Koreader running on Kobos (all of them, hopefully!)

Originally Posted by paola

great, any one tried it on other devices? I am interested in the Mini, and of course I hear you say I could try myself, but as I am lost in the technical talk, I can't keep track of which is the latest version, whether it includes all mods (I think it does not), and in which order the various things should be installed.

Yeah, the thread is hard to keep track of. It is the early days of the port so ideas are flying back and forth, both in an attempt to get it working properly and in improving it. If you get lost in technical talk, maybe it's best to hold off for a little while so that things get straightened out.

If you want to try anyhow, what I can tell you is that the glo, mini, and aura use the same Kobo software. koreader seems to use this software to learn about the reader that it is run on, then it does it stuff. I can't tell you that it will work since I'm an Aura user, but it should work.

[Ken Maltby]

I was thinking of making a "How To" thread for having both Koreader and Nickel on a Kobo device, without conflict. I also only have an AuraHD, but the Mark 4 devices are all running under the same Kobo firmware. The Koreader port is also common to all the Kobo devices. So, the basic use of sergeyvl12's Launcher and Giorgio's Koreader port should be pretty straight forward and certainly should work on all the devices.

The hacking of the Koreader internal files to change menu font sizes and allow for showing hidden files in the File Manager that you see in the last couple of pages of this thread, are not all necessary to get the programs working. The hidden file hack is needed if you wish to have a large library of thousands of ebooks on your external uSD card and not have Nickel trying to Process the content, forever.

Before I try to put it all together in one mostly coherent "How To" I thought that I should wait until Giorgio gets back from holiday. Also, I want to see if sergeyvl12 or XOR_ can make a selection menu that allows a branching to either his Launcher menu or Koreader. That way we get around the weird corruption that Koreader gets when launched from the Launcher menu, and still have access to the rest of the Launcher functions and games. Right now I am using his launcher with the script modified to start Koreader, instead of the Launcher menu.

Luck;
Ken

[henriquemaia]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I was thinking of making a "How To" thread for having both Koreader and Nickel on a Kobo device

Please do. I would love to try it out.

[paola]

BWmill, Ken, and everybody else: just a big thank you! I am in no hurry, and very grateful for your altruism, and very happy to see koreader developing so nicely and fully. If only you could make notes to work, too

[hreader]

Can anyone say which are the main feature of the project?
And what about the original firmware, is still possible to use it after installing koreader?
Can I suggest to make a video and add the link and the above info in the first post? I'm curious to know and see

In the github page, it is written "created for usage on the Kindle e-ink reader. It currently supports Kindle 5 (Touch) and Kindle Paperwhite" just because the kobo version need more testing?

[Markismus]

Originally Posted by paola

great, any one tried it on other devices? I am interested in the Mini, and of course I hear you say I could try myself, but as I am lost in the technical talk, I can't keep track of which is the latest version, whether it includes all mods (I think it does not), and in which order the various things should be installed.
Yes, there is a post which explains this, but it is older than subsequent modifications (I think..)

Simpler instructions for doing it (without ScreenInv/nightmode) can be found here.

What I did to get the dictionary working was:
1) Install the latest version of KOreader in .kobo with KoboLaucher and muness tweak to the script. An overview of the install is given in post #84 of muness. Bullets 4 and 5 are optional. The optional mod of cgm999 is in #137.
2) Copy dictionary files to .kobo/koreader/data/dict.
3) Copy OCR files to .kobo/koreader/data/tessdata.

Ad 2.) You can get the files for dictionaries here. Unzip it into three files with extensions .ifo, .idx and .dict.dz . Unzip the dict.dz-file further into a dict-file. Copy the ifo-, idx- and dict-file into .kobo/koreader/data/dict on your reader.
(I've installed the englisch Wordnet-dictionary and the german Duden-dictionary and apparently it knows which dictionary to use.)

Ad 3.) You can get the OCR (optical character recognition) files from here. Again unzip and move the entire tessdata-directory into .kobo/koreader/data/dict on your reader. (There should now be 9 files all starting with "eng." in .kobo/koreader/data/dict/tessdata.)
(Apparently there is no need for german OCR-files for it to work, but maybe you should add the traineddata-files for umlauts and such...)

