Sync from cloud without downloading everything?

Hi all,

I recently started using YACReader on my PC to organize my library, and use the iPad app to read comics. Initially I copied files over manually, then I tried out the library sharing feature from PC, but I don't like letting the computer running just to read comics, so I eventually decided to push all my files into my DropBox account and use that for easy access.

However, when I connected YACReader with my DropBox account and selected my import folder, during import it proceeded to download all the comic book files from my DropBox account to the iPad, which wasn't my expectation. Of course I quickly ran out of space on the iPad and import stopped.

I expected it to just look at the files and maybe do some processing to extract a cover image and metadata, but not download the entire file until I actually start reading the comic. Is there no way to do this? I didn't see any option that allowed me to tell YACReader to not download all the files during import. I assume that for Google Drive and other cloud storage services it works the same way and isn't specific to DropBox.

If there isn't a way to do this right now I am still wondering if it's at least on the roadmap? Syncing with the cloud shouldn't replicate everything in the cloud, which defeats the purpose of using the cloud for storage in the first place.

Doesn't look like YACReader is an open source project, but I'd be happy to implement that feature as well

Keep up the good work!

Hi,

Most people just pick whatever they want to read from a cloud service to import it to the device, you don't have to use the auto import feature, just open the browser and then import whatever you want.

Since comic files are zip or rar files, extracting the covers would require to get all the files and that would take a lot of time if the collection is big.

What it is planned is to improve the cloud browser, and then add a feature to read comics without importing them, downloading the whole file will be needed though, but freeing space will be handled by the app.

YACReader for desktops is open source, the ios version is not.

Some people runs the server in a nas or a raspberry pi to have a 24/7 comics server.

I too think this would be great. Store the comics in the cloud, and have YacReader on iOS browse those as if local, but download when you want to read. Of course some caching will be necessary. It’s like iPhoto does - it can store photos in the cloud and just download them if you want to view full size.

The problem is that extracting the cover from a comic stored in a cloud service can take some time, depending on the file you may end needing to download most of it, so the whole user experience can suffer quite a bit.