Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor
Sorry, but you have no justification for this. At no point does Kobo claim the devices support random languages or dictionaries. The fact that some users have reverse engineered the device and worked out how some of this works, does not imply any promise of support from Kobo. You can try it, but if it doesn't work, it is your problem, not theirs.
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Surely true from a legal point of view, but...
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor
Of course, I wish Kobo did support it. Or some other method of getting different dictionaries. When they changed the dictionary support, I thought Kobo would follow this by selling better or extra dictionaries.
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... business-wise, this is the relevant point, and I personally think Kobo has not got it right.
It does cost (near to) nothing for them to at least publish a format specification, especially since it is well know (even to them!) that their format has been reversed engineered, and they could have bragged about it at length if they implemented it. The ROI is quite large, hence they should have done it. Clearly, either they think the ROI is not so large, or they have other priorities with higher ROIs.
BTW, the same is true for Bookeen, whose Odyssey dictionary format has been known and supported by Penelope for a while now. Bookeen even suggests to use Penelope to their users on Facebook and Twitter, when they ask for dictionaries in languages different than the official ones. Despite the fact that I have asked them to put somewhere, officially or privately, a format specification!
(Of course the fact that Kobo hard-coded the dicthtml*zip file names in their firmware is not really a good practice and, going "official", they might force them to solve that issue, which is a cost for them; Bookeen got that point right, as the Odyssey devices support arbitrarily named files for arbitrary languages.)
I suggest complaining with their customer care not because I hope that doing so will help (I don't think it will), but to "educate" the users to think about their choices. Of course we --- those discussing this issue here on a dedicated forum --- have way more technical knowledge than the average user. But, getting emails from "non-tech-savvy people" I can assure you that, for some of them, my explanation of why their custom dictionary does not work and my invitation to complain with Kobo customer care are quite a revelation....