topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Thursday March 28, 2024, 4:09 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?  (Read 11740 times)

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« on: October 17, 2011, 02:12 PM »
Okay, so I'm pretty pissed off right now.

I upgraded my iPad to iOS5 a couple of days ago, and boy was that a craptastic experience - dismal download speeds... yeah sure, lots of people hitting Apple's servers at the time, but they're trying to position themselves as a cloud provider and can't handle it? Not to mention that the crapTunes downloader doesn't know how to resume downloads... like, wut, it's 2011?.

Anyway, I digress - yesterday I realized that Stanza no longer works, throwing Sig6 and Sig11 errors. What, an OS update on easy-to-support fixed-capability hardware that breaks backwards compatibility of a regular usermode application? "Apple - suddenly everything sucks!". Then I realize that Stanza probably won't be updated, since Amazon bought Lexcycle probably pretty much just to kill off Stanza. Ugh.

And of course there's no way to downgrade to the previous iOS version - I thought the backup I made before installing iOS5 would allow that, but I guess that's a silly expectation when you're dealing with crApple. Not even if you find a 4.whatever firmware image from their own servers - you need a jailbroken device for that. Like, wtf?

This leaves me with, what? iBooks is a bit of a joke. Too much time has been spent on making it "cute", like the bookcase UI metaphor and the super-animated page transitions. But it's slow, and requires the use of crapTunes to transfers ebooks over from my collection. Ugh.

Stanza had a bunch of features going for it, where the important ones I'm looking for in a new reader are:
  • Calibre integration, so I can simply grab the ebooks from a Calibre instance running on my workstation.
  • Fast no-nonsense page flipping.
  • Compact list of available eBooks (cover art and title, perhaps possibility to sort by author or title).

I came about Ouiivo eReader, but it's unstable, can only show the first page of search results from a Calibre server, et cetera.
- carpe noctem

wraith808

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 11,186
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2011, 03:03 PM »
I don't know of an alternative, but at least I know not to upgrade.  I also use eReader, but I see that it's gone... if you ever downloaded it, you might try to recover it, because it supports most if not all of the formats stanza did, and has a minimal interface.

UPDATE: I just realized that I hadn't opened stanza on my new phone- I get the same problems unfortunately.

Some threads on the support forum (no answers of course):
http://getsatisfacti...for_the_iphone_ios_5
http://getsatisfacti..._unhandled_exception

One of them recommends readMe, which I hadn't heard of... I'm happy with eReader (though it doesn't support o'reilly like stanza did, so that's a bummer), but I might check this one out too.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2011, 03:18 PM by wraith808 »

nosh

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 1,441
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2011, 10:35 PM »
Don't know any alternatives, I only use iBooks (since Calibre converts text to epub) but it's become progressively slower with iOS upgrades [insert conspiracy theory here], which is a shame. Rolling back the OS on a JB device comes with its own set of problems, since a lot of apps don't have backward compatibility.

BTW, are you using an iPad 2? It would really suck if iBooks was slow on there too!

(I'm waiting for an untethered JB before I go near iOS 5 - Pic somewhat related  :D)

fXHvx.jpg

Paul Keith

  • Member
  • Joined in 2008
  • **
  • Posts: 1,989
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2011, 01:55 AM »
Don't have an Ipad but the only thing I could find is the Kindle software although obviously it doesn't sync with Calibre.

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2011, 08:16 AM »
BTW, are you using an iPad 2? It would really suck if iBooks was slow on there too!
Yup - pageturn on PDFs is almost as slow as a Kindle screen refresh... that's NOT good. I can live with iBooks not being perfect, I guess, but...

...having to go through iTunes to get stuff on the iPad really sucks, I'm not putting that p.o.s on my workstation - and Calibre+eBooks is on the workstation, not the laptop where I've begrudgingly installed iTunes. THE killer feature of Stanza was definitely that it could connect (wireless, of course) to Calibre on my workstation, and transfer books that way. (That it's faster and it's UI is in many ways better than iBooks was a pleasant bonus).

The Really Big Feature of iOS5, the iCloud, is pretty much useless. Yeah sure, wireless backup of the iPad is fine and all, and the sync between iDevices is probably nice as well. But it doesn't offer you any easier access to your files, no new way to get data onto or out of the iDevice, etc. It's just another of those crApple black boxes.
- carpe noctem

nosh

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 1,441
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2011, 08:54 AM »
For PDFs I use GoodReader, which is pretty awesome feature-wise. You can sync using Dropbox, there's even a "Local Servers (via wifi)" option there, dunno exactly how it works though - I transfer files via SCP (jailbreak perk). I can't really speak for its speed, since I have nothing to compare it to... I read 20-40 MB magazines (full graphics) there and am quite happy with it.

wraith808

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 11,186
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2011, 08:36 PM »
Stanza has been updated, and I can confirm that it again works in iOS5.  There was apparently a problem with the library, so that could be an issue.

Renegade

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 13,288
  • Tell me something you don't know...
    • View Profile
    • Renegade Minds
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #7 on: November 11, 2011, 12:20 AM »
So, has the update insanity settled down enough for someone that always waits because he doesn't like farting around with software updates that break things?

-- Haven't updated to iOS 5 for that exact reason -- stuff breaks.

Is it safe enough now?
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

wraith808

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 11,186
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #8 on: November 11, 2011, 06:35 AM »
So, has the update insanity settled down enough for someone that always waits because he doesn't like farting around with software updates that break things?

-- Haven't updated to iOS 5 for that exact reason -- stuff breaks.

Is it safe enough now?

*I* haven't updated my iPad.  I only have iOS5 because I got an iPhone 4S (out of need this early- my prior phone got wet)

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2011, 04:07 PM »
Stanza has been updated, and I can confirm that it again works in iOS5.  There was apparently a problem with the library, so that could be an issue.
Wonderful - back to having a sane method of transferring PDFs to my iPad(*) :-*. I seriously thought Amazon had killed off Stanza for good.

(*) well, technically, pulling them from Calibre, using Stanza using my iPad.
- carpe noctem

wraith808

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 11,186
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2011, 07:21 PM »
The biggest issue I have is that I got most of my books I read in stanza from somewhere other than an organized store, so most of them didn't have the book information.  I entered all of them at varying times over a year.  I was almost done!

...and now I'm back to square one...  :'(

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: iPad2: alternative to Stanza?
« Reply #11 on: November 18, 2011, 08:15 PM »
I have the metadata pretty well nailed down in Calibre, and it shows just fine when I use Stanza to browse the booklist from Calibre... but it seems like Calibre only keeps the metadata in it's own database files, and doesn't update the PDF files. Very good default choice (lots of DIEDIEDIE to applications that touch my files without asking), but I'd like an option(*) to update the PDFs - because once in Stanza, some of them have reeeeeally cruddy metadata :)

(*): option might be hiding somewhere right under my nose :-)
- carpe noctem