Kobo Newbie needs help!

[Phssthpok]

I've just got a Libra 2 to replace my Kindle, whose battery is suffering from electronic arteriosclerosis, and I'm having a few problems. I use Calibre to manage my books, which I keep as EPUBs and autoconvert to AZW3 on upload, and with the Kindle I had a metadata plugboard to insert the series name & number into book title, since the Kindle doesn't believe in series.

I have set the Kobo Touch driver on Calibre to use "tags" for collections. This works brilliantly; each tag appears as a collection. However my books which are part of a series in Calibre don't show up as such on the Kobo, which tells me I have no series. I have "Set series" checked on the driver's "metadata" tab, btw.

I find the font settings hard to manage (on the Kindle you can do a two-finger stretch and shrink gesture, but on the Kobo you have to click at the top, open the Aa font menu, and play around from there.) Since the first book I looked at was displayed in something approaching 72pt, I had to figure it out urgently!

On some books changing the line spacing setting has no effect -- I seem to be stuck with single spaced lines no matter what. On other books I can change it successfully. I had a look at the stylesheet on one of the problematic books, and tried removing "line-spacing: 1.2" from the body tag rule, but this had no effect either.

I also like to correct typos in books I read, so I use the Calibre rating to specify whether I've read and fully proofed the book. My plugboard added a checkmark to my proofed and corrected books, and I moved them to a "Corrected"collection on the Kindle to keep them out of the main booklist. I tried adding a Collections Template rule on the driver's "collection" tab to create a "#Corrected" collection:

program: if $rating ==# 5 then list_join(':@:','#Corrected') fi;

which just resulted in a collection called "KOBO Invalid 'List, separator' pairs..." containing all my rating=5 books.

In any case this won't do what I want, since the corrected books will still show up in the main booklist -- but I can at least use a plugboard to add a checkmark to the front of the title, as I did for the Kindle, so at least I can see they've been corrected.

So some questions:
1) How do I get the Kobo to recognise my series?
2) What might be preventing me from changing the line spacing?
3) What should the code above really look like?

I will probably have more questions later... but I'd quite like to sort at least these issues out before I start uploading my entire collection of 5000+ books...

[DNSB]

If you are sending the series metadata which is done on the second connection—the first connection sends the book and imports them on the disconnect which creates the database entry for the series metadata to reside in, you should see the series information below the book title and above the author name(s) in the book views. You should also see a Series tab.

For the driver, check the 3rd tab in the configuration dialog and see if the Update metadata on device checkbox is checked and if the set series information checkbox is checked (it may also be checked and the entry greyed out depending on how some other options are set.

For the line spacing, you will also have to check the paragraph styles, html styles, page options, etc. as any/all of those can cause you to be unable to change line spacing. Basically, I remove line spacing from everything with the possible exception of header styles.

[Sirtel]

There is a patch "Force user line-spacing in epubs", which lets you always change the line spacing despite the html and css values. But patching is a bit of an advanced course (there are detailed instructions here, pretty easy to follow, if you're interested). With patching you can fine-tune and change many settings in addition to the built-in ones.

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you are sending the series metadata which is done on the second connection—the first connection sends the book and imports them on the disconnect which creates the database entry for the series metadata to reside in, you should see the series information below the book title and above the author name(s) in the book views. You should also see a Series tab.

For the driver, check the 3rd tab in the configuration dialog and see if the Update metadata on device checkbox is checked and if the set series information checkbox is checked (it may also be checked and the entry greyed out depending on how some other options are set.

For the line spacing, you will also have to check the paragraph styles, html styles, page options, etc. as any/all of those can cause you to be unable to change line spacing. Basically, I remove line spacing from everything with the possible exception of header styles.

I deleted the books I'd loaded as a test and re-imported them,and this time the series information showed up as expected.

As for the line spacing: I missed one occurrence of line-height in the stylesheet, and when I removed it all was well. I will now have to convert nearly 6000 epubs to epub with a "Transform stye" rule to get rid of all the line-height rules...

Thanks!

[Colonel Cathcart]

You may wish to try auto converting a book or two to kepub with Calibre when sending it to the device. There are, actually, two different reader apps with different features. See if you like it better.

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by Colonel Cathcart

You may wish to try auto converting a book or two to kepub with Calibre when sending it to the device. There are, actually, two different reader apps with different features. See if you like it better.

OK, thanks, I'll try it. Can you summarise the differences for me?

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you are sending the series metadata which is done on the second connection—the first connection sends the book and imports them on the disconnect which creates the database entry for the series metadata to reside in, you should see the series information below the book title and above the author name(s) in the book views. You should also see a Series tab.

So I just transferred all no books, and saw "You have no series". I disconnected, reconnected, diconnected, and the series appear.

