As has been seen, Kobo has released firmware version 4.17.13694. This is to replace the version 4.17.13651. It will be rolled out to all devices except the Mini. The rollout will follow their usual strategy of starting small and getting more users along the way. This will start with the Libra H2O and the people who received 4.17.13651.
The changes, from 4.17.13651, in this firmware are:
- Fixes to ToC handling in epubs. This is to fix the navigation issues with epubs that had internal files that were not in the ToC. As far as I can tell, all the problems reported in recent firmware versions have been fixed.
- As well as the above, a much older problem that has been fixed is tracking in the ToC for files with multiple ToC entries.
- The ".trash" directory will not be scanned for books. There are other changes related to how books on the device are found, but, basically, you should assume if a file on the device has an extension that can be interpreted as a book, that it will be imported.
- Same changes to improve WiFi connecting after a restart.
Calibre has support for 4.17.x firmware, but, it doesn't have the correct database version. This was change just after the last calibre release. I have updated the calibre code to the correct database version for the next release. I expect the next calibre release will be version 4.0. I do not know when this will be. There are beta versions of calibre that include the update if you want to try them. In the meantime, using the option in the driver to support newer firmware versions is perfectly safe. There are no changes that affect the function of the driver.
For users of my Kobo Utilities plugin, there is a change that affects the fetching of book status from the device. The way that the reading location is stored has changed for epubs. This does not affect getting the percent read or the last read timestamp, only the reading location. I plan to fix this over the weekend.