[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Anak

• I didn't use the term "wasted space".
• I dind't say anything about a comparison of digital books with printed books (or even implied)

Is English your native tongue? It's not mine, so maybe that's why there has been some confusion...

When did I say you used the term "wasted space"? This term has been used in this thread quite often, but I didn't mean to imply that you said that.

Also I never said you compared digital books with printed books. That was an analogy of mine.

True, I do not like the header (in its current form) but I didn't my mention my dislike in my post.

Well, but you called that a "shortcoming" and I assumed that you don't like shortcomings.

I said the header and footer are relatively wide, caused by a huge margin and the position of the text on the screen.
Some (not all) readers have a header and/or footer too. But these are generally much smaller because the margins are smaller and the text position is closer to the edge of the screen. E.g. The Cybook Odyssey HD has an option to turn the headers and footers on or off (seperately! Header and footer are also smaller). The Icarus Sense has a full screen mode, In the non full screen mode small header and footer are shown.

It would be nice to have something similar for Kobo readers, as options. But that has been said many times in this thread.

Yes, it is caused by formatting not the use of a different rendering engine. A conversion from epub to kepub with the KoboTouchExtended plugin goes well (Thanks, jgoguen!).
Yes, Kobo tries to follow the original layout but because Kobo adds some own code to the kepub to make sure all Kobo functions work correctly (font size, line height, annotations etc.). Some code functions as a wrapper around the original code and this code is a sort of a "catch all", which is understandable as it is to costly to do it on an individual basis or manually. This Kobo code can have a huge influence on the output (e.g. add white lines between paragraphs). But true not with every kepub.
Kobo probably decided to add code to the software (epub) to turn a epub into a kepub instead on the hardware side (device or software app) because it was easier to implement and cheaper to get the desired output.

I think that the KePubs you can buy from Kobo have been formatted that way intentionally - like I add a blank line after every paragraph when formatting my ebooks because I like it that way.

If I don't do that, I don't get a blank line, even if I sideload my books to my ereader(s) as KePubs. So I'm not really sure what you mean to say.

If

• original Kobo kepub does contain blanc lines between paragraphs, and the
• original epub does have no blanc line between paragraphs, and the
• user generated kepub (epub conversion to kepub with the KTEP) does not contain a blanc line between paragraphs, then

the blanc line between paragraphs are caused by the Kobo Code.

Somehow Kobo seems to think the blank lines after paragraphs are desirable and they formatted their KePubs that way. But no one forces a Kobo user to buy and use those KePubs. So I still don't see how that makes the comparison fair. The comparison should be made between two books that are formatted the same way, not to differently formatted ones.

Header and footer, okay, but not the formatting. I can't blame my Kobo ereader for showing three blank lines after each paragraph and have superwide margins in a book if I formatted it that way.

No, you don't compare different formats with each other you compare readers.

Yes, but that's not what the review does. By using two differently formatted ebooks it's no fair comparison if you want to show the amount of text on the screen.

And if possible with the same book or same paragraph. And use the default publishers layout of the book.

That was not done in the review either...

So books should look nearly identical, any differences are caused by the reader (engine) or css overrides/changes.

Should - but only if you use identical ebooks (or at least equally formatted ones) which was not done in the review.

Kobo does not control the local environment of an in shop product comparision of different ereaders. If the comparision is done with kepubs that have a blanc line between paragraphs the output looks quite different when compared to the other ereaders. And potential buyers may think it is odd or even that there is something wrong.
So a fair in shop comparison depends very strongly on which books (kepubs) are preloaded on the device. I consider this tricky for Kobo.

That's true... ideally you could load an ebook of your own onto each device to look how it is displayed. But it's rather unlikely that you'll be allowed to do so.