Thread: Kobo Firmware 2.4.0
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Old 02-26-2013, 07:36 AM   #245
Rev. Bob
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Here on the perimeter, there are no stars
Device: Kobo H2O, iPad mini 3, Kindle Touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by mconh View Post
Since the books and the settings did not change on the downgrade it must be the firmware that caused ALL the covers on all four units to have white stripes on the sides. I use all Zero margins.
The problem is not margins, but proportions. The Kobo dimensions are 3:4, which normally plays out as using a 600x800 cover image. However, many ebooks out there use a 600x900 image instead.

There are three ways to handle that: stretch, zoom/crop, or box. Nobody zooms/crops that I've found; I mention it only for completeness. Best I can tell, Kepubs stretch; the 600x900 becomes about 675x900 and fits the box, but there's some "short and fat" distortion. Standard epubs box instead, and since the default background color is white, you get white stripes down both sides.

One trick that worked before 2.4.0 was to tweak the OPF and make the cover image the first element in the <spine> element, but set to non-linear so it wouldn't come up as the first visible element. Unfortunately, 2.4.0 has changed rendering behavior so that the device uses the first item in the spine to set the book's rendering area - meaning that if you have a small cover image there, you get huge margins to the right (and possibly bottom) of your book, and there's no way to "zoom in" and fix it.

I've taken to writing my own cover-page code, where I can control the colors and lock in some other formatting. The files are small, and the structure is pretty simple overall, but it's not just a drop-in replacement. After all, you do have to put the right image locations in, and sometimes you want to preserve some IDs from the original page. However, it's a lot better than before; a black background isn't perfect, but I like that better than white bars most of the time.
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