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Your ePub Is fine

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Re: Your ePub Is fine

#301

Post by majora2007 »

gabrieletrovato wrote: post #217
stonecharioteer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves FoxIt reader, I'm building https://merrilin.ai to be the best damned ebook reader out there, to support PDF and epub. FoxIt's annotation system is one of the best I've experienced and I want to design one that is just as good if not better.

Building a robust annotation system for both PDF and EPUB is a tough technical challenge, but definitely needed. I've been working in a similar space and recently open-sourced it. It's a local-first 3D library for organizing and reading EPUBs and PDFs directly in the browser. It's called KoreShelf on Github

I just released a pretty solid annotation system for Kavita's EPUB reader. It wasn't super challenging (although Kavita has a custom epub renderer).

Now doing that with PDF would actually make it challenging.

Annotation system (with pics): https://wiki.kavitareader.com/guides/readers/epub/#annotatio...

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#302

Post by themadturk »

ornornor wrote: post #183

If you use a kobo you have to give koreader a whirl! The only thing missing for me is the unified view of the library: koreader requires you to navigate to the subdirectory to open your ebook whereas nickel (kobo’s UI) will list them all in one library regardless of how deeply nested they are. Everything else is better with koreader and it’s super easy to install alongside nickel. And it works very well with calibre…

You can also play with Calibre's default transfer template so all book files go into a single folder of your choice on the device. Then you can set your KOReader home or favorites folder and see everything in one place.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#303

Post by themadturk »

nanapipirara wrote: post #152

I’m supposed to be able to lend ebooks from my local library. Adobe makes it impossible as their software doesn’t run on my macbook…

Adobe Digital Editions runs on my MacBook Air M3 with macOS Tahoe. What problem do you see?

(FWIW, ADE will probably die when Rosetta support goes away with MacOS 28, but one of the de-DRM plugins will read acsm files directly and bring in the books.)

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#304

Post by tracker1 »

acdha wrote: post #20

Adobe has always been like this, too. They squandered an enormous marketshare with Flash because the alternative would've been spending a couple million on QA and they managed to unite all of the browser manufacturers in agreement that the web was better off without such an unreliable partner. I shipped a couple of things on Flash back in the day but it was staggeringly bad software — random crashes, various heisenbu…

I worked in eLearning in the early-mid 00's and Flash/Flex were king at the time... Came to find so many flaws that were used, and kept me from using Flash at home.

A bit earlier... when Adobe had taken over Macromedia, my hopes were really that Flash would become something like a .zip file with assets as SVG, audio, etc. and ActionScript/JavaScript as the glue... I think it could still be a good package format for browsers. Given Adobe's work prior to that on advancing/enhancing SVG support for browsers etc. Making Flash just the best of breed tool for creators.

That's not what happened though. Adobe is just a massive rental scheme at this point, and I think the time may be up sooner than later... I honestly think at this point, the first well-placed competing product with solid Linux support will unseat them. I know a lot of people are using Davinci Resolve and Photopea, and if those work well enough for you, that's great. Not sure the effort it would take to get some of the open alternatives into a better position overall.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#305

Post by tracker1 »

tjoff wrote: post #149
m348e912 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love or hate Steve Jobs, his insistence of not supporting Flash on the iPhone (in favor of HTML5) accelerated Flash's demise dramatically.

The best feature of flash was that it was so easy to disable. Because 99% of the use was annoying ads that pinned your cpu at 100%. And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. Predictably though, now that annoying crap moved to "newer" tech (javascript) and now we can't disable it as easily or without as little consequence. Just as resource intensive though...

I'd love a browser switch to disable JS in N layers of IFrame... maybe you can have it one layer deep, but nested, it just disables. That would save a lot of grief.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#306

Post by tracker1 »

GreyStache wrote: post #156
tjoff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best feature of flash was that it was so easy to disable. Because 99% of the use was annoying ads that pinned your cpu at 100%. And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. Predictably though, now that annoying crap moved to "newer" tech (javascript) and now we can't disable it as easily or without as little consequence. Just as resource intensive though...

I never bought the benevolent technical angle for not supporting flash. I'm pretty sure Apple strategists knew the value of the gate-kept platform, the app-store revenue stream. The pivotal point was that flash would break this stronghold by allowing rich applications that are reasonably self-publishable. (Excuse me while I go rinse that sentence out of my mouth)

When the iPhone came out, Flash was solely responsible for MOST of desktop app crashes... It was a pretty easy win not to even support it.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#307

Post by tracker1 »

nar001 wrote: post #181
GreyStache wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never bought the benevolent technical angle for not supporting flash. I'm pretty sure Apple strategists knew the value of the gate-kept platform, the app-store revenue stream. The pivotal point was that flash would break this stronghold by allowing rich applications that are reasonably self-publishable. (Excuse me while I go rinse that sentence out of my mouth)

I remember seeing stories about Adobe not being able to, or not wanting to, write a good energy efficient flash renderer for the iPhone, thus being another reason not to support it for Jobs (Adobe being of the mind that "Flash is so big, they'll have to support it" and Jobs proving otherwise)

Forget efficient.. they couldn't manage to create a Flash that didn't crash your browser or have gaping security holes discovered left and right.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#308

Post by timeinput »

jolmg wrote: post #293
timeinput wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pine note. It lives up to that description. It's "fine", but I like to use it as an e ink laptop (well terminal with occasional other uses) with a bluetooth keyboard. I don't know that I would even want to start on using it as an ebook reader. It's bulky / heavy, and just doesn't match my kobo. I imagine asking it to do DRM ebooks would just be a non-starter. I tried to turn a kobo into an eink terminal, and…

Curious, what kind of battery life have you been able to get from the pinenote?

I don't really push it. A couple of hours is all I really ask of it, and I get it.

I feel like it's not great given what I'm asking of it, and that it's an eink display. This is just vibes because I play on it like a few hours a week. I think I'd be very uncertain about getting a real work day out of it as an ssh client.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#309

Post by GoblinSlayer »

mawise wrote: post #253

Sharing my experience as a tinkerer, sideloader, and recent Kobo owner. I used a Kindle for ages, always in airplane mode and only sideloading content. Honestly, it was a pretty good setup.[1] But it seemed like it would be harder to setup this way on newer devices, so when mine finally failed, I got a Kobo Clara BW. I was thrilled I could boot it up in "sideloader mode" and not even register it or enable wifi. I not…

> An update triggered immediately and I was frustrated for days that everything in the UI changed.

You tried to forget that you don't own anything.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#310

Post by paradox460 »

It constantly amazes me that something like Koreader is so good, yet software made by paid professionals can be so bad.

Surely it would be easier for someone like kobo to just use Koreader, implement their ui changes and demand as plugins or patches, and forget ade

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