[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Andrew Ashling

For a good understanding: I'm based in Belgium and bought my Glo at Fnac in Antwerp (a so-called FNAC-Book). It had a modified version of the firmware (version 1.9 or something). My computer OS is Linux, as is the OS of the Kobo. I "liberated" the Glo thanks to some instructions here on MR. This was a very fast, painless operation, completed without a hitch. Current version is 2.1.5 (r43939). I installed a few fonts of my own.

I'm a bit surprised about the 1.9.x firmware. I thought the Glo came with 2.1.2 and would get upgraded to 2.1.4 or 2.1.5 when it was first connected. 2.2.1 seems to be a good firmware version, but I wouldn't have expected any change in the image handling.

Re: Different cover images.

I noticed that the cover renders as good as can be expected in sleep modus. The library view is so small it hardly matters, but even so it seems to be all right. The problem is only with the cover view in reading modus.

On one hand I'm happy because there seems to be nothing wrong with my cover image. The problem is with the Kobo, and more specifically when it adds margins to the picture. This is confirmed by another experience I had. My book(s) contain full-page maps. When I just use the image-tag and add a "{text-align: center;}" class to the page, they appear smaller but sharper. When wrapped in svg-tags, sharpness is lost and they appear ragged, but bigger.

Looking at this on my Touch, both versions of the map look good. But, they are different. The map is 600*800 which is the same size as the screen on the Touch. But, it looses margins on the sides, and the page footer at the bottom. The img version is displayed full screen with the footer covering the bottom of the image. The svg version is resized to fit inside this. But, it has had a little cut off the bottom. The last squiggle in the sea is missing. Both look pretty good.

With the Glo's higher resolution screen, I would expect the svg version to be resized to fit the screen taking into account the margins and bottom section. Going from 600*800 of the image to 1024*758 for the screen, would cause some distortion, but I'm surprised it is as bad as you are seeing. I assume the the img version to be displayed without being resized. That should mean it would look OK.

There are three possibilities, as far as I can see:1

1. The Kobo doesn't handle svg-tags well, or
2. the Kobo borks the images by adding margins, or
3. the Kobo borks the images by adding the extra "page"-margin

For the cover it doesn't help to omit svg-tags (let alone you then lose scalability which you need for display on other devices like tablets, iPads and mobile phones) because the Kobo forces the margins on the cover page.

Question: Is there a css code that could overrule the Kobo's page settings?

One of the most common complaints about the Kobo devices is that changing the reader font, margin and line spacing settings doesn't work. This is because they have been set in the epub. Kobo has decided to honour the settings in the book and not override them. Your sample doesn't set any of these for the cover or map pages. So, the Kobo will apply its margins. Setting these to nothing in the font settings, will remove the margins.

I have a few other remarks and questions which I will post separately at a later time.

Sorry to go on about this, but I like to offer my readers value for money, and I want my books to display as good as I can make them on as many devices as possible.

Personally, I see that as a very good attitude. And I'm happy to answer any questions I can.

In this file I added the same map twice, once without and once with svg-tags (I adopted davidfor's version):

Don't worry, I stole that from elsewhere. It is either something I found in the ePub or Sigil forums here, or it came out from a calibre conversion at some point in the past.