Losing my page

ringerc · 02-24-2011, 07:46 PM

Hi all

My Kobo narrowly escaped a high-speed flight into the wall this morning, as I discovered that it'd lost my page in my book overnight. This wouldn't be a big deal, except that (unlike a print book, or any other eReader) there's no "go to page" feature so you have to page glacially through about 1000 page turns to get back to where you were.

This isn't the first time it's done this when it's run out of battery power. It has enough juice left to draw the low-power image on the display, but for some reason doesn't bother updating syncing the SQLite database. It's infuriating.

I'd love to investigate this myself, and/or implement a "go to page" function, but Nickel is closed-source, the plugin api isn't useful, and there are no headers published anyway. I'm stuck with begging Kobo to fix this, and they're not moving particularly quickly, as "go to page" looks like it's been one of the most-requested features since at least mid last year (see: firmware updates thread).

Is this likely to get fixed? It's a pretty dire issue for a dedicated reading device. Either remember my page, or let me remember it and GO TO IT.

ltr · 02-24-2011, 08:44 PM

1000 page turns?

Why wouldn't you use the go-to chapter feature and then advance to the page in the chapter?

Or you could click to the page quickly on the book in the Kobo desktop application and then sync it on the e-reader since you're charging the e-reader anyway.

ltr

The Terminator · 02-24-2011, 09:53 PM

I agree with ltr why wouldn't you just use the go to chapter button? As for losing your page why not just charge it more often? And I have a question about it losing you page, does it go to a totally random page? or does it go to the page you were on before you started reading at night?

ringerc · 02-25-2011, 02:30 AM

As for why I can't use the chapter skip or table of contents: the book is formatted as one giant chapter. Sigh. Even if it wasn't, that'd be several hundred pages to fight through.

Using the Kobo desktop application is a good idea. I forget it exists, as I use Calibre instead of it for pretty much everything, but it *would* be handy for this. I'll give it a go.

As for charging more often: it should've been fine, as it'd been charged relatively recently and IIRC had a fair bit of power left. However, over the last few days it seems to have decided that it doesn't want to automatically enter sleep mode anymore, so it ran out of juice overnight. After being charged and powered on again it seems to be back to normal.

It's still incredibly stupid that you can't jump to a page, and that the Kobo doesn't sync its reading position to the database periodically. Some warning about running out of power doesn't seem to much to ask, either. I continue to dream about them open sourcing Nickel so I could get into its nice friendly Qt innards and _fix_ some of this, but it's not going to happen.

CazMar · 02-25-2011, 02:40 AM

That running out of battery sounds like a technical problem - have you done a factory reset? Maybe there is a corrupted file or something? Mine seems to go forever on a recharge - but I plug it in to get magazines so probably would never go more than about 3 days without a recharge.
I HATE those ebooks with no chapters that force you to search the entire book! Usually Google badly scanned EPUB files. Try searching for the book in Gutenberg as theirs are better formatted.

PeterT · 02-25-2011, 08:39 AM

Remember though, that IF the book is ePub format then you can not read it (or set location within it) using the Kobo Desktop.

Anthem · 02-25-2011, 09:51 AM

Oh yeah, I've had the "Oops, I lost your page and I see that this book is all one giant chapter (basically) and so I may have done it on purpose to make you question the value remaining in living!"

We have prostrated ourselves before the Kobo gods, incessantly offering pleasing sights and odors to their eyes and nostrils, but nothing happens. It's like they aren't there! (Invisible, undetectable, non-existent (for all practical purposes) deities?!?! Surely not!)

We keep begging. My groveling is now conducted six inches into the dust (I dug a trench) in order to emphasize my baseness.

Fingers crossed.

cutterjohn42 · 02-25-2011, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ringerc

Hi all

My Kobo narrowly escaped a high-speed flight into the wall this morning, as I discovered that it'd lost my page in my book overnight. This wouldn't be a big deal, except that (unlike a print book, or any other eReader) there's no "go to page" feature so you have to page glacially through about 1000 page turns to get back to where you were.

This isn't the first time it's done this when it's run out of battery power. It has enough juice left to draw the low-power image on the display, but for some reason doesn't bother updating syncing the SQLite database. It's infuriating.