So does this mean that every time I transfer any books, I have to go through the same disconnect/reconnect/disconnect rigmarole? If so, AAAARGH!

[Colonel Cathcart]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

OK, thanks, I'll try it. Can you summarise the differences for me?

You can find a discussion here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=343765
Edit: since that thread is a bit dated, since it's creating Kobo added a feature that lets you further tweak font weights for both built-in and side-loaded fonts for kepbus.
Some screenshots of the extra features here:
https://medium.com/@inesferreira789/...ow-9b5c1b39798

[fogice]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

So does this mean that every time I transfer any books, I have to go through the same disconnect/reconnect/disconnect rigmarole? If so, AAAARGH!

Yes (mostly), but it is still SO much better than creating all of that data manually on a Kindle!

There is a bit of code called NickelSeries that says it will do it all at once. I haven't tried it.

There is a larger bit of code called NickelMenu that can do a lot of things; one of them is to reconnect the USB with a menu option, without having to unplug and replug it. I love this feature.

[Lys]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

So I just transferred all no books, and saw "You have no series". I disconnected, reconnected, diconnected, and the series appear.

So does this mean that every time I transfer any books, I have to go through the same disconnect/reconnect/disconnect rigmarole? If so, AAAARGH!

You can install NickelSeries and forget to ever have to reconnect again

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

So I just transferred all no books, and saw "You have no series". I disconnected, reconnected, diconnected, and the series appear.

So does this mean that every time I transfer any books, I have to go through the same disconnect/reconnect/disconnect rigmarole? If so, AAAARGH!

Yes. You can't update the metadata in the database until the record for the book has been created. Personally, I use NickelMenu so once the books have been imported, I use one of it's menu options to reconnect without having to unplug/replug my Kobos. I've included part of my NickelMenu config below. The USB connect line triggers the connection, the Toggle Autoconnect line lets me switch between getting the Connect/cancel popup or just connecting.

#
menu_item : main    : Screenshots        : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots
menu_item : main    : Import books       : nickel_misc    : rescan_books_full
menu_item : main    : USB Connect        : nickel_misc    : force_usb_connection
menu_item : main    : Toggle Autoconnect : nickel_setting : toggle : auto_usb_gadget
menu_item : main    : Screensaver Status : cmd_output     : 500: quiet : test -e /mnt/onboard/.kobo/screensaver_old
      chain_success    : dbg_toast       : Screensaver is off
      chain_failure    : dbg_toast       : Screensaver is on
#

One item is that out of the box, NickelMenu does not have any options, you have to create the config file and place it in the correct directory.

See the NickelMenu: An integrated launcher for Kobo eReaders thread for the basics. There are also several other threads with various NickelMenu setups.

From the same author, there is also NickelSeries which removes the need for the second connect for series however I've never used it though some people do seem very happy with it.

[isarl]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

So I just transferred all no books, and saw "You have no series". I disconnected, reconnected, diconnected, and the series appear.

So does this mean that every time I transfer any books, I have to go through the same disconnect/reconnect/disconnect rigmarole? If so, AAAARGH!

In the post below I refer to “Nickel” several times. This is the default software running on your new Kobo. I use Nickel to specify that I'm not talking about alternative software such as KOReader, which can behave differently. Whenever you see “Nickel” on its own, you can read that as “Kobo OS”. (Various patches, including NickelSeries, include Nickel in their names to reflect that they are patching various aspects of the Nickel software. But it is important to remember that these are third-party patches, not official and not supported by Kobo/Rakuten.)

Unfortunately the Nickel import code does not read Series metadata from sideloaded books which is why the “normal” method is to disconnect and then reconnect to Calibre so that it can update the metadata in your device library. The books have to already be imported into your Kobo's onboard database, and then Calibre can update the database with their series. This is why the disconnection is important – it allows Nickel to process the newly added books and add them to its database.

Strongly seconding the recommendation for NickelSeries which patches in a bit of code to the import process so that Nickel reads series metadata while importing new books. This is effectively a third-party bugfix which renders the entire connect/transfer/disconnect-and-import/reconnect/update-metadata rigamarole completely unnecessary. I have been using it and it works great, zero fuss. Also seconding the recommendation for the “force_usb_connection” action in NickelMenu which is so convenient for repeated connections and reconnections to Calibre in a single session. Be warned that I believe it can lock up your Kobo if you try to force a USB connection while your Kobo is not plugged into a computer. (Most frequently, I do this despite already using NickelSeries just to ensure that newly-imported books display in a certain order when sorting by Recent. This is purely fussiness on my part, in that I like a series to display in proper order even before I've read any of it, for example, even when viewing all books by Recent. (Yes, I understand that Nickel has series-specific library views as well.))

Good luck, hope you're enjoying both your new Kobo and whatever you're reading at the moment.