They Are Soooo UGLY!

[Faterson]

Having now purchased the new Nexus 7, I can first-hand observe the oft-reported deficiency of the Android platform compared to iOS: lack of high-quality apps.

That applies to such essential (for me) apps like Mailbox, Toodledo, or office software packages. A typical situation on Android seems to be, that even if you manage to find a particular app whose quality satisfies you in iOS, the same app in Android will be of lower quality. This is the case of the Kindle app, for example. It is also true of "office" apps: my favourite iOS office app, DocsToGo, which satisfies me nearly 100% in iOS, is so lame in Android that it even fails to support Dropbox or any other cloud services except for Google Drive. Kingston Office, while pretty impressive for a free Android app, does support various cloud services, but its actual interface (for example, when editing spreadsheets) is inferior to DocsToGo in iOS. Quickoffice always struck me as a low-quality app -- and its quality has now further decreased after being purchased by Google, and being given away for free now; instead of supporting all cloud services like it used to, it now likewise only supports Google Drive!

Naturally, where Android comes up short most, from my point of view, is in failing to provide a top-quality counterpart for Marvin. For this reason, I can only hope that Marvin for Android will not remain a pipe-dream; that we will get to use it in (say) 2014.

Just to take a look at current leading Android e-readers, I briefly tested 4 of them: Moon+ Reader; Mantano Reader; FBReader; and Aldiko. See screenshots below (click them for full size) to compare how the same book displays in the 4 Android e-readers, and in Marvin (the final screenshot).

Here is a short summary of my findings:

• Moon+ Reader — to me, the best of the Android bunch, because most customisable, yet compared to Marvin, it seems woefully inadequate. Switching text/background colours is an arduous procedure. At least the paragraph spacing setting is there. There are quite a few reading fonts on the menu, but I wasn't impressed by any of them. And, there is no option for indenting the first line in paragraphs.
• Mantano Reader — offers only 3 colour modes (Normal, Sepia, Night), which, on a tablet capable of displaying millions of colours, is just as inexcusable as it is in the Kindle and iBooks apps. I found no option to select your preferred reading font (!). I found no paragraph spacing option, and no page margin settings, either.
• FBReader — unlike the other three, it offers textures as reading backgrounds: the grand total of 4 textures, that is. Again, no paragraph spacing setting.
• Aldiko — once more, no paragraph spacing setting, making everything on the screen blur into a single blob of text. Offers the nicest selection of reading fonts from among the four.

[kyteflyer]

I like Moon+ Pro, and fbReader also. If I do happen to read on android (not much lately) I tend to choose fbreader, even though I paid for Moon. Aldiko was good in its early days, when there wasnt any competition in the OPDS catalogue stakes, and I never liked Mantano, go figure, many say its the best. It just didnt do it for me. I'm happy reading with either moon or FB.

[kguil]

I hardly used it but I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Moon+ too.

[hbtaylor]

I'll echo what others have said. Among the set of Android apps, Moon+ is the one I like best for its configuration options and ability to tweak it and extend it. But Marvin keeps me coming back to my iPad.

I have an iPad 3, but sometimes it feels too big for reading. I bought a 2013 Nexus 7 and really like the form factor, but nothing compares well enough to Marvin. I end up coming back to it, even on the big iPad. I know I could buy an iPad mini and get Marvin on a smaller form factor, but I'm trying to avoid doing that. I like the Android tablet (and Android's openness in general), but the reading experience on Marvin is just that good in my opinion.

As a matter of fact, Marvin's capabilities, openness, and Kris' responsiveness reflect some of what I like best about Android. When you add in the absolutely stunning look and feel, I consider it the best of both worlds!

[Faterson]

Out of the four, Moon+ most resembles Marvin in its apparent desire and undeniable effort to oblige the user, whereas the other three (especially Mantano) are closer to that other extreme, the corporate "Kindle/iBooks way" of approaching users, which is, "Here it is, take it or leave it, and just shut up!"

[Larla]

Moon+ does supports custom fonts that you have downloaded. You can use any font you want.

This is a feature that I still am waiting for in Marvin.