I'd love to investigate this myself, and/or implement a "go to page" function, but Nickel is closed-source, the plugin api isn't useful, and there are no headers published anyway. I'm stuck with begging Kobo to fix this, and they're not moving particularly quickly, as "go to page" looks like it's been one of the most-requested features since at least mid last year (see: firmware updates thread).

Is this likely to get fixed? It's a pretty dire issue for a dedicated reading device. Either remember my page, or let me remember it and GO TO IT.

I just can't believe how many basic features are missing from their fw even after so many updates either. Go to page # being one of my top ones given that some books have LENGTHY chapters, but even with short chapters navigating to a chapter and then page flipping is NOT the answer, goto page # IS!

Bookmarks are my second favorite one: wtf would want to use bookmarks with a freaking book?! WTF?!

WiFi: Why? All it's good for ATM is browsing their "store" with it's UI breakage and cumbersome filtering and access and getting updates, or IOW useless. True general web browsing would not be useful either, but if it's pretty much there why not take the simple step to enable it as it CAN be handy at times...

etc.

Have a list going in the wishlist stickied... lots of basic things missing... very frustrating... at least I was able to get it for $99.99 o.w. it'd've gone straight back... well maybe not as they've released the GPLed source and some other stuff so it might be hackably fun later, but right now Andrtoid tablets are taking up that time for me...

Anthem · 02-25-2011, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cutterjohn42

I just can't believe how many basic features are missing from their fw even after so many updates either. Go to page # being one of my top ones given that some books have LENGTHY chapters, but even with short chapters navigating to a chapter and then page flipping is NOT the answer, goto page # IS!

Well, it is certainly an answer to the problem, although the entire paradigm these e-book hardware and software peeps are developing around is digital feature parity with a physical book, where the problems of such an equation are more than painfully obvious.

Still, we wish for it fervently.

ringerc · 02-25-2011, 09:49 PM

The Kobo guys were so responsive here early on, but appear to have vanished now. I haven't heard from any of them by email in a while, either.

@CazMar: The failure to sleep was resolved when the device forced a reboot by running out of power.

Now the @#$@#$@ thing has a new issue: nickel is crashing while parsing one of the 97 new books I added (from the Baen Free Library). While I've tweaked /etc/init.d/rcS so that it redirects nickel's output to the sd card where I can easily read its logs, it doesn't appear to actually log anything useful about its progress as it parses the books. It's crashing while reading one of them, but there's no way to know which one beyond doing a binary search (add half, does it crash? if yes, remove half; if no, add half of remainder; repeat) and that's mind-numbingly tedious.

It's truly amazing that it doesn't note down which book it's just started processing, so it can resume after it (and inform the user about the problem) if it crashes while parsing a book. Now, if only the sources were up I could fix that one myself in about 10 minutes... grr.

02-24-2011, 07:46 PM	#1
ringerc Enthusiast Posts: 31 Karma: 64 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Australia Device: Kobo	Losing my page Hi all My Kobo narrowly escaped a high-speed flight into the wall this morning, as I discovered that it'd lost my page in my book overnight. This wouldn't be a big deal, except that (unlike a print book, or any other eReader) there's no "go to page" feature so you have to page glacially through about 1000 page turns to get back to where you were. This isn't the first time it's done this when it's run out of battery power. It has enough juice left to draw the low-power image on the display, but for some reason doesn't bother updating syncing the SQLite database. It's infuriating. I'd love to investigate this myself, and/or implement a "go to page" function, but Nickel is closed-source, the plugin api isn't useful, and there are no headers published anyway. I'm stuck with begging Kobo to fix this, and they're not moving particularly quickly, as "go to page" looks like it's been one of the most-requested features since at least mid last year (see: firmware updates thread). Is this likely to get fixed? It's a pretty dire issue for a dedicated reading device. Either remember my page, or let me remember it and GO TO IT.

