iPad Bookmaster - ePub and PDF reader for iOS

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

3) If there are enough users who want system-wise (iBooks-like) brightness control, we may consider offering an option. Anybody else wants this?

I want this too. To me, sometimes even setting the system brightness to the lowest at night won't be dark enough. Bookmaster allows me to dim it to a more comfortable level with the convenient vertical swipe control. During daytime, however, I would often like to see it applies to the system brightness. When reading at different angles, I need to adjust the system brightness slightly. It's just frustrated to use the tiny iOS system brightness slider.

[pugsley]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

3) If there are enough users who want system-wise (iBooks-like) brightness control, we may consider offering an option. Anybody else wants this?

Yes! Brightness as in Marvin works best for me - I set the device level at 0 and use Marvin to adjust as needed. It goes back to 0 when I close the device, and setting it is easy with the swipe. At night, changing to a different theme offsets the brightness of the device when at 0.
So Yes please!

[tbergman]

It would be great if you could add an option to allow disabling the long press gesture.

Regarding the other items
1) now that I know there will be no response when I press download, it's not really a problem. It's just a suggestion.
2) That's really unfortunate, are there plans to change this?
4) it's already on. It does not work right. To duplicate, all you need to do is exit the app while reading, remove the app from memory on the iPad, and start the app. The same effect occurs when time has gone by with other iPad app usage.
6) Ok, I understand why now. I think a better implementation would be to auto log in but perhaps have a forget credentials option in a menu somewhere. After all, how often will someone really want to change the account they use?

Thanks for the responses. It's great that You're here at this forum to answer questions.

Originally Posted by sbaylor

You said, "Overall though, very nice app." Great! Thank you for your compliment. I hope as you dig deeper, you'll find more the app more satisfying. Don't forget to give the app a good rating and write a review on the App Store then!

Now, I'll answer your questions one by one.

If you long press on the left or right margin, the gesture is always ignored. If you also disable the tap gestures at the left/right margin, then you can safely rest your thumb there. However, if you long press on the text or image area, then some text or image may be selected. You can't disable this behavior.

1) Check the Queue view, which is next to Websites. As a book is added to the download/import queue, the badge number associated with the Queue icon is incremented; as a book download is completed, the badge number is decremented. When the number is 0, no badge number is shown.

2) Page margins are fixed

3) If there are enough users who want system-wise (iBooks-like) brightness control, we may consider offering an option. Anybody else wants this?

4) Turn on "Auto-Open Last Book Read" in System Settings. Perhaps we should turn it on by default in the next release.

5) We'll play with the labels to see if it's possible to make it dimmer without losing readability under (almost) all themes (including background color and text color, etc.)

6) The credential dialog appears only once when your credential is requested the first time after connecting to a given OPDS server (including calibre with password protection) and your credential is correct. In case you want to type in a different password, or want to switch to a different account for the same server/website, the dialog gives you the chance to do so. Subsequently, the credential dialog will pop up again only if the supplied credential fails.



Attached is a screenshot of BookMaster CE's System Settings. See #4 above.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

3) If there are enough users who want system-wise (iBooks-like) brightness control, we may consider offering an option. Anybody else wants this?

Yikes, no!

Please don't change BookMaster's brightness control. I like it just the way it is

One reason I dislike Marvin and iBooks is because the brightness control is system-wide, affecting the entire device, not just the individual app. It's invasive and overreaching. If I want to change the brightness for the entire device, I'll use the system control, not do it within the BookMaster app.

[Jane12]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Yikes, no!

Please don't change BookMaster's brightness control. I like it just the way it is

One reason I dislike Marvin and iBooks is because the brightness control is system-wide, affecting the entire device, not just the individual app. It's invasive and overreaching. If I want to change the brightness for the entire device, I'll use the system control, not do it within the BookMaster app.

+1! I like BookMaster's brightness control the way it is, too.

You can already use the control panel to change the system brightness without leaving the app. Making the app brightness control system-wide is redundant -- you end up with 2 ways to control the system brightness and 0 ways to control the app brightness.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

That's great! Thank you for your compliment!
Hope you can give the app a good rating and write a review on the App Store too.


