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Reading and watching

Book reader

How books scroll or turn, how to make the text look the way you like, and how to search and tidy it.

Scroll or turn pages #

Books open in Continuous scrolling. For pages that turn, tap the middle of the page to show the menus, tap Reading mode in the bottom bar and pick Paged (left to right), Paged (right to left) or Paged (vertical), then Apply.

In the paged modes you turn pages by tapping the side of the page or swiping. Tap zones and Invert tap zones work as in the comic reader, and Volume keys turn pages on Android. Pages set to Automatic shows two pages side by side when the screen is wide enough.

Two pages side by side

The slider in the bottom bar moves through the chapter. Tap the position beside it for Go to position, where you type a page or a percentage. Table of contents lists the chapters and the book's own contents inside them.

Mouse and keys Linux #

In the paged modes a click turns the page or shows the menus, following Tap zones as a tap does. While scrolling, a click shows the menus. Drag to select text, and right-click a selection to copy or translate it. The wheel scrolls, or turns pages in the paged modes, and Ctrl with the wheel changes the text size.

Arrow keys turn pages in the paged modes and scroll while scrolling. Page Up and Page Down turn pages, or move a screen while scrolling. Home and End go to the start and end of the chapter, N and P open the next and previous chapter, and Ctrl with +, - and 0 changes the text size. Ctrl+F searches the chapter, Ctrl+Shift+F searches the book, and F3 steps through the matches. After a jump, Alt+← or the mouse's back button returns to the previous position. Press F for full screen and ? to list every key.

Change how the text looks #

Open the menus, tap Settings and go to the Appearance tab.

  • Theme: App theme, Paper, Dusk or Black. New colours… saves your own background and text colours; press and hold a saved one to edit or delete it.
  • Text size, from 80% to 200%.
  • Font: Serif, Sans serif, Monospace, or a TTF or OTF file you add with Import font.
  • Line spacing, Margins and Text alignment.

Each of these also offers Book, which keeps what the book itself asks for, and that is where they all start. A setting you change applies to the body text, so headings keep the book's look. Publisher styles turns the book's own colours, boxes and borders on or off.

Appearance

Tap the search button at the top and type. Katari finds matches in the open chapter, ignoring case and accents; the arrows step between them. Search all chapters looks through the rest of the book, but only through downloaded chapters.

Hide text that keeps repeating #

Some sources put the same notice or watermark in every chapter. To remove it:

  1. Press and hold to select the text, then tap Hide text… in the menu.
  2. Choose Hide, or Replace with and type the replacement.
  3. Under Applies to, pick This series or This source, and confirm.

Rules live under Settings › Readers › Book reader › Text rules, where you can switch them off, edit them, or add one that matches a Regular expression.

Listen, translate or copy #

Select text for Copy, Listen and Translate. Listen reads the selection aloud with the voice set under Settings › Text to speech. Katari doesn't read whole chapters aloud.

LinuxListen speaks through Speech Dispatcher. Install the speech-dispatcher package and a voice such as espeak-ng.

Translate selected text automatically, in the Common tab, translates whatever you select without the extra tap. Translation covers the engines.

A selection

Settings for one book, or for all #

Anything you change in the reader's settings applies to the open book only. Change it under Settings › Readers › Book reader to set it for every book that hasn't changed it. In the reader's settings, ⋮ › Default reader settings opens that screen and ⋮ › Reset drops this book's own choices.