The Ultimate Kobo Tips & Tricks Thread

[ProDigit]

Is there a way to manually change page flushes from 6 to perhaps 9 or 10?
Or is that a bit too hard to do?

[oren64]

Hi ProDigit,

I guess you miss what i and davidfor write in your thread:

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by oren64

See Index to the Metazoa firmware patches, you can patch your firmware and increase the number of page turn.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Or, to me, simpler, change the config file:

- Set the refresh rate to something other than 6
- Connect to the PC
- Open the file ".kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf" with a Linux line-end aware editor.
- Find the line with "numPartialUpdatePageTurns"
- Change the number on the end of the line to anything up to 99.
- Save the file and eject the device.

The only problem with this is that you cannot change the setting on the Reading settings page. If you look, it shows "Oh the humanity!" and the standard options.

[ProDigit]

What does 99 do?
Will it be possible to have 9 or 12 pages per flush, what do I write then?

[oren64]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

What does 99 do?
Will it be possible to have 9 or 12 pages per flush, what do I write then?

99=refresh screen every 99 pages.
you can choose between 1-99.
open configuration file "Kobo eReader.conf" with Notepad++ and change the number.

[Reading]
numPartialUpdatePageTurns=9

or

[Reading]
numPartialUpdatePageTurns=12

=== === === ===

Or you can patch the firmware see the link i posted.

The `Custom page refresh options` patch allows the Reading Settings menu itself to be changed, so you can select from a custom set of values without the need to edit the configuration file. There are two patch alternatives: an arithmetic progression (default 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12); or a geometric progression (default 1,2,4,8,16,32,64).

you can change the patch so it can be 1-50 or 6-20.

===

I recommend to patch the firmware, if you what to change the number page turn, you can do it in Reading Settings menu.
also see if like the a other patches.

EDIT: i hope that "flush"=screen refresh, and not flush the toilet every 9 or 12 pages

[ProDigit]

Ok, on work pc here,
Wordpad works quite good as well.
As soon as I unplugged, it refreshed, and now the page turn option says "Oh the humanity!"

LoL!

Don't know why...

[rashkae]

Kobo currently (and for the past few years) has some of the best e-ink ebook readers available. In terms of what they are capable of, Kindles don't even come close. Sadly, the Kobo interface and ease of use leaves much to be desired. I've spent much time and trial/error formatting books to optimize for both Kobo and Kindle devices; but to really get the most of a Kobo, some steps need to be taken by the User.

I will not go into the user made patches here. They are great, and more info can be found on the mobileread kobo developer forum for those, but here I'm focusing on what you can do with a stock Kobo device that doesn't require loading your own firmware, (or anything else than can in any way risk bricking the device.)

This guide is for people who are happy with sideloading books over a USB cable with Calibre.

The first point is that Kobo actually has two e-book reading applications installed. There's an Epub reader based on Adobe SDK (required for books with ADOBE DRM, such as books from libraries, or purchased from Google Books.). If you've been downloading epubs and copying them to your Kobo, this is the reading application you've been using. Second is Kobo's own reading app. It works with books that have been specially modified and end with the file extension .kepub.epub ; colloquially known as KEPUB format. Each of these reading applications have their set of advantages and bugs.

Advantages of Kepub:

• Much faster response to page turns.
• Ability to Zoom (and pan) on Images.. Great for maps, or pictures with small print text.
• Much more responsive to text selection, if you like to make annotations or text excerpts.
• Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
• Reading Time estimate,, see the mostly accurate remaining time to read the current chapter, the entire book, as well as as a graphic chart that shows the relative length of chapters.
• Footnote links will pop up as a window, instead of jumping around to a different page in the book. Also, the small footnote links are much easier to press without accidentally turning the page.
• Font selection will fall back to a font that has any missing glyphs. That means, books with unusual or foreign language Unicode characters will display properly, even if the font is not embedded in the book. You can Sideload a font for languages / scripts that Kobo does not support. I like Arial Unicode MS as a catch all.

To take full advantage of these benefits, the first thing I'm going to do is create file named kobo_extra.css. This file needs to be copied directly on the Kobo's filesystem (the drive that is attached when Kobo is plugged into a pc.).
It will contain the following:

body {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0 !important;
}

body>div {
padding-left: 0.2em !important;
padding-right: 0.2em !important;
}

Next is to install the following 3 plugins in Calibre. If you haven't used plugins before, they are pretty simple. Open the Preferneces dialogue in Calibre, and the Plugins button is on the bottom. Press the 'Get New Plugins' button. Search for and install the KoboTouchExtended, KePub Metadata Reader and KePub Metadata Writer plugins.

