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Old 04-11-2012, 05:18 PM   #226
Jaden
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Originally Posted by WS64 View Post
Anything that makes it possible to go forward no matter what hand you use, without having to go through the menu at all.
Yes, that would be ideal - but I thought that this was not already implemented and therefore the best I could hope for from the great guys who offer the plugin was the shortcuts.

We agree on wishing for horizontal tap zones or even better "tap anywhere to go forward, swipe to go back" (and best of all - all of this: more options for everyone).

Until then I hope for the 2:1 and 1:2 shortcuts to shorten the actions needed to switch by half.
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Old 05-04-2012, 12:52 PM   #227
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Hey! I would like to help translating the plugin to Spanish. How can I do that?

--
Edit: Well, I just read the whole thread and found the NL translation, so I translated the tags based on that. I hope the new translations can be implemented soon.

Note: The attached file has the translation
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File Type: zip koboplugins.es.ts.zip (2.1 KB, 309 views)

Last edited by shouled; 05-04-2012 at 01:27 PM. Reason: Found!
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Old 05-06-2012, 09:06 AM   #228
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Jaden told me about possibilities for koboplugins.ini:

[Reader]
tweakFooter=1
showBrowser=1
showLibrary=1
showSleep=1

Works well. But library search would be nice too. Is that possible?

And: Is it possible to add a clock to the page number at the bottom?
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Old 05-09-2012, 06:00 AM   #229
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Thanks for the translations! There's already a spanish translation, and I don't speak enough (any) spanish to judge which one is better. Maybe you could compare your new translation with https://github.com/ah-/koboplugins/b...es.qm?raw=true and create a really good one .

I also merged the dutch translation, and it would be great if someone with dutch as a language option on their kobo could test if it works.
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Old 05-10-2012, 01:05 PM   #230
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ah- View Post
Thanks for the translations! There's already a spanish translation, and I don't speak enough (any) spanish to judge which one is better. Maybe you could compare your new translation with https://github.com/ah-/koboplugins/b...es.qm?raw=true and create a really good one .

I also merged the dutch translation, and it would be great if someone with dutch as a language option on their kobo could test if it works.
Thanks, ah-. I just merged that translation with mine!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9909942/koboplugins.es.qm
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Old 05-10-2012, 01:31 PM   #231
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Thumbs up

First of all, thanks for all the great work in making these tweaks. I was just about to sell my Kobo Touch and put the money towards a Kindle Touch because I cannot stand the fact that there is no way to organise files.

I have many gigabytes of PDF books and articles and I am basically stuck at a limit of 50 on the reader at a time. It is simply too hard to locate anything when there are more.


My question is: does the collections / bookshelves work with PDF files or epub only? Of course, I will try it myself but just wondered if there were any major issues with this before taking the plunge.

A suggestion, linked to organising: would it be possible to create a tweak that allows the Kobo to sort by filename instead of metadata? I name my pdfs relevant to content but the metadata is often unrelated. That would mean renaming every single file on Calibre, manually, and I'm not prepared to do that.

Another suggestion: enable highlighting/note taking on pdfs.

I think these are the features that would change the Kobo from a toy to a researcher and scholar's companion.

I state that I am also a newb.

Thanks again for all the work you've put in.
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Old 05-10-2012, 05:23 PM   #232
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Originally Posted by aliali47 View Post
I have many gigabytes of PDF books and articles and I am basically stuck at a limit of 50 on the reader at a time. It is simply too hard to locate anything when there are more.
I have a similar quantity of documents of various types, mostly pdf. I won't have all these on the Kobo (especially since it cannot deal with pdf files acceptably at current), but I think all that would be needed to find files is a slightly better search. Instead of searching for one string only in the search for a document, it should search for say, up to three strings, each of which must be present at the beginning of a word. I have this set up on my pc and it is trivially easy to find most documents. Eg, search "ch co wo" will find David Chalmers's "Constructing the World" on my system.

It would be very easy to add this to Kobo to generalize its trivially simplistic search which could still work the same if given only one string.

Quote:
My question is: does the collections / bookshelves work with PDF files or epub only? Of course, I will try it myself but just wondered if there were any major issues with this before taking the plunge.
I had no idea why you would think it would not work with pdfs, so I tried it. Well, indeed, it seems not to work with pdfs! (I guess you are more cynical than I am). At least, when I tried to add a pdf to a shelf that already had an epub in it, it would not accept it. It would accept other epubs. I think probably no pdfs are accepted even in an empty shelf but I am not going to try because it is very difficult to do. The only way (I can see) to add books is to scroll through all your books until you find the one you want. My first pdf is 50 pages into the list (the last 10 from the end). Takes minutes to add the book. You cannot add a book when you are in it, or have located it with search (as far as I can tell, hopefully I am wrong about that).

