DjVu Reader for iPad and iPhone

(last updated: 31.11.2013)
current version: 2.0.7
dev version: 2.0.8

Content

Capabilities
The Interface

Appearence
Browsing a document
Searching for a document

The Documents menu
The Outline Menu
The Bookmarks Menu
In Document Search Menu
EPUB Support
Creating DjVu documents
Uploading DjVu documents
Downloading Books with Safari
Files transfer with FTP
Using DropBox
Troubleshooting
Wishlist
Bugs and Comments
Changelogs

Capabilities

DjVu Reader is a simple application for iPad that allows to display mainly DjVu documents. It is aimed at being practical and at browsing easily through the documents. With time, its goal has increased and now DjVu Reader can read the following file formats

djvu (normal bundled, indirect if all files in same folder)
secure djvu (SDJVU, encrypted djvu files) are not supported
pdf (normal and password protected)
text (txt, rtf, doc)
EPUB with full EPUB library support (à la Stanza) for documents placed in EPub folder(respect case).
html
chm
image (jpeg, gif, tiff)
Zip

It has many features

iPhone and iPad are supported
Airdrop on supported platforms
Continuous browsing of PDF and DjVu
iTunes file sharing support
Dropbox support
iCloud support
In app configuration, without exiting and quitting the app
FTP server included which allows synchronization with your desktop structure
import documents from other apps
remember last read position
usable outline if available (in PDF and DjVu documents)
editable outline in DjVu documents
editable bookmarks in PDF and DjVu documents
send by email
open in... feature to open documents with other apps
search for a document in the folder structure
search for a word in a DjVu document.
Access to OCR layer with selectable text
Dictionary available in all text modes with simple selection of expression
two finger rotate page
three finger vertical slide to dim screen
tap left to advance and right to go back (or reverse to mimick oriental reading mode)
swipe left or right to browse when in vertical mode
and more to come...

The interface

Appearence

On the first launch there is no document loaded. To load a document select one in the Documents menu and it will open to fit the screen.

You can then pinch and zoom in or out to suite your prefered view. You can also scroll it to display the part of the page that interest you most.

Keep in mind though that the more you zoom in, the more memory is required.

With extreme zoom you can easily make the application crash and even the springboard may crash. So avoid to zoom in too deeply. DjVu documents have generally large page size, but even with a low zoom factor, documents can pretty well be parsed in all comfort. Pages are decoded one at a time to prevent memory issues.

Page size may vary in one document, DjVu Reader will try to display the new page with the same size than the previous one. If the format of the page changes, it is possible the the new page will be deformed.

The last document opened will be opened at the last read page when the application will restart.

Once a document is opened, DjVu Reader will remember the last position and resume the browsing form there the next time it is opened.

A single tap in the middle of the screen, will toggle fullscreen display, hiding/showing the tools.

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Browsing a document

To turn pages you may also just tap once anywhere on the left part of the display to go one page back, or tap once anywhere on the right part of the display to go one page further (usefull in fullscreen mode, when you don't have the arrows at the bottom of the screen or when you don't want to use the arrows).
To browse through a document you can use the navigation icons on the lower toolbar or select a page with the goToPage button which are from left to right: "go to first page", "jump 10 pages backward", "jump 10 pages forward", "go to last page", "enter page to jump to". Clearly, if the reverse reading page order is active, , the buttons work in the other direction.
By default, you need to advance in a document as you would read a book written in occidental language (from left to right. If you are used to read it in the reverse order, you can change it ba activating the corresponding slider in the preferences, or by pressing the button.
If you want to go rapidly in a given region of the document you can slide the progress slide up to the point of interest. A small window will open to show the page number of the actual position of the slider. When you leave the slider, the page will change to the location selected.

