yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Version 1.10

Hey all,

I am pleased to announce the release of version 1.10 :) I was scrambling to get this stuff out the door, so some of your suggestions may have slipped through the cracks. Fear not, I will get to them as soon as possible. Here is the run down of what's new:

WHAT'S NEW IN V1.10:

* Local zooming. Tap two fingers diagonally down over the section that you want to zoom. Tap the screen again to dismiss it. It works great for zooming in on that hard-to-read text.

* Support for image directory comics. An image directory comic is a folder that has images (of any format) in it. It can not have directories in it.

* Right-to-left reading. It is saved as a preference, but you can toggle it on and off as you wish.

* Ability to mark a folder or file as "read" or unread from the file browser. Long-press on a file to bring up the selector.

* Ability to delete a folder or file from the file browser. Long-press on a file to bring up the selector.

* Custom directory images. If you place an image called "cover.jpg" in a directory, it will be used as the thumbnail for the folder. You may need to clear the thumbnails for it to load though.

* Buttons around the page thumbnails that allow you to quickly scroll to the bottom or top of the page thumbnails.

* Ability to clear thumbnails from a folder or across the board for the whole application.

* Additional memory management improvements (it can still be better though - still working on it)

* Additional help information.

* Ads have been added back.

BUG FIXES:

* Fixed issue on page overflowing out of bounds on devices with smaller screens

* Fixed issue with random force-close when attempting to open a comic

* Fixed issue with page thumbnails not loading

WHAT'S COMING IN THE NEXT RELEASE:

* PDF support. Sorry, but it was harder than I expected, so I punted it to the next release. I will be working on it exclusively not that I got almost all the low-hanging fruit out of the way. I will release it ASAP.

I hope you guys enjoy it. As always, feedback and suggestions are appreciated. If you guys can rate the app in the market, it would be very much appreciated as well. Thanks a bunch!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] okegesan:
Update

Awesome update Thank You! And I Must say once again...Great Work on this app...I use it everday!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Is anyone seeing any issues? Thumbnails not getting generated or something like that? Or files that are not able to be opened? I woke up to a mess of error reports, and it has me worried.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] MagicMicky:
Hi

Great work with the last version. Thanks a lot

Here some suggestions :

- When you mark as read a folder, it should mark as read all the files inside the folder (and when all the file in a folder are read, it should mark as read the folder)

- When you pinch to zoom, and release just one finger, it should stop zooming, and start mooving into the page (yeah weird request isn't it ? It's not very important, but I think it would be more user-friendly !)

- I'm thinking of a thing that would be totally useless, but so cool. It's to add, in the file manager, an action when you pinch a folder, like there was in the Photo gallery (I think it's called Pinch to peek, you can see here : youtube.com/watch?v=QgGHrgVKs1w ). I don't know if it would be usefull to someone, but i just think it's cool :D

And really thank you for your work ! I am really glad to read comics on my tablet now ! :D

(and for the bugs : since the last version, didn't see anything (but i hadn't enough time to try yet), and when there's less than 3 files in a folder ([EDIT] Or juste others folders), it won't have any thumbnails generated, but i think it's normal. Could it be improved ? (like just showing two comics instead of three ?)

PS : Sorry if sometimes i'm a bit hard to understand, I'm french ! :)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] GokuH12:
Wow, and waiting to get home to try this!, it seems really good, i had tryed all the other option and any of them was good for me.

I Like that u really take a note of our suggestion too ( im not here yet hehe)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Hi Micky,

Thanks for the feedback, I am glad you like it.

* I was aware of the "mark as read" issue that you reported. I had to do it that way because of time constraints. It is definitely on my list of things to do though!

* The second request regarding zoom makes sense I will add it in as well, thanks!

* The pinch-to-peek feature is super cool but isnt very useful. I got some cool ideas along those lines that I am cooking up, but I think some of the other issues are of higher priority.

* The restriction to make a 3 comic requirement was a conscience decision. I think I might drop it down to a minimum of two like you said. You can use a "cover.jpg" image for the time being to make your library much prettier though. I will think about coming up with a better solution, but I dont think it is that much of a priority.

PS: Your English is great - better than some Americans that I know haha.

EDIT: I frogot to ask you guys. How do you guys like the local zoom? Is it useful? I think it might be a tad hard to trigger. I will be adding some buffer to make it easier to bring up.

- kaycha
[Xoom Themes and Apps] GokuH12:
Well this its actually sad, i went to install your app and says that i cant beacuse of my country, i live in venezuela, i really hate this discrimination of google market to everybody that not live in US.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Really? That seems strange. I turned it on for everyone I could possibly turn it on for in the market. and Venezuela is on that list. I will contact the Android Market and ask them what is going on. In the meantime, PM your email. I will send it to you directly!

