Volumen [voˈlu.men]

A reader for books, and for the manuscripts you send to readers.

Volumen sets EPUB, Word and Markdown files as properly typeset columns, which move sideways under the keyboard, a trackpad or a touch. A writer can also send a manuscript to a small circle of readers as a sealed link; their highlights and notes come back and appear beside the passages they concern.

Open the library Install

Book II

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.

AnnThe list reads as if it were written this morning.

For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.

TomasAn odd image, the teeth, and the one I will remember.

Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed.

InesMarked this paragraph: a strange thing to read in a book.

From Meditations, with notes from three readers, as a writer sees them on a manuscript they have shared.

Reading

Typesetting

Paragraphs are set whole, as a typesetter sets them, so that lines are evenly spaced and words are hyphenated only where they should be. Small capitals, footnotes, tables and verse are kept as the book has them.

Moving through a book

The text does not scroll. A key moves one column and Space the whole spread; a trackpad carries the page under the fingers and settles it on a column; on a phone, a tap at the edge turns it. The map shows the whole book at once.

The library

Books are kept on your own device and read without a network once opened. Highlights, notes and places can be exported as files, and the whole library backs up to one.

Sharing a manuscript

  1. Sealing

    The book is encrypted on your device with a key that exists only in the link you send. The service that holds the file cannot read it, and the link can be withdrawn at any time.

  2. Reading

    Readers open the link in their browser, without an account or anything to install, and highlight, mark paragraphs and write notes as they go.

  3. Returning

    Their notes come back to you sealed, and are shown beside your text, each reader in a colour of their own, gathered passage by passage in the book's notebook.

Installing

On each kind of device

iPhone and iPad
In Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
Android
In Chrome, open the menu and choose Install app, or Add to Home screen.
Mac
In Safari, choose File, then Add to Dock; in Chrome, the install button in the address bar.
Windows and Linux
In Chrome or Edge, the install button in the address bar.