Thread: Kobo Android (or other Kobo software) Feature request
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Old 05-22-2013, 07:29 PM   #6
DNSB
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Quote:
Originally Posted by khahoon View Post
DNSB,

I am not directly asking them to implement a pdf reader really. If you read my op you will see that I asked for a way to access to the pdf version of the book that has bad epub conversion. All they have to add is a direct link in the reader to the pdf version of the book so that one does not need to go though hoops to relocate the pdf. Although naturally it would be amazing if the Kobo reader offers multiple formats when one clicks on a book that is offered with multiple formats (like, epub and pdfs as in the scanned books from google`s book project)

I mainly commented on the free books, not sure about purchases since I am pretty sure all are properly formatted. All the free epubs I have opened/added in the reader have bad formattings, bad type representations, mostly because I am mainly interested in accessing the old books. So epubs wont cut it as I see.
Hmmm... it sounds as if you want Kobo to find the pdf version of the epub and make it available to you. If you check the Kobo store, you can search for only the ebooks that have a .pdf version. If you just search for a book title without specifying the format, you will get all the formats they have available. Or simply search for the book title with .pdf added to the search string.

I've found the majority of the free ebooks I've downloaded from Kobo have very bland, generic formats. I wouldn't say they are perfectly proofed but they are pretty decent. A few minutes with Sigil makes them more than acceptable to my eyes. Which particular ones have you found that appear to have generated by OCRing a scanned image PDF file?

You could check Gutenberg -- a large number of free ebooks seem to have originated from there. Gutenberg does have multiple formats available and they seem to be very good at proofing their ebooks so I doubt many of the junk ebooks you mention are coming from there. There are also quite a few university sites that have scanned versions of older books freely available.

Part of your original message read: "So why not allow user to download the original pdf file to the reader on Android or other Kobo softwares if they have the same issue?"

Given that the Kobo readers on Android or iOS do not support PDF, why would allowing you to download the original pdf file help anything? And that is making a large assumption that Kobo even has an original PDF file. Kobo Writing Life does not support .pdf so no need to look at those self published books for original PDF versions. For most other books, if a PDF version is available, Kobo will list the PDF version in their catalog.

Regards,
David
Last edited by DNSB; 05-22-2013 at 07:36 PM.
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