Voyage - New Software Update 5.6.2.1

[odamizu]

Kindle Voyage Software Update 5.6.2.1 just showed up at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201630670

No details beyond: "The software update includes general improvements and bug fixes."

[booklover6]

I installed it. I don't see any differences.

[byzkarl]

Is it just wishful thinking, or is the typesetting a bit better?

It's probably wishful thinking.

Originally Posted by byzkarl

Is it just wishful thinking, or is the typesetting a bit better?

It's probably wishful thinking.

I use Calibre to convert all of my ebooks before copying to my Kindle, and ensure that they have ragged right edges (aka left justification).

But sometimes, I'll download a sample to my Kindle, and read it immediately... and if it's fully justified, it tends to look like garbage. Without hyphenation, there are monstrously large spaces between lots of words. It's just terrible.

I don't expect LaTeX-quality output, since even LaTeX requires some hand-holding sometimes, but let's be honest: the Kindle's typesetting is trash. Ragged right makes it pretty readable, and I'm glad I can use Calibre to force it, but if I couldn't? I'm not sure what I'd do.

[Atunah]

See and I hate ragged right. Overdrive app looks like that and its hard for me to enjoy reading on it.

Kindles have always had the best looking books to me. Best looking fonts and readability. Every single paper book I pull of the shelf has full justified. Not one has ragged right edges. I want my kindle books to look as close to their paper version as possible. I don't miss hyphens I guess, been reading on kindles since 2008. I rather not have it than it being a pain as I have seen some apps do it.

But I don't notice anything different with this new update. I put it on last night.
Everything seems the same to me.

[Strether]

It seems to me that the lower left hand corner where you can change from page to location, etc. is now more sensitive than it was. Ditto the type size display settings. Can anyone else confirm?

Jim

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Strether

It seems to me that the lower left hand corner where you can change from page to location, etc. is now more sensitive than it was. Ditto the type size display settings. Can anyone else confirm?

Jim

Okay, I know this isn't just in my head, right? I had posted previously, might have been on another board though, that I had to kind of use a flicking, short swiping motion to change from pages to locations as it was hard to do with tapping. I wasn't the only one. I just tried it and every single tap was registered. I know that wasn't the case before.

So unless we are both losing our mind, I can confirm this.

I addition to that, I swear tapping overall is more responsive for me now. I don't have to put as much skin down anymore, not as much tapping is needed. I had just posted about that in a thread here. I sometimes had to tap 2-3 times to get it to respond.

Unless this is just because the device rebooted, I don't know. I'll keep an eye on it.
Not sure how such thing could be changed with a update though. Is it?

Originally Posted by Atunah

See and I hate ragged right. Overdrive app looks like that and its hard for me to enjoy reading on it.

Kindles have always had the best looking books to me. Best looking fonts and readability. Every single paper book I pull of the shelf has full justified. Not one has ragged right edges. I want my kindle books to look as close to their paper version as possible. I don't miss hyphens I guess, been reading on kindles since 2008. I rather not have it than it being a pain as I have seen some apps do it.

But I don't notice anything different with this new update. I put it on last night.
Everything seems the same to me.

Books are fully justified, but they are professionally typeset. That's my problem with full justification on Kindles: they look horrible compared to books, in my opinion. There is just way too much whitespace in between words. But I also don't care about making my Kindle look like a book: I just want to read comfortably.

The Nook can do hyphenation, and although it's been a while since I've read mine, I don't recall many huge problems with full justification, even though it's clearly below the quality of a printed book. Without hyphenation, I find the Kindle's full justification a joke.

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Colerson

I use Calibre to convert all of my ebooks before copying to my Kindle, and ensure that they have ragged right edges (aka left justification).

But sometimes, I'll download a sample to my Kindle, and read it immediately... and if it's fully justified, it tends to look like garbage. Without hyphenation, there are monstrously large spaces between lots of words. It's just terrible.

I don't expect LaTeX-quality output, since even LaTeX requires some hand-holding sometimes, but let's be honest: the Kindle's typesetting is trash. Ragged right makes it pretty readable, and I'm glad I can use Calibre to force it, but if I couldn't? I'm not sure what I'd do.

I do the same as you, but since I hate ragged right possibly more than "default" fully justified Kindle has, I just process the ebook with Saulius' Hypenate-this! plugin.
Pre-process per pre-process, using hypenate-this! allows me to have fully justification and correct hypenation.

[odamizu]

I've been reading with 5.6.2.1 for a few days now and I'm not really noticing any differences. Also, the lower left corner is still inconsistent for me. I'm thinking maybe I'm just not hitting it right? Or the "sweet spot" is too small? <shrug>

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I've been reading with 5.6.2.1 for a few days now and I'm not really noticing any differences. Also, the lower left corner is still inconsistent for me. I'm thinking maybe I'm just not hitting it right? Or the "sweet spot" is too small? <shrug>

It's always been difficult to hit on my Voyage, too. Using the menu option for it is an awful lot easier.

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

I do the same as you, but since I hate ragged right possibly more than "default" fully justified Kindle has, I just process the ebook with Saulius' Hypenate-this! plugin.
Pre-process per pre-process, using hypenate-this! allows me to have fully justification and correct hypenation.

Now that's intriguing. Ragged right doesn't bother me, so I'm not sure it's worth it to me to add another step to ebook conversions, but it's definitely something I'm going to look at. Thanks for the info!

[Ruskie_it]

That's why I wrote you about this! ;-) You don't really add yet another step, whatever you did to ensure ragged right, you just substitute it with "press the hyphenate this! menu button", once you added the hyphenation dictionary to the plugin, it really is that simple. Oh, and you need to have the correct language in calibre's book metadata, but it is already there 99% of the time in my experience. The only downside is that if you need to edit the book in calibre (I do, when I find typos etc) you need to dehypenate it first, or calibre search won't work. I find this acceptable, in exchange for a much better reading experience.
The only thing that really bothers me is that I can't, this way, read a book directly from the Amazon cloud, you need to download it to your hd first... But that is the same in your reading workflow that uses ragged right... :-\

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

That's why I wrote you about this! ;-) You don't really add yet another step, whatever you did to ensure ragged right, you just substitute it with "press the hyphenate this! menu button", once you added the hyphenation dictionary to the plugin, it really is that simple. Oh, and you need to have the correct language in calibre's book metadata, but it is already there 99% of the time in my experience. The only downside is that if you need to edit the book in calibre (I do, when I find typos etc) you need to dehypenate it first, or calibre search won't work. I find this acceptable, in exchange for a much better reading experience.
The only thing that really bothers me is that I can't, this way, read a book directly from the Amazon cloud, you need to download it to your hd first... But that is the same in your reading workflow that uses ragged right... :-\

I convert every single ebook I get (regardless of format) so I can include transformations that are absolutely necessary: ragged right, font size uniformity, removing spacing between paragraphs/lines, fixing tiny indentations, straight → curly quotes, and so on.

If hyphenation were part of the conversion process I'd add it without a second thought, but as it is, I would need two sweeps to convert books. I rather like being able to make all sorts of transformations (including custom CSS) with a single operation.

But it may just turn out to be useful enough that I'm willing to do it.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Kindles have always had the best looking books to me. Best looking fonts and readability.

Agreed. And I despise left aligned text as well. It's the book equivalent of a gorgeous red velvet cake with a halibut thrown on top.