The File that Broke the Kobo Glo - Your experiences?

Dr. Drib · 03-07-2013, 01:31 PM

Well, not literally. But figuratively speaking, yes.

I recently acquired a free copy of "The Survivors," by Angela White. After translating it to epub, I then used calibre to put it on my Glo. The Glo froze up and was unresponsive. I was able to turn it off and do a restart. I then tried again, and the same thing happened.

The file works fine on my Kindle Fire HD.

I'm going to put it on my Kindle paperwhite to see what happens.

-- By the way, someone did a lousy job on this ebook. The TOC is non-working.

Wish me luck, although I just may remove this turkey from my Amazon account.....

Has this happened to anyone with a particular ebook?

Don

Ninjalawyer · 03-07-2013, 01:52 PM

Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature caused my Kobo to hard lock every time I tried to open it at one point. Luckily a firmware update seemed to fix the issue for me.

davidfor · 03-07-2013, 09:39 PM

I haven't had a book that hung my Touch for a while. And I don't think I have had one hang the Glo. And I think any time I have, a calibre conversion fixed it. But, I do tend to do some fiddling in Sigil as well.

"The Survivors" is still free, so I just grabbed it. I'll have a play and see what happens. Is it any good? I like a good Post Apocalypse story, so hopefully it isn't wasted.

TechniSol · 03-08-2013, 12:03 AM

I suppose it's a bit off topic, but you can download an epub version of "The Survivors," for free from Smashwords without having to convert it.

davidfor · 03-08-2013, 12:38 AM

I have had a play. Whoever created that ebook should be shot.

Firstly, it looks OK in Kindle for PC. But, the TOC was strange. It is there and works, but there is no text in the list, just blank lines.

The conversion in calibre seemed to work OK. But, I was surprised at how long it took. Nearly 8 minutes. But when I opened it in the calibre viewer, it was a mess. The contents page was split in strange places, there is a poem at the start that became basically one line per page. There were strange font changes later in the book.

I loaded it onto my Touch which is running 2.4.0. This had a bit of a clean-up earlier when I did a logout of my account. The book opened, and the first few pages were OK. But, when I reached page 9, it was blank and refused to go to the next page. But, it didn't hang. I could open the menu and return to the home screen. I also used the navigation bar to go to a random page. That worked except the page was blank. And I couldn't turn the page again. At that point it froze and restarted a few minutes later.

I opened the azw and epub files and looked at the files. It looks like this is a straight conversion from a Word document. All the styles are defined in each part. I wonder if this is what the Kindle converter produces. And the calibre conversion converts this to using html entities instead of characters.

Actually, I just picked it up and tried another random page. Page 502 displayed as blank and wouldn't change. But, tapping the page repeatedly, and every six taps it did the refresh flash. When I found some text, it was displayed OK. Paging through that was OK and then it reached an empty page. Tapping the screen repeated the the problem for page 502. I think what is happening is that there is so much non-text in each file, that it is confusing the page calculation algorithm used by the device.

I also opened the converted epub in Sigil. Sigil gave a "invalid epub - do you want to automatically fix it" message. I said yes, and the above HTML entities were converted to characters. I saved this and loaded it on the Touch and it opened OK. It was still badly formatted, but it works.

But, there is a better solution, which TechniSol also found. Smashwords has it for free and epub version looks to be reasonably well formatted. And my Touch has no problem with it.

Dr. Drib · 03-08-2013, 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

I haven't had a book that hung my Touch for a while. And I don't think I have had one hang the Glo. And I think any time I have, a calibre conversion fixed it. But, I do tend to do some fiddling in Sigil as well.

"The Survivors" is still free, so I just grabbed it. I'll have a play and see what happens. Is it any good? I like a good Post Apocalypse story, so hopefully it isn't wasted.

I have it on my Kindle Fired Hd - no problems there.

I've just started it, in order to see if I like. It's gotten some very good reviews and some very bad reviews. As usual with numerous Indie novels, it's being blasted for bad grammar among other things.

ADDED: I'll try the Smashwords version. Thank you for the suggestion on that.

Don

DNSB · 03-09-2013, 12:55 AM

[QUOTE=Dr. Drib;2447979]I have it on my Kindle Fired Hd - no problems there.

I've just started it, in order to see if I like. It's gotten some very good reviews and some very bad reviews. As usual with numerous Indie novels, it's being blasted for bad grammar among other things.

ADDED: I'll try the Smashwords version. Thank you for the suggestion on that./QUOTE]

I got hold of a copy of the Kindle version converted to an .epub. The kindest phrase I can apply is a regurgitated dog's breakfast -- I've never seen so many errors spit out by EpubCheck and FlightCrew. I even tried a couple of online epub validation sites though most seem to use a version of EpubCheck with the same results.

