[Ken Maltby]

The "zoom" and "contrast" defaults are probably in one of the .lua scripts, but I don't know which ones, off hand.

The "Default" folder, that the File Manager opens in, can be passed as an argument when calling "reader.lua".

I use the Kobo Start Menu, so Koreader is launched from ".\.kobo\kbmenu\onstart\koreader_kobo.sh". If you start it from Nickel using the png Icon, the koreader_kobo.sh found in the koreader folder would be the one to change.

My koreader_kobo.sh:

#!/bin/sh

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

# we're always starting from our working directory
cd /mnt/onboard/.kobo/koreader/


# export trained OCR data directory
export TESSDATA_PREFIX="data"

# export dict directory
export STARDICT_DATA_DIR="data/dict"

# remount external SD as RW
mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd

# finally call reader
./reader.lua /mnt/sd/.Koreader/Books 2> crash.log

----------------------------

The last line sets /mnt/sd/.Koreader/Books as the folder File Manager will open in.

You may or may not want to set the external SD card to read/write, it could aggravate any issues with Nickel's database. (If you use it try a long press on an item listed in File Manager.)

Luck;
Ken