or select a section in the outline menu if it exists in which case it turns blue when the document is first loaded.
On browsing through the document, the new page will be placed on the screen at the same place of the previous one.
Some document have blank pages. The page numbering continues, but no page is present. In that case, a blank page will be displayed.
If the page of a document is not oriented correctly, you can turn the page 90 degrees at a time by rotating the image with two fingers in the direction you want to make the rotation (by more than 10 degrees). If you change your mind or if your intention was to zoom instead of rotating the image, just make the rotation less than 10 degrees and no rotation will be made.
You can get some informations on the current page by pressing button.
You can block the current position to allow only vertical scrolling in the document by pressing toggle. Press again to release the vertical scroll mode.
You can adjust the page to fit its width to the width of the screen or to fit its height to the height of the screen or to fit its height to the height of the screen in full screen mode with the button. It works as a toggle that fit the screen in "width", "height", "fullscreen height" alternatively.
You can turn pages with a swipe with one or two fingers to the right or to the left. This is possible each time the scroll mode is inactive. For example when you activate the "vertical scrolling mode" or if the displayed page is not larger than the screen display.
If the document contains an OCR (optical character recognition) layer, it will be available by pressing the button. The swipe to turn page is also available in this mode. The OCR text is displayed as it is stored into the document, no formatting is made on the text. You can copy, paste that text from DjVu Reader to any other app, define words as in any other application manipulating texts.
Undo and Redo are implemented. Clicking will Undo last turning page or loading file, and clicking will Redo the steps.

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Searching for a document

You can search for a document in your directory structure. The search toolbar is normally hidden at the top of the document table. Tapping once on the statusbar or pulling the documents table down will reveal the search toolbar. Just insert a string for the document filename you are looking for and hit Search. All files containing that string in their filename will show in the table. Only files in the directory structure under the current directory will be looked at. Hitting the Cancel button will display the current folder content again. You can delete the files directly from the Search Result displayed.

if Many strings are looked for, only files which filename contains all those strings are displayed.

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The Documents Menu

In the Documents Menu you can see all your files.

You can manage the directory structure through the Documents Menu.

The name of the current folder is written in large characters at the center of the navigation bar of the document menu. The upper folder name is written in the left button of the navigation bar. Clicking on that button changes the current directory to the upper one. Selecting the Edit mode, you can

move files and/or folders in the directory structure by copy/past or cut/paste.
create new folders
rename files and/or folders(one at a time)
delete files and/or folders (permanently!)

The tools are, in order, cut, copy, paste, new folder, rename, delete, refresh content.

When selecting New Folder, or Rename, a dialog appears in which you can type in the new name.

In the New folder dialog, the name of the current folder in which the new folder will be created is written above the input line.

In the Rename Dialog, the current name of the file is written above the input line, and also into the input line to ease the modification of a current name.
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The Outline Menu

If the opened document contains an Outline, the outline is loaded and the icon turns blue

. On first opening the outline, the icon turns black again, but the outline will still be available.

You can edit the outline or create a new one. Just go tho the page you want reference. Click the Edit button and select the add button (plus). That will create a new item that contains the new reference with the page number displayed. An edit dialog will show in which you can change the name of the reference. Do not leave the item with an empty name, that will give a corrupt outline and may crash the application.

You can copy a complete outline from one file to another. Select and open the file you want to copy the outline from. Scroll down the outline, select Edit and then copy. Open the destination file. The previous outline is still in memory and the outline of the current file is not loaded. Now select the outline menu and push the save button. That will save the current outline (the one from the previous file) into the current file (the old outline will be completely replaced).
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The Bookmarks Menu

You can store bookmarks for PDF and DjVu documents. Bookmarks are not stored into the document. They will be available, though, into DjVu Reader. You can create bookmarks for PDF documents that do not have outline informations, for example. Or you can simply use the bookmark feature to record...bookmarks, for interesting pages. Just give the bookmark a name that is representative enough. Bookmarks are stored as soon as they are created or modified.
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In Document Search Menu

