TomesUsing Tomes
Whether you've just launched Tomes for the first time, or you've just finished downloading content using the ShelfServer Quick Start, this page will show you how to use Tomes's interface to read files from your device.
File listing
The initial Tomes view is the file listing table. Each file or folder is listed on this screen, sorted by its name. Unread files are shown with a blue dot indicator. Folders are shown with a folder icon, and read files are shown with no indicator. Clicking a file will open it to read. Clicking a folder will show the contents of that folder. Click the "back" button in the upper left to go back up to the next highest folder. And of course you can scroll through the list by dragging your finger on the screen.
The toolbar on the bottom of the file listing gives four options (from left to right):
- Preferences - show global settings for fonts, colors, text encoding, etc.
- Rotate lock - when unlocked, Tomes's view will change according to how you tilt your device. When locked, the view will stay in its current position, regardless of how the device is tilted.
- Bookmarks - shows any bookmarks for files in the current folder.
- Dowload Books - shows the Shelf interface which allows you to download books from your desktop or other near by ShelfServers.
Preferences
Tomes's preferences let you set the font face and size, test encoding, and color theme. You can also reverse the tap-scroll direction (tap on the top of the screen to go forward instead of on the bottom), or mark ALL of your books "unread".
A similar preferences screen accessible while reading a book allows you to set some of these on a per-book basis.
Bookmarks
From the file listing, the bookmarks screen shows you any bookmarks which were created on any of the files in the current directory. Files in sub-directories are not shown. Bookmarks may not be created from this screen, but only from within books.
Deleting files and directories
In order to delete and file or directory, make the "swipe" gesture on that item's row. A delete confirmation button will appear, and tapping it will remove the item. Directories are deleted recursively without additional confirmation.
File reading view
By tapping a file in the file listing view, Tomes will load the file and display it for reading. The first time a particular file is loaded may take slightly longer as Tomes indexes the file.
The reader view (of course) shows you the contents of your book. You can scroll either by dragging the contents around or by tapping on the top or bottom 1/4 of the screen. Tapping in the middle of the screen will hide or show the toolbars at the top & bottom.
The top toolbar allows you to go back to the directory containing this book by tapping the "back" button on the left side. On the right are previous / next navigation buttons which move through the "chunks" of the document being read. Note that small files may only have one chunk which would leave both of these buttons disabled.
A word about "chunking..."
Many ebook files are large. Sometimes several megabytes in size. The text and web views used to display these files have limitations much smaller than that. To get around these limits while still allowing smooth scrolling, Tomes indexes files and logically divides them into smaller pieces. Tomes attempts to divide these pieces (usually referred to as simply "chunks") at places between paragraphs, or at least between words, whenever possible. These chunks are arbitrary and have nothing to do with "chapters" or any other internal organization of the book.
On the bottom toolbar, the following options are available (from left to right):
- Preferences -- shows both global preferences (see above) and also overrides which will apply only to the current book.
- Rotate lock -- same as for the file list view
- Delete -- deletes only the current file and returns to the file list
- Bookmarks -- shows existing bookmarks for this file and allows adding new ones.
- Start/Stop Auto-scroll -- the view will slowly scroll up on its own.
- Slower/Faster Auto-scroll -- tap minus or plus to make the auto-scroll go slower or faster.
Bookmarks
When viewing a book, bookmarks may be created or deleted in the bookmark screen. When you create a bookmark, it's left at the current position of the book. While Tomes always saves your last place in a book automatically when you close it or quit Tomes, named bookmarks allow you to mark multiple places in the file and keep them.
Auto-scroll
If you prefer not to scroll around manually, autoscroll can help. Tapping the "Play" button will make Tomes start moving the view slowly up. While scrolling, the minus/plus buttons allow you to control the speed. Your preferred speed is saved automatically and will be used every time you run Tomes. You can stop auto-scroll either by tapping the Play/Pause button a second time or by manually moving the scroll point with your finger. Autoscroll will also stop automatically when you reach the end of a chunk in a book.
Start Here:
Quick Start Help
New in Tomes 2.0:
Download Books without using ShelfServer
Click to Install Tomes with iTunes or AppStore
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