[Pre-release] ruBooks - fb2/html/txt reader and pdf/xls/doc viewer based on Books.app

[Colel]

I've been working last month on several enhancements to the original Books.app and reached the point where it can be shared as a pre-release version with a wider audience. There are still a number of glitches, inconsistency in UI and lack of documentation. However the it's rather stable.

ruBooks
Repository: BigBoss's Apps and Things
Category: Productivity

• FB2 support, including support to zip-archived files;
• Localization support, with English, Russian and draft German, Chinese and Japanese languages included;
• Text search;
• Page scrolling with volume control buttons;
• Auto-scroll with adjustable scrolling speed;
• Increased book loading speed;
• Table of contents for single-file books;
• Book cover inside the text;
• Opening files anywhere on the file system under /var - including both home dirs of users "root" and "mobile". Also /var/root/Downloads;
• Color management for fore- and background in both day- and night-modes;
• PDF, XLS and DOC viewer based on Safari engine;
• Justified alignment and other small but very handy enhancements.

Please try it and send me any kind of feedback before it becomes v1.0.

As the original application, ruBooks is going to be released under GNU/GPL - the source code can already be downloaded from the home page, but it might lack in some files all the obligatory headers. I am not an expert on GPL, so if you spot any potential noncompliance - let me know, so that I can fix it ASAP.

[Tagir]

Love all the enhancements you've made to Books.app, especially auto scroll and using the volume buttons.

Can you make the volume buttons control the auto scroll speed while scrolling?

I will continue testing the application and let you know of any problems I come across.

[crashx]

Great app!
A few suggestions:
Landscape mode ( I only tried viewing PDFs)
Saving of page you are at, maybe bookmarking
When opening big PDF ebooks its a little bit slow when you scroll.

But the landscape mode is the most important imho.

Thanks for your effort and greetings, crashx

[Colel]

Actually, there's a trick to switch to the landscape mode for PDFs - open any txt/html file -> press "rotate" button -> close the file -> open PDF.

[Colel]

However ruBooks is primarily targeting html-xml-text files. PDF/XLS/DOC is a nice by-product.

[shamster69]

Hi Colel,
Just like to say a BIG THANK YOU for working on this great app. As soon as I installed it, it immediately replaced my books.app (already a fantastic start). I read a lot of ebooks and your work has made it that much more pleasurable.

Couple of things I would love to see in ruBooks:

1. consistency between fonts. Appreciate this is a beta so this is a minor niggle. Fonts change without notice as I'm going through the book. Some books are fine and others a bit erratic.
2. if reading a single file, it takes a long time to switch to landscape mode.
3. Would be great to hear an update of what you're doing with this app as I can't wait for the next iteration!
Sham

[Colel]

Originally Posted by shamster69

3. Would be great to hear an update of what you're doing with this app as I can't wait for the next iteration!

Apart from cleaning-up the disclaimers and putting together some visual guides and how-tos, I am working on basic search and fast custom rendering that is not limited to single page, as in textReader.

[jrentzke]

Colel, this is very, very nice, thank you!

One thing I've noticed - it doesn't seem to display any pictures that are part of an html page, eg AJ Hall Collection. I can see the picture in the file list with the html pages, and when I click on the picture it displays, but within the html page I get a blue square block with a question mark.
This gets displayed correctly with Books though.

[Colel]

Originally Posted by jrentzke

One thing I've noticed - it doesn't seem to display any pictures that are part of an html page, eg AJ Hall Collection. I can see the picture in the file list with the html pages, and when I click on the picture it displays, but within the html page I get a blue square block with a question mark. This gets displayed correctly with Books though.

Are you speaking about cover page graphiсs? Right now ruBooks only deals with images embedded into fb2 files, ignoring external images.

If you could send me direct link to the sample book and will surely try to see what could be done to make it work.