You can search for words in DjVu documents. Open a DjVu document and press the looking glass button. It will open a popover table view, with a search controller. Type in the word you are looking for. All pages with occurences of that word will show in the table, with the number of occurences on the page. That feature depends highly on the quality of the OCR layer stored in the document. Also the recognition of the position of the word on the page is also given by the document itself. So if some occurences are not found or if the colored boxe showing the occurences are misplaced, that is because it is not stored correctly into the document. Later revision will allow to search for strings. That feature is not yet available for PDF documents.
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EPUB Support

EPUB documents are now supported by DjVu Reader. They can be read directly by selecting a document, though the prefered method is to put all your EPUB document in the same temporary folder (say "temp") and THEN rename it "ePub" (case is not important). Once this is done you will benefit from a complete environment that deals with your EPUB library, where you can modify the author, title fields and save them back to the original epub files. The best method to create the "ePub" is still using the FTP server of DjVu Reader. From an FTP client on your desktop you can create an "ePub" folder and copy there all your EPUB files. Once in the "ePub" folder, you don't see anymore your EPUB files (unless you change the name of the folder to omething else that EPUB). When you click the "ePub" folder you enter directly into the EPUB mode. Where a friendly interface allow you to browse through your library. If you make any change to an epub document while in the library, that change will be stored back into the original file. So if you move that file to another app, the changes will appear in the new app too. That allow to correct badly formatted author informations or title, add language informations and so on.

Files transfer with FTP

Provided you are in a WiFi environment, the prefered way to upload document to your iPad is to use the integrated FTP (File transfer protocol) server which is very efficient and maintain the directory (folder) structure you may have on your desktop computer. To do so, start the FTP server using the "FTP" button. The address and port of the iPad FTP server is displayed. You can then use whatever FTP client on your desktop to upload/synchronize your hard drive DjVu folder into your iPad. Many free FTP client are available and include Cyberduck©, FileZilla©, SmartFTP©, BitKinex©, and so on.
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Using DropBox

You can use your DropBox account to store, download or upload your files from DjVu Reader. Click the DB icon in the documents menu to link to your account. Once linked you can interact with it as if it was a local folder, with the exception that you cannot read a file directly from your DropBox account. You need to download your file to your local folder first using the copy/paste mechanism. You can download many files at a time (be aware though that it can take a bit of time to download large files depending on your connection quality). You can delete/create folders into your DropBox, as you would with a local folder.

Creating DjVu documents

If you have a PDF document and have the djvulibre library installed with all its tools, you may have a working djvu conversion tool available for free. There is a script named "djvudigital" that can be used to convert PDF files to DjVu format. It uses a Ghostscript driver gsdjvu. You can then open a terminal window, go to your document folder and enter something like

djvudigital filename.pdf --dpi=300 --words --bg-slices=78+10+11+10

and, if all goes well, you should recover a djvu file named filename.djvu. Adding

--gsarg=-s

Uploading DjVu documents

For now you need to connect your iPad to your computer and upload your documents through iTunes. Once your iPad is connected to iTunes, select the iPad icon in the left pane. Then select the Apps tab in the main window. Scroll down the window and under the image showing the iPad screens you have list of Apps that can share files with iTunes. Select DjVu Reader and upload your documents by putting them there.

It is now possible to load a document into DjVu Reader from another app, using the Document Sharing possibility provided by the Apple API. For example you can load a document in Safari, or receive one in mail, and taping on its icon, you will open the document into DjVu Reader. The document will be placed into a folder named "Inbox" in the main Documents folder.
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Downloading Books with Safari

Many books can be found on the internet. Though many sites that provides books for reading as for example http://www.archive.org embbed their document in an applet. For example

http://ia600307.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=26/items/uncletomscabinor00stowiala/uncletomscabinor00stowiala.djvu

To recover the DjVu file you need to suppress the call to the applet in the address, that is the part "/load_djvu_applet.php?file=" sot that it reads

http://ia600307.us.archive.org/26/items/uncletomscabinor00stowiala/uncletomscabinor00stowiala.djvu

Then Safari can download the file and you can open it with DjVu Reader.
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Troubleshooting

If the application cannot start and crashes on launching, you can prevent the encriminated document to be open at startup. Go to the Preferences application and select the "DjVu Reader" item. Select the Reset switch. Next time you start the application, no document will be opened and a fresh session will start.

