Reader - feedback and problems

[Krytes42]

Overall, I really like the increased functionality and customization of the reader- it's a massive upgrade from version 3. What I liked, what I found confusing, and possible bugs:
Liked:

• I love that it's possible to set a separate default flashcard category for each file.
• Ability to easily turn on tone colours is absolutely amazing
• It's nice to be able to use custom fonts. I wonder, is there an option to use fonts specified in an epub if they're installed on the device? I'm thinking of books that have 'handwriting' and 'printed-text' fonts in the same file.
• the 'words' tab in the 'book' menu is really neat. I like seeing the words by frequency, and it's fun to be able to generate charts full of stats - I want to explore this bit more. It would be nice if I could mark words as known, and then just see a list of the words that I don't already know and their frequency.

Confusing or disliked:

• I didn't realize that in the 'bookshelf' view, the icons I'm looking at represent folders rather than individual books, especially since the icon sometimes shows the cover of one of the books on that shelf.
• If the most-recently-added book in a folder doesn't have a cover image, then the whole folder gets the default 'file folder' image, and there doesn't seem to be a way to reorder books within a folder (is it always by date added?).
• There's no visual distinction between an empty folder and one where the most-recently-added book doesn't have a cover image.
• When the document settings type is 'custom', there doesn't seem to be an option to paginate the document or to change margin size and paragraph spacing. When the document settings type is 'simple', there's no option to choose a default flashcard category for the file.
• I'm not sure what the "exclude flashcard" and "require flashcard" options do, and now I'm not even sure where I found that option.

Possible bugs:

• I tried to move a book from the auto-created "MC Break (S)" folder to a custom folder. The book disappeared from the MC Break folder but didn't appear in my custom folder. The file itself wasn't deleted (it still shows up in 'Recent Documents' and I can open it), but it no longer appears anywhere in the bookshelf.
• the "width" property isn't being honoured in epub <img> tags. <img width="50%" or whatever has no effect on the actual width of the image.
• In the 'words' tab under the top-right 'book' icon, I tried to create a custom filter 'does not have a flash card'. It didn't work (I used matching type 'require', condition 'has flashcard', comparison 'no') and no words were displayed, but the 'words' tab still displayed "#occurrences 68" above what would have been the first word displayed if there had been any.
• I thought I'd chosen the default flashcard category 'vanilla witch', and the default flashcard category shows 'vanilla witch', but when I actually clicked into it, the category with a tick beside it is 'grade 5' (the first category in the list). Words are added to 'grade 5'.
• When creating a new flashcard with the "+" button from the reader, the icon doesn't change to indicate that the word has been added, and it will happily add duplicates to the same category without prompting.
• When creating a new flashcard with the "+-" button from the reader, there doesn't seem to be a difference between "Chinese entry" and "Chinese example" - no matter which is checked, it adds the entire sentence containing the new word, but no definition. I'd like a way to create a card with both the definition and the sentence where the word was added.
• When creating a new flashcard with the "+-" button from the reader, leaving the "check for duplicates" slider unchecked doesn't seem to have any effect - it still creates duplicate cards without any warning.

Feature requests:

• It would be nice to be able to sort epubs by author/title/subject/metadata tags
• Is it possible to set different dictionary orders when performing a general search vs reading a document? For a general search I'd like the outlier dictionary first if there is an entry because it's interesting info and I don't mind scrolling down on the full dictionary page, but for a popup definition when reading a book I'd like a short and basic definition first.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for all this great feedback!

It would be nice if I could mark words as known, and then just see a list of the words that I don't already know and their frequency.

You're on the right track with the filter, but it is indeed bugged in the current release version - working on it though.

• I didn't realize that in the 'bookshelf' view, the icons I'm looking at represent folders rather than individual books, especially since the icon sometimes shows the cover of one of the books on that shelf.
• If the most-recently-added book in a folder doesn't have a cover image, then the whole folder gets the default 'file folder' image, and there doesn't seem to be a way to reorder books within a folder (is it always by date added?).
• There's no visual distinction between an empty folder and one where the most-recently-added book doesn't have a cover image.

Yeah, that whole bookshelf screen is one of those cases where Writing A Good Version Of This Common Feature Just For Our Chinese Dictionary App is a big lift, but we do need to refine some of the visuals.

When the document settings type is 'custom', there doesn't seem to be an option to paginate the document or to change margin size and paragraph spacing. When the document settings type is 'simple', there's no option to choose a default flashcard category for the file.

We're getting rid of the 'custom' business for our next update, now it's all one set of settings but two screens - 'settings' and 'formatting' - with separate sets of profiles. (and it does include the default category option)

Is it possible to set different dictionary orders when performing a general search vs reading a document?

This can theoretically be accomplished in the current app with a custom Reader Screen, but we're getting rid of those and pushing the interesting options in them - including custom dictionary order - to reader settings instead. (since document settings profiles are now more flexible - can create / apply arbitrary ones - it seemed simpler to put them there)