I've just bought a Kobo Touch, and need help

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you both, and another question.

@robko - I'm sorry, I can't remember the details. I will do a full check and report it, but it's hard to summarise.

@tshering - I'm not sure if you're responding to my comments, but just in case... mine are ePub2 ebooks.

New question: Is it possible to read ePubs in landscape mode? I can't find any instructions on how to do that. It would be useful for reading long line poetry.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

New question: Is it possible to read ePubs in landscape mode? I can't find any instructions on how to do that. It would be useful for reading long line poetry.

Have a look there.


Are the epubs you have problems by chance in Japanese? If the language of the epub is set to Japanese (<dc:language>ja</dc> in the opf file) you can only change font face and font size. I do not know why this is so but this is the way it is.

[AlexBell]

Thanks, tshering. I appreciate the evidence that a Kobo Touch can be read in landscape orientation. Could you go the second mile please and give me a link to how to get there?

And no, the ePubs are not in Japanese. And they do validate and work on my Sony and my iPad2/iBooks.

[tshering]

@AlexBell,

The idea is to put html "{-epub-writing-mode: vertical-rl}" into the css file of an (DRM free) epub. On the reader choose "Gothic MB101" as font face. Page forward by touching the top of the screen and backward by touching the bottom of the screen.
I add an example epub from today's "Some of Our Latest Books" list of http://www.gutenberg.org/ which is modified by me so that you can test it.

If you need more details on how to make it yourself:
Decompress an epub (it is a zip file) and then find and open the css file (if there are more css files you have to decide on a case by case base which to choose). Add the line

html {-epub-writing-mode: vertical-rl}

to the css file. If there is already a "html {...}" entry then add "-epub-writing-mode: vertical-rl" to it.

After that re-compress the whole content and copy it to the reader.

The important point in compressing is that the file "mimetype" has to be the first file in the zip-file and must not be compressed. Most tutorials recommend 7-zip for this, but it does not work for me. I use info-zip, which can be downloaded here (http://stahlworks.com/dev/index.php?tool=zipunzip). I add a batch file below that makes the task easier (on Windows). Copy it to your computer. If you drag and drop the "mimetype" file on it it will compile the epub. Attention: You have to modify line 6 (SET myzip=C:\Program Files\infozip\zip\zip.exe) according to the path on your computer.

[llcj]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Quite often when I select a link to go to a new page the lower part of the newscreen appears first and then the upper part - sometimes with the text disappearing and coming back. Is this normal?

I've just noticed this on my Mini (I've only recently updated to 2.3.1.) As of now, I only notice it when I first open a book or when I go to TOC and select a chapter (the first page brought up displays this behaviour.) It seems to happen only on epubs and not on kepubs. I'm still running 2.1.5 on my Touch so I can't comment on it.

[AlexBell]

@tshering Thanks so much for all the effort you've gone through to help me get to use my Kobo in landscape mode. I should have let you know beforehand that my main interest is in designing ebooks, and I wanted to know about landscape mode because of a poetry ebook I'm working on. Many of the poems have long lines, and they look better with the ereader in landscape orientation.

Though I admire your ingenuity I think the average poetry reader on the street would not be be pleased to open an ebook and find it 'went the wrong way.' I was more interested in finding some hidden method within the Kobo instructions to change to landscape mode.

[AlexBell]

I've been concerned about problems with links and italics on the Kobo Touch, and have just posted a survey of the Kobo Touch fonts on the ePub forum at

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...86#post2381986