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?
Er, what do you mean by “actually works”?
For an ebook reader to actually work, it must:
- Install, launch and run on the hardware/OS platform it is offered for
- Read typical ebook formats including .epub files
- Display the contents of the ebook on the screen
- Display the contents of the ebook on the screen correctly.
- Allow turning the page forward and back.
- Allow zooming in and out.
Too many I have tried don’t display anything. Or display the background image and then the text that should be on that page as separate pages. Or that lock to “one entire page on the screen” but it’s shrinking a 9x12 page to the size of a phone screen so each word is now 3 pixels across.
PEBKAC or ID ten T user error, IMO.
If all software is “bad”, it’s probably the eBook files themselves. Calibre will work if the file is good.
The closest I can find is “Readest.” That renders the books as close as I can find, so the books aren’t “corrupt.” Badly authored? Likely, but the data is intact. Main problem with “Readest” is it’s made for Gnome so it’s UI is insipid. No joy at all on mobile. I think I need to print these things to PDF?
Use Calibre, it’s a full ebook library manager but include a fully functioning reader for all non-DRM files. KOreader also should work, is made for e-ink devices but supports Linux and Android. If neither of those work then your epub files are corrupted somehow.
Calibre doesn’t work; it displays the left half of the first page and then nothing. Overly complicated as well; it’s an entire authoring suite. Reminds me of emacs, it’d be a nice OS if they’d put a decent text editor in it.
Calibre is THE ereader program. I agree with the other user that it may be a problem with your epub files or perhaps your system itself.
I hope that’s not true, as badly made as Calibre seems to be.
That sounds like operator error or a bad epub. I’ve been using calibre for more than a decade on all 3 major OSes and it’s been rock solid except when i’ve tried to display corrupted data or something.
FBReader for Android is very good.
My only problem with it is that it doesn’t handle PDFs in the same way as epubs.
“This app may collect location, personal info and 4 others”
What could an e-reader app need with my location?
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.
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.
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
Been using using ReadEra on my Huawei for years now with no issues. Can read epub, mobi and PDF with no issue. Not sure if it exists on Linux but otherwise it’s great and free.
Calibre
Well, I’d normally suggest moon+, since I’ve used it for a long time on dozens of devices with no issues that weren’t in the source files themselves (which I would normally suggest calibre to fix those, but you mentioned not being fond of it as well).
The next best app I’ve found in terms of rendering the files correctly is librera. After that, I’d go with maybe fbreader, or koreader for non android devices
Epub is definitely not write-only. It’s pretty much the default format for ereaders outside the Amazon ecosystem. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect though I’ve written something like five books at this point (depending on the length one thinks it acceptable to call a “book”). And, even with paying attention to my formatting during my finalization process, I get errata from the conversion process
Calibre is the most consistent at converting the base document files into epub, but it still manages to either misread my formatting, or not be very clear in what formatting is supposed to be used to achieve a given result once converted. Most of the word processing software (I use libreoffice, but used to use others) doesn’t do any better.
So what you may be running into is that the files themselves have some little anomaly from their creation that’s rendering weird in different apps. I can’t say for sure that’s the case, but I have seen exactly that problem before with my own work.
Thing is, other ebook formats aren’t better. Mobi is actually worse to deal with, and tends to cause its own problems. PDF is consistent if you format the origin file correctly, but isn’t great for books without extra work. The the other options are significant downgrades from there, imo as both reader and writer.
All of that said, there are a few other apps that I’ve tried that weren’t bad, but didn’t match my preferences. Readera is solid. Prestigio usually rendered fine. Pocketbook was kinda bad, imo, but only in terms of ui, not rendering.
On fdroid, anx reader is good. Lx reader is clunky, but rendered mostly okay. Those are the only ones from fdroid that aren’t in the play store that I’ve used to test my own books.
Overall, librera is probably where I’d point you since you weren’t happy with moon. The ui isn’t great, but it works okay. The rendering is at least consistent, so you’d know that any issues would be with the files rather than the reader.
Edit: looking at one of your other comments, I noticed that images and tables are where you ran into trouble. That comes down to the files themselves usually. I think you may want to crack open calibre and convert what you have into a few formats and see if any of them preserve the formatting better in a reader app.
Calibre doesn’t render these files correctly. It opens up, for a split second the first page is rendered, then the left half of the background of the first page disappears, so I get a thin white rectangle with text that runs off of it, and then no other pages render.
I think the books I’m working with…they’re similar in format to cookbooks or textbooks? A lot of pictures, diagrams, graphical elements, with text set over them, this sort of thing:
Probably needs to be a PDF?
Yeah, that’s definitely the use case for a PDF.
Dammit, this is bugging me lol.
Do you have a way to share the file that you’re comfortable with a stranger having? I can piddle with out and try it on stuff over the next couple of days and see if I can find something that renders right.
I got a bunch of woodworking books off Humble Bundle, the example above is Taunton Press’ Complete Illustrated Guide To Table Saws. I’m comfortable with you having that book, not sure I’m comfortable distributing copies.
I did find a different book of theirs and ran it through the stuff I have on my tablet
The only one that gave a decent render was perfectviewer, which is mainly for comics.
Nowhere near as good as a pdf version of a different book from the same publisher, a recipe book.
I think you may end up being better off converting files to pdf and going that route
I think I’m going to do that. Now to find conversion software that will do the job since Calibre seems to choke on these. Pandoc maybe?
That would be where I’d start
Totally fine, no worries. I’ll see if I can dig up a copy.
Wait! Have you tried sumatra?
It is/was an app on Windows that handles a pretty wide range of text files. Iirc, it did a decent job with some manuals I had in pdf and ebup formats. I can’t promise it’ll render right, just that it’s an option that worked for a similar use case a few years ago
Edit: I didn’t think of it earlier because it’s windows based, but it might be doable on Linux nowadays https://sumatrapdf.org/
Tolino. I’ve two, the oldest is 10.
I suspect that PDF is the only format that can do all you ask. However, in the PDF file, the type would need to be converted to curves, to keep it from reflowing, or resetting differently from what was intended to be printed. As a graphic designer, flattening all raster images to one image, and converting the type and other graphic elements to curves, then sending as PDF, was the only way I could ensure that what I sent was what got printed. (There were exceptions for printing that wouldn’t apply to digital rendering, such as spot colors, etc.)
So, the issues you have are in the file format. But, even PDFs will render differently, if the designer isn’t hell-bent on building a file that won’t.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too. Don’t fuck around with EPUBs. Use PDF.
If everyone smells like shit, check your own boot. Have you tried literally ANY other ebook? Or tried a different means of transferring to the ereader? Or a different source for ebooks?
I will say this dysfunctional ebook that isn’t working on anything might make a great litmus test for choosing an ereader that will work the best in the worst digital conditions, for making a long-term choice. Than again, my uncle always said “Practicing on a shit tool, only trains you to use a shit tool.” That might be extrapolated to optimizing a tool to run in shit conditions or on a shit project.
What the fuck you babbling about?
Yeah. This is Lemmy. Why would I expect communities about books to have any reading comprehension skills? Let’s try simple sentences.
I have ebooks.
I need software to read those ebooks.
I tried many softwares. None of them are good.
Do you know of any ebook software that works?
You talk funny.
