09-20-2012, 09:52 AM | #31 |
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I'll add two summarised questions to the list, but as I'm new to ebooks, I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer these. Any good guides on creating collections in Calibre you can recommend?
EDIT: OK, I seem to have found some Calibre guides on the web, so I'll have a go at creating some epub colelctions before the Glo arrives. However, I have also found a Calibre plug-in called "Collections" which is specifically for the Kindle. I wonder if people have had problems using Calibre collections on their Kobo readers because they are using a Kindle plug-in?... Last edited by 9littlebees; 09-20-2012 at 10:29 AM. |
09-20-2012, 10:20 AM | #32 | |
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09-20-2012, 10:27 AM | #33 |
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I read this thread a few times. I didn't want to chime in unless I had something of value to add in, and I wasn't sure I did . Here goes.
I think it is important to acknowledge, perhaps through weighting of the importance of features, or the prominence/order in the review, a difference between whether the Glo does what Kobo promises and has been designed to do, and, well, other things. So, for example, Kobo stresses the ease of syncing kepubs with other devices and apps. I believe that should be covered in a review. Kobo is designed to sideload though Adobe ADE. How well that works is important, even if MR users are prone to use calibre, instead. It's hard to remember that we are not the typical user of an e-reading device. I believe that for this reason, prominence and rating points should reflect the basic functionality that most people are looking for when they buy a reader. Speaking of calibre, I am a huge fan and use it almost daily. That being said, it is a third party program, and whether or not Kobo plays nicely with it depends, to a large extent, on whether one of the people who volunteer to develop and extend it choose to work on and develop the kobo driver. Currently David is doing an amazing job working on the driver. Before David, Tim did that for several years. Volunteers have other lives, and there can never be a guarantee that any device will do what we would ideally want when kobo (or any device manufacturer) makes a change. I think that people who write about devices need to take that into account. Now, if a manufacturer goes out of its way to keep calibre from working with its devices, that is another story. |
09-20-2012, 10:28 AM | #34 |
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These collections are called "shelves" in the Kobo devices. At the moment I don't think Calibre can organise anything into shelves. The only way to make shelves and add books to them is from the device itself. But who knows, things might change in newer Kobo firmware, and then we'll need a Calibre update as well...
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09-20-2012, 10:48 AM | #35 | |
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I am positive that we will see great things happening with shelves/collections through the calibre driver. It's not my story to tell. |
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09-20-2012, 10:59 AM | #36 | ||
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Now I just need to think about how to succinctly add a comment to my original post stating this... Quote:
Phew, looks like I've got a lot of work to do before I get my new eReader!! Last edited by 9littlebees; 09-20-2012 at 11:01 AM. |
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09-20-2012, 12:12 PM | #37 | |
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I think for the purposes of a review, you may want to try to make a clear distinction between these two types of digital files. This would include books that might have had alterations to their coding or stylesheets that could interfere with how the reader works. To my noodle-filled mind, it is worth noting the pretty well known fact that Kobo readers--at least those we have had so far--really, really doesn't play well with books with wonky coding. It does this in predictable ways, well, at least for Kobo devices. Let me give you an example. I routinely strip the drm from ePUBs I purchase before loading them onto my Kobo. Nothing is changed other then that. I can choose to use calibre or copy and paste the books--neither method of getting the book onto my device seems to matter in terms of how well the device works with the book. I have not yet had a problem with any book from which I have stripped the drm and then loaded onto my device without making other changes. The same can not be said for books that have been sent to me by family and friends. In those instances, they may have altered the stylesheet (sometimes using calibre, sometimes not) or the html in a way that effects how the book works with the Kobo device. It may be a book they have created themselves. Things that are most often altered seem to be how book covers display and the ability to adjust things like margins and line spacing. Because it's not my first rodeo, I know how to get these things to work the way I want them to. Heck it's not even my 500th rodeo . People using an ereader for the first time will not necessarily know how to do that. For that reason I believe it is important to make a distinction between poor functionality of the device in general and how the device handles files that may have been modified in these ways. |
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09-20-2012, 12:47 PM | #38 | ||
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Whilst I do not condone the illegal obtaining of other people's Intellectual Property, I do prefer to have an open to a closed platform where possible - one big reason for choosing the Kobo and the reason I own an Android rather than an iPhone. ADE has a number of "sample" epubs I will try out, I'll obtain some kepubs from the Kobo store, epubs from the WH Smith store (our official Kobo retailer in the UK) and I'll browse the interwebs for some legally free CBR/CBZ and epubs (like the Conan epub I mentioned earlier). I want to ensure that my review will mention the way in which the device will handle formats from different sources, as this is something I myself want to know. If you have to spend a long time tweaking an "unsupported" epub in software before it will display perfectly on the Glo, again this is something I will be interested in pointing out. That is not to say that I will be banging on Kobo. I appreciate the fact that people develop their ebooks with a specific output in mind (whether Kindle, Sony, Kobo or Nook) so they will not always work instamagically on all devices that support that format. As such, this would not affect my rating, but would be more of a caveat for people to be aware of. Quote:
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09-20-2012, 01:54 PM | #39 |
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i don't have time to write something up from work (darn those pesky bosses) and I am working until 9 PM my time, but I will take a stab at it tomorrow. In the meantime, this is not top-secret , so chances are someone else will write it up.
