Who likes manga?

Don’t forget you can report bugs, quirks, wishlist ideas… :-)

Hi Rick, I noticed that the manga with the name starting with “Re: Zero kara” gives a 404 while you attempt to read any chapter, while I have no problem with reading it online. By the way that was one of my favorites anime from last year.

Your application reminds me that I’m missing some decent offline reader. RISCOS Select came with an interesting image viewer application which automatically moved to the next folder/archive in the directory tree when you tried to move past the last image of the folder. If you could tell it to show the top of the image instead of centring the image it would have been ideal for manga reading.

For some recommendations from the list: Death Note, Haikyuu!!, Hikaru no Go, Claymore, xxxHolic, Natsume Yuujinchu, Mushishi, Rurouni Kenshin, Paradise Kiss, Parasyte, Please save my Earth, Onepunch Man, Ookiky Furikabutte. S-F side is a little restricted, I only found “Uchu Kioudai” (Space Brothers), no “Blame” or “Knights of Sidonia” thought.

“Re: Zero kara” gives a 404

Almost finished work, then on holiday! Whee!

I’ll look at Zero Kara’s problem this evening.

Sorted. The stupid-long filename was prefixed why a slightly less stupid-long filename, which didn’t fit into the allocated buffer space. So I’ve extended the buffer space to fit the markup in so it can be parsed correctly.

Update via beta track (just restart Manga, it should pick it up). Or you can pick it up from http://heyrick.ddns.net/manga/manga_0-05.zip.
I’ve also been playing with the updater. There’s now a “More info” button that will fetch a short file (a part of the version log) that describes what’s new in the last version or two (depending on update cycles, in case you miss a couple of days). That’s this file: http://heyrick.ddns.net/manga/changelist.txt
At the moment, reading the changelist will abort the update. This is because you kinda can’t read squat with an error box on-screen. You’ll need to quit and restart Manga to invoke the update check again. I know it’s a bit ass-backwards, there will be a pretty UI way to do this soon, no more stupid error boxes. :-)

If you could tell it to show the top of the image instead of centring the image it would have been ideal for manga reading.

…if it was capable of fetching the images too. :-)

For some recommendations from the list:

I dimly recall a number of those titles as animé.

André – here’s a link to MangaReader’s genre list for titles marked sci-fi. Don’t know if NetSurf can do the scripting bits, so I’ll just post a link to the results page instead: http://www.mangareader.net/search/?w=&rd=0&status=0&order=0&genre=0000000000000000000000100000000000000&p=0 (yes, it looks like the genres are given as a bitmap!)

[note: all links are manga: links]

Had a rummage through the sci-fi genre and added the following to my “ought to read this” list, something to pick when I’ve finished Azumi and I Am A Hero.

No. 6 (25 chapters, ongoing, last updated a year ago)

Memories of Emanon (109 page one-shot, interesting drawing style)

Stardust Memories (259 page one-shot)

The Hour of the Mice (9 chapters, complete)

Alive – The Final Evolution (82 chapters, “ongoing”, last updated in 2010, strange art style)

Coppelion (was an animé a couple of years ago, 150 chapters “ongoing”, last update 2014)

Kiwaguro no Brynhildr (was an animé a year or two back – “Brynhildr in the Darkness”, 180 chapters ongoing, last update in March; makes a lot of use of halftone overlay and it shows in the scans!)

I have now tried version 0.05. “Re: Zero” now kind of works but I received an error on the first image. I forgot to note it down it was something like “… disconnected … TotalSize:xxx ObjectSize: yyy”. On my second attempt it did not attempt to relad the image but displayed a non filled window. Clicking Select to obtain the next images worked fined.

I suspect the partially downloaded first page was kept in your cache, so you should remove failed downloads from the cache. On the other hand without the cached version if that problem keeps occuring the image window would never be shown and it would be impossible to skip to page 2, so it would be better to always show the image window (and blank its content if no image could be laoded) and propose a “reload page” button/menu. Note that menus to select chapters and pages would make a nice addition too.

Another similar issue came on page 14 of first chapter of “Berserk” (a very good manga but its release rate is slow and erratic, to the point that the joke is that the readers will probably be dead before the manga ends) and on the second attempt the application crashed in its redraw handler.

“Re: Zero” now kind of works but I received an error on the first image. I forgot to note it down it was something like “… disconnected … TotalSize:xxx ObjectSize: yyy”.

Thanks. That is because the server claimed the image size was X, but sent Y bytes instead (or just gave up early). I can’t say I’ve found that server to be terribly reliable…

I suspect the partially downloaded first page was kept in your cache, so you should remove failed downloads from the cache.

Yes, that would be logical.

On the other hand without the cached version if that problem keeps occuring

I’ve never actually had that. Usually it is a failure to read the chapter/page info (in other words, the server just doesn’t reply).

the image window would never be shown and it would be impossible to skip to page 2,

In this (rare) case, you could just click on the iconbar icon to open the manga selector, and then click on “Go!” to retry.

Note that menus to select chapters and pages would make a nice addition too.

I’ll add that to the ideas list.

and on the second attempt the application crashed in its redraw handler.

I’ve never had it actually crash – can you please be more specific?

Thank you for the feedback.

Version 0.07 is now on my private server for Beta Track update – it will delete files that were not correctly/fully downloaded (so shouldn’t litter the cache with “fragments”), a chapter selection menu has been added (but no page selection as you can Ctrl-click to skip +/- 10 pages at a time), and other bug fixes.

