[Android App] Default reader app selection?

[Mousebumples]

Per the "features" listed for the app, included is The ability to choose a default reader app for a book extension (format).

How/where do you go to change this? I don't see any details about this in the FAQ, so I figured posting a thread might be the best avenue to take to find an answer.

I've been using Nook for my reading, and while that's certainly changeable, it would be great to open Calibre Companion (to find which book I wanted to read) and then use that app to open my reading app.

Also, are there only particular reading apps that are compatible? Is there a list somewhere that I should be checking out?

Thanks for any assistance!

[chaley]

When you press the "read" button in CC's book details, or long-press on a book when not connected to the content server, a dialog will open offering all the installed apps that say they can open the book. There is a checkbox in that dialog that tells CC to remember your selection. There is a menu line that tells CC to forget all remembered defaults.

As for which reader app, i suggest you try them. All are quite good but they do differ in ways that appeals to personnel preference. I use fbreader. Others prefer moon+, and others cool reader. There are others.

[Mousebumples]

Originally Posted by chaley

When you press the "read" button in CC's book details, or long-press on a book when not connected to the content server, a dialog will open offering all the installed apps that say they can open the book. There is a checkbox in that dialog that tells CC to remember your selection. There is a menu line that tells CC to forget all remembered defaults.

When I select "read" I get a popup box that says:

Can't open directly
[hr]
No reader apps answered our "Who can open this book?" call. However, some readers do not play so nicely with other apps and we can't launch them directly. You'll have to start the reader app yourself.

See our FAQ on how to make sure the other app will be able to find your books.

As such, I'm thinking that I should read that as my installed ebook apps (which are limited, I'll admit) are not compatible with Calibre Companion, in this way?

If so, might I suggest editing the above message to make that point clearer? I thought I had missed some "options menu" somewhere or something.

I'll give some of those reading apps a try. Thanks!

[Xus]

Same problem here, using a Nexus 7.
At first I thought I understood this was due to Amazon Kindle for Android (K4A)'s poor design (the CC author's claim) so I gave it the boot. Good riddance.
However, with both FBreader and Adilko installed (and having no problem whatsoever to read the ebooks when I browse for them from within those apps), the "Read" button reacts just the same (the message mentioned above).
Frustrating.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Xus

However, with both FBreader and Adilko installed (and having no problem whatsoever to read the ebooks when I browse for them from within those apps), the "Read" button reacts just the same (the message mentioned above).

What kind of books are you trying to open, Mobi, Epub? I have a Nexus 7 and when I have multiple reader apps installed opening a book via Calibre Companion (CC) allows me to choose which app to use. When opening Mobi books I get the choice of Moon+ Reader or FBReader. When opening a Epub I get a choice between Moon+ Reader, Aldiko, Cool Reader and FBReader. (Now that I finished testing it is time to remove all but Moon+Reader Pro, my reader of choice.)

Is there anything unique about your setup?
Do you have the latest version (2.4) of CC installed?
Are you connected to calibre or the calibre content server during the attempt to open a book?

You might want to try resetting your Nexus 7 by turning your device off then back on?

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Xus

Same problem here, using a Nexus 7.
At first I thought I understood this was due to Amazon Kindle for Android (K4A)'s poor design (the CC author's claim) so I gave it the boot. Good riddance.
However, with both FBreader and Adilko installed (and having no problem whatsoever to read the ebooks when I browse for them from within those apps), the "Read" button reacts just the same (the message mentioned above).
Frustrating.

This is frustrating for us (CC's developers) as well. Both my son and I have nexus 7s and we don't see this problem, so it is hard to know where to start looking for a fix.

I would ask the same questions as DoctorOhh, so won't repeat those again.

Three more questions:
- If you have a file manager installed, what happens when you attempt to open a book from it?
- Have you rooted your nexus 7?
- What language do you use on your nexus 7? (Shouldn't matter, but ...)

Expanding slightly on DoctorOhh's suggestion: uninstall fbreader, reboot your nexus, then reinstall fbreader. My concern is that something was wonky in the "mime table" (the table Android uses to associate file types to apps), and my hope is that a clean install after a boot will fix it.

[Xus]

Thanks for trying to help...
I have started with the last suggestion (uninstall FBreader and reboot). I am happy to report that after reinstalling FBreader, the one and only book left in my CC library, Calibre's epub manual, opens fine with FBreader.
Now to the questions.
- nothing special with my N7. Not rooted, and everything is on auto-update.
- I use English
- CC's version is 2.4
- Using Astro file manager, I do not see the epub file in the CC folder. Only a .FBreader folder with some 0.ncache, etc, files. I have a single .azw file obtained from my kindle collection in my kindle folder and, whichever file I try to open from there, a message "no activity found" results... The strange thing is that I have rebooted and reinstalled K4A yesterday after posting. .azw files don't seem to be associated with K4A...