If a document make the app crash, try deleting the plist of that file in the document menu -> opened window.

If memory is low, it may happen that even if the outline is present it will not show up and a blank outline is shown. The situation will be corrected when enough memory will be available again.

DjVu documents are image based. Displaying images on the iPad can be very resource consuming. Apple suggest not to display images that are too large compared to the iPad display size. In a DjVu document, each displayed page is a true image that needs to be computed before to be displayed. This process can take some seconds to complete. It is a normal process when reading DjVu documents. Some documents are made with larger images than others. So various documents may take different amounts of time to be displayed. Some are displayed quite instantaneously some can take up to 3 seconds to display and even more.
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Wishlist

These are the requested and planed features at the moment

(1) Add/modify notes
(2) Printing support
(3) Possibility to save images from document
(4) Support for other file types
(5) Support for localization (If you want to contribute to lacalization, contact at email below)
* better help
* selectable text and/or links in PDF and DjVu

(numbers indicates the priority of the planed features, no numbers indicate a possible implementation in a remote future, * indicates a probable implementation in a minor update).
I will try to implement the desired feature according to my possibilities and to the possibilities offered by the DjVu format.
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Bugs and Comments

DjVu Reader can read most DjVu documents. Lately a new DjVu format appeared, aka Secure-DjVu, which encapsulate a crypto-code to protect the document from being read by unothaurized persons. That kind of document cannot be read by DjVu Reader. This is not a bug (neither a feature ;-) : mainly a lack of feature).

When downloading many files from Dropbox, some files seem to be stuck and not downloading. If that happens ignore them and download those files again. they will download fine.

Outlines in PDF documents can be lengthy to load (though it is a background process, so you can browse through the document at once, even if the outlines are not available) due to some outlines formatting that use somewhat indirect references. At the moment this is the way it is, though some improvements may appear in a later release with, ideally, some editing features.

Address any comment or bug report to: info(at)pasacreation.com.
Please do report bugs or comments to the above address. Care is taken to answer all e-mails. Even if corrections or modifications cannot be done at once, I try to take care of all requests. Understand though that this is a part time project, so I will do my best to satisfy all requests but be patient. Thanks in advance.

Known bugs

When rotating the phone or the pad, the page format needs to readapt. Turn a page and it will be right.
Sometimes the scale factor when openin a pdf or a djvu is wrong when in landscape. Open first the document when in Portrait mode.
Send a mail if you find others.

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Changelogs

Current release: 2.0.7 (30.01.2013)

Fixed a problem with pdf and djvu documents containing less than 3 pages.
Fixed some problems with chm documents.
Paging option added in preferences (enabled by default).
Colors changed to improve readability.
This will be the last version running on iOS 5, since Apple does not support iOS 5 on Xcode 5 on Mavericks.

2.0.6 (26.11.2013)

Fixed Open In feature.
Fixed encoding selection for chm documents.
Tries to find a cover for chm documents.
Delete thumbnail button added in details view.

2.0.5 (20.11.2013)

Corrected a bug that made the app crash with indirect djvu documents (which are still not supported, exept if all parts are in the same folder, since DjVu Reader does not work as a browser plugin, for now).

2.0.4 (20.11.2013)

Corrected a bug with pdf documents which could crash the app if the doc was opened at the first page.
Corrected a bug with outlines for djvu documents that stored the wrong page number.

2.0.3 (15.11.2013)

Corrected a bug which caused a problem when browsing by jumping to a group of pages with blank pages in djvu documents.
Added undo and redo buttons for pdf and djvu reading on iPhone.

