[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Barruel

Basically, yes. That's how markets evolve. By standarizing features. If you can't buy a new car today without ABS or Bluetooth connectivity is not because every car brand has single-handedly decided to include them in their cars. It's because these features are nowadays standard car features. That's why current cars have better equipment than cars being sold 10 years ago.

Except, what if someone puts a bad feature in? Do you expect everyone to copy it? And ABS in cars is actually an interesting example. When it started to appear, so did air-bags. And for a time cars had one or the other, but air-bags were what seemed to be added quicker. I never understood that. A choice between a safety feature that would help prevent accidents and one that only helped once you were in an accident. And made less sense here in Australia as wearing seatbelts had been mandatory, and nearly universally accepted, so the original air-bags didn't really add much.

I might agree with that if Kobo were just that small store in the corner of street. They are Rakuten, which is nothing less than the japanese Amazon and a company with a $11.6 billion market cap. I don't know much about them or their financial status, but I bet they can indeed afford some extra hours of their professional programmers to enhance their readers. Same with support staff.

Yes, Rakuten is a large company with a lot of revenue. But, that doesn't mean that they will be willing to lose money on one small subsidiary. Most companies treat subsidiaries as independent companies and expect them to be profitable in their own right.

And of course, this isn't the only place where a few extra people would help. Do you think Rakuten could actually afford to add a few extra people everywhere that some external person thinks it is needed?

Deciding how to implement software features and how interfaces should present them to the users is what professional software designers are paid for. I'm a teacher and I've never programmed anything other than a microwave, but I don't see how a "Save" button, a "Restore" button and a combo box displaying saved reading settings would "overcomplicate the interface".

That's one of my "favourite" statements made here. I am a software engineer with a lot of years of work. Adding a button to the UI is probably easy, but, it doesn't stop there:

• First you have to decide what the option is for.
• Then decide where it goes.
• And what the label is (a lot harder than you think)
• And is it on by default or not. And that makes you revisit everything above.
• Then you need to work out how it interacts with other options.
• Then write the code to handle the option and anything else going on.
• Plus update the UI code. At which point you discover there isn't actually room on the screen for the option.
• Next is to test it and make sure it works.
• Then testing it to make sure it does what was originally intended (these aren't the same thing).
• Then more testing to make sure it hasn't broken anything (again, not the same thing).
• About this this time you update the documentation (some will do it at the start with updates here to complete).
• Then you need to produce the actual release.
• And update the support staff.
• And after that, you need to support it in the software for the rest of the life of the software.

And of course, you are suggesting the developers spend "some extra hours". Extra hours they are probably already spending. Extra hours that they possibly want to spend with their families. That's sort of like me suggesting that teachers spend "some extra hours" as their students aren't getting the marks some external party thinks they should get.

We are no typical users. Those don't read ebooks. The ones who do, do it on their phones, tablets or computers, and the few of them who use an ereader own a Kindle. Looking at anything different from a Kindle is, at least where I live, indeed untypical. We are using a niche product inside a niche market. Right.

I'm not sure of your point. My point was that people here tend to think that what they want is what others need. It isn't. And while I was explicitly talking about the target market for "dedicated ereader manufacturers". But, it the same whether you are talking about dedicated ereader devices or ereader apps. We are not typical, and what we ask for is beyond what most users want or need. These companies are catering for others, not us.

But I wasn't requesting something exotic only connoisseurs would appreciate. I was requesting a way of having something we already have in a more flexible way. It was a "just let me back those ok settings up so I can try some others without losing them". That's simply a natural extension of features as simple, universal and standard as changing font, margins or line spacing. In an ereader. It is something so elemental that even Kindles have it.

No, it isn't particularly exotic. And it would help some people. But, how many? That is what Kobo have to decide. Do enough people want this to make the investment worthwhile? And, is it more important than the hundreds or thousands of suggestions that they probably have right now? Remember, this isn't the only suggestion for a change they have. They can't do them all. They have to decide which to do next. And they probably have a list of features to develop over the next few years.

Having said all that, have you told Kobo what you want? Kobo does not officially monitor this forum. Suggestions made here will either not be seen, or not carry much weight. Suggestions made through official channels will be taken and are always considered. And if others are making similar requests, then it gets more notice and is more likely to be implemented.