I guess it had to happen sooner or later
Oct. 5th, 2016 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelStanza, my beloved but orphaned ePub reader, no longer works properly after the recent iOS 10 update on my iPhone and iPad. Instead of going from page to page as it ought, it only displays the first page of each chapter.
I could understand an update breaking the app entirely, but I'm totally boggled that it could cause such a minor but disabling bug.
I've been investigating other options, and the good news is that (unlike the last time I tried this), there are options I can stand. My wish list isn't that large, but in the past, most ePub readers have failed on at least one of the requirements. I want the ability to define font, specify font size to a fairly fine granularity, define paragraph indent, define line spacing (leading), define space between paragraphs (should be zero, with paragraphing indicated by indents), set body text to ragged right with hyphenation, and have formatting from the original document (bold and italic) display properly.
Shubook fails on the bold/italic display, and even the large margin setting is just a bit too narrow for my taste.
iBooks fails because the leading isn't configurable, and there's too much space between lines. Also, the font size granularity is too coarse.
Ebook Reader fails because almost nothing but font and font size is configurable. Also, it may have the world's most generic app name. I think I tried it once before, but if so, I'd forgotten. As is likely to happen with generic things.
Bluefire Reader fails because it has a horrible interface and minimal configuration options. Or at least it did the last time I tried it, a couple of years ago. The one thing I have to say in its favor is that there were a couple of badly formatted fanfic works that were readable in Bluefire and totally not in Stanza, at least not without a reformat of the ePub file.
Megareader fails because it doesn't allow indented (not "intended," you silly fingers) paragraphs with no space between. I actually paid for this one (all of $2) back when an iOS upgrade broke Stanza completely (it got better), but never used it regularly.
Gerty is totally new to me since the last time I looked at apps. A first look was very promising, but I soon realized that a) the text scrolls vertically, not page by page (which may be the most sensible way to do it, but my eyes aren't used to it), and b) there doesn't seem to be a way to enable hyphenation. I'm using the free version, and am not inclined to pay the $4 to upgrade, because vertical text scrolling appears to be the only option.
I don't remember why the original Marvin didn't work for me, but I just downloaded the free version of Marvin 3 -- it's apparently an entirely new app optimized for iOS 10. The reviews are quite uneven, but it's looking like the best possibility of the bunch. All of the required features are there, though I'm not sure, once I've tweaked my current eBook to the way I want it, if there's a way to set that as the default for all other books I read on the app. The other annoyance is that the bottom eighth or so of the screen is currently filled with a red bar that promises to go away if I pay $5 for the full version. I can have a day free to check out the full version, but I'm not going to do that tonight.
So if there's no way to bring Stanza back to life, I'll probably settle on Marvin 3. But I expect I'll continue to mourn Stanza for quite a while.
I could understand an update breaking the app entirely, but I'm totally boggled that it could cause such a minor but disabling bug.
I've been investigating other options, and the good news is that (unlike the last time I tried this), there are options I can stand. My wish list isn't that large, but in the past, most ePub readers have failed on at least one of the requirements. I want the ability to define font, specify font size to a fairly fine granularity, define paragraph indent, define line spacing (leading), define space between paragraphs (should be zero, with paragraphing indicated by indents), set body text to ragged right with hyphenation, and have formatting from the original document (bold and italic) display properly.
Shubook fails on the bold/italic display, and even the large margin setting is just a bit too narrow for my taste.
iBooks fails because the leading isn't configurable, and there's too much space between lines. Also, the font size granularity is too coarse.
Ebook Reader fails because almost nothing but font and font size is configurable. Also, it may have the world's most generic app name. I think I tried it once before, but if so, I'd forgotten. As is likely to happen with generic things.
Bluefire Reader fails because it has a horrible interface and minimal configuration options. Or at least it did the last time I tried it, a couple of years ago. The one thing I have to say in its favor is that there were a couple of badly formatted fanfic works that were readable in Bluefire and totally not in Stanza, at least not without a reformat of the ePub file.
Megareader fails because it doesn't allow indented (not "intended," you silly fingers) paragraphs with no space between. I actually paid for this one (all of $2) back when an iOS upgrade broke Stanza completely (it got better), but never used it regularly.
Gerty is totally new to me since the last time I looked at apps. A first look was very promising, but I soon realized that a) the text scrolls vertically, not page by page (which may be the most sensible way to do it, but my eyes aren't used to it), and b) there doesn't seem to be a way to enable hyphenation. I'm using the free version, and am not inclined to pay the $4 to upgrade, because vertical text scrolling appears to be the only option.
I don't remember why the original Marvin didn't work for me, but I just downloaded the free version of Marvin 3 -- it's apparently an entirely new app optimized for iOS 10. The reviews are quite uneven, but it's looking like the best possibility of the bunch. All of the required features are there, though I'm not sure, once I've tweaked my current eBook to the way I want it, if there's a way to set that as the default for all other books I read on the app. The other annoyance is that the bottom eighth or so of the screen is currently filled with a red bar that promises to go away if I pay $5 for the full version. I can have a day free to check out the full version, but I'm not going to do that tonight.
So if there's no way to bring Stanza back to life, I'll probably settle on Marvin 3. But I expect I'll continue to mourn Stanza for quite a while.