[MeSue]

Originally Posted by hbtaylor

Moon+ is the one I like best for its configuration options and ability to tweak it and extend it. But Marvin keeps me coming back to my iPad.

This, precisely. But overall, I dislike Android, so that is another factor for me. People rave about the keyboard options, but I never found one that I liked more than iOS and I never could get the hang of selecting text. Drove me batty.

And, yeah, the Android versions of my favorite iOS apps almost always feel inferior.

I'm probably going to give my 2012 Nexus 7 to my 6 year old niece this Christmas if a retina iPad mini comes out this year. I can't even sell it for half of what I paid less than six months after I bought it. For now I keep it as a backup in case I break my iPad again. That was a hellish week I still shudder to think about. I've always done very well selling used Apple devices.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Larla

Moon+ does supports custom fonts that you have downloaded. You can use any font you want.

Right; I was comparing the "out-of-the-box" experience.

Still, I can't see an option, in Moon+ Reader, for indenting the first lines of paragraphs, which, to me, is a big minus, because it makes the transitions between paragraphs less visually obvious, and I do not wish to increase my paragraph spacing any further. Also, switching between colour themes seems more difficult in Moon+ than in Marvin, etc. The other three Android e-readers, in their turn, impose the first-line indent of paragraphs, but unlike in Marvin, there appears to be no way to set your preferred size of the first-line indent, or to set it to zero if you do not wish to indent your first lines.

To me, there are 3 sets of criteria to talk about when it comes to judging the quality of e-book readers:

1. Primary level — the book-reading experience itself.
2. Secondary level — the highlighting and notes functionality.
3. Tertiary level — the books management, library, books import functionality.

Any issue on the primary level is, to me, more important than any issue on the tertiary level. For example, I might forgive an e-reader if it gave me zero sorting options in the library, and only a single way of loading books -- as long as the book-reading experience is superb; because that is what really counts. I may spend 15 seconds loading a book into a particular e-reader, but I will likely spend 15 hours reading that book. Conversely, if the display of books in an e-reader is lousy, with virtually no customisation options (Kindle/iBooks...), then it is of no comfort to me if that same e-reader gives me a 1000 ways to sort my library or import books into it.

For this reason, in the other thread, I said that that guy's way of introducing Marvin struck me as "upside down". He started his YouTube club by introducing all the Marvin features on the tertiary level -- the least important level. If I was asked to give a 15-minute intro of Marvin, I'd start with an open book -- showing all the wonderful ways you can customise the book's display in Marvin to your heart's content. I would then move on to the secondary level, presenting all the amazing highlighting and notes (and vocabulary!) functionality (including the unique HTML/XLS/MRV export options!) in Marvin. And only in closing my Marvin intro, I might close the book and highlight a few features of Marvin's library, the plentiful import options, etc.

[AnemicOak]

Can you not create custom themes in Mantano anymore? It's been a while since I used it, & I don't have my tablet here to check, but you used to be able to pick any colors you wanted to. Perhaps that's only in the premium version?

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Perhaps that's only in the premium version?

Yes, that's possible; the premium version of Mantano is advertised as offering "more customization options" (no specifics given). I might give it a try one day -- if we need to wait for Marvin for Android for far too long, that is. Being unable to select your preferred font for reading is certainly a stunning limitation, so I'd expect the premium Mantano version to offer at least that type of choice.

[Faterson]

Ah, yes, now I have it.

The upgrade option description inside the free Mantano is rather scant, but inside the Play Store, you get to read what you can see below in the screenshot.

Some of the features advertised there sound really appetizing, such as:

• themes customization
• attach freehand notes (!) to a selection or a page (I'd love the option of freehand notes in Marvin!)
• customize predefined gestures and key actions
• download offline dictionaries
• Notes Manager

If all these features work as well in Mantano Premium as they are advertised, they might make Mantano better than Moon+ Reader, and better than the current Marvin in some respects, too. Mantano also supports reading PDF files (I guess that's where the freehand notes support comes from) and Adobe DRM.

Given all that, the Mantano Premium price of $10 might be justified. There is also an "intermediate" version, called Mantano Reader Essentials, at $4.

