[Archived] Marvin ePub reader for iPad

[Terisa de morgan]

I missed the emoticon I was telling it because of that

[Faterson]

No prob... always grateful for another opportunity to rant!

[andy88]

Hi Kris,

Just to suggest something (not sure if this has been pointed before) :

It will be good if Marvin does not download epub's that has already been downloaded before via Calibre Content Server (OPDS) - or via any other method of transfer.

For e.g, it is difficult to keep note of books that are already present in the Marvin Library and quite often; I end up downloading epub's from the Calibre OPDS (Content Server) which has been downloaded before.

There is of course a message saying "This book is already present in Marvin". But it will be so much more effective if it doesn't download it in the first place. Maybe a flag symbol beside book titles to signify relevant epub's are already present in Marvin Library would be great.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks and Keep up your good work !

[kguil]

Hi Andy, unfortunately this can only be done via the OPDS browser (and even that wouldn't be very accurate). In, say, Dropbox there isn't a way for me to peek into the file to see what's inside it before downloading it entirely. In fact, the flag that shows up in Dropbox is just based on filename. The OPDS service gives me more details a priori to determine whether a book already exists in the library (note that you might want to download it anyway if, say, you have the same book fixed for typos). I'll add the idea to the wish list and put some more thought into it.

[Meemo]

Originally Posted by Faterson

That never works -- or only for superficial readers. As an example, here's my reading speed for one of the 7 books I'm currently reading, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (I've been unimpressed so far):

• 1.25 / 2%
• 0.5 / 4%
• 0.5 / 6%
• 1 / 3%
• 0.5 / 6%
• 0.75 / 7%
• 0.5 / 4%
• 0.5 / 10%

Each line represents another day of reading that book. The percentage shows my reading speed, in percentages per hour. (This particular book is 107,000 words long, which might be around 330 pages on paper.) The earliest data is at the bottom.

As can be seen, my reading speed for this book varies wildly, between 10% per hour and 2% per hour. Whenever I slow down in a book, it's typically a sign that the book is getting better -- that I annotate it more while reading it, or think about it more as I'm reading it. And how could you know in advance how good or bad the rest of the book you're reading, is going to be? You can never know that in advance. Therefore, predicting your reading speed on the basis of your reading speed so far, is always extremely unreliable, and can always only be an extremely crude guesstimate. Unless you're a superficial reader -- which, of course, is exactly what our schools and universities typically teach young people to be.

Well despite my avatar I'm far from young, but maybe I'm just one of those dreaded superficial readers. I usually have a pretty good idea of whether my book is a long one or a short one from the outset, and if I'm not sure, I can tell by how quickly or slowly that percentage moves along. I never annotate my books (I read for pleasure and it's a bit like the math thing - I just want to read, not take notes like I had to waaay back in college). I guess I can see your point, kind of, but we're clearly approaching our reading enjoyment from two completely different directions.

But hey, I'm all for as many choices as possible, so it'd be nice to have both options to make everyone happy.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Meemo

I never annotate my books (I read for pleasure

In contrast, I always annotate my books*, although I read for (also) pleasure as well.

* The only time I'm not annotating anything in a book, is when a book is so unremarkable there's simply nothing worth annotating in it. However, if a quote happens to be particularly atrocious, I annotate that, too. (I can post some examples of extremely bad quotes here, if anyone would like to see them.)

Naturally, most books ever written or ever published are unremarkable, and not worth annotating (or reading!). The trick is to avoid getting one's hands on such books (legitimate literary criticism -- rather than fake Amazon reviews -- can help here), so that one is lucky (or smart) enough to be always selecting only the small minority of quality books for one's reading.

Originally Posted by Meemo

we're clearly approaching our reading enjoyment from two completely different directions.

We definitely are, but that's fine. To me, reading books is both work, and enjoyment -- impossible for me to separate the two from one another, in this particular area of my life.

Because readers and their expectations from reading books are so different from one another, superior reading software can be recognized by the wealth of customization options it offers to each and every reader. That's our Marvin. Whereas crappy reading software like iBooks, Kindle and their ilk, can be recognized by contemptuously dismissing individual users' customization needs -- because those crappy apps don't really care about obliging their users; they only pretend to be doing that. Their actual concern is selling stuff to users, and in order to sell indiscriminate stuff to the great, indistinguishable masses of users, a focus on quality of software is not strictly necessary.

[Meemo]

I've always felt like the reading apps that are connected to eReaders (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and now Sony) were seen by the makers as a kind of "gateway drug" - get folks hooked on eBooks so they'd want to buy the Kindle/Nook/Kobo/etc device as well - even though the real money is in the books themselves. Otherwise, why not make them more like the independent reading apps like Aldiko, Bluefire, Stanza, and best of all, the brilliant Marvin. Heck - Amazon could've turned Stanza into the Kindle app, but alas they chose not to.

Ah well, I'm grateful for Marvin and my Mini. And Calibre, and Dropbox.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Meemo

Otherwise, why not make them more like the independent reading apps like Aldiko, Bluefire, Stanza, and best of all, the brilliant Marvin.

Because the real focus of these corporations is money -- not books, not art, and not literature. I think it's a fundamental business principle to focus on where the bulk of your revenue is streaming from -- and you can more or less disregard the minority sources of your income. If you're a polite corporation, you won't say so openly; you will pretend as if you cared about each and every customer of yours; but in reality, you will focus on the grey, indistinguishable mass of users, where most of your money is coming from.