And now, one more question:
I thought I had done it right by converting my DRM free .azw books to .epub in Calibre and sending them to my Nexus, but it appears that only the .azw are uploaded. How can I select which version to send from Calibre?

Tx

[Xus]

Nevermind my last question, I figured it out...
Now I can read all my books in epub format.

[chaley]

Glad you got it sorted.

Originally Posted by Xus

- Using Astro file manager, I do not see the epub file in the CC folder. Only a .FBreader folder with some 0.ncache, etc, files. I have a single .azw file obtained from my kindle collection in my kindle folder and, whichever file I try to open from there, a message "no activity found" results... The strange thing is that I have rebooted and reinstalled K4A yesterday after posting. .azw files don't seem to be associated with K4A...

This is what we mean when we say that K4A "does not play nice". The only association it makes is PDF. Why amazon chose that K4A not advertize the other extensions it can handle is a mystery and a genuine bother.

If you ask to read an amazon book in CC, it works around the problem by copying (if necessary) the book to K4A's folder (/kindle). CC messes with the book file a bit to change the modification date to "now", and then launches K4A. K4A does a scan of its folder and adds any new books it finds to its own DB. The "view by latest" view will show the book you asked to read at the top, making it reasonably easy to open it in K4A. This is clearly not as good as directly opening the book, but it was the best we could think of.

[Steve_Haley]

Originally Posted by chaley

Glad you got it sorted.
If you ask to read an amazon book in CC, it works around the problem by copying (if necessary) the book to K4A's folder (/kindle). CC messes with the book file a bit [...]

Ah, clarification - we don't copy the book to the /kindle/ folder, but perhaps we should! It'd save on confusion for users about trying to get Kindle working, at the expense of duplicating every file.

What we might want to do instead is, if no other reader apps respond but they do have Kindle installed, then we suggest that they move the Amazon formats to the /kindle folder, which then lets Kindle open the books. It also then preserves the mapping of the file CC thinks it's managing, and the file that the user is actually reading. (Which would matter if Kindle has a way of annotating books.)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Steve_Haley

Ah, clarification - we don't copy the book to the /kindle/ folder, but perhaps we should! It'd save on confusion for users about trying to get Kindle working, at the expense of duplicating every file.

Shows me that I should actually look at our code before making claims.

What we might want to do instead is, if no other reader apps respond but they do have Kindle installed, then we suggest that they move the Amazon formats to the /kindle folder, which then lets Kindle open the books. It also then preserves the mapping of the file CC thinks it's managing, and the file that the user is actually reading. (Which would matter if Kindle has a way of annotating books.)

This is better than copying. The file would be changed only when the user asks that it be changed (resent). CC wouldn't need to work out if the file in its library is different from the file in /kindle. And as you say, it eliminates the double copy. We would still want to touch the last mod date, though.

[BillyG]

Hi,

short version of my problem:

Opening an epub with Mantano Ebook Reader selecting it each time as the reader app, it works but if I choose to have this reader as my standard for epubs it does not work, it closes directly after starting.

Long version:

there is a problem trying to set Mantano Ebook Reader Lite as the standard epub reader on my Nexus 7.

Before setting any standard app for any file format, I can choose manually each time I like to read an epub ebook. I choose then my favorite - Mantano Ebook Reader Lite (as this seems to be the only I found, that renders correct and pretty epub ebooks) and in 98% it opens the epub directly and show correct. Sometimes it closes directly, but then after reopening the epub it works as expected.

But I would like to have this reader as standard, so I click the the checkbox below the list of available epub reader on my Nexus 7 and then the wanted App (Mantano). It tries to open it but it closes directly with a message like "something happened, closes... etc.". This happens every time.

I trie to set another App as standard. In this case it was FBReader and it looks at the first moment as it works (I don't had any direct closes after clicking "Read" on Calibre C.) but id doesn't show the book selected, it stays on the last I had opened before. But this is not my "big problem" as I do not want FBReader for reading epubs. Maybe it helps to know about this for figuring out what could be the problem...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BillyG

Hi,

short version of my problem:

Opening an epub with Mantano Ebook Reader selecting it each time as the reader app, it works but if I choose to have this reader as my standard for epubs it does not work, it closes directly after starting.

...

Thanks for reporting this.

I reproduced the two problems. They are related to the same bug in our default reader app selection code. Both will be fixed in the next release, which should be this week.