Perhaps I don't fully understand your suggestion. As far as I understand, your suggestion more or less has been implemented in BookMaster since v1.0. Let me clarify.

1. In any Library view (icon vs. list, and flat vs. hierarchical) where you see some books, tap "Edit" at the upper right corner.
2. Select one or more checkmarks, one for each book.
3. Tap "Copy" or "Move" to see the list of book sets, then choose one book set as the destination book set.
4. Repeat Step 3 for each of the other destination book set you want.

*In Step 3, for the special book set "All Books", you'll only see "Move" dimmed, because by definition "All Books" have all the books in the Library, and thus you can't move it to any other book set. Were you able to do so, the moved book would not appear in "All Books". But this is a contradiction.

Attached are two screenshots at the end of Step 2, one for the Book List View, the other one for the Book Icon View, both displayed in Flat mode, for the same 3 books selected from the user-defined book set "My Book Show".

Ah, yes. When I sent you that suggestion, I hadn't yet explored what "Copy" might be for. Now I see. That takes care of my suggestion.

As far as the brightness control question goes, I also like it the way it is. However, if enough people want a change, you can set it up as an option. The default can be the current setup, with an added option to switch to system brightness control.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

4) Turn on "Auto-Open Last Book Read" in System Settings. Perhaps we should turn it on by default in the next release.

Originally Posted by tbergman

4) it's already on. It does not work right. To duplicate, all you need to do is exit the app while reading, remove the app from memory on the iPad, and start the app. The same effect occurs when time has gone by with other iPad app usage.

Yes, you are right. The option is already on by default. It turns out that there is a subtle bug here. Thanks for reporting the bug, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Fortunately, there is an easy workaround. Just turn the switch off and on again, then it will work. Of course, this bug will be fixed in the next release.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by pugsley

I set the device level at 0 and use Marvin to adjust as needed. It goes back to 0 when I close the device, and setting it is easy with the swipe.

Did you mean you manually swipe it back to 0 every time you close the device? As far as I know, Marvin doesn't do any auto adjust or reset of the system brightness. It only lets you control it through vertical swipe.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

3) If there are enough users who want system-wise (iBooks-like) brightness control, we may consider offering an option. Anybody else wants this?

Originally Posted by cedhax

I want this too. To me, sometimes even setting the system brightness to the lowest at night won't be dark enough. Bookmaster allows me to dim it to a more comfortable level with the convenient vertical swipe control. During daytime, however, I would often like to see it applies to the system brightness. When reading at different angles, I need to adjust the system brightness slightly. It's just frustrated to use the tiny iOS system brightness slider.

Thank you for all the responses from cedax, pugsley, tbergman, odamizu, Jane12, downeaster59 for the last 7 days on this question. Apparently, there are two schools of thoughts. Most prefer the existing way -- app-specific brightness control. So do the developers of BookMaster, of course.

However, cedax has indeed raised an interesting point that BookMaster's brightness control via vertical swipe is a much more convenient way to control screen brightness, app-specific or not, than the tiny iOS system brightness slider, esp. on iPad, even though the vertical swipe gesture is functionally redundant to the brightness control sliders in both the app and iOS control panel.

We have decided to resolve this issue by adding a new option "App-Specific Brightness Control" (default ON, as it is implicitly the case now) in System Settings in the next release of the app. There will be no other related changes in the UI. For users who like the status quo, nothing needs to be done. For those who prefer the other way, just turn off the option. Hopefully, this gives us the best of both worlds.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

... We have decided to resolve this issue by adding a new option "App-Specific Brightness Control" (default ON, as it is implicitly the case now) in System Settings in the next release of the app. There will be no other related changes in the UI. For users who like the status quo, nothing needs to be done. For those who prefer the other way, just turn off the option. Hopefully, this gives us the best of both worlds.

This is great news. The best of both worlds, indeed Thanks!

[thomasmorus]

Hi There
I really like bookmaster better then Marvin (but not as good as the Calbre Companigon which I use on my erader device). However i have some questions and issues:
Importing via Calibre ODPS
- Tags are not imported, do not know why
- when will the Series and series number import be fixed?