Thanks for your interest.

EDIT: Ticket submitted. Lets see what Google has to say!

- kaycha
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
missing pixels

I'm getting a little bit of black bars at the top... just a few pixels, it would be fine, if thpse pixel wasn't the ones missing at the bottom of the comics... :)

can't see those pixels at the bottom with zooming and paning. (maybe some diferences between screen resolution and useable resolution excluding honeycomb's bar? )
[Xoom Themes and Apps] gbmitchell:
Can you add in the ability to take a screen shot?
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
I am a bit unclear of your issue. I scale the pages down to the maximum size possible in the screen (you can fill the screen completely because it will distort the image). Most pages in comic books are not the exact same size as the usable screen, so some black bars are inevitable. Are you saying that parts of the page are getting cut off? If so, that is definitely a bug.

Thanks for the report!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Hmm that is an interesting suggestion. I will look into it. Just curious, why do you want to take a screenshot.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] GokuH12:
Ok, i have to say it. WOW, i really like this app, its really fast! and clear and so good to read my manga!, it did open all my formats ( Zip, jpg) . and the litle bar that appear when u tap in the screen to jump to some page its amazing!

Loving it so far! The only thing that i would add are two:

1.- Be able to move the zoom glass that appear

2.- Be able to connect to a online source a download the manga ( chapter, volumen)

Im lately using mango ( Only view in online mode, not have the download ability yet) to do that but its kind slow rendering and zooming in the images!

And again thx for sending me the app!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Glad you like it :) I need to rethink the local zoom if I want to allow it to pan around. They way it is currently implemented makes it a bit hard to do. I will definitely look into it though.

Do you know where mango pulls its manga from? If I could get a reliable source, I definitely could do something similar.

Thanks for the suggestions.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
yes, the amount of black bar at the top looks like the amount missing at the bottom... just some pixels, but a bit annoying when cutting text/dialog...
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
I will try to reproduce this once I get home. Thanks for the heads up!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] gbmitchell:
There were a couple of occasions that I took a screenshot of particular moments so that I could email them to a friend of mine on Comic Zeal, a reader for the iPad (and honestly the best I have used.) It came in handy to show him a panel or page. Of course i could do this with an outside app but it is pretty convenient to have it in the app. I also have been thinking of doing a video podcast and it might be easier than unarchiving and using the image files. I also used it to make a wallpaper out of it but you already have that built in.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Hmm sounds interesting. Its easy enough to do. I'll put it on the list :) What do you like in particular about comic zeal? I actually didn't find it that amazing, but I didn't give it a fair shake. I didnt like its collection management in particular. On a side note, is anyone experiencing issues where they can never open a file that this app should be able to open? It works fine for all of my stuff, but I am wondering if I am missing something...
[Xoom Themes and Apps] gbmitchell:
Honestly your app may have pretty much all of the things I liked about Comic Zeal but I just started using it yesterday and I have not used Comic Zeal regularly in over a month. It also had its problems like how slow it was to load through iTunes. Off the top of my head I know it did a decent job of grouping like issues into a folder.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Ah. That is something I would definitely like to do eventually. I would like to be able to pull meta data from an api like comic vine and have that automatically apply to the comic. With that would be grouping based on different attributes like series, publisher, artist etc. This is definitely not an easy task though. I want to get the fundamentals down before I tackle something like this. It gets iffy - i have noticed some files titled like "006.cbr" You can reliably map that to meta data at all...
[Xoom Themes and Apps] ltracte:
thanks for incorporating my suggestion about the local zooming. but it is kindof inelegant. the diagonal double tap is kindof awkward to do. can you make it so the magnifier just appears over the area you want zoomed? also, can you make the magnifier track around the page, instead of having to close the zoom and open a new one?

sorry to seem picky, just trying to be constructively critical. keep up the good work!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Definitely. I appreciate the feedback. Critical is good. It helps create a better app. I am not a big fan of making the diagonal double tap as well. I am struggling because I do not want to use the swipe function for two different operations (page turning and defining the box for the zoom). What can we use instead to denote a local zoom? Also is panning really necessary or is it just a by-product of it being too difficult/awkward to trigger the local zoom?
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
I found the issue. Like you said, I forgot to take into account the height of the action bar. It is resolved, and I will probably go out with a couple of other stability fixes tomorrow or the day after. Thanks for catching this! :)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] MagicMicky:
Hi.

I think there's an issue with the local zoom. When i double tap, the "zoom window" seems not to be complete, like the image isn't completely taken : there's the outlines of the window, but the image doesn't fill the whole window. It happens only with a double page, in the right section of the page.

And Could it be possible to choose, when a comics come with a double page to stay in portrait mode. Maybe you could just split the page ? It could be a parameter to choose ?