[trekk]

Originally Posted by hreader

And what about the original firmware, is still possible to use it after installing koreader?

You can still use the original firmware without any problem.

[Markismus]

In .kobo\koreader\frontend\document\credocument.lua I've added at the end the lines:

DocumentRegistry:addProvider("lua", "application/txt", CreDocument)
DocumentRegistry:addProvider("sh", "application/txt", CreDocument)

Now I can read the script-files on my Kobo.


What I want is an editor, like the notepad from the KoboLaucher. Unfortunately I can't get that one to work from the prompt:

[root@(none) ~]# cd /mnt/onboard/.kobo/KoboLauncher/Qt/lib
[root@(none) lib]# ../../notepad/notepad
Did not receive a connection event from the qws server
Aborted

Does anyone know of an alternative?

[trekk]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The hidden file hack is needed if you wish to have a large library of thousands of ebooks on your external uSD card and not have Nickel trying to Process the content, forever.

I had some issues with lost bookmarks, when using the hidden file hack on my uSD card. As this hack also wonderfully works on the kobo device as well, I created hidden folders on the kobo's internal memory. Now koreader correctly bookmarks the last reading position. So I think, I have to blame the uSD card.

As a nice side effect this content will not be processed by Nickel. I created some test folders on the device with 5000 books in different subfolders. I found that a maximum of 500 books per folder should not be exceeded, otherwise the file processing would be too slow. Koreader managed 2500 books in one folder, before crashing. Anything between 100-300 books seems to work without flaws and with appropriate speed.

edit: still some issues with remembering bookmarks and style-sheets...

[paola]

Originally Posted by Markismus

What I did to get the dictionary working was:

great post for a non techie, thanks and K to you!

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by hreader

Can anyone say which are the main feature of the project?
And what about the original firmware, is still possible to use it after installing koreader?
Can I suggest to make a video and add the link and the above info in the first post? I'm curious to know and see

In the github page, it is written "created for usage on the Kindle e-ink reader. It currently supports Kindle 5 (Touch) and Kindle Paperwhite" just because the kobo version need more testing?

There are a number of features that make Koreader a great addition to any Kobo reading device. Many prefer how it handles .pdf files, others need the ability to read the ebook formats that Nickel (Kobo's software) cannot read, like .pdb, but for me the best feature is that Koreader uses a File Manager to access your ebook files. Using the file manager approach allows for a much larger ebook library and the ability to browse through your files to make your selections, from category folders of your own devising.

Your access and use of the original Kobo software is not effected by also having the Koreader installed, in fact you launch Koreader from within the Kobo User Interface (UI).

The Koreader Project was as an alternative reader program for the Kindle reading devices, originally for its PDF reading functions. Giorgio130 has been generous enough and dedicated enough to create a port of the Koreader that allows it to run on Kobo ereading devices. (See the first post of this thread.)

While I do have some experience with Video production and editing, it has been some time and the process I am used to is very time consuming. I guess a quick and dirty Youtube type video is possible but it would be just to show how it looks in operation, not a walkthrough of the modding process that was used.

Luck;
Ken

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

ebook formats that Nickel (Kobo's software) cannot read, like .pdb

Pedantic point... pdb is NOT an eBook format. A pdb is a container; originally came from the Palm world. Neither is prc an eBook format.

Originally Posted by paola

BWmill, Ken, and everybody else: just a big thank you!

The appreciation is nice, but giorgio130 and cgm999 and xor_ are the ones doing the hard work here so the biggest thank-you of all really ought to go to them! (My apologies if I missed a few of the heavy lifters here. The blame is mine for not following this thread more carefully.)

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Pedantic point... pdb is NOT an eBook format. A pdb is a container; originally came from the Palm world. Neither is prc an eBook format.

So, Epub is not an ebook format, it's a zipped HTML container. Whatever.....

As long as I get to read the books that are contained in my .pdb files, as well as those in my .epub or .mobi files. It's not .pdb's fault that it is only a container! Why are you so mean??

Luck;
Ken

[PeterT]

No Ken; the point ius that a PDB can contain MANY MANY types of information; In the Palm world a PDB was a generic extension. The fact that many eBooks of that era were stored in PDBs does NOT make PDB an eBook format. That is what I am saying.

I could easilh send you a PDB that koreader would not be able to open.