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FaeryLynne@sh.itjust.works

Anybody know of an ebook reader that actually works? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 6 months ago by captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works to c/freeebooks@sh.itjust.works

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I can't find one. I've tried about a dozen across Linux and Android, not a single one is even remotely usable. It may be that epub is a write-only format?

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[–] druk@feddit.uk 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Moon+ Reader Pro, unfortunately haven't found any better than this one. The settings menus are not super intuitive, but once you set it up how you want, it is perfect.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I tried the non-pro version, it mangles the formatting of the book, text size and position is wrong on the page and the UI.

It might be designed for text-only books? It seems to have every font option other than "display as intended." Might be useful for text-only novels where end-users messing with the fonts makes sense. I've got books like "The Complete Illustrated Guide To Table Saws" which has a lot of images and diagrams with text overlaid, so it needs to be displayed correctly, exactly as it was typeset. Applying font and size adjustments only breaks things.

[–] dreugeworst@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

I think you may be misunderstanding the purpose of e-book formats like epub. It's not like PDF or word documents, where the file dictates the exact layout of each page, or even how many pages are in a book.

Rather it's meant to be a flexible description of a book, that adapts to different screen sizes. More like old websites than a book. So, with a larger screen, more words may fit on a page, so there's fewer pages. This also means the exact location of an image isn't fixed.

This is not a bug or bad rendering, it's working as designed. The reader/user usually decides the font, font size, margins, line spacing etc.

If a book requires precise positioning, control over pages etx.,, epub is the wrong format, you need pdf