2.0.2 (09.11.13)

Inbox handling corrected to open document from other app.
Zooming feature improved for pdf and djvu documents.
Bugs corrected in the scrolling of pages for pdf and djvu documents.
Bugs corrected in outline handling.
Undo and Redo buttons restored for some page jumping operations.
Restored the send by email button for pdf and djvu documents.
Small web browser.

2.0.1 (02.11.13)

Djvu scrolling crashes corrected.

2.0.0

New user interface.
Initial iPhone port.
Major enhancements.
Support for other ebook format: CHM files are supported.
In CHM file browsing, when no bars are visible, just scroll past the border to go to the next page.
Airdrop support.
Continuous browsing of PDF and DjVu documents
iOS 5.0 to 7.0+ supported

1.5.2 (est.:25.06.2012)

Various bugs corrected.
Luminosity problem corrected.
Corrected a bug in where after some blank pages, the zoom factor was doubled.
Many bugs corrected in the Epub Library operations.

1.5.1 (est.:03.03.2012)

Various bugs corrected.

1.5.0 (est.:26.02.2012)

Various user interface improvements.
Various bugs corrected.
Fixed a bug preventing to select last page of a document from the outline.
EPUB Support via single file or (ePub or whatever capitalization) complete folder management.
New html support with a dedicated navigator.
New text documents support with a dedicated navigator.
Zip files supported (if a zip file is selected, then it will be decompressed).
Improved support for html documents.
Corrected a bug which prevented bookmarks to be stored.

1.4.0 (10.10.2012)

Various user interface improvements.
Various bugs corrected.
Search is implemented in djvu documents (only single word, for now...).
Options can be selected directly within the app, without quitting to go to the general preferences.
Bookmarks can be set for PDF and DjVu documents.

1.3.3 (10.09.2012)

Corrected a bug that did not recognize files that were moved.
Improved handling of outlines in djvu documents.
Corrected the display mode of PDF documents.

1.3.2 (01.08.2012)

Corrected a bug dealing with folders creations which occurs if iCloud is not available.

1.3.1 (25.06.2012)

iCloud integration.
Remember previous location in text documents(doc,txt,rtf).
Can read html documents.
"Open in..." feature added.

1.3.0 (10.05.2012)

DropBox integration.
If "Got to top of new page" is not selected, the new page is displayed as the previous one was left.
If the page is adjusted manually to the screen and vertical scroll is enabled, the adjustment is preserved when browsing(as expected).
Scroll lock in vertical mode is remembered.
PDF documents can be read too. Outlines are supported when available, though they are not editable (at least for now).
Corrected a bug which prevented to edit outline in djvu files.(PDF outlines are not editable, this is not a bug.)
Password-protected PDF can be opened (if you have the password).
Many bugs corrected.

1.2.7 (01.04.2012)

Corrected a bug in which OCR on a page not having OCR layer, entered the app in a loop displaying a blank page.
Cleaned the display of the search results.

1.2.6 (31.03.2012)

Retina support added.
Search support implemented (search for all occurences of one term in all files under the current folder). If many strings are looked for, only filenames containing all those strings will be displayed.
Preliminary undo/redo function implemented.

1.2.5 (26.02.2012)

In fullscreen mode, the status bar disappears.
Rewrite of the display code.
Added a preference switch to increase the page number, in swipe mode, by swiping to the left (as in occidental books) or to the right (as in oriental books). Toggle button added to allow to toggle without restarting the app. This status is remembered for each document.
Back and Fore button, that paginate one page back/fore, suppressed.
Changed the rotaion mode so that rotations of less than about 10 degrees are not taken into acount. That allows to avoid rotations, if you change your mind or if the system misunderstand your intention and undertake a rotation instead of a zoom (you just have to reduce the angle to less than 10 degrees).
Added a "page adjust" button, that adjusts the page in width, height or fullscreen height (in a cycling manner). Each time the document is width adjusted, you can turn pages by swiping with a finger.
Paging option in Preferences.
Scroll automatically to the top of new page.
Help updated.