02-25-2011, 02:30 AM	#4
ringerc Enthusiast Posts: 31 Karma: 64 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Australia Device: Kobo	It's the book As for why I can't use the chapter skip or table of contents: the book is formatted as one giant chapter. Sigh. Even if it wasn't, that'd be several hundred pages to fight through. Using the Kobo desktop application is a good idea. I forget it exists, as I use Calibre instead of it for pretty much everything, but it would be handy for this. I'll give it a go. As for charging more often: it should've been fine, as it'd been charged relatively recently and IIRC had a fair bit of power left. However, over the last few days it seems to have decided that it doesn't want to automatically enter sleep mode anymore, so it ran out of juice overnight. After being charged and powered on again it seems to be back to normal. It's still incredibly stupid that you can't jump to a page, and that the Kobo doesn't sync its reading position to the database periodically. Some warning about running out of power doesn't seem to much to ask, either. I continue to dream about them open sourcing Nickel so I could get into its nice friendly Qt innards and _fix_ some of this, but it's not going to happen.

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02-24-2011, 08:44 PM	#2
ltr Addict Posts: 399 Karma: 104628 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Canada Device: Kindle PW-2	1000 page turns? Why wouldn't you use the go-to chapter feature and then advance to the page in the chapter? Or you could click to the page quickly on the book in the Kobo desktop application and then sync it on the e-reader since you're charging the e-reader anyway. ltr

02-24-2011, 09:53 PM	#3
The Terminator Retired Posts: 2,552 Karma: 37638420 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Vancouver Island Canada Device: Kobo Touch, Optimus One (2.3), Nexus 7 (4.2)	I agree with ltr why wouldn't you just use the go to chapter button? As for losing your page why not just charge it more often? And I have a question about it losing you page, does it go to a totally random page? or does it go to the page you were on before you started reading at night?

02-25-2011, 02:40 AM	#5
CazMar Book Geek Posts: 596 Karma: 1499085 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Adelaide, Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Asus MemPad 7" tablet, Nexus 5, Asus 10" tablet	That running out of battery sounds like a technical problem - have you done a factory reset? Maybe there is a corrupted file or something? Mine seems to go forever on a recharge - but I plug it in to get magazines so probably would never go more than about 3 days without a recharge. I HATE those ebooks with no chapters that force you to search the entire book! Usually Google badly scanned EPUB files. Try searching for the book in Gutenberg as theirs are better formatted.

02-25-2011, 08:39 AM	#6
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 13,407 Karma: 78880114 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour	Remember though, that IF the book is ePub format then you can not read it (or set location within it) using the Kobo Desktop.

02-25-2011, 09:51 AM	#7
Anthem Guru Posts: 704 Karma: 1622328 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: USA Device: Kindle Oasis, OnePlus Nord	Oh yeah, I've had the "Oops, I lost your page and I see that this book is all one giant chapter (basically) and so I may have done it on purpose to make you question the value remaining in living!" We have prostrated ourselves before the Kobo gods, incessantly offering pleasing sights and odors to their eyes and nostrils, but nothing happens. It's like they aren't there! (Invisible, undetectable, non-existent (for all practical purposes) deities?!?! Surely not!) We keep begging. My groveling is now conducted six inches into the dust (I dug a trench) in order to emphasize my baseness. Fingers crossed.

02-25-2011, 09:49 PM	#10
ringerc Enthusiast Posts: 31 Karma: 64 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Australia Device: Kobo	The Kobo guys were so responsive here early on, but appear to have vanished now. I haven't heard from any of them by email in a while, either. @CazMar: The failure to sleep was resolved when the device forced a reboot by running out of power. Now the @#$@#$@ thing has a new issue: nickel is crashing while parsing one of the 97 new books I added (from the Baen Free Library). While I've tweaked /etc/init.d/rcS so that it redirects nickel's output to the sd card where I can easily read its logs, it doesn't appear to actually log anything useful about its progress as it parses the books. It's crashing while reading one of them, but there's no way to know which one beyond doing a binary search (add half, does it crash? if yes, remove half; if no, add half of remainder; repeat) and that's mind-numbingly tedious. It's truly amazing that it doesn't note down which book it's just started processing, so it can resume after it (and inform the user about the problem) if it crashes while parsing a book. Now, if only the sources were up I could fix that one myself in about 10 minutes... grr.

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