The Smashword's version is much improved though (personal opinion) it has a ways to go in terms of the formatting and cleanup.

Regards,
David

03-07-2013, 01:31 PM	#1
Dr. Drib Grand Sorcerer Posts: 44,736 Karma: 55645321 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Peru Device: Kindle: Oasis 3, Voyage WiFi; Kobo: Libra 2, Aura One	The File that Broke the Kobo Glo - Your experiences? Well, not literally. But figuratively speaking, yes. I recently acquired a free copy of "The Survivors," by Angela White. After translating it to epub, I then used calibre to put it on my Glo. The Glo froze up and was unresponsive. I was able to turn it off and do a restart. I then tried again, and the same thing happened. The file works fine on my Kindle Fire HD. I'm going to put it on my Kindle paperwhite to see what happens. -- By the way, someone did a lousy job on this ebook. The TOC is non-working. Wish me luck, although I just may remove this turkey from my Amazon account..... Has this happened to anyone with a particular ebook? Don

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03-07-2013, 01:52 PM	#2
Ninjalawyer Guru Posts: 826 Karma: 18573626 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Touch, Nexus 7 (2013)	Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature caused my Kobo to hard lock every time I tried to open it at one point. Luckily a firmware update seemed to fix the issue for me.

03-07-2013, 09:39 PM	#3
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	I haven't had a book that hung my Touch for a while. And I don't think I have had one hang the Glo. And I think any time I have, a calibre conversion fixed it. But, I do tend to do some fiddling in Sigil as well. "The Survivors" is still free, so I just grabbed it. I'll have a play and see what happens. Is it any good? I like a good Post Apocalypse story, so hopefully it isn't wasted.

03-08-2013, 12:03 AM	#4
TechniSol GranPohbah-Fezzes r cool! Posts: 1,056 Karma: 3151024 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Nook STRs, Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo	I suppose it's a bit off topic, but you can download an epub version of "The Survivors," for free from Smashwords without having to convert it.

03-08-2013, 12:38 AM	#5
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	I have had a play. Whoever created that ebook should be shot. Firstly, it looks OK in Kindle for PC. But, the TOC was strange. It is there and works, but there is no text in the list, just blank lines. The conversion in calibre seemed to work OK. But, I was surprised at how long it took. Nearly 8 minutes. But when I opened it in the calibre viewer, it was a mess. The contents page was split in strange places, there is a poem at the start that became basically one line per page. There were strange font changes later in the book. I loaded it onto my Touch which is running 2.4.0. This had a bit of a clean-up earlier when I did a logout of my account. The book opened, and the first few pages were OK. But, when I reached page 9, it was blank and refused to go to the next page. But, it didn't hang. I could open the menu and return to the home screen. I also used the navigation bar to go to a random page. That worked except the page was blank. And I couldn't turn the page again. At that point it froze and restarted a few minutes later. I opened the azw and epub files and looked at the files. It looks like this is a straight conversion from a Word document. All the styles are defined in each part. I wonder if this is what the Kindle converter produces. And the calibre conversion converts this to using html entities instead of characters. Actually, I just picked it up and tried another random page. Page 502 displayed as blank and wouldn't change. But, tapping the page repeatedly, and every six taps it did the refresh flash. When I found some text, it was displayed OK. Paging through that was OK and then it reached an empty page. Tapping the screen repeated the the problem for page 502. I think what is happening is that there is so much non-text in each file, that it is confusing the page calculation algorithm used by the device. I also opened the converted epub in Sigil. Sigil gave a "invalid epub - do you want to automatically fix it" message. I said yes, and the above HTML entities were converted to characters. I saved this and loaded it on the Touch and it opened OK. It was still badly formatted, but it works. But, there is a better solution, which TechniSol also found. Smashwords has it for free and epub version looks to be reasonably well formatted. And my Touch has no problem with it.

03-09-2013, 12:55 AM	#7
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 35,295 Karma: 145435140 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Forma, Clara HD, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	[QUOTE=Dr. Drib;2447979]I have it on my Kindle Fired Hd - no problems there. I've just started it, in order to see if I like. It's gotten some very good reviews and some very bad reviews. As usual with numerous Indie novels, it's being blasted for bad grammar among other things. ADDED: I'll try the Smashwords version. Thank you for the suggestion on that./QUOTE] I got hold of a copy of the Kindle version converted to an .epub. The kindest phrase I can apply is a regurgitated dog's breakfast -- I've never seen so many errors spit out by EpubCheck and FlightCrew. I even tried a couple of online epub validation sites though most seem to use a version of EpubCheck with the same results. The Smashword's version is much improved though (personal opinion) it has a ways to go in terms of the formatting and cleanup. Regards, David

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