Reading apps

[kkruglov]

+1 for fiction book reader, love it using on 3 devices.

[rfog]

Originally Posted by kkruglov

+1 for fiction book reader, love it using on 3 devices.

Fiction Book Reader has some major bugs:

1.- It completely plains the formatting text. Only repects bold and italics. It actively does not follow indents and relative font size changes.

2.- In Phones, it cuts the text and periodically eats one text page.

3.- Does not present TOC in ePub and FB2, only mobi shows the right TOC.

4.- Chapter separation in the botton progress line is a joke: sometimes appear, others not, and when you can see them, they are in the wrong position.

Those are the ones I just remember now, sure it has a lot more.

[kkruglov]

Originally Posted by rfog

Fiction Book Reader has some major bugs:

1.- It completely plains the formatting text. Only repects bold and italics. It actively does not follow indents and relative font size changes.

2.- In Phones, it cuts the text and periodically eats one text page.

3.- Does not present TOC in ePub and FB2, only mobi shows the right TOC.

4.- Chapter separation in the botton progress line is a joke: sometimes appear, others not, and when you can see them, they are in the wrong position.

Those are the ones I just remember now, sure it has a lot more.

well, i'm not as mature user as you, i mean, i don't know what TOC is and i have never seen text eaten on my phone (lumia 630/640), but i will pass this to developer.

[rfog]

TOC is "Table Of Contents".

In relation to TOC, it seems that some epubs shows it and others not. BTW, each time an ebook shows wrong in Fiction Book Reader I load it in iBooks or Marvin and it is presented perfect.

[MTR]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

Hi Sweetpea - that is an interesting observation. When I started out developing Freda, I definitely intended that it should just do 'reading books', not 'managing a library'. But user requests and features of the Windows Phone platform pushed me into implementing library management anyway. It would be an easy fix to provide Freda with a 'lite' mode in which it did not display a list of book sources, did not provide library management and did not let you edit book embedded data. In 'lite' mode Freda would just display a list of (say 6) most recently opened books on its main screen, and the normal way to launch it would be to click on an EPUB or FB2 file. Would that be valuable to you?

Hi Jim, did the 'Freda Lite' option of reading straight from the Calibre library on the same device come to light yet? I'm asking since I'm about to switch to a 2-in-1 full Windows device which will both host my Calibre and be used as my main reader and I'd prefer to keep reading in Freda over the Calibre built-in reader.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by MTR

Hi Jim, did the 'Freda Lite' option of reading straight from the Calibre library on the same device come to light yet? I'm asking since I'm about to switch to a 2-in-1 full Windows device which will both host my Calibre and be used as my main reader and I'd prefer to keep reading in Freda over the Calibre built-in reader.

Hi, It is still on the list, but there are some difficulties with getting it to work with Calibre (because Calibre does not seem to recognise the 'file associations' that Windows uses, and I would like to use to make Calibre links open in Freda). I don't know when I will have an answer for that.

[MTR]

Thanks for the follow up. Good to hear it's in the pipeline still. I've managed to open books in Calibre with third party viewers using 'right click > open with' but haven't seen any option to set/change the default reader. I'd assume it's in the code somewhere that sets 'E-Book viewer'as default. Not that it's a deal breaker for me, just the right click option in Calibre to select Freda is sufficient. More important/convenient is having Freda installed as (optional) default reader in Windows and being able to select/open books within Freda using Calibre's library on that device rather than it's own. Will have a look if I can figure out something from the code....

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by MTR

Thanks for the follow up. Good to hear it's in the pipeline still. I've managed to open books in Calibre with third party viewers using 'right click > open with' but haven't seen any option to set/change the default reader. I'd assume it's in the code somewhere that sets 'E-Book viewer'as default. Not that it's a deal breaker for me, just the right click option in Calibre to select Freda is sufficient. More important/convenient is having Freda installed as (optional) default reader in Windows and being able to select/open books within Freda using Calibre's library on that device rather than it's own. Will have a look if I can figure out something from the code....

I couldn't get Calibre to set the default reader as Freda, because, though Calibre does let you set a different reader program, it does it by asking you to specify the executable (that is, the .EXE file). Freda being a Windows Store App, you can't launch it using the name of its .EXE file. There is, I think, some long hexadecimal-infested incantation you could use with the link to the Windows Store .EXE to make it launch Freda, but so far I did not figure it out.

[MTR]

Ah, I haven't yet tried with a WSP, only with 'normal' executables. I remember there being an easy way to port desktop apps to WSA, but so far not the other way wound. So making Calibre 'see' a WSA might require Kovid's help. Will see if I can figure out something useful.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by MTR

Ah, I haven't yet tried with a WSP, only with 'normal' executables. I remember there being an easy way to port desktop apps to WSA, but so far not the other way wound. So making Calibre 'see' a WSA might require Kovid's help. Will see if I can figure out something useful.

I've not actually delved into the Calibre source code (Python is not really my cup of tea) but I believe that in principle all that Calibre would need to do is launch it as a URI - such as by calling Launcher.LaunchUriAsync() - passing a URI like "file:///path/to/file.epub". Then, as long as the user had previously told their device to use that third party reader (Freda, or whatever) as the default association for files having the EPUB extension, it would all work nicely, I think.

[jackie_w]

If you go to calibre Prefs - Behavior and uncheck EPUB in the 'Use internal viewer for' list then the book is supposed to open in whatever default app Windows has set for EPUB. Does that not work in your case?

[radius]

Won't be as good as a dedicated reading app, but it looks like the next update of Windows will include an epub reader right in the Edge web browser:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexp...-14971-for-pc/

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If you go to calibre Prefs - Behavior and uncheck EPUB in the 'Use internal viewer for' list then the book is supposed to open in whatever default app Windows has set for EPUB. Does that not work in your case?

Cool - thanks for pointing that out; I had not spotted that corner of the preferences screen. It works just fine.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by radius

Won't be as good as a dedicated reading app, but it looks like the next update of Windows will include an epub reader right in the Edge web browser:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexp...-14971-for-pc/

This is 'live' now, and works in Windows 10 or Windows Phone 10 'Creators edition'. It includes TTS, and it will read .epub files directly from the file system.

[tomsem]

Overdrive's 'Libby' app is available for Windows (both W10 and W10M). It's at least better than the Overdrive app for Windows Phone, which is horrible. I also discovered that borrowing a book with it did not take it out of my overdrive Cart, and I was able to also borrow it for Kindle.