The shelves have been left unenabled for a reason, as someone said. They appear not ready for use other than in trivial cases. (Also perhaps the tweak doesn't enable all the functionality).

It would be easier to make a program on your pc to create the shelves after figuring out how they were represented in the sqlite database.

Quote:
A suggestion, linked to organising: would it be possible to create a tweak that allows the Kobo to sort by filename instead of metadata? I name my pdfs relevant to content but the metadata is often unrelated. That would mean renaming every single file on Calibre, manually, and I'm not prepared to do that.
Don't you mean that would require changing all the metadata to incoporate the info in the file name? Why would you have to rename the files? It would not be hard to extract the information from the filenames and stuff it into the metadata automatically. Calibre's "epub-meta" can easily be used in a simple shell script.

Quote:
Another suggestion: enable highlighting/note taking on pdfs.
Indeed, it is very bad that one cannot do this. I saw someone saying that you could, but I have not been able to find it either.

Quote:
I think these are the features that would change the Kobo from a toy to a researcher and scholar's companion.
Come on, the Kobo is not a "toy"!! But its targeted market is not researchers and scholars. I think it is people reading mostly novels and popular nonfiction on the subway, while away from home camping or travelling. A scholar or researcher will be doing most things at his desk(s), or at least with a more powerful computer.

That being said, it would be nice to have an entire scholarly library on the Kobo. There is enough space. But a lot more would be needed than just what you have mentioned. Although it would not be that hard to develop it. The annotations, already stored in one database, would have to be searchable, and groupable into groups that go across books, and serve as a general hypertextual index into the collection. A researcher/scholar would have to link together sections from many books along with his comments on them. A simple version of this, really, would not be that hard. If they made the nickel source open, I could do a basic version in a month.

For now, though, at least, we need to be able to easily READ pdfs. It is not possible, is it? How do you read a pdf now, compared to an epub? I find it horrible: first you have to enlarge it to the max in landscape mode and then painfully pan it up and down on the one page, and finally pan over to hit the advance-page region. I hope you agree that the first thing they have to do is to fix this, and make it work in maximally panned landscape mode exactly like epubs with a single tap to advance in the document, no panning required ever on a typical document.

Last edited by BensonBear; 05-10-2012 at 05:25 PM. Reason: Typos
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Old 05-10-2012, 06:51 PM   #233
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I didn't think bookshelves would work with pdfs because some features work on epubs, like highlighting and note taking, and not on pdfs. Alas, I can't get the shelves working on either.

I assumed that shelves were a way to organise files so that you could search for a file in a group rather than from a list of all files on the KT. I have tried the update but it doesn't work that way on my KT. I open the shelves and there is one untitled shelf that says '6 books'. I can edit, rename, delete, but the name I give it doesn't appear after I save it. I can add/remove items from the shelf and save the changes, but it doesn't remember the changes. When I open the shelf, it gives me the same menu as the library. Perhaps because it is the only shelf on the KT. I was hoping for a 'create shelf' option, and to be able to add files to it but I guess that is what you mean by 'trivial cases'?

Don't you mean that would require changing all the metadata to incoporate the info in the file name? Why would you have to rename the files? It would not be hard to extract the information from the filenames and stuff it into the metadata automatically. Calibre's "epub-meta" can easily be used in a simple shell script.
Yes, that is what I meant. But I don't know how to run a shell script in calibre's epub meta. I tried in the past to edit metadata in calibre so my files are not called things like 'template.p65' but the KT didn't recognise the changes that I thought I had made correctly. I don't want to spend time manually changing file data, even for 50 files that is a lot of time. I saw that the Kindle keyboard version doesn't read metadata, it uses the file names that you have used (that's how my friend's was set up anyway).

Because of the poor organising options, I can only use the KT for leisure reading and not work. In that sense it feels like a toy. When I heard about a device that ran a version of linux, I hoped that it would have the capabilities to be a researcher's companion (or be more open for programmers to be creative). I am at my desks a lot, but sometimes in the library, or working elsewhere. Having a proper scholarly library to hand would be a fantastic tool, looking things up I wasn't sure about etc from my pocket sized device. It saves me from being in a library, and having to carry different sets of books and prints of pdf articles around for each work session.