As I said, I don't have problems with a book purchased/downloaded from a real bookseller--this is true even when I do a format conversion, for example, a kindle book that magically becomes an ePUB on my device. There may be the rare instance when the publisher does something screwy or kobo screws up a particular book, but it's not a device issue--it is, again, a formatting issue. I routinely buy from BOB, Smashwords, Google, B&N, and Amazon without incident. I'll be interested to read what your experience is like. Last edited by taming; 09-20-2012 at 02:00 PM. |
09-20-2012, 02:28 PM | #40 | |
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For instance, I've noticed previously that book covers of kepubs show up perfectly full screen, no margins. And then when I download the DRM epub of the same kepub and put that on my device (either through ADE or via Calibre with DRM stripped), the same book with the same cover but in epub format suddenly has a cover showing margins (ie. not full screen). I don't know if this is still the case in the current firmware (I did the above in 1.9.17), as now I change all my stylesheets to show the covers correctly without margins (which needs unpredictable code to work perfectly. Even regular code and/or with proper fixed sizes in for the cover image still gives margins.) |
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09-20-2012, 07:40 PM | #41 | |||
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There were later posts about shelves and calibre, but as this is the one that started it all.
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This all works well up to removing the SD card. Then the device forgets about all the books on the card. It removes them from its library including the shelves. If you put the SD card back in, the books are all treated as new books and added to the library. Quote:
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09-21-2012, 05:23 AM | #42 | ||||
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I've modified the previous "colelctions" point on my list to address "shelves" instead, along with a mention of their behaviour with microSD cards. If the wording can be improved, please do let me know, as I have no idea how shelves will actually work on the device. |
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09-21-2012, 05:43 AM | #43 | |
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OK, I've completely updated the first post so that it now contains my entire outline for the review. I'll update this list with additional requests as they come up. Here it is, to save jumping back to the first page...
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Last edited by 9littlebees; 09-21-2012 at 05:47 AM. |
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09-21-2012, 04:27 PM | #44 |
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When you are testing the reader's ability to handle epub, I think it would be a good idea to get a few samples from Project Guttenburg, as well as some books from Baen. (The Baen Free Library would be a good source.). The books should be reasonably well formatted as any 'official' book, easy for anyone else to aquire and compare, and that way, the review is not limited to allegations of Calibre introduced taint. Some free books (or samples) from Smashwords would also be a good idea.
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09-22-2012, 04:16 AM | #45 | |
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I've also picked up freebies from ComicBookPlus (to test CBR and CBZ files), the Kobo store, epubbooks, feedbooks, digilibrary, a free epub on web-writer.net and I've also got some books I've purchased in the past (as PDFs) which also came with epub versions on drivethrurpg. I've also picked up some free books on Amazon to see about converting mobis to epubs. I did look at Barnes & Noble, but they want a US registered card in order to download free ebooks, so I won't be looking there. So hopefully I'll have my bases quite well covered in terms of ebook sources! |
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