That‘s a pretty neat piece of software Rick, cheers!
I‘m usually not that interested in Manga but I do occasionally read graphic novels

( The Boys would be my recommendation!)
Anyway: very cool addition to RISC OS, love it.

Maybe I‘ve missed something but is there an option to scale the page to fit my monitor?
Constantly scrolling down kinda breaks immersion and gets old real quick:

(!Manga 0.08 via !store running on my BB-xM @1920x1080; RO 5.22)

Do you have a wheel on your mouse? You can use that to scroll – it’s much nicer that way.
I did make a few tests, but I felt some of the detail (and text legibility) suffered on scaling. I can look at it again…

BTW, does PlingStore’s monthly reports not work? I opted for reports and nothing. So I have no idea if you’re the only person that got it from Store or what…

Yeah, I do have a scrolly mouse and it does work. It just feels slightly unnecessary on a 22“ screen running a (relatively) high resolution. Legibility isn‘t that much of an issue really, gave it a try on my iPad and it seemed fine:

I actively searched Plingstore for anything that might be of interest, no flash alerts! :)

Rick – monthly reports should work (at least recently), but we went through a period where the server IP was blacklisted by (something) and emails legitimately sent by the service were not reaching their destination. I believe this has now been (largely) resolved, as I think I’ve received the R-Comp reports recently, but it has been a real problem. Indeed, we have considered switching hosting provider because of it.

but we went through a period where the server IP was blacklisted by (something) and emails legitimately sent by the service were not reaching their destination

I’m going to stick my neck out and say SpamHaus. They seem to have a reputation for extortion – if a user of an ISP is sending spam, they will wipe out a huge IP range “in order to force the ISP to terminate that user’s account”.

How do I know this? My private mail host. When he was setting up the spam detection, my email was getting thrown on the floor. He told me it was because of SpamHaus, and I looked it up and…

Hey, tell you what. Let’s look up my current IP address.

https://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/2.13.238.233 (needs a modern browser, not NetSurf)

I’m listed in one of the three lists, the PBL, reference PBL735152.

Click on the link, it says what is blocked. It says, and I kid you not:

2.12.0.0/15 is listed on the Policy Block List (PBL).

I tried a nearby address and… 2.8.0.0/14 is also listed in the PBL. Have they blocked Orange France? France? Everything they dislike? B**tards.

Patric, if you are part of the Manga beta track, you’ll find there’s a new version available. It will attempt to scale oversized images to fit the display.
RISC OS’s JPEG plotting is nippy, but that’s because it doesn’t bother to even attempt anti-aliasing. As such, detail will be lost, and it simply won’t look as good as the app on your iPad.

(link to full size image, I’m not dropping a ~350K image on the forum!)
Pi2 original, 1280×1024, RO5.23 8th Aug self-built.

See what you think. I prefer scrolling…

See what you mean, that does look terrible. Unfortunately my BB-xM/monitor combination won’t support higher resolutions, I‘m pushing it as it is with 1920×1080 @ 40Hz. Well, I guess you learn something new every day. Thanks for your reply though and of course for creating !Manga in the first place! It‘s a great idea and while it‘s certainly a niche it really does bring something new and interesting to our platform.

P.S.: now I need something to go with Haruki Murakami‘s novel „1Q84“, which at times can be pretty exhausting.
Murciélago might fit the bill but apparently it’s not on MR, shame.

I tried a nearby address and… 2.8.0.0/14 is also listed in the PBL. Have they blocked Orange France? France? Everything they dislike? B**tards.

Why not do a bit of research first? https://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/

Why not do a bit of research first?

Well, that does make sense.
I guess it is the fault of whatever mail service extension was filtering the mail that outgoing authenticated mail was being dropped “because it was on a SpamHaus list”…
All I know is – removing SpamHaus integration from the server made mail work again.

Rick – you should have received !Store reports today. Certainly mine were in my Inbox this morning, via my rcomp email address (ie. sent from Plingstore through to rcomp domain which is handled by completely different services). I received both my R-Comp and RCI download reports. Hopefully you received yours too :)

Hopefully you received yours too :)

Just logged into store, checked my given email address (it’s the one everybody knows). Nothing as yet…

[edit: yes, I checked the spam folder ;)]

RISC OS’s JPEG plotting is nippy, but that’s because it doesn’t bother to even attempt anti-aliasing

Do any of the dithering options on JPEG_PlotScaled help?

Report turned up yesterday.

Application: Manga
Downloads for November: 7
Total downloads: 9

It’s a niche product. ;-)

It’s a niche product. ;-)

Nine? In a short period? Round here that’s approaching mainstream :)

For those on the Manga beta-track, I’ve just pushed out an update that will attempt to use ChangeFSI to perform the scaling, reverting to the naff OS method if CFSI cannot be found.
The bad news – it takes time. Maybe 5-10 seconds per page¹ (depends greatly on image size and processor speed).
The good news? Yes, there is good news! ChangeFSI does a nice job. Compare the page on the left (OS scaling) with the right (CFSI scaling) and you’ll see what I mean:

(original size: http://i.imgur.com/FdIj2v5.jpg)

Round here that’s approaching mainstream :)

:-) That may be true… wait, shouldn’t this smiley be the other way around?!?

¹ Every page, always – the original cached images are not resized, only a copy made prior to display on-screen.

Slower but I love it!