Android: simple non-online reader with proper paragraphing

[Fallingwater]

I've dug out and old supercheap tablet (Eken M009 dualtouch) I bought some time ago but never really used because it was too mind-numbingly slow to do much of anything. But I got the idea that it'd be good as an e-reader that I won't cry if I break (as opposed to my current tablet).

So I went looking for e-reading apps and tried several, but many (Google Books, Blio, Book Place) obsess about cloud features and markets and such, all of which I care for not one whit. Worse, they won't let me use them if I don't first configure them with their online service; because the tablet in question has a faulty wifi module and won't connect to a wifi link (I sideload everything by downloading the APKs from the Google store and using the microSD card), this makes them entirely useless to me.

I also want something with a filesystem interface, because I order my files by directories/folders and have no need for a library that'll take ages to be imported and misname a whole lot of books (I'm looking at you, Aldiko).

I found Coolreader, which is everything I want... except for one extremely annoying problem, neatly exemplified by this picture (ignore the weird color on the tablet - it's actually white with a low backlight, not sure why my DSLR thinks it's green). As you can see the paragraphs are not separated from each other as they should be; I really dislike that, as I find the separation necessary to concentrate - walls of text tend to annoy me very quickly.

I need something similar to Coolreader that'll do paragraphs properly. Or a way to configure Coolreader to do so, but I haven't been able to find one yet and I've perused the options menu extensively.

Any ideas?

[Dopedangel]

You can have space between paragraphs in Coolreader go to options>CSS> Default paragraph formatting and change Margin after to 1 or how ever much space you need between paragraphs.

[Jabby]

FBReader will do what you want.

Go to: Settings >Text >More Styles >Regular Paragraph. Here you find space before and after as well as indent.

[Difflugia]

Another reader that you may want to try is Mantano. It uses the Adobe rendering engine, so it's similar to Aldiko (including rendering PDF). It requires an "import", but it opens them from their original location (i.e. it imports metadata into a database, but doesn't make a new copy of the book). The only problem that I have with Mantano is that it's unstable on some hardware.

I'm curious... how do you download .apk files from Google Play to your PC? I can only get it to push them to my device the next time WiFi is connected. Is there an option somewhere I missed?

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by Fallingwater

...it's actually white with a low backlight, not sure why my DSLR thinks it's green...

Most fluorescent lights are greener than sunlight (incandescent tungsten lights are yellow) and your monitor is probably a "true white" model. The DSLR set its white balance to the monitor and the fluorescent backlight is green in comparison.

[Fallingwater]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

You can have space between paragraphs in Coolreader go to options>CSS> Default paragraph formatting and change Margin after to 1 or how ever much space you need between paragraphs.

No change. It says it's formatting the document, but then it displays it exactly as in the picture.

Edit: tried adding some indentation to at least make it tolerable. No change again.

Edit2: I can add some indentation by converting from epub to epub with calibre, but then everything in italic becomes normal. Just in the tablet, though - Calibre still reads both files perfectly fine.

I tried the other tablet, and this behaviour is repeated perfectly.

Originally Posted by Jabby

FBReader will do what you want.

Go to: Settings >Text >More Styles >Regular Paragraph. Here you find space before and after as well as indent.

No change here, either.

I thought maybe the file has something weird going on in it, but both Calibre and my Cybook Opus put all the paragraph spaces where they're supposed to be.

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I'm curious... how do you download .apk files from Google Play to your PC? I can only get it to push them to my device the next time WiFi is connected. Is there an option somewhere I missed?

I use a Chrome extension: http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/

It basically uses a device ID and your google account to cheat the store into thinking it's an Android device, then downloads the file to your computer.

I can't quite see why downloading APKs requires one to use such devious means, especially considering that once an app is installed in a device via the store you can easily grab the APK using any file explorer and install it in other devices. *shrug*

Originally Posted by Difflugia

Most fluorescent lights are greener than sunlight (incandescent tungsten lights are yellow) and your monitor is probably a "true white" model. The DSLR set its white balance to the monitor and the fluorescent backlight is green in comparison.

Oh, right. I don't have a true-white model, but I did tinker with its colour sliders in order to make it a bit warmer.

[Fallingwater]

I'm tinkering with the "tweak book" feature in Calibre, and I think I've found the problem - the whole book is not divided in paragraphs at all, the lines are just separated with two <br> tags one after the other. Calibre handles this, and the Opus too (though this might explain why it takes friggin' forever to open this one file), but CoolReader and FBReader follow stricter procedure and ignore the second <br> tag.


I'll try replacing the br tags with p tags and seeing what happens.

Edit: I followed this suggestion, replacing all the br tags with p ones, and not only does CoolReader now work properly, but my Opus loads the file much faster. Victory!