1.2.4 (20.02.2012)

Cosmetic changes
Rotate using two finger gesture
Corrected a bug in the Swipe gesture to turn pages when turing pages backward.
Brightness can be controlled with a 3 fingers vertical pan.

1.2.3 (12.07.2011)

FTP server embedded into the app (initial release so feedback is welcome on the support email, not on the evaluation). This allows easy dowload via WiFi with any (in principle) FTP client for your platform. (As I am on Mac, I use cyberduck and I only have experience with it, so comments are welcomed.) To launch the FTP server tap the button aside the info at the top right corner.
Outlines can be copied from a file to a new one. In the Outline menu select Edit->copy-> then open a new file then -> in the outline menu->save.
Preliminary (and rudimentary) support for txt, rtf, pdf files and some image file format (jpg,tiff,gif). No memory on current position for now. Do not expect much from that for now.
In the folders menu, you can double tap to toggle selecting All/None. Triple Tap to Invert Selection. (the cell on which you tap may (de)select at the same time this is a known bug)
When a file is opened, you can send it by email by tapping the button with the arrow that goes out of the box.

1.1.5 (04.07.2011)

Alert when trying to modify a file in the Inbox folder. Files must be moved from the Inbox folder before being modified. Only the system can write to that folder.
the progress bar is now a slide bar from which you can rapidly go to anywhere in the document (at any page).
Corrected a bug which crashed the app when it was launched afresh by another app to open a DjVu file.

1.1.4 (17.06.2011)

Opening DjVu files in Safari with DjVu Reader is working correctly again.
Messed Outline are loaded at best and can be edited and saved. Bad lines are labeled "nil".
Deleting a file using the swipe to delete in the documents list is working again.
Internal corrections. Stability should be highly improved.

1.1.3 (31.05.2011)

Speed improvements.(This time it should be fine.)
Page turned were shifted after turning page following an out of bound scrolling. This is corrected.
Internal changes
Outline saving is done in background. So you can continue reading the document while it is saving.
Please, consider leaving feedback with the email address provided instead of the evaluation, indeed, when you leave evaluations, I am not informed of the content immediately. This means that if you have a problem, it may pass several days before I know what is happening. Bugs and comment are to be left at the contact address. I always try to answer rapidly.

General comment: DjVu files are image based documents. Since some images can be enlarged, choice has been made to use the panning and zooming possibilities of the scrollview UI. This means that it is not possible to swipe to turn pages, since swipe is reserved to pan the image left-right or up-down. When in vertical-lock mode though, you can swipe to turn the page, but swipe with two fingers.

1.1.2 (05.05.2011)

The Outline is structured. Tap on the blue button of an outline to expand it or to fold it back.
Outline is editable.
Page caching is enabled.
Speed issue solved.
OCR content is available, if the OCR layer present in document.
Stability improved

1.1.1(25.03.2011)

Ordering documents list according to date, name, type is now possible
Memory warnings are shown only if you activate it in the preference pane.
Small changes in the list of open documents.
Minor corrections.

1.1.0 (05.03.2011)

Opened file list accessible with possibility to resume an opened file from where it was left. The list is editable.
In EDIT mode, if CUT or COPY are selected EDIT mode is still the current mode and only PASTE is selectable.
Blank page are shown as...blank pages (white) as would be a real blank page.
Some documents begining with a blank page did crash the app. That is corrected.
Stability improvements.
Outline uses unicode characters.

1.0.2 (21.02.2011)

Erratic jumps on zoom messing with scroll corrected.
Help updated.
New icon for document interchange through "open with..."
Relative path in preferences.
Minor corrections.

1.0.1 (17.02.2011)

Document interchange added.
Minor corrections.

1.0.0 (15.02.2011)

Initial release.

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