Question re: reading list format

Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you here — I’ve been busy (as you undoubtedly are as well) and didn’t see your response for quite a while — setting USE_OPEN_GL=0 has in fact got it working (on the XP box at least — still haven’t tried the Win7 machine)…
 
Incidentally I’m getting a lot of feedback from MAC users that they can’t get it to work under OSX — any tips I can pass on?

Huh? Why are you getting feedback from OS X users? And for what exactly? If they are having problems with YACReader, the best way to get help is to post in the beta testers thread or the support forum. Also, this thread is supposed to be about the reading list format not MAC support and OpenGL problems on Win XP.

The OpenGL cover flow is kind of an double-edged sword. While it's a very convenient feature and runs really smooth if it runs, it's also our nr. 1 cause of blocker bugs and cross-platform problems. Alas, replacing it is easier said then done...

True — I wanted info on the reader-list format and would have just figured it out if the Beta had been willing to work … Hence the digression to OpenGL problems (though that wasn’t a known direction at the time) …
 
The MAC reference is because there are now an increasing number of comics appearing using webp — often in a CBT wrapper and for that on a MAC YACreader 〔beta〕 is one of the few potential options … in comics forums unrelated to the tech side I (as someone there who is tech aware) get a lot of questions/feedback on the subject. these aren’t people who would ever consider coming here — they’ll just look for another option (in fact initially this was the other option) …

Well, if you want to give support for YACReader in another forum then that is your choice

The beta is a beta for a reason. Especially on MAC, the changes between the 7.x series and the coming 8.x series are big and we've had some unpleasant surprises. If the guys you support don't want to report bugs, then that is their decision, but we won't be able to do anything about bugs if we don't know about them. Since the start of the beta, we have included a lot of fixes and some of them are OpenGL/Coverflow related, so you should make sure they do run the latest version of the beta (we're at number 3 right now). Other than that there's nothing I can do for them if they are unwilling to give me something I can work with.

@invisifan, I need more info about what is going on. "...they can’t get it to work under OSX..." is not enough.

selmf wrote: Well, if you want to give support for YACReader in another forum then that is your choice

I’m not “chosing to give support” anywhere — MAC users have issues with some of the comics that I have a connection to — they complain to me and I refer them to YACreader beta as the only reader I’m aware of that will (supposedly) handle that format on a MAC — they complain it doesn’t work. Period. No support.

selmf wrote: The beta is a beta for a reason. Especially on MAC, the changes between the 7.x series and the coming 8.x series are big and we've had some unpleasant surprises. If the guys you support don't want to report bugs, then that is their decision, but we won't be able to do anything about bugs if we don't know about them. Since the start of the beta, we have included a lot of fixes and some of them are OpenGL/Coverflow related, so you should make sure they do run the latest version of the beta (we're at number 3 right now). Other than that there's nothing I can do for them if they are unwilling to give me something I can work with.

They may not have found the beta — it’s not easy and they aren’t technical — and again, I’m not providing support, I just hear the complaints …
That said, I’ll try to get some further info or firmly direct them here since I could do without having to deal with it …

Yes, just point them to the betatest thread here in the forum. Otherwise, the situation you are dealing with is something I like to call the early adaptors curse. Others might call it a chicken and egg situation... webp is only slowly becoming supported and will probably never replace .jpg as the standard picture format.
Finally, since I assume you want to save space by using .webp, I have one more practical hint for you: Use .png for black and white images. A properly reduced and compressed .png only has a fraction of the size of a .jpg at high quality levels and it's even lossles! A good way to optimize the compression and other stuff is OptiPNG.

selmf wrote: Yes, just point them to the betatest thread here in the forum. Otherwise, the situation you are dealing with is something I like to call the early adaptors curse. Others might call it a chicken and egg situation... webp is only slowly becoming supported and will probably never replace .jpg as the standard picture format.

It’s hard to say one way or the other — though there’s an amazing amount of low-key, behind the scenes support (ComicRack has supported it for a couple of years now but don’t mention it anywhere) … in fact at least on Windows nearly all the notable comic viewer programs whose development hasn’t been abandoned now support it … It’s the other platforms that are more problematic, although Android is essentially covered and QT supports it as well, so it’s there, just not generally recognized …

selmf wrote: Finally, since I assume you want to save space by using .webp, I have one more practical hint for you: Use .png for black and white images. A properly reduced and compressed .png only has a fraction of the size of a .jpg at high quality levels and it's even lossles! A good way to optimize the compression and other stuff is OptiPNG.

Actually I already do that, though I haven’t tried it head-to-head against webp (lossless or otherwise).
 
And on a lighter note I passed the address of the latest Beta to one of the MAC users and got this response:
“It works really well. Only tested it on one comic so far (a bit too busy to do a full testing with multiple files), but the file (fox #1) opened quickly, navigated well and pages were rendered instantly.”
So perhaps other complaints were from people who couldn’t find the beta version?

invisifan wrote: So perhaps other complaints were from people who couldn’t find the beta version?

Probably, since 7.2.0 does not support .wepb... Luis does not really provide any pointers to the beta from the main site, so it might be tricky to find it for someone who doesn't know about the forum. By the way, the current release candidate contains fixes for some ugly bugs that are still present in version 7.2.0 and before, but were only discovered during the 8.0 beta. Since we recently switched from beta to release candidate we finally should be out of the worst trouble
One of YACReader's strengths in the 7.x series is it's speed when opening and handeling comic files. With all the fixes and improvements we've included in 8.0, this version should perform even better.

If possible, by any means, please pass the address of the beta test thread instead of download links. We will likely go through one or two more release candidates before the final release and we need every bit of feedback we can get till then, especially on MAC...