Also, i was wondering if it was possible to get the notification bar hinding while we are reading (like in the Films, or youtube app) ?

Thanks again for taking note of what we report, and for that amazing app ! :)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
possibile controls

I think the "click" overlay with page previews takes too much of the possible uses for this action... this overlay should be contained to other action or clicking in some specific regions of the screen, and the click action could be used to trigger other stuff, like local zooming (clicking, then clicking with other finger and not moving would define the local zooming instead of pinch to zoom... or maybe with overlay widgets to control it... or just transform it into a magnifying glass overlay widget; just tap out side it to quit and click into the page to turn it on. the contextual action bar at the top, link for copy and paste in other apps, could house other similar tools too in the future if needed...)...

other options include three finger click to activate the local zooming... but imho that would be better for the current overlay that triggers on click...
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Hey MagicMicky,

The local zoom allows you to zoom what is on the screen. If you make a bounding box (with your fingers) into the black region of an image that has black border (because of the size) it will also zoom in on that black region. That is why you only see it really happening on double page issues.

I like your suggestion of splitting double-spread pages. I will look into that as a possible option. Thanks!

I definitely can remove the notification bar. I will do it for the next release. Thanks!

I think that is the right path to go down. I think its also a bit too easy to trigger the page thumbnails. It is pretty jarring when you accidentally do it. I think I might move this to a long press action. I like your idea of toggling a different overlay with a click (click of a clear button or something?). The click can be used to prevent the page from turning via a swipe. With that, I can do local zoom by swiping the region you wan to see. I can add the clear buttons on the bottom to turn pages. My only problem with this solution is that it can lead to confusion when you accidentally toggle it and can no longer turn pages with a swipe.

Thanks you guys for excellent suggestions and constantly getting me to re-evaluate and improve the ui.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] MagicMicky:
Yeah but it does it when I'm not zooming in on black region !

[EDIT] in fact it does it in portrait view too, when you try too zoom at the bottom of the image !

[EDIT 2] Hum it doesn't do it on every pages... (If you can't reproduce the bug, maybe i can send you a comic from my collection by mail so you can try)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
I will try to reproduce it. Thanks for the heads up!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] timrock:
ive been using Perfect Viewer for quite sometime. But i will try this out.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
hmm... i think we can't have everything at same time... why not circular menus triggered by long press?

long press, after vibration and visual clue, swipe up to the pages icon and get the current click menu.

long press, after vibration and visual clue, swipe down and switch from swipe to change pages to click left or right to change pages (i would prefer, by default both actions working, as default in the honeycomb home screen... but make then this action could toggle the transparent regional buttons on and off...)

long press, after vibration and visual clue, swipe left/right to do another action... and so on... (you may wanna take a look at youtube for mudbox 2012 new features video where the new circular menu is illustrated... and better/more suited for komiks than the original one from maya...)

for local zooming, i still bet the pinch with three finger still the best option...
[Xoom Themes and Apps] bo_wadh7a:
This can't be installed in ur country :-(

Sent from bo_wadh7a-xoom
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
You know, I really like that idea. Long press on one of the edges will spawn a radial dial (like on labs for the browser) that lets you enter one of several modes or do several actions (next/prev page, thumbnails, local zoom, back to library) which you swipe to. I think that is a really excellent idea, and not too hard too :)

I am a bit unclear how a 3 finger pinch works. It seems like a really awkward motion; I must be missing something.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
What country are you from? PM me your email and I will send it directly to you. Thanks for your interest!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] GokuH12:
Maybe u could use the same effect that the stock browser whrn u enable the menu in thr sides in labs settings, its really great
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Yeah that is what I was think of too. I will give it a shot.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] slaino:
Thanks for welcoming me to these boards.

I used your application for some time now and I must tell you it is good. A lot of great features but I'll focus on the bad points more and some suggestion as well.

I don't remember if these bad points are before or after your update (great one btw):

- I had slow to load covers: few "blank" swipes were required to make them load.

- Another one was forced closes with some comics (very big "V for Vendetta" zip files): I could not reproduce these forced closes.

My suggestions are:

- Adding a page count on the library for each book (right up the reading progress icon?) to show which books have more pages.

- When selecting a book, we could select them using the cover (not only the small checkboxes).

What do you think of these suggestions?
[Xoom Themes and Apps] bo_wadh7a:
I'll pm u now, thanks, am from Kuwait

from bo_wadh7a-xoom
[Xoom Themes and Apps] Aberrix:
I just wanted to say I tried Komik yesterday and after 5 minutes went and purchased the 'donate' version, totally worth it, great product. Is there any plans in the future to make things smoother/quicker? its not too big an issue but if i load a comic and try to scroll in say 8-10 pages quick it kinda lags...

however, again... phenomenal app! and the 16:10 screen is perfect for viewing comics.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] GokuH12:
Google had tell u something about the restriction in the market of ur app?

