In my experience stock NST reader is best in this respect. But it also lacks any customization. If we change something e.g. margins size we loose fonts built in ebook. It only offers like 3 reasonable font sizes and margins are enormous.
Most of the time I use FBreader. It has many personalization options like size of the font, you can add new fonts, you can have progress bar etc. but it also ignores some parts of built in css (even if we choose in options not to) - mostly margins I think. To be fair you can set page margins in FBreader settings but it ignores any margins around paragraphs, titles, subtitles, chapters etc. so everything on page is really squeezed.
I use FBreader mostly because of this personalization options and FANTASTIC library.
Mantano Reader like stock reader is good at respecting ebook styles but it lacks any customization as well.
Lately I tested AlReader which also has progress bar but it massacres any ebook formatting.
So my question is can i find something better than FBreader? Probably nothing will have as good library but maybe there's something which respects ebook formatting and have some personalization options?
PS. I'm sorry for massacring english language as AlReader massacres ebook formatting
Yes, style is a hassle.
Some books are completely overstyled where the best thing to do is just delete any CSS files in there.
I have a little Windows exe for stripping automatically.
There were some threads on modding the stock reader to use more sane font sizes and margins.
Related
Having worked with rlToday, and currently coding an app to do something similar, I have wanted a couple of times to display text with an outline (ie white text with black outline so it is visible on any background) but simply printing a black version of the text in a bigger font underneath white text in a smaller fontsize does not work because of the way fonts are scaled.
However, this got me thinking...
What if one were to design a set of custom fonts for this purpose?
The way I am thinking, you would need two fonts - an "inner" version and an "outer" version. The outer version would have to be scaled about the centre of the letter, not about the baseline, and I would imagine that the spacing on the inner font would need to be as wide as the characters on the outer font.
So, before I waste loads of time getting font editors and seeing if it can be done, I would like to ask if anyone knows if this would be feasible, or if they have successfully done it or failed.
Another idea I suppose would be to print the outer font 4 times (left one, right one, up one, down one) - I guess this would have the same effect but at the cost of speed.
In an ideal world, it would be nice to not have to make an inner font - just to have to make an outer version of existing fonts, but I am not sure this would work unless you could set the spacing of the stock inner font wider.
Comments, suggestions please.
The classic path approach isn't working on WM?
Ultimatelaunch does it...I have two colored text and it looks pretty sweet. The font is called 'juice' not sure if that has anything to do with it though
What is this "Classic path" method you speak of?
At a guess I think you mean drawing a line around the font programatically?
This is not an option for some things, unless you have access to the source code - it would be nice to have a solution that could be implimented without needing to code for it in the app. For example, rlToday would benefit nicely from just such a system.
OK, so it has been done before then, although I did search around the net before I posted, honest!
It seems that the term used for the "inner" font is a "fill" font. I am going to try and find a freeware fill + outline font combo, pls let me know if you are aware of any.
Synned said:
Ultimatelaunch does it...I have two colored text and it looks pretty sweet. The font is called 'juice' not sure if that has anything to do with it though
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When you say "Ultimatelaunch" does it - what do you mean? I bought UL and I do not see the font on my system or in the UL dir.
I see a "juice" font on the internet that is a fill+outline set, but it is not free.
So if it is possible, I may well have a bash at doing a free one myself. At the very least it would be worth doing just the numbers for SMS / email counts in rlToday
An update here:
My main use for something like this was to be with applications such as rlToday.
However, stefanux is now writing XIAMultiTheme (XMT) which is compatible with, and extends rlToday. One of the things XMT does is allow you to specify a directory as a font, and it will look for image files named accordingly
ie if you wanted to print "123" you would need "1.png", "2.png" and "3.png" in the directory you specify.
I have made a 16px high font of numbers in transparent PNG (Great for overlaying message counts onto icons) and added it to the XMT project for now.
If the need is still there in a while I will look at making a fill font combo and releasing it, maybe as part of the XMT project, but for now this is a good enough solution for me.
dupe post deleted
We all find a lot of very interesting software in this forum which at the moment is far superior to what Microsoft or the vendors come up with.
The thing that bothers me (personally) a bit is the non-uniformity of all the applications offered. One application is doing nice pulldown menus with custom based settings while the other is doing the native windows thingy.. If we could work out a standard "framework", this way we spare ourselves the work of re-inventing the wheel over and over again and we can focus on the actual functionality.
Here some examples of what could be done:
- Default way of browsing files (kinetic scrolling list, like throttle launcher)
- Default listbox (see 1st)
- Semi Transparent keyboard (to see what you're typing through the KB)
- Transparent scrollbars (like the omnia viewer)
- Transparent menu's
- Look for active today screen and adapt wallpaper (Manilla, 2day, etc.)
- Sizeable custom title bars (for big screens or small screens)
- Resolution aware (no pixels but %'s)
- Tilt Sensor / Accelerometer abstraction
- Uniform but skinable (skin will be used for every app based on this famework)
- Etc.
Is there somewhere being worked on this kind of thing? I was thinking in making some open source re-usable classes in which we can put it all.. I don't say I can do this (alone) but if we make it a group effort it could be a very nice concept imho..
