Just installed this on my (original) H2O. Seems to work fine and has some nice new options (especially with the patches!). I do have one issue however.

When reading epub's (haven't tested kepub files), There seems to be a rather large gap between the bottom of the text, and the footer. The footer size itself does not appear to be the problem, as I've tried the "custom footer style" and the new "footer size" patch, which doesn't really help. Also note that I have the "widows/orphans" patch enabled, so it's not that.

For the moment, I'm trying the "fullscreen" options, which seems to work well enough, but I do miss the footer. I'm wondering if a value has been hardcoded for 300 DPI screens, making the gap larger on lower DPI screens like the H2O.

Anyway, I'm not going to scream too loudly, seeing as this firmware version is not meant for the H2O.

(Note, I happen to like some whitespace. Emphasis on the "some". The current whitespace I'm seeing is excessive)

One of the new patches for 4.11.1192 reduces the footer size similar to the kepub header reduction patch.

Tried that, as I mentioned in my original post. Yes, the new patch that was released today. That one.

As I said, I don't think it's the footer itself that's the issue. Appears to be either the margin above the footer, or margin below the renderer, or similar.

On a page with the screen as full as it gets, tap the screen and bring menu bars. The line at the top of the footer is the bottom of the text area. That is what you need to measure the "wasted" space against.

I completely disabled all patches and have done a bit of testing. It appears to me what has happened is the previous (4.8) firmware allowed the text to encroach into the footer region a bit, so long as it didn't cover the actual "page n of nn" text. I seem to recall the bottom menu covering a bit of text previously (which never bothered me).

The current firmware appears to be enforcing a minimum gap between the footer region and the text, so depending on the font size, style and metrics, this could become quite a gap.

Also, there is now a bit of whitespace at the top of the page, which didn't exist before. I don't actually mind that however.

Ok, putting the patches back on, including the reduce footer size patch seems to indicate to me that Kobo appears to have changed the dimensions of their epub render surface (ie. made it shorter).

Making the footer smaller doesn't change where the lines of text stop.

I also note that the "page n of nn" text appears to have more whitespace below it, which probably also helps explain the changes.

All of this makes me wonder if it's possible to change the dimensions of the surface which epubs render to. I'm pretty sure Nickel probably creates a surface for RMSDK to render to. EDIT: Maybe pixmapsurface might be something to search for...

I'll completely disagree with that. I have never seen the text going beyond the line of the bottom bar area. Maybe there were some patches that did that, but the unpatched firmware has never done it. There has been far to much discussion about the "wasted" space for this not to have come up.
There has always been some space, but not much. Looking at my Glo HD, which is on 4.11.11982, I haven't noticed any changes. Or on the other devices. If it has changed, it is only a pixel or two.
There is a bigger margin at the top with the title turned off than there was before in the epub reader. I didn't like it when there was none, but, there is a little more that I like now.

I'll eat humble pie on that one. I went back and did a factory reset, then upgraded to 4.8.x, and you're right on the money.

Also, the difference is not as bad as thought, although there does appear to be a slight increase in whitespace at the bottom. 4.8.x was approx 14mm from the bottom edge, whereas 4.11.x appears to be about 16mm. Measurements to the baseline of the last line of text.

I'm going to tentatively attribute the difference to the increase to the top whitespace allowing for one less line to fit, but the increased top whitespace is less than a line of text, therefore the bottom whitespace increases slightly. And no, I haven't counted lines, so I may be wrong here.

Has anyone installed this firmware on ka1? I did it and bricked mine, and I had to factory reset it.


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This firmware runs absolutely stable on my Kobo Aura H2O 2nd Edition (version 1) as well as on the Kobo Aura H2O 1st generation.

Did you check for padding or margins coded in the book your testing with? Of course they won’t change in the different firmware versions, but they might give you more white space than you like...

Me, with patches, as in Aura Ed 2, and no brick at all.

11980 works on my Kobo Aura One.


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My H2O@ is on its way, should be here today or tomorrow, am I correct in thinking that Edition 2 Version 1 is a "Mark 6", not a "Mark 7"? If that's so, how do I find out which version mine is, and would this firmware work on the older version?

Yes. This firmware should work on any kobo ereader. The answer to your second question can be found on my kobo firmware page. Basically: If the 7th digit of your serial number is a 2 you have the second version, otherwise you have the first version.