Back in the Plugins window, search for KoboTouch. You should see both a KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended plugin. Hightlight the KoboTouch one and Disable it.

Highlight the KoboTouchExtended Plugin and click the Customize Plugin button. In the 'Collections, Covers and Uploads' tab, put a checkmark in the "Modify CSS" option.

Use the Ok and Apply buttons to close all the windows. Now, when you connect the Kobo to the computer and use Calibre's "Send to Device" Button, the epub book will be sent to the Kobo in Kepub format. (DRM must be removed first. That's just a given, and common sense if you're stuck with a DRM source.)

My last trick is to enable the option of full page reading. Full page will remove the Header and Page counter footer at the bottom of the every page and allows you to use the whole screen for reading, (with a margin you control by the usual margin slider.)

With the Kobo attached to the PC, open the KoboEreader Drive, and the .kobo/kobo Directory. We'll edit the Kobo eReader.conf file. However, you should use a text editor that will preserve the Unix text file format. Windows users are recommended to install and use Notepad++ to modify this file.

Scroll to the [Reading] Section, and add the following line:
fullScreenReading=true


Save the file, disconnect the Kobo as normal. This by itself will not have changed anything, however, when you open the Reading Setting while reading a book, there is now a new option that was previously hidden, "Show Header and Footer." Remove the check mark to get use of your full screen. Note that when you are in full screen mode, the 'margin' slider will not always update the display on the fly. You have to adjust your margin, press the home icon to close the book, and re-open it, for the new margins to be in effect.

[Koboyashi]

Thank you for this Guide. You're listing advantages of the Kepub format - sounds good, especially the full screen option. But are there any disadvantages and/or bugs introduced which I don't have with Epubs?

How do I re-upload an already as Epub sideloaded book as a Kepub? Do I have to delete the Epub on device first?

As far as I understood, the kobo_extra.css has to be in the device root, right?

Regards,
Koboyashi

[MGlitch]

Am I correct in recalling that kobo_extra.css only applies to kepubs sent over to the device -after- the file is placed in the root directory?

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by Koboyashi

Thank you for this Guide. You're listing advantages of the Kepub format - sounds good, especially the full screen option. But are there any disadvantages and/or bugs introduced which I don't have with Epubs?

Of those that I know off the top of my head.

Kepub must have a TOC entry for every internal file. (It's a structure of how the book is put together thing). If The TOC is not formatted this way, the Kobo will not follow page numbers accurately. (Page numbers and reading progress will appear to jump around, but you'll still be able to read the book as normal.)

If you enable book progress for the entire book, and use the slider to move around or jump chapters, then press the 'return' button, it's possible to lock up the kobo and require a restart. This bug was introduced about 3 firmwares ago.

If you select any other font besides 'Publisher Default', the book will not use any other font specified in the book formatting. This will be very bad for any books that relies on different fonts for different context.

There are people who are really OCD about typography who prefer the way ADOBE renders text. I'll let him jump in and explain.


Edit: I should add that the full screen option will work with normal epubs. But there will be no top / bottom margin whatsoever. If you don't mind text right up against the edge, that will work for you as well.

How do I re-upload an already as Epub sideloaded book as a Kepub? Do I have to delete the Epub on device first?

As far as I understood, the kobo_extra.css has to be in the device root, right?

It's entirely up to to you if you want to delete the epub first or not. The Kobo works just fine with one of each.

yes, the kobo_extra.css has to be on the root of the device. (I was trying to avoid Unix terminology in hopes to avoid confusion.)

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Am I correct in recalling that kobo_extra.css only applies to kepubs sent over to the device -after- the file is placed in the root directory?

Yes, that is correct.

the purpose of this kobo_extra.css is to add the work arounds to the bugs with kepub and full screen display. This is what the patches do for you by default if you install those. If you do not intend to use full screen, or if you patch your firmware with the community patches, (including the full screen bug fixes), then you do not need this.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Am I correct in recalling that kobo_extra.css only applies to kepubs sent over to the device -after- the file is placed in the root directory?

