New Epub reader app

Development Plasma Mobile
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Hi, with Niccolo we are working on a Epub reader app: Graphics / Arianna · GitLab

Currently it looks like this:

Library

arianna library view
arianna library view570×821 19.7 KB

Simple list of book found in the file system. This is based partially on some code from peruse

Reader

arianna reader
arianna reader1076×895 156 KB

This is based on QtWebEngine + epub.js for the reader

Anyone interested in helping out? :slight_smile:

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Current progress on the library view

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most important question: curly pages shader effect when?

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Unfortunately seens to be quite hard Add animation to page transition · Issue #34 · futurepress/epub.js · GitHub

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Its interface is intuitive, but what’s the benefit of this over Okular or Okular Mobile?

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Okular epub rendering is quite bad and slow and doesn’t have any library management feature

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Latest state btw

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image1300×969 236 KB

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Where should I file bugs for it? Do you need a bugzilla product?

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I indeed need a bugzilla product :slight_smile:

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Done!

https://bugs.kde.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Arianna

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Any reason that you didn’t choose to add those features to Okular?

BTW, this is really useful. I’ve had to put up with KOReader until now. :sweat_smile:

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what’s the benefit of this over Okular or Okular Mobile

More concretely, Okular has a number of issues with ePub:

  • It splits the content into paper-sized pages. Unlike an e-reader these pages have nothing to do with the screen, it still scrolls between them, just with an occasional page break. It has neither continuous pageless scrolling, nor screen-based discreet pages.
  • It doesn’t reflow when zooming. It’s clearly designed for fixed-layout content.
  • It lacks a lot of ePub features, such as a lot of CSS, inline SVG, and the hidden attribute.
  • It renders images in ePub at a low resolution and upscales them, resulting in even high-resolution images looking pixelated (presumably a bug in Okular).
  • It doesn’t support ePub 3 (it does handle some non-ePub 2 features, such as the video tag, but it notably doesn’t support ePub 3 TOC).

As for whether it’s simpler to make a separate application or add those features to Okular, I don’t know.

Some questions I have:

  • Does it support both continuous scrolling and discreet pagination modes?
  • Will it be available on Android?
  • Will it have full ePub support (most reader apps seem to lack a lot of CSS and inline SVG; Lithium is the only decent one I’ve been able to find)?
  • Will it support other reflowable publication formats, e.g. MobiPocket, FictionBook, Kindle and Markdown, or is it just for ePub?
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Has anyone reported any of these (to the knowledge of any of the participants of this thread)? I ask because although I might not be the best bug owner for any of them, I can at least try to verify and report them if none of you have the time to.

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Also, text selection in Okular by default highlights a rectangle, rather than highlighting content in a semantic order. But that can be switched, and it would make more sense to default to text highlighting for reflowable documents.

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Is the plan to limit it as a reader or also as a library/collection management (like e.g. Calibre)?

If the latter, then the question of Tellico and Peruse pops up too.

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I know you are concentrating on epub atm but are there also plans to support comicbook formats like cbz/cbr?

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I believe Peruse already handles those.

Gosh we have a lot of reader apps at this point…

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Wasn’t there KParts or something similar that would essentially just pop in a different renderer in the same GUI? (I’m grossly oversimplifying and forgot the right terms)

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KParts still exists, but it’s not relevant here for a few reasons:

  1. It’s the whole guts of the app, not just a front-end or backend. It’s used when you actually want to embed an app inside another one or write a thin wrapper around it with a slightly different UI (e.g. Yakuake is a wrapper with a slightly different UX around the Konsole core functionality).
  2. Its QtWidgets-only and we want to be using QtQuick for our new apps.
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So how is Peruse distinguished from Okular? At least Arianna distinguishes itself by focusing on reflowable documents, but Peruse and Okular both seem to be made for fixed-layout documents.