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Old 02-16-2013, 01:20 PM   #1
fish99
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[Solved] Glo page turn problems

***Solved, see post #14 below***


Hi,

Just posting here my disappointment to discover that the page turn bugs from my old Kobo Touch are still there on my new Glo.

The problem is - when the device is freshly powered up, the touch screen works fine almost every time, but after 3 hours of reading, it becomes totally unreliable. It can take up to 5-7 presses for the device to change page, and an average of 3 presses. Sometimes you press three times, the device will do nothing for 10 seconds, then suddenly jump forward 1-3 pages. I've even pressed 5 times to go forward a page, had no reaction from the device, and 10 seconds later then it's suddenly jumped backwards 2 pages. It spoils the flow of your book.

This is with a side-loaded epub btw. My Touch does exactly the same thing. Both have 2.3.1 which is the latest firmware in my region (UK). Neither have micro-SD cards installed.

Just really disappointed with Kobo that they put out another device with the same problem. Otherwise they're really nice devices, and the light on the Glo is awesome, but I'm not going to keep buying Kobos if they're all going to be like this.


Last edited by fish99; 02-20-2013 at 04:22 PM. Reason: issue resolved
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Old 02-16-2013, 04:03 PM   #2
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Btw is there anyone out there who reads for 3+ hour sessions and doesn't get this problem?

Also is there any way to check if any of the epubs I sideloaded are dodgy? Calibre didn't report any issues with them, but I didn't use Calibre to load them onto the Glo.

Cheers.
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Old 02-16-2013, 05:23 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fish99 View Post
Btw is there anyone out there who reads for 3+ hour sessions and doesn't get this problem?

Also is there any way to check if any of the epubs I sideloaded are dodgy? Calibre didn't report any issues with them, but I didn't use Calibre to load them onto the Glo.
I occasionally read 3-4 hours in a session, but I usually flick the Glo into sleep mode for 5 minutes every hour or so to make a cup of tea or listen to the news, not sure if that makes any difference. I didn't use firmware 2.3.1 for very long, so if it is something specific to that version I might have missed it.

I don't usually have any problem with page turning, but I have had some particuler books that were very slow in that regard, and caused the Glo to become slow to respond while the book was open. This included some bought from Kobo (both the kepub and the epub had the same problems). However the problems were apparent soon after starting the book, they didn't take hours to manifest. After an epub-->epub conversion with calibre everything worked fine.

Edit: I'll try doing a long session tonight without letting the Glo sleep at all, to see if that makes a diffeerence.

Last edited by GeoffR; 02-16-2013 at 05:39 PM.
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Old 02-16-2013, 06:07 PM   #4
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I've seen one or two reports of page turning going the wrong direction or getting erratic after while before... However I can't find the post in question. I also can't remember which firmware it was about.

It sounds like a firmware thing though, I can imagine that three hours of non-stop reading can eventually fill up some cache or something fails to refresh causing erratic page turning problems.... and also seeing your Touch and Glo are both on the same firmware I think it might be firmware related, so not (necessarily) device related. Having said that, I don't know if this is a known bug for Kobo or if it has been fixed in the newest firmware (2.4.0).
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Old 02-16-2013, 07:05 PM   #5
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I've read for long sessions and don't get this problem. I did get the jump ahead 3 pages problem (with the page being built in sections). The latest firmware seems to have fixed this particular problem.
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Old 02-16-2013, 07:06 PM   #6
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Thanks.

My Touch has always had this problem, and I remember when I bought it about a year ago, there was a long thread here about page turn problems, and it seemed like it was a moderately widespread issue if you used the device for long enough in one session without restarting it.

I don't know if it was ever addressed though, because I've barely used my Touch since then. When I updated it last week it was still on 1.9.17, so it's jumped all the way to 2.3.1 without me ever using any of the firmware in between.

Guess I'll have to wait for 2.4.0 and see if that helps, or just restart my Glo every hour. It could still be a dodgy epub (the Glo and Touch have the same books on them), but I don't know any way of testing them. If definitely feels like a software problem, rather than the touchscreen itself.
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Old 02-17-2013, 02:47 AM   #7
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Perhaps the simplest suggestion is to sleep or reboot if that solves the problem. As someone suggested above it sounds like a memory leak or something of the sort. Maybe on entering sleep or powering down a garbage collection routine runs and sorts the problem out.