How many readers expect advanced functionality from e-reader software? One percent? Two percent? Five percent, if we're very optimistic? If your primary concern is money, it would be insane paying too much attention to the wishes of the tiny minority of 1%, 2% or 5% of your customers. That those 5% might be your smartest customers, with the highest IQ, is completely irrelevant. It's not about quality of software, not about being smart, not about intelligence -- it's all about the money, Lebowski. Quantity over quality. Dumb users will always constitute the crushing majority of users of any software that is widely spread -- see also the inanity that is the "Ribbon" in Office, or the entire Windows 8 operating system, as delivered by Microsoft. All of that is done in the interest of obliging the crushing majority of dumb users. That you may be alienating the 5% of your smartest users in the process of obliging the dumb ones -- that may be sad, but that's simply a necessity, as long as your primary focus is money, rather than quality.

The only reason Marvin's quality is so high is that, apparently, Kris does not expect to be making a living off of it. (I am still shocked Marvin is completely free to use; certainly, a price of at least a couple of dollars would be perfectly justified.) Because Kris is free from money concerns while developing Marvin, he can focus on the only thing that really matters -- quality of software, advanced functionality. The results of that different focus can be seen after only a few months: his software is already today clearly superior over the products of gigantic multinational "software" corporations. They are not really "software" corporations as much as money-making machines; the software these corporations produce is merely a tool to achieve the ultimate goal, which is money; whereas for Kris, it appears that the tool itself is the ultimate goal -- which explains why it's such a fantastic tool, much better than anything the corporations have to offer.

[kguil]

Faterson, I'd like to clarify, that whilst I put a lot of effort in maintaining Marvin's quality and listen to what readers need, neither Marvin nor myself are free from "money concerns". I run Marvin as a business. There are very real and non-neglible costs to keeping something like Marvin alive and growing.

[Faterson]

I confess (again) I don't understand that angle: how it's possible to "run freeware as a business". But it's not my concern (I almost said "business" ) to pry into such things. (I do remember Micah was similarly amazed by this in the Bluefire thread.)

It's true each of us needs to finance somehow the things we hold dear in our life. My own way of doing it is thoroughly outlandish and unconventional, some would even say crazy (but that's off-topic).

Because neither you nor I are directly selling our best efforts... the thing over which we spend most time on a daily basis... that's what corporations do, after all, which is (perversely and ironically!) why their products are so crappy: they are crappy because their employees are actually getting paid for creating them...

Which reminds me of (I think) Schopenhauer's definition of work: he said that only such activities can truly be called work which you would perform even if you never got paid a single cent for performing them. The things you do only because you are getting paid for them -- they are not real work, but only a semblance of it, according to Schopenhauer. Which would explain, I guess, why Kindle, iBooks and their ilk are such crappy software products: because they are created by hordes of software professionals, who are getting paid for creating them, but their hearts are not in it... (Because they are getting paid?) And the thoroughly mediocre results of their work indeed show that their hearts aren't in it -- the lack of love on the part of developers. Why would they deeply care about the quality, or lack of it, of Kindle, iBooks and their ilk, as long as the pay-check arrives on time, right?

As I was saying: because we are not directly selling it, we must indirectly finance it, at least for the time being, while the "time being" could well turn out to be several decades, or even one's entire life-time. There may be A Big Reward waiting at the end of the road -- or there may just be nothing. Who knows? While it would definitely be nice if there were A Big Reward at the end of the road, it's not really necessary. The main reward, after all (although not financial), is the progress along the road.

The big question, of course, because we are not directly selling our best efforts, is how sustainable for the future such a model is. Will there be Marvin in 5 years from now? Or will it just vanish into thin air, like Stanza and Mobipocket Reader did, after bringing us joy for a few short-lived years? Amazon was the big magician, helping them disappear, gleefully.

My own model of financing my main work may collapse within a year or two from today (and this has been true for me for years now). I must count with that, and be always mentally prepared to accept such an outcome, if worse comes to worst. I have no idea if your own model of sustaining Marvin is similarly brittle, and I don't need to know. Let's hope it's a bit firmer, for the sake of all of us Marvin fans.

</end musings>

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I confess (again) I don't understand that angle: how it's possible to "run freeware as a business". But it's not my concern (I almost said "business" ) to pry into such things. (I do remember Micah was similarly amazed by this in the Bluefire thread.)

Add-ons? I bought the theme pack even if I just use the default color to support Marvin development. It really is one of the (if not the) best reader app available for the iPad. Hoping to see bookmarks/notes/progress syncing (via Dropbox would be great) and an iPhone/iPod Touch version soon.

[kyteflyer]

I have an issue at the moment. I've not struck this particular one before, and I am not sure what on earth I did, in order to make it happen. When turning a page (I read in landscape) in a book, it now seems to randomly skip through chapters for no apparent reason. All I want to to is get to the next page. I was gobsmacked when I opened the book this morning and found that I had read 68% of it (no, I havent, not even close... only about 5-6% in fact) ... I actually closed Marvin and started again in iBooks, out of sheer frustration. Is there some setting I havent found which can skip chapters on a page flip?

[Turtle91]

I think there is a gesture setting that allows skipping multiple pages. You may be inadvertently using that gesture??

[Jessica Lares]

Yeah, it's in the tutorial. 2 or 3 fingers will swipe more pages in one go. I can't seem to do it, but then I think I'm due for a Genius appointment since I'm having a lot of screen responsiveness issues lately.

[kyteflyer]

Thanks folks. better stick to a one finger poke then