Venezuela its in the list of new countrys to be able to use de market, but seems to be problems yet =S.

I was reading that there is a option to block countrys of ur list of distribution, can u see if that appear to u?

Just seeing what seems to be the problem now =S with the market
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Google hasn't gotten back to me yet. Their customer service is notoriously slow! It is definitely set up properly (I noticed the block list but nothing is blocked). Maybe it takes some time to get synced?

Thanks I am glad you like it! I cant buffer too many pages because applications on the tablet are only allowed a very small amount of memory. If I try to increase the buffer size there will be a lot of force closes. If you want to scroll through 10 pages. the best bet is to use the page thumbnails when you want to quickly scan through the pages. Those thumbnails load pretty fast. Making things faster and more stable is always on my mind though.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Thanks for the feeback slaino. The program generates the thumbnails the first time and then caches them. The empty thumbnails should only happen the first time you view the file or directory. Thanks for the heads up on the force close. I did some improvements but there is still a lot of work to be done.

I will definitely add the ability to check the box by clicking on the book. I found it annoying too, but didnt have time to implement it. Thanks! I still need to find an elegant way to show the page count of the book. It is a bit tricky though, but I will definitely try to. As always, thanks for the feedback.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] gerbick:
I believe this has been brought up before; however I just noticed that there's a slight black bar at the top, like it pushes down like 24 pixels and if there's anything at the very bottom, it cannot be read.

Seriously... after nightly use of this, that's my only complaint. Best comic reader so far on Android, rivaling what I used to love on the iPad... easily.

Great work.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Thanks! I am glad you like it. I have fixed the issue already and was sitting on it to see if any other bugs were going to pop up. I think I will release a quick patch for it tonight instead of trying to lump it in with the next release.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
IMHO, to the top action should be increase brightness, to the bottom one decrease brightness. to the right could trigger the current page previews/scrolling overlay

about 3 finger pinch, it is just like normal 2 finger pinch, but with your middle finger touching the screen too... the extra detected point on the screen would them trigger the different action... usually, the indicator finger (is that how it is called in english?!) and the middle finger would moving be together, unlike the thumb that would be (but happily) alone...

about the reading direction, by selection a file/folder with long press in the browser, another button like the mark as read and the delete button could define the reading direction or toggle between them (this way you could define an entire directory as desired... and not conflicting with an possible default setting...). and the current toggle within the comic is fine (and another toggle there, this time only when reading a comic, for night mode would be really nice too for B&W comics/mangas).

also, the more I think... be more I believe that the standard action for changing pages could integrate clicking on the side of the screen you like to change page to. just like the home HC screen... make easier too if you're holding the tablet with one hand only. I don't think any change in the current swipe need to be done, only within the current click action to require long press to not interfere with this click to change page method.

also, I can see you cache the next page to faster page switch... but I think you could hang the previous page some more seconds in the cache, so if you changed the page accidentally, you can go back without waiting it to load again.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] ZanshinG1:
If it were me coding it, when the cbz/cbr file were initially opened I'd asynchronously cache the entire archive as bitmaps in the app cache, loading the previous and next into memory as the page changed.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Everything already happens asynchronously. I already am caching previous and next pages into memory. I am halfway through the process of caching more of the archive onto the filesystem. Part of the optimizations I am doing. There are a lot of things you cant do because of the limited heap. It spikes very high when decompressing.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
I was playing with the newer version (released today), and even if the "loading bug" is hard to reproduce, I can tell that it happens a lot just after the "wanna load the next issue", trying to change from the first page of the new issue to the next.

IIRC, it happened in the past too by selecting some page in the click overlay too... but as I don't use it, not sure if it still happens in this situation...

...but it is probably something related to opening pages not currently cached and entering in some kind of loop...

(by the way, when I load the next issue and the bug happens, I usually hit back and load the issue again... sometimes I exit the app, and when I come back, instead of the page I was, it loads the program as it just loaded... not sure if it is a feature because if existing in the first page, or related to the bug itself...)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Thanks for giving me steps to reproduce it. I will look into it asap.
[Xoom Themes and Apps] slaino:
I forgot to mention that I purchased the donation version as well.

I'll post feedback as I use this app some more. It easily became my number one comic reader on honeycomb.

Thanks for all your updates,kaycha!
[Xoom Themes and Apps] jrezin:
i'm currently using the app Screen Filter, with 45% setting and the lowest brightness of xoom, to read some b&w comics/mangas. it's amazing to read in the dark.

I wonder if this functionality could be integrated inside this app... :-)
[Xoom Themes and Apps] kaycha:
Hmmm that should be really easy to do. You got it!