I've had some strange page turns happen too, multiples forward or back, but I usually figure I either hit the wrong spot or it's lagging for some reason and I've made multiple touch entries by the time it catches up. A quick sleep might fix it, I can't recall it happening over and over though, but if it did I'm sure I either slept it or rebooted.
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Old 02-17-2013, 10:37 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fish99 View Post
Guess I'll have to wait for 2.4.0 and see if that helps, or just restart my Glo every hour. It could still be a dodgy epub (the Glo and Touch have the same books on them), but I don't know any way of testing them. If definitely feels like a software problem, rather than the touchscreen itself.
I read an epub for just under 4 hours without leaving the book or letting the Glo sleep and had no problem with page turn speed or touchscreen response, this is with firmware 2.4.0.

One thing you might try is paging through a book that has caused problems to see whether it is the number of page turns or the time with the book open that causes the slow down. If it slows down just as a result of paging through the book then others could quickly test that book. (As a part of a battery test I paged through an epub version of War and Peace without any problems while running firmware 2.3.2.)
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Old 02-17-2013, 01:33 PM   #9
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I'm gonna try removing all books except the one I'm reading, and if that doesn't help I'll wait and see if 2.4.0 does, since that should be coming to UK Glo's this week.

It was as bad as ever last night, even a restart didn't seem to help much. The actual book I'm reading is 'Guardians of the West - David Eddings.epub' which is 606 KB.
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Old 02-17-2013, 06:48 PM   #10
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It could be the formatting of the book. The more complicated the code in the book, the longer it takes to turn a page. In this case, "complicated" code generally means bad code. And if the files making up the epub are big, the further through each of the files, the longer it takes to turn a page. And if you have badly coded and long files, it is a lot worse.

My first thought is that closing and reopening a book like this wouldn't affect things. But, there could be a memory leak or something that is only seen after a long session. If there is a memory leak when reading the most likely time for that to happen is each time you turn a page. CLosing and reopening the book could clean this up. Otherwise a restart would be needed.

Lastly, my reading patterns do mean I have a two or three hour session most weeks. And I've had a few four plus sessions with both the Touch and Glo. But, my epubs tend to be clean. I usually end up opening them and changing some of the styles and at the same time clean and simplify the code.
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Old 02-18-2013, 02:22 PM   #11
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TBH I had no idea epub files contained code, I thought it was just formatted text, like a .doc file or something, i.e. a very simple format. I guess I can try reformatting the files in calibre since I'm assuming calibre would product better/cleaner files.

Btw removing all files but the one I was reading made no difference.
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Old 02-18-2013, 06:06 PM   #12
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Epub contains markup, not code

They're actually just renamed zip files - you can rename the file extension and open them in Explorer or Winrar. They're usually just a bunch of html/xml files and other assets.
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Old 02-18-2013, 06:23 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fish99 View Post
TBH I had no idea epub files contained code, I thought it was just formatted text, like a .doc file or something, i.e. a very simple format. I guess I can try reformatting the files in calibre since I'm assuming calibre would product better/cleaner files.
An ePub is a set of files in a zipped containing file. There are a few files that describe the reset. These contain things like the metadata, TOC, list of the files and order they are used in. These files are XML. The text of the book is in one or more files. These use HTML for the layout of the text.

Running a conversion in calibre can make better code or worse. If the code in the source is bad, calibre tends to produce cleaner code. Or at least it produces code that is more consistent and easier for me to modify if I want to. For good source, the output is generally good, but it can merge some styles and do a couple of things I don't like.
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Old 02-20-2013, 04:19 PM   #14
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I'm tentatively calling this as fixed after reformatting* my epubs using Calibre, and getting a >95% reduction in page turn problems during a 6hr reading session last night with my Glo. Also just tried the same fixed files on my Touch and again, almost no problems.

Seems like it was bad epubs then and not the device itself.

Thank you for the help everyone



(* when I say reformatting, I'm just talking about using 'convert books' with the kobo reader output profile selected in page setup)
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