The Kindle Touch has collections enabled so a large library is workable, you can find stuff easily on it. I heard it also lets you highlight and take notes in pdfs.

Reading pdfs compared to epubs is tedious, yes I think fixing it is a priority. But I would like to be able to find pdfs as well as read them easily! Amazon offer a conversion service for Kindle, which I hear works very well on text only pdf articles, which is what I mostly have.

I have very little programming knowledge but I assumed that nearly all of the above mentioned features would be straightforward to add. It is very frustrating.
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Old 05-10-2012, 10:15 PM   #234
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Sony readers have collections sorted by meta data. If this is such a must have feature maybe you have the wrong e-reader? PRS-T1 also handles pdf books well.
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Old 05-10-2012, 11:29 PM   #235
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aliali47 View Post
I didn't think bookshelves would work with pdfs because some features work on epubs, like highlighting and note taking, and not on pdfs. Alas, I can't get the shelves working on either.
Yes, but there is an excuse for why he highlighting doesn't work on pdfs. It would require different code since the logic of rendering is totally different for pdf and epub. But it should not require different code to add the books to a shelf, since one is just dealing with the name of the book, which is the same kind of thing in both cases. No real excuse here (except, again, the shelves are not being offered to us by Kobo at this point).

Quote:
I assumed that shelves were a way to organise files so that you could search for a file in a group rather than from a list of all files on the KT. I have tried the update but it doesn't work that way on my KT. I open the shelves and there is one untitled shelf that says '6 books'. I can edit, rename, delete, but the name I give it doesn't appear after I save it. I can add/remove items from the shelf and save the changes, but it doesn't remember the changes.
I could add epubs fine, just not pdfs.

Quote:
When I open the shelf, it gives me the same menu as the library. Perhaps because it is the only shelf on the KT. I was hoping for a 'create shelf' option, and to be able to add files to it but I guess that is what you mean by 'trivial cases'?
If you go to home, then choose library, there should be a create shelves option in the menu you get. It is not there if you go to bookshelves from home. Kobo will probably arrange the menus better when it finally adds shelves.

Quote:
Yes, that is what I meant. But I don't know how to run a shell script in calibre's epub meta. I tried in the past to edit metadata in calibre so my files are not called things like 'template.p65' but the KT didn't recognise the changes that I thought I had made correctly. I don't want to spend time manually changing file data, even for 50 files that is a lot of time.
Calibre has a command line program "ebook-meta". If you say

ebook-meta -t "The title" -a "The author" filename

it will set the title and author accordingly. Now if you can just strip that data out of the filename, you can set the metadata automatically. For example, I extract the title from various all my converted SEP html files and stuff them into the epubs with the one line

for $x in `echo *`; do ebook-meta $x/$x.epub -t "`sed -nr 's/<title>(.*)<.title>/\1/p' $x/index.html`"; done

If you tell me the format of the file name containing the info, and maybe give me a list of filenames for testing, I can probably whip you up a command in a few minutes that will work on your entire collection. (Which reminds me: before you mess around with shelves very much, I would recommend backing up your sqlite database )

Quote:
Because of the poor organising options, I can only use the KT for leisure reading and not work.
Well you can read a document for work on it. I don't see why one needs organising options just to read a book.
That is something at least.

Quote:
When I heard about a device that ran a version of linux, I hoped that it would have the capabilities to be a researcher's companion (or be more open for programmers to be creative).
Yeah, bummer. But, it is no different from your desktop if it runs Linux, and which you bought a proprietary program for. There is no need to give the source of that program, or plugin capacity, or anything, and that is what Kobo has done. It is an argument that Stallman and others have for not allowing the so called Lesser GNU Public License but that horse has left the barn long ago.

Quote:
Reading pdfs compared to epubs is tedious, yes I think fixing it is a priority. But I would like to be able to find pdfs as well as read them easily!
Let us collect together a list of people who want pdf reading to be as easy as epub. THIS IS EASY TO ADD! Also, the search I mentioned would be easy to add as well.

Quote:
Amazon offer a conversion service for Kindle, which I hear works very well on text only pdf articles, which is what I mostly have.
I highly doubt it! I will believe it when (if) I see it.

Quote:
I have very little programming knowledge but I assumed that nearly all of the above mentioned features would be straightforward to add. It is very frustrating.
Decent pdf reading is EASY TO ADD. The search I mentioned is EASY TO ADD. Decent "shelves" would be a little more work but still pretty easy. The hypertextual collection of excerpts a little harder still, but still not too hard.