Originally Posted by rashkae

Yes, that is correct.

the purpose of this kobo_extra.css is to add the work arounds to the bugs with kepub and full screen display. This is what the patches do for you by default if you install those. If you do not intend to use full screen, or if you patch your firmware with the community patches, (including the full screen bug fixes), then you do not need this.

This is correct, but incomplete.

Firstly, the kobo_extra.css handling is part of the main KoboTouch driver. That will apply it to epubs* as they are sent to the device. If you use the extended driver, it will be applied to kepubs that the driver generates. The extended driver will also look in a location on the PC for the kobo_extra.css and copy it to the device before sending the books.

* It's possible it is applied to kepubs in the library, but I don't remember. If it doesn't, it should.

[Ansl]

Originally Posted by rashkae

If you select any other font besides 'Publisher Default', the book will not use any other font specified in the book formatting. This will be very bad for any books that relies on different fonts for different context.

There are people who are really OCD about typography who prefer the way ADOBE renders text. I'll let him jump in and explain.

There is a patch to "un-force font-family settings" for both KePubs and epubs. For the kepub one, there's even three different options to choose from, that affect how strongly user/publisher settings are prioritised.


Epub advantages include ligatures and kerning (there is a way to get kerning to work in KePub but not all fonts do it unmodified), better full justification and more accurate hyphenation. But, it is slower to open, highlighting is more cumbersome, and if you use sideloaded fonts, it really does need separate files to display italics, bold and boldItalic text.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Advantages of Kepub:

• Much faster response to page turns.
• Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
• Font selection will fall back to a font that has any missing glyphs. That means, books with unusual or foreign language Unicode characters will display properly, even if the font is not embedded in the book. You can Sideload a font for languages / scripts that Kobo does not support. I like Arial Unicode MS as a catch all.

I have to make some disagreements here.

One reason that kepub may seem slightly faster is that kepub cannot have as much text on screen because of bugs with Access. I have a wider line height and a wider left/right margin. That means I get considerably less text on screen. And finally, ePub has gotten faster in some of the 4.3 firmware versions. I have not yet tried the new 4.4 version.

The better images is a thing of the past. ePub now renders images quite well since the OS was updated to 32bpp.

Now as to the font, that's not a disagreement as such. What I do disagree with is a sans-serif font for reading with. A font such as ChareInk makes a much better catchall because it's a much nicer looking font and it's weighted rather well for eInk.

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have to make some disagreements here.

One reason that kepub may seem slightly faster is that kepub cannot have as much text on screen because of bugs with Access. I have a wider line height and a wider left/right margin. That means I get considerably less text on screen. And finally, ePub has gotten faster in some of the 4.3 firmware versions. I have not yet tried the new 4.4 version.

Kepub is more than twice as fast with the same amount of text. margins can be eliminated just as easily if you follow the instructions. They make no difference whatsoever.

Images on epub have improved a bit. (and indeed, the difference is barely noticeable on the One. They look comparatively horrid on the H20 (compared to Kepub) and have no zoom, nor are most full page graphics automatically sized correctly to the page. (depends on the formatting of the epub.)

(Why am I still replying to nonsense like this? gah, ,there's an xkcd comic about this somehwere.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Kepub is more than twice as fast with the same amount of text. margins can be eliminated just as easily if you follow the instructions. They make no difference whatsoever.

I read a kepub on the second to last 4.3 firmware and it was not twice as fast even though it had less text on screen. It had to have less text because the line height has to be larger or the last line gets all screwed up and sometime unreadable. So there is no way I can have the same amount of text with kepub as I do with ePub. Also, hyphenation doesn't work as well. I the last kepub I read, there were 2 incorrect hyphens. Also, if you want the fastest kepub, then you have to give up the better typesetting. I read with the better typesetting.

Images on epub have improved a bit. (and indeed, the difference is barely noticeable on the One. They look comparatively horrid on the H20 (compared to Kepub) and have no zoom, nor are most full page graphics automatically sized correctly to the page. (depends on the formatting of the epub.)

Given that I have an H2O, I do say images in ePub are better since 32bpp in the OS. They do not look horrid. Yes, I agree with the lack of zoom and that if the coding isn't correct in ePub, the images may not display correctly.

(Why am I still replying to nonsense like this? gah, ,there's an xkcd comic about this somehwere.)

It's not nonsense. It's what I know from experience with my H2O. And my experience says that some of your information is out-of-date. What was true in the past is no longer true now. I'm basing this on more recent firmware versions.