Thread: Kobo Bug thread
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Old 02-19-2019, 12:07 PM   #1056
maximus83
Nameless Being
 
Bug in Kobo popup footnotes

Ran across a possible bug in how Kobo handles popup footnotes.

Background: there are typically 2 ways of handling in-book footnotes.
  1. Navigate to a separate location. This goes to a separate page at the point of the specific note, but displays all the other notes on the page too. User has to use 'back' navigation to return to position in text.
  2. Display a popup window in the current page. Contains only the content of the specific note, is in context, and does not require back navigation.

Most recent devices including Kindles and Kobos enable (2), and it works fine in most cases. But I've noticed a specific case where the Kobo software fails and falls back to (1). When there's a large set of end notes contained entirely on a separate HTML page, Kobo software tries to display everything from the content of the current note, to the end of the page (all the remaining notes as well). So whenever there's too much content for Kobo to display in a single footnote popup window (typically, when you're early in a chapter that has tons of footnotes :-) ), Kobo will fall back to approach (1). But as you get to the end of the chapter, say the last few footnotes and there isn't much content left on the "notes" page, Kobo will correctly go back to (2). I am not seeing this behavior on other devices on the same ebook content. For example, all the follow apps using the same epub file will handle footnotes just fine using approach (2): Calibre reader, FB Reader, KOReader.

Does this seem like a bug? If so, I have to think it should be straightforward to change that behavior, just display one note at a time versus "everything from that point to the end of the notes page."

ETA: Reported to Kobo. BTW, the email address for bugs/help in the OP of this thread no longer works. I had to navigate to this page to contact help:

https://rakutenkobo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Last edited by maximus83; 02-19-2019 at 12:56 PM.
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