Two questions about the Marvin reader

[slayda]

Brightness control - the gestures indicate that a swipe up or down can change the brightness. This doesn't work for me with my iPad 4. The menu brightness seems to work fine. Is this a bug or was a change made and just not reflected in the gesture instructions?

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by slayda

Suggestion - I have been using iBooks and have several books there. It would be nice if there was a way to import books into Marvin from iBooks (and possibly other ios readers as well. (And yes I could go through Dropbox to load them, but I'm lazy.)

I don't think that would be easily doable. If you have any familiarity with IOS then you know that apps are "sandboxed", and there is no way for apps to share easily and that would pass the App Store review.

There's only so much developers can do, witchin the restrictions imposed by Apple.

Question - I set Dropbox to be used with Marvin. I also would like to use Box with Marvin. Maybe I missed it but I don't see a way to use other services similar to Dropbox.

Comment - I like Marvin.

It would be impossible to integrate every service out there Into Marvin. There must be dozens if not hundred of different Dropbox-like services out there.

But one way to load books the they have in common, open you service (Dropbox, Drive, Copy.com, etc) in their app or via the web site, click on your book and use ios "open with..." Function. Select Marvin and it will happily add your book to the library.

This also works for virtually any app (iBooks, etc).

Art

[artbatista]

Originally Posted by slayda

Brightness control - the gestures indicate that a swipe up or down can change the brightness. This doesn't work for me with my iPad 4. The menu brightness seems to work fine. Is this a bug or was a change made and just not reflected in the gesture instructions?

Hmm, works for me. Did you turn that gesture on?

From reading a book, bring up the settings menu, go to gestures, fifth item down. See attached picture.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by artbatista

I don't think that would be easily doable.

Nor do I think it should be doable. Why should Marvin be "supporting iBooks", so to say? The switch from iBooks to Marvin is a one-time process that can be quickly accomplished by using, for example, iFunBox. (Or slowly accomplished using iTunes.)

Originally Posted by artbatista

But one way to load books the they have in common, open your service (Dropbox, Drive, Copy.com, etc) in their app or via the web site, click on your book and use ios "open with..." Function. Select Marvin and it will happily add your book to the library.

That's what I've been doing with SugarSync ever since Marvin was first released. It's nice to have Dropbox directly integrated in Marvin, but such close integration is by no means a necessity. Just open the Box app on your iPad/iPhone, and you can load books into Marvin from there with a single tap.

[kguil]

@slayda, Marvin cannot access books in another app, so I can't import from iBooks. Also keep in mind that if your books are DRM protected (encrypted), M won't be able to read them. Right now, M supports Dropbox only. Eventually, I'll be adding more services. Did you check whether the gesture is turned on as ArtBatista suggested?

[slayda]

Yes gesture for brightness is turned on. I tried turning it off and back on. Still doesn't work.

All other gestures seem to work correctly.

[dordale]

slayda--The brightness control via swipe is a little tricky for me on my iPad 2. It works most of the time, but not all. And sometimes I mean to turn a page and end up increasing or decreasing the brightness by accident--I know it's the direction that I'm swiping. Sometimes, it seems like my iPad ignores my up and down swipe for brightness, but eventually it'll take. I don't think this helps you much--because unlike your experience swiping for brightness control is functional on my iPad.

[slayda]

OK I finally discovered the trick. You have to swipe up or down NEAR THE CENTER OF THE PAGE. Otherwise it doesn't work. Apparently I missed this info in the instructions. Being right handed, it is more intuitive th try swiping up/down on the right side of the screen.