Flash files are used widely, but when people use it, they always need new demand. People always chase perfect. SWF files optimization is one of the chasing things. Here is the tip for how to optimaiz flash swf files.
General optimization
Please use symbols, animated or otherwise, for every element that appears more than once. You need to use tweened animations when you are creating animation sequences, because these animations occupy less file space than keyframs. Use movie clips instead of graphic symbols for animations sequences. You need to reduce the area of change in each keyframe as possible as you can to make the action happen in as small area as possible. Try your best to avoid animating bitmap elements and use bitmap images as background or static elements.
Colors
You can use Color menu in the Symbol Property inspector to create many instances of a single symbol in different colors. Then you need to use Color Mixer to match the color palette of the document to a browser-specific palette. Use gradients sparingly. You need about 50 bytes for filling an area with gradient color. You can use alpha transparency sparingly because it can slow playback.
Texts and fonts
You need limit the number of fonts and font style. Please use embedded fonts sparingly because they can increase file size. Select only the needed characters instead of including the entire font for Embed Fonts options.
Lines and elements
Do your best to group elements. You can separate elements that minimize the number of separate lines that are used to describe shapes by using layers. Reduce the number of special line types as possible as you can, such as dashed, dotted, ragged. Solid lines require less memory and lines that are created with the Pencil tool need less memory than brush strokes.
With these tips, you need not to spend extra money to buy some software or tool. What’s more, these tips are easy to understand, you are not required much flash knowledge.
Hello,
Is there any way to change default font when using "Publisher defaults" option in stock reader app? I can change font size, but when I try to change typeface it always disables publisher defaults. I prefer to use some sans serif font for reading so it's why I'm asking. I know I can embed font in epub file but I'd prefer to not to do it. Of course if there is some code in CSS stylesheet that will force app to use different font I can use it.
Some books have awful CSS in them.
The "Duke Publishing" books that I get from the library are horrible.
I go in and delete the CSS sheet from inside the EPUB.
There are only a few reasons why you should ever have CSS in a book, for formatting quotes or poetry.
They should keep the CSS as generic as possible.
All I can recommend is going in and deleting/modifying the CSS.
You are completely right. Before I start to read a book I always modify CSS to my needs. It only includes margins, line spacing, indentations, justification and font size for headers. But unfortunately my settings are different from those available as defaults in Nook so I'm forced to use "Publisher defaults" option, what blocks font face change. I've tried to embed font in EPUB but it always looked horrible compared to default font so it's why I want to change it to one of sans serif defaults.
Link "Malabar" to the font you want
I believe that the default font for the Nook reader is Malabar. I personally prefer a slab serif font like Caecilia or Amasis. So I went into the /system/fonts directory and removed all of the Malabar fonts and linked each of the Malabar font file names to the equivalent Amasis font name. Now when I use "Publisher Defaults", I get the Amasis font. Doing this will require root of some description. I suspect this might be possible without permanently rooting the Nook, but as I want my rooted, I have not tried that.
It's good idea - didn't think about that before. I'm not sure but maybe it will be doable using ADB access. I think I can just change names of Malabar with Helvetica Neue (my preference) and that way I will still have 6 fonts to choose from with default Helvetica Neue.
Yes, you can do it with adb access (that is how I did it). I am not sure if renaming the fonts will work because I think the name of the font is imbedded in the file, but you can certainly try that. What I actually did was create a new directory called archive (/system/archive) and moved the Malabar fonts to that directory so I could easily restore them if I ever wanted to. I also move apks I don't want to run into that directory so I still have a copy I can easily access "just in case".
Hey folks,
I have been into this app which has a lot to do with calendar and dates.
I am still confused about the libraries available for it, I will be requiring the calendar to have following features:
- The calendar should change (by month) when I swipe UP or DOWN
- The boxes of month should have specific colors according to the events of that particular day, eg: red for urgent issues, green for vacation and so on
- The boxes should also have ICONS like weather updates for that particular date
- A LIST VIEW of the calendar will also be needed
If anyone has seen any which can accommodate these features, do let me know.
Cheers
Alex
Hey Alex,
for me, these seem more like programming issues, rather than library ones.
For the first one (The calendar should change (by month) when I swipe UP or DOWN) implementing a gesturedetector is the best way to go Imo.
The other three are simple coding issues, like setting backgrounds, drawables and implementing a listview.
As a tip, you should check out a library we made called "CalendarWrapper" (sorry, I can't yet post links, search for it on GitHub). Basically it's a wrapper around the CalendarProvider, so there's no need to mess around with cursors, everything can be done with object methods. It lacks a few features though.
I don't think there are any ready to use libraries with these specific features, so I'm afraid you will have to build it yourself. There are a few date picker / time picker dialogs floating around, or android-times-square from Square, but you'll have to look into extending it with the specific features like image overlay support for the weather/icon.
caldroid
Have a look at caldroid, it does not have all the functions you seek but is very customizable.
Since you are asking for too much in one library, you will have to do a lot of coding on top of any library that you choose.
thankx
Thankx guys, CalendarWrapper did give me something to look into but caldroid has almost done the job for me.
I have finished the bulk of the job with caldroid now it is printing images inside the dates and list view left.
I do know where to start for list view but printing icons inside boxes could be tricky
Will update you guys when I am done with the APP and put it on play store.
Cheers