[Faterson]

So as not to slight Moon+ Reader and Aldiko, below are their upgrade options, including (in Moon+) additional fonts, background images/textures (!), annotations/highlights sharing and Dropbox integration. The price is €3.80. Aldiko Premium basically promises extended customization options and some extra functionality, for €2.49. There seems to be no premium version of FBReader.

It looks like I might later on dish out at least the €8.36 + €3.80 for the premium versions of Mantano & Moon+ to check them out.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Still, I can't see an option, in Moon+ Reader, for indenting the first lines of paragraphs

I have now found it buried under Miscellaneous/Typesetting, but the offset of the 1st line is very large. It looks better to me than without the offset, but unlike in Marvin, I'm not given the option to reduce the offset to the preferred size. (Perhaps this is possible in the Moon+ Pro version, but judging by the setup of the interface for this particular setting, it seems unlikely.)

I have now loaded "Marvin's" Arvo font into Moon+, and it's like seeing an old friend in an unexpected place.

The reading speed stats in Moon+ are pretty nice, although hardly precise: "6 minutes left to read in current chapter"; "6 hours and 35 minutes left to read in book".

[Faterson]

I have now purchased Moon+ Reader Pro (€3.80) and Mantano Premium (€8.36) and also ezPDF Reader (€3.00), which seems to be the most reputable PDF app on Android, and "Android's answer" to GoodReader in iOS.

If I notice any features in those readers worth considering for Marvin implementation, I will post them here or to Marvin's GitHub. For example, Mantano's Notes Manager sounds intriguing, at least in theory: it allows you to view and manage your annotations from various books on a single pane.

A couple of observations from the first test runs of the premium versions of Moon+ and Mantano...

A feature where Moon+ Pro is superior over the current Marvin is vertical scrolling. And, in many ways, Moon+ Pro is even more configurable and customisable than the current Marvin.

But Moon+ Pro's main advantage over Marvin currently, as I see it, are its plentiful (unlimited, not only 3 like in Marvin today!) themes, optionally employing background textures (along with, again optionally, many other formating settings, not only font & background colours), which are absolutely stunning. Regarding Moon+ Pro's themes, the current thread would need to be renamed from They Are Soooo UGLY! to They Are Soooo BEAUTIFUL! Please don't tell me, when you look at the screenshots below, that we do not need background textures in Marvin. Of course we do; I find solid-colour backgrounds so incredibly boring compared to textures. The "old book" theme/texture in Moon+ Pro looks even more amazing in real life, when displayed on the new Nexus 7's ultra-sharp screen, than it looks here in screenshots. The first screenshot below is the default "old book" theme (Day 5) in Moon+ Pro; the screenshot below that, is the same theme as further customised by me. The only thing spoiling the look for me, are the too large 1st-line indents for paragraphs; but there appears to be, indeed, no way in Moon+ Pro to adjust the size of the 1st-line indents.

On the other hand, Moon+ Pro is clearly inferior to Marvin when it comes to fidelity of rendering e-books. Moon+ Pro totally mangles the display of my EPUB test file. It's as if Moon+ Pro was arbitrarily selecting any style it prefers for displaying the test file -- disregarding the CSS employed in the e-book's code. Mantano Premium displays the test file better, but with flaws, too: neither Moon+ Pro, nor Mantano Premium seem capable of displaying small caps. What they do better than Marvin, is that they at least preserve the publisher-specified font colours (see GitHub #99).

Regarding Mantano Premium, its interface seems chaotic. Although the app costs €8.36 -- roughly double the price of Marvin for iPhone -- I still can't see any paragraph spacing setting in Mantano Premium. And although I specified zero page margins both vertically and horizontally, Mantano still leaves a fairly wide margin along the 4 screen edges in some (why only some?!) e-books. Mantano seems to be enforcing "publisher settings" for some EPUBs, with no easy switch provided for clearly distinguishing between publisher and user formatting preferences.

My first ad hoc conclusion would be that, despite the lower price and problems with rendering fidelity, Moon+ Reader seems to be the better choice from among the two.

[cortman]

I like Mantano (Premium). I was going to bring up the custom themes thing if no one else did. I've created some that fit my needs perfectly. I like the app quite well.
I like the looks of Moon+ reader though. I will have to give that one a test drive.