Kobo future firmware feature request thread

[woe]

Desperately needed: in the library view, ability to either restrict the list to unfinished titles or to sort by finished/in progress/unread status. In a library with hundreds of books, most of them finished, it can be very cumbersome to locate the few unread titles.

[Quexos]

I would like to see the total amount of books I have in the library of my Aura as is the case with the Glo. Only way (it seems) I can check the total amount of books is by counting the pages, knowing that there are 6 books by page or 12 books if I display the covers and then I need to go to the last page where there may be less than 6 or 12 books and from there I do the grand total.
In the Glo, the figure is available at the right corner of the screen in the library so I wonder why it was removed for the release of the Aura.

Oh and if you guys could implement the ability of self tagging our books as "unread" in the library ? I like to keep my unread books as "unread" until I decide to actually read them and whenever I load a book I would like to preview it to see how it looks on the device. But if I do that, the "unread" tag is gone and replaced by "1% read" or something like that. From there I can tag it as "finished" which I won't. But I cannot re-tag it as "unread". Only way is to delete it and to re-load it which is annoying.

[evanft]

They added the book title to the top of the page when reading epubs. No one wants this feature. Please remove it entirely or make it an option in the menus.

[Quexos]

Yep, a lot of wasted space there, please make it optional at least. I want as much of my screen for reading text and enough is used at the bottom for page numbers without a forced used top section too.

Originally Posted by evanft

They added the book title to the top of the page when reading epubs. No one wants this feature. Please remove it entirely or make it an option in the menus.

[ewphoenix123]

Originally Posted by evanft

They added the book title to the top of the page when reading epubs. No one wants this feature. Please remove it entirely or make it an option in the menus.

I agree.

[ShellShock]

And while you're fixing the title bar Kobo, please can you make the bottom page numbers take less space (fewer lines), or as an option, hidden altogether (kepub and epub)?

[einkgood]

hello. i bought kobo aura hd recently. but pdf viewer and dictionary DB is very worse. font changing and line spacing are not modified in some epub files.
i want belows.
1. auto trimming margin, auto scaling for better readability. can look-up dictionary in OCRd pdf.
-do not page change with drag when use landscape mode. instead, side click for changing page. drag is not appropriate method for E-ink Devices i think.
pagenumber only display when middle area clicked. pagenumber displayed area is so wasting space. in other words, unless clicked middle area, contents displaying on original pagenumber area and pagenumber display covering book's contents when middle area clicked.

2. Support multilanguage for non-alphabetic language and dictionary
-some user study language with ebook reader. font changeable is very good. but some font not completely applied in some epub so font changing in setting not function. likely line spacing is not function.
and downloadable or can make multi languge dictionary easily.
downloadable dict db is so limited.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Yep, a lot of wasted space there, please make it optional at least. I want as much of my screen for reading text and enough is used at the bottom for page numbers without a forced used top section too.

Agreed. Please, PLEASE give us the option of full-screen reading mode. I bought the Aura because of the larger screen, but instead I ended up with a larger device and a smaller usable screen. I am very disappointed.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

And while you're fixing the title bar Kobo, please can you make the bottom page numbers take less space (fewer lines), or as an option, hidden altogether (kepub and epub)?

Strongly supporting this (at least on EPUBs).

EPUB: Fix the bug with the so annoying pagebreak before long paragraphs...

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by evanft

They added the book title to the top of the page when reading epubs. No one wants this feature. Please remove it entirely or make it an option in the menus.

+1

[Nightyume]

Okay, I have some very specific requests which many people won't care about but which would make the Kobo readers (Glo, Aura, etc.) much better school companions.

1. Notes in epubs/kepubs: Right now when I look at notes that I have made on I have to go to the notes section where it will show me my highlights and note but only the first few words in the cases where I highlight a long sentence (let alone a long paragraph) or write an extensive note. So I have to select it and then it will show me the note/highlight.

What I would like would be a way to look at my notes/highlights all together in their entirety as if I had made them in a notebook. You know, scroll through them without having having just the previews.

2. Secondly I understand that Kobo has its PDF rendering engine and that it is limited (I get the impression that it just creates an image of each page then shows it) and that we cannot search in them and that we cannot highlight the words in the pdf but I feel that only being able to "dog ear" the pages is a bit too limited. Yes, we cannot highlight words to attach notes but couldn't we attach notes to pages instead of words?

3. Now two more having to do with the dictionaries, one of which I'm sure has been mentioned previously, the ability to install more dictionaries. I currently have the Merriam Webster's unabridged dictionary on my cell phone and tablet, but I like not having to turn on a second device to look up a word. I would gladly be willing to pay for the dictionaries. Maybe you could offer a combo deal, if you buy the dictionary as a book, you can install it for looking up words within books (I recognize this would require working out a deal with the dictionary providers). I know I could install free/open source dictionaries but either they are old (the unabridged dictionary from about a hundred years ago) and therefore lack a smidge of the newer words or they are generally not as comprehensive in the case of the open source ones.

4. The second one is that I would like the reader to remember my dictionary preferences (and if it could remember them on a per book basis even better). What I mean is if I look up a word in the german dictionary I would like it to keep it, and if I use the translation dictionary then I'd like it so that every time I select a word it would automatically show me the word in that translation dictionary until I choose otherwise. The reason for this is two fold: one is when I am reading books in my native tongue but which include foreign words so the only times I'm using the dictionary function is for foreign words (i.e. where there are German or Russian characters who occassionally say something in their own tongue but is not translated and I want to know what it means without running to the computer, this also makes me wish there was a Latin dictionary sometimes...) and the second is when I am reading in a foreign language in which I am fluent yet still lacking vocabulary when it comes to literary/technical texts.

5. Finally I would like the ability to use paypal to buy books directly from the device, if I can do it on the webpage, why not on my Glo? I understand that maybe for this to work we would need to use the experimental/beta/whatever you wanna call it web browser but you could set it up as an option deep within the settings if you want to avoid complaints. I'd prefer not to dig out my tablet/phone, or worse, turn on the computer, just to buy a book. On the bright side this keeps down my impulse buying.

[ksiflhjla8]

It keeps the last read pagenumber in PDFs, why can't it keep the scale factor and landscape mode for the PDF?

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by evanft

They added the book title to the top of the page when reading epubs. No one wants this feature. Please remove it entirely or make it an option in the menus.

A touch at the middle of screen presents user with two vertical "panels", on top and on the bottom. I think that presenting clock in that pop-up panel was an elegant way of solving eInk screen updates needed to deal with the time. For those of us who use our gadgets to tell the time, it is but a touch away on our readers.

Well, one could argue that the title of the book and the progress indicator (page x of y) also belong to one of these panels. Non-essential info, and I don't see any reasons why either of those panels should not be made taller than it currently is.

My $0.02.

[ksiflhjla8]

It should be possible to browse files by directory, it is nearly impossible to find anything if you have some hundred files.
Then after I opened a file, I should get back to the list of files, not have to go through the main menu again.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by ksiflhjla8

It should be possible to browse files by directory, it is nearly impossible to find anything if you have some hundred files.

That's what shelves and the search feature are for.

It would be nice to be able to tell the Kobo to use a certain shelf as my front page, though. I keep a "top 5" shelf just so I can get back to 'em easily.