Android client - Tachiyomi shortcomings

[gotson]

Tachiyomi is generally doing a good job through the Komga extension, but there's a few things that will limit the experience going forward.

Tachiyomi's code repo is split in 2, one for the main application, and one for extensions. While it's fairly easy to get PRs merged for extensions, it seems it doesn't happen as much for the main app, most likely because inorichi is working on a new 1.0 version.

This issue is to keep track of the limitations, and to consider either a Tachiyomi fork, or a brand new client.

Limitations

• only one 3 Komga server can be configured. An open PR could fix that, but it hasn't been acknowledged.
• handling the read status will prove difficult. Tachiyomi has a tracking feature built into the main app, but series need to be manually associated for the feature to work. It also only track chapters read in full, and not per page.
• books display is limited, it doesn't show the cover nor any other information, only one line of text can be shown.
• browsing collections is not ideal. There is a filter by collection, but it cannot show the list of series following the collection's order.
• there is no way to browse reading lists.
• filters are loaded on app startup only, a restart is needed to update them.

[PichetGoulu]

If you intent to build a new Android client, Bubble provides a good starting point as it's a simple comic reader app.

The app create a library on the fly by walking though a directory on the local disk and store the read status in a single table SQLite database.
I think that it could easily use the Komga API instead.

Pros

• MIT licensed
• Small code base: ~3500 LOC
• Show covers in the library view
• Handle a per comic/page read status
• The underlying image library used to render the page (Picasso) can also load an image from an HTTP endpoint

From a quick glance at the source code:

• The read status handling: Storage.java
• The cover loading: LocalCoverHandler.java
• The comic loading: LocalComicHandler.java
• The library scanner: Scanner.java
• The image loading part: ReaderFragment.java#L418

[PichetGoulu]

I made a fork of Bubble called Bubble-Komga.

This fork removes the support for local files and use a Komga library instead.
It also handle and save the read progress.

I've been using my fork for about 6 months now without any major issue.

My plan for this repo is to provide fix for bugs should some be reported and maintain compatibility with the API of future version of Komga if needed, but I do not plan to add any additional feature for now.

Most of the development was done on early Komga releases, but the Komga API is mostly stable for the used endpoints.
The only API change was in 20b2b39 (The IDs of entities have been changed from number to string in the API.)

See the README.md file for more info.

[prysme01]

Thanks for providing your code. I have give it a try (build with android studio)

Read Status is working fine, really appreciate to have this 👍
Support for library is really basic but it is working.

I hope other developper are going to add few others functionnalities.
Read status is really a must to have and tachyomi is a good reader.

We are not far from having to best of both world 🥇