But only if one has the source.
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Old 05-11-2012, 06:44 AM   #236
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Benson Bear: Thanks for taking the time out to suggest a way around the metadata. But a) I don't know what / where the sqlite database is and (b) I don't understand a lot of the suggestions you made. Like this one:

Quote:
For example, I extract the title from various all my converted SEP html files and stuff them into the epubs with the one line

for $x in `echo *`; do ebook-meta $x/$x.epub -t "`sed -nr 's/<title>(.*)<.title>/\1/p' $x/index.html`"; done
But how does it extract the title if the information isn't already there? How will it know which words in the file name belong to the author, and which to the title? Would this involve typing the author and file name again?


Quote:
Well you can read a document for work on it. I don't see why one needs organising options just to read a book.
That's true, but I'm talking about finding a document within a scholarly library. Kobo boasted that the device could carry a thousand ebooks (up to 30,000 with the SD card, not that I would need that many) so I thought it fair to assume that it would have a decent organising system ready to use. Why not enable it to recognise user defined folders? My mp3 player has the option to use folders or the metadata. Would it have been hard for a company like Kobo to enable that?

Quote:
Let us collect together a list of people who want pdf reading to be as easy as epub. THIS IS EASY TO ADD! Also, the search I mentioned would be easy to add as well.
Wishful thinking. Kobo has a page on the http://getsatisfaction.com site and nine months ago a Kobo rep said that organising capabilities were under consideration by the development team. We're still waiting for that, but luckily we can now post about what we're reading on facebook.

filmo: yes, I suspect I do have the wrong e-reader. I wish I had the time to learn enough about programming to make the KT closer to it. But had I known this simple and elegant device was flawed in so many ways, I would definitely not have bought it.
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Old 05-11-2012, 06:45 AM   #237
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PS - if you want to start a thread on http://getsatisfaction.com/kobo I will join you and others in support.

Last edited by aliali47; 05-11-2012 at 06:47 AM. Reason: incorrect url given
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Old 05-11-2012, 06:46 AM   #238
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The Kobo page is here: https://getsatisfaction.com/kobo
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Old 05-11-2012, 07:54 AM   #239
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Later: I've found that the shelves work fine for epubs, but oddly not kobo epubs such as any of the free classics downloaded from the book store.
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Old 05-11-2012, 11:30 AM   #240
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Originally Posted by aliali47 View Post
Benson Bear: Thanks for taking the time out to suggest a way around the metadata. But a) I don't know what / where the sqlite database
It is in .kobo/KoboReader.sqlite. If you are going to mess around with shelves, you should make a backup copy of this database in case the shelves mess it up. They are not a supported feature at current.

Quote:
But how does it extract the title if the information isn't already there? How will it know which words in the file name belong to the author, and which to the title? Would this involve typing the author and file name again?
That is why I asked for your filename format. I would assume (and hope) you put them in some regular format that it would be possible to extra the information from automatically. For example mine are in the form author-date-title-origin.filetype. But the title is in a debased form in all lower case with no punctuation so it would not give a perfect solution.

Quote:
That's true, but I'm talking about finding a document within a scholarly library. Kobo boasted that the device could carry a thousand ebooks (up to 30,000 with the SD card, not that I would need that many) so I thought it fair to assume that it would have a decent organising system ready to use.
All that is needed is a way to easily locate a document you want to read. The search is not so good but should be good enough. The improvement I suggested is very easy and would make it good enough without having to do the organizing, which is an open ended issue.

Quote:
Why not enable it to recognise user defined folders? My mp3 player has the option to use folders or the metadata. Would it have been hard for a company like Kobo to enable that?
No but it's kind of an ugly solution that does not fit a high level user metaphor like shelves, and this latter would take more work. I know from experience that when a problem is open ended, it can be hard to just do a little on it.

Quote:
Wishful thinking. Kobo has a page on the http://getsatisfaction.com site and nine months ago a Kobo rep said that organising capabilities were under consideration by the development team. We're still waiting for that, but luckily we can now post about what we're reading on facebook.
Organizing is no where near as crucial a feature as being able to read a pdf with some ease. So it is far worse imo that they have not done this. It is, really, a travesty.

I assume you are being sarcastic about the facebook capabilities! (And another rather stupid thing is the Reading Life and the ability to tell everyone about how many books you have read).

I did not know about that get satisfaction site. I will look there although it seems to have a rather quixotic name.

Last edited by BensonBear; 05-11-2012 at 11:40 AM. Reason: Typo
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