Missing features:
Date added: I would really like to use the date added from calibre. because at the first load all books are under the same date!)
Import to a specifc Set - as i use multiblee library with calibre

Thanks for the good work and continue please

Best regards

Thomas

[sapphiresilver]

I was actually going to stop using my iPad as an ereader because I missed Calibre Companion, but BookMaster made me reconsider that. I import books from calibre using calibre's content server and so far I haven't had any problems with tags. I'd second the request to be able to use calibre's date, though. It would make it easier when importing a large amount of books at once.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

Hi There
I really like bookmaster better then Marvin (but not as good as the Calbre Companigon which I use on my erader device). However i have some questions and issues:
Importing via Calibre ODPS
- Tags are not imported, do not know why
- when will the Series and series number import be fixed?
...
Thomas

Thanks for reporting the bug about series and volume (series number). As we have explained in post #55, there is a workaround, and the bug will be fixed in the next release of the app. The next release v1.4, to be submitted to App Store in a few days, will introduce some exciting new feature too.

However, we can't reproduce your reported problem with tags. Perhaps you may try the following test. Just focus on one book in calibre. Add a few new tags to it, and just import that one book to BookMaster. Look at Book Info. If the tags don't match, send us some screenshots by email. If you can reproduce this bug and want to get it fixed by the next release, then please do it ASAP.

Thanks.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by thomasmorus

...
Missing features:
Date added: I would really like to use the date added from calibre. because at the first load all books are under the same date!)
Import to a specifc Set - as i use multiblee library with calibre

Thanks for the good work and continue please

Best regards

Thomas

About the first request for treating "Date Added" specially for calibre server:

- The "date added" of a book as recorded by BookMaster when you import the book via a calibre OPDS server (or any other server or book source) is indeed the time you add it to BookMaster, but not intended as the time when the book was added to calibre (or any other server or book source) earlier. Shouldn't that be the common expectation in general?

- Even if we wanted to give special treatment to calibre, there were technically no way to do it via its OPDS server. The entry associated with each book contains only one time-stamp, the time it was last modified/updated by calibre, which is not necessarily the same as the time the book was added. This difference can be easily verified by a simple experiment anyone can do. Knowing that there may be a difference, do you still want to treat the update time as if it were the creation (date added) time? Are you willing to be confused sometimes that different books imported from different sources (calibre or others) might have a different interpretation of creation (date added) timestamps?


As for the second request to import books to a specific set
- All imported books initially go to the built-in set named "Ungrouped". Just move the books from Ungrouped to the specific set you want after (batch) import from calibre, one virtual library at a time. Arranging them by "Date Added" will help.
- We've just double-checked that calibre OPDS server does not provide any information about user-created virtual libraries. Thus, importing some books to some set, and other books to another set automatically are not possible.


Ok, you might ask why it was possible for some other apps (on iOS and/or Android) to do exactly or almost exactly what you want in the first place? I am not an expert on those apps. But I don't think they did it through calibre's OPDS server. There are stories circulating on mobileread.com about how some of these non-OPDS (standard) plug-in approach has broken as calibre is constantly being upgraded over the years.

[thomasmorus]

[QUOTE=sbaylor;3280232]About the first request for treating "Date Added" specially for calibre server:

- The "date added" of a book as recorded by BookMaster when you import the book via a calibre OPDS server (or any other server or book source) is indeed the time you add it to BookMaster, but not intended as the time when the book was added to calibre (or any other server or book source) earlier. Shouldn't that be the common expectation in general?

Hello Sbaylor

First, thanks for the fast answer!
I used the workaround which is working fine; and will try to reproduce the Tag error - but I can not do it at the moment (traveling on business)

Concerning the Time stamp: I would be OK with the Time last edited on calibre; the problem with the timestamp at the moment is with the first load: Everytime you have to relaod yall your books all of them are under the same time - which renderes the Date added function useless (I have about 2000 books on Calibre; starting using calibre in 2008). I always was able to hold on to the orignall calibre libaery database but had to reload books to the Ipad (due to changing of device or reader apps) multible times, and therefore alwayse lost the time sorting function!

Concering the Set Function: Tanks for the explaniton, I can live with it