Koreader running on Kobos (all of them, hopefully!)

[blablub]

Originally Posted by KevinShort

I just tried the latest nightly on my Glo, and it seems to work just fine. However, after I saw that it was working I downloaded an epub from the Kobo's web browser, and now files monitor is starting Koreader automatically after a reboot. I couldn't even turn my Glo off with the power slider. I ended up removing the internal SD card and deleting koreader.png.

Have also installed nightly build 502 on my glo. After factory reset I instaled fmon and KOreader. Have no problems with automatically starts after reboot. (Had some before with using 1-step hack.)

In landscape view KOreader crashes every few pages and the reader reboots.

Suspend / power button don't work.

Every other thing seems to work (light button, PDF with different zoom modes, epub, file browser).


USB-connection don't work (should it?), pressing on home button in file browser the reader reboots (is that the normal way to kill KOreader?).

[blablub]

Originally Posted by freekobo

It seems I broke the light button..not sure how to fix.

Yes, on my glo too. Light is on every time, also in suspend (my KOreader starts with light on).

Apart from that, sleeping mode works fine.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by blablub

Have also installed nightly build 502 on my glo. After factory reset I instaled fmon and KOreader. Have no problems with automatically starts after reboot. (Had some before with using 1-step hack.)

In landscape view KOreader crashes every few pages and the reader reboots.

Suspend / power button don't work.

Every other thing seems to work (light button, PDF with different zoom modes, epub, file browser).


USB-connection don't work (should it?), pressing on home button in file browser the reader reboots (is that the normal way to kill KOreader?).

The "usbnet" from Sergey's KoboLauncher provides a better way to access the files on the device, with WinSCP and also have command line access to the Linux OS, with Putty. Since I just overwrite my existing Koreader installation with the Nightly Builds, and I am too lazy to start over with individual installs of the relevant programs, I can't be sure that the launching scripts start usbnet along with Koreader in the files provided by the nightly build or if it is leftover from earlier installs. It is not too hard to install it and have it start with Koreader. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=201632

Yes, the File Manager home icon in the menu, is how you reboot back to Nickel.

Luck;
Ken

[Markismus]

Originally Posted by Fabry

Build 502 has various problems.

Crash even with PDF in portrait mode (during fast pages zapping)
Crash with bottom menu if setting menu (the first from right) is selected
Some graphic garbage (i.e. Portrait text partially corrupted on rotation menu)

I revert to 494 which seems to works better (not considering landscape pdf bug)

Good to hear someone else has problems with that nightly, too. With all the posts mentioning using build 502 I started to wonder whether I had a hardware issue. It crashes in the filemanager for my Aura HD. Giorgio's crash.log only gives the result: Segmentation fault.

[Markismus]

I am trying to add fonts to koreader by copying them to the directory koreader/fonts

Some work, some don't. Some fonts are not recognized by their filename, but by their 'family' name. For example the beautiful font Brioso. So if I put more files into the folder of the same font family, I only see one name.

How can I do this properly?

[Ken Maltby]

Odd that it seems to be the PDF side of things that is having the most problems now, after all the project started with PDF in mind.

Not likely a hardware issue. "Segmentation fault" = program error, the program is trying to access something that it isn't allowed to or doesn't exist. On very rare occasions a hardware issue could make something the program is trying to access unavailable in a way that could cause a segfault.

"Nightly Builds" are traditionally very much a matter of software under construction, they allow all concerned, especially those working on the project, to see how the recent changes/additions effect the overall status of the program. They are in no way meant as a finished program. We are just lucky to be far enough along in the project development that, for some of us at least, the builds provide a mostly working program.
Don't despair, they will get there and we get to play with their work along the way. The hope is that our fumbling with the nightlys will expose the nature of problems that the team are dealing with.

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Markismus

I am trying to add fonts to koreader by copying them to the directory koreader/fonts

Some work, some don't. Some fonts are not recognized by their filename, but by their 'family' name. For example the beautiful font Brioso. So if I put more files into the folder of the same font family, I only see one name.

How can I do this properly?

I could use a good "how to" as well. I like this one:

Luck;
Ken

I just put it in /fonts/freefont/ and it seems to be working in the current .epub I'm reading. I had to find the Change Font in the top menu, I kept looking for it in the bottom one. This font is very simple and it appears to ignore things that were creating artifacts in the text, making it easier to read.

[Fabry]

Same landscape bug (crash) even with CBZ and not only PDF.

