Quote:
Originally Posted by mbovenka
But that's what their purpose is. Reading. All else is gravy. Not to you, perhaps, but to 99.9% of the audience. They are also not meant to organize hundreds or thousands of books. That's what Calibre is for.
Up to a point this is of course my opinion, but it does seem to match that of the Amazons en Kobos of this world.
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I agree. While I use my e-ink readers for academic work, such as researching topics for essays, involving lots of dictionary use, highlighting and note-taking, that is not what these devices are primarily designed for. These devices are designed for reading - especially casual, spontaneous reading, for immersion and enjoyment.
Spoiler - promotional images for Kindle and Kobo devices:
As we can see in these images from advertisements and others, Kindle and Kobo advertise their products with people reading in cafes and restaurants, bus stops, swimming pools, and country fields. These adverts emphasise a 'curl up with a good book' way of reading, which is about enjoyment and convenience and immersion.
For this, the device must be as light as possible, so it is convenient to keep in your bag, and light enough to hold for long periods. As such, these devices eschew physical buttons, which would add size and weight, making it more difficult to hold, and less convenient to carry. While I would find physical buttons such as 'menu' and 'back' to be wonderfully useful, as they are much more reliable and satisfying to use, I can see why companies got rid of them.
Long battery life is also essential for these readers to provide a convenient, immersive experience. As large batteries would add lots of weight to the devices, the only option is to make the operating system use as little energy as possible. The result is that the navigation of books is clunky, especially PDF, and I believe functions such as highlighting suffer due to this economical operating system.
Of course, Lucas Malor, if you are reading, I assume you already know all of this. The reason I posted the images above is to show that Kindle and Kobo design their devices with a specific type of user in mind - the casual user. Then, I aimed to make the argument that designing devices for this casual user requires sacrificing ergonomically superior navigation buttons and processing power, which would have otherwise have been useful for making notes and highlights. Thus, I would like to make the argument that because Kindle and Kobo have such a strong focus on the casual reader rather than the academic, high-concentration reader, they will continue to design their firmware with this type of usage in mind. As such, Kindle and Kobo firmware, while being adequate for casual reading, will continue to suck for note-taking and other features associated with more intensive styles of reading. (Although, I do find highlighting on Kindle quite smooth.)
Firmware such as Coolreader and Koreader may demonstrate that, as others have commented, the poor highlighting experience is not an inevitable consequence of a low-energy device. But in using these alternatives, you must relinquish the niceties of the native firmware, such as well-designed browsing experience, searching, and high-quality dictionary features. For me, that was enough to go back to the default Kobo firmware.
In conclusion, while I think your proposed solution is fine and I hope someone listens and implements it, I think maybe you are barking up the wrong tree. Kobo aren't designing the firmware for your way of using their devices, and as such, maybe it is always going to disappoint you. Maybe rather than spending your life suffering with firmware that you believe to 'suck', and campaigning for the implementation of minor improvements, it would make sense to choose an e-reader that is designed with note-taking in mind as one of its primary functions. Alternatively, maybe your proposed highlighting solution will be implemented, and you will subsequently find the Kobo experience to be perfectly seamless, and live happily ever after.