at different times) as has been the issue before.

Do you think there will be an eventual way of dealing with this? Ie, allowing books to be downloaded via content server at different times with difference hashes but still being allowed to sync (maybe based on other metadata?).

Thanks for your thoughts. I use this app every day and continue to think it is the best epub app out there.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by slantybard

Hi sbaylor, I tried to use the latest cloud sync (thanks for the bulk sync - it's way better than syncing each book individually) and see that the sync is not working between my iphone and ipad. I suspect that this is because the hashes are different for each file (downloaded from OPDS content server at different times) as has been the issue before.

I think you guess is right. What appear as identical books on two devices may not be actually (bit-by-bit) identical, especially when you download them at different times from an OPDS source like Calibre Content Server. Have you looked at the following FAQ on our website? They also suggest a solution by changing some preference setting of Calibre.

• I've followed the instruction to sync, but it does not work. Why?
• I've downloaded the same book from Calibre to two devices. How can the two copies turn out to be different?

Do you think there will be an eventual way of dealing with this? Ie, allowing books to be downloaded via content server at different times with difference hashes but still being allowed to sync (maybe based on other metadata?).

As you know, two books with identical metadata (title, author, series, tags) and/or filenames are not necessarily identical. For example, there are many ebook editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (AAIW) by Lewis Carol, each with its own text/figure formatting styles. There is absolutely no guarantee that any given highlighted text range in the underlying HTML file in one edition is also valid in another edition. What's worse is that anyone can edit any book's metadata (in Calibre and/or MapleRead) to make it look like any other book, say, AAIW. We think relaxing the md5 hash check for MapleRead's definition of identical books is really opening a can of worms. If you can come up a robust solution without relying on hashes, I will be glad to consider it.

In the meanwhile, my recommendation for you is to disable Calibre's metadata writer plugins and then re-download the books as needed. You should then have a very smooth sync experience.

Thanks for your thoughts. I use this app every day and continue to think it is the best epub app out there.

Thank you for your compliment! Writing a positive review on the App Store will be much appreciated too.

* For those who do not (or do not have to) use calibre, if you import your books in another way, you shouldn't have to worry about the sync issues as discussed in this post.