Furthermore big cbz (like 300MB) need much time to be opened (the first time).
Time like 60 or more seconds, in this case will be useful a message in file manager like "loading please wait".
With so long waiting pause, without a message is difficult to understand if we must only wait or if the click has not been got by touchscreen (and we are waiting for nothing, no file has been selected).

I have noticed also (with CBZ and PDF) that margin set to medium and large corresponds to the same screen rendering, only margin small changes the screen.
Is it correct or is it another bug (medium icon set large preset instead medium) ?

[Fabry]

Even Crop mode setted to Auto seems to do nothings (big white borders always present with all page margin mode).

I must change to SemiAuto and then revert to Auto to see Auto works for really.

Sometime touchscreen stops to respond (more often with cbz but also with pdf) and koreader seems freezed.
Sometime it will recover after many seconds (often more than a minute) during which I continue to touch various screen areas, trying to recover koreader usage.
In this case I have found out a trick to solve.
By sliding the power button when koreader seems frozen, reset the problem and touchscreen will immediately be used again

[hawhill]

Fabry: That margin thing might be a bug, but I'm not sure how it is supposed to work for the document you tried it with. I'm not so sure why it takes *that* long to open a CBZ - will need to try it myself.

Auto-Cropping will probably only work with PDFs, maybe others when reflow is used.

We still need to do a lot of debugging and bug-fixing. Koreader is still in an early stage - where it works fine for some things, not so for others.

[hawhill]

Markismus: I'm not really sure about the state of things with multi-master fonts and/or OpenType fonts with multiple faces included. While freetype does in principle support them, I think that neither KoReader nor the rendering engine we use (crengine) really has support right now.

[Fabry]

Originally Posted by hawhill

Fabry: That margin thing might be a bug, but I'm not sure how it is supposed to work for the document you tried it with.

It is the same for all pdf I have tried (same for the only cbz tried).

I'm not so sure why it takes *that* long to open a CBZ - will need to try it myself.

I suppose that it wants to read/parse the whole file before display the first image.
And reading 300MB needs many seconds (often more than a minute).

If I reopen it (after reading other documents) it opens quickly enough (less than 5 seconds, often less than 3), something cached ?

This cache seems to survive to koreader reboot, only newer cbz file will be very long to open.

Auto-Cropping will probably only work with PDFs, maybe others when reflow is used.

Yes I was talking about PDF, but it is the same for CBZ.

If I open a new pdf (never read before) crop is to auto-crop as default but no changes happen when I change margin setting to small.
Always big white border around.
But if I switch to semi-auto (setting a manual border and then confirming) and then I revert to auto it seems that now also auto-cropping is working (at least it responds to margin changing).

We still need to do a lot of debugging and bug-fixing. Koreader is still in an early stage - where it works fine for some things, not so for others.

Yes, I understand but I try to indicate areas where I think there are problems to be fixed or things to be improved.

[hawhill]

Of course, and feedback is highly welcome. Reading CBZ should be faster. It's a ZIP and has a table of contents - lookup of individual files should be fast. Auto-cropping PDFs depends on the content type (in non-reflowed mode) - it looks for a rectangle actually covered by content. In the worst case, this contents might be white bars. Also, scanned PDFs cannot be automatically cropped this way if the white margins are part of the actual bitmap (the scanned image) laid out on the PDF page. I'll have a look and will try to reproduce. In any case, thanks for each and every bug report!

[chrox]

Originally Posted by Fabry

If I open a new pdf (never read before) crop is to auto-crop as default but no changes happen when I change margin setting to small.
Always big white border around.
But if I switch to semi-auto (setting a manual border and then confirming) and then I revert to auto it seems that now also auto-cropping is working (at least it responds to margin changing).

The margin option is not working when opening a new pdf is because that new pdf document is opened in 'fit to page zoom mode' by default in which one whole page is displayed in one screen so that margin option is meaningless and the layout is calculated according to the aspect ratio of the page. It happens to work after setting manual cropping box because the zoom mode is set to 'fit to content width zoom mode' automatically in manual cropping.

[Markismus]

After numerous crashes and an altogether laggy experience of koreader I remembered the extra lines cgm999 put in his koreader_kobo.sh script, which is situated in the main koreader directory.
The result is as of yet astounding:

• Koreader pdf pageturns are snappy again,
• it changes pdf from landscape to portrait and back without a hitch.

The changes to koreader_kobo.sh the following added lines:

# Decrease the reasons for crashes. Search forum for cgm999's explanation.
exec 3<&-

# Stop nickel and related processes
killall nickel
killall adobehost
killall dbus-daemon
killall hindenburg

Just copy-paste those lines after the first line (#!/bin.sh) and before the call to reader (# finally call reader).