Kindle Touch Update 5.1.2

[arad26]

Anyone noticed some improvements after this update? I was hoping they will give us an update like the one for the Kindle NT with parental controls, crisper fonts.

[ixtab]

The most important improvement is that they closed a critical security hole. Other than that, no major visible differences for the time being.

As the version number states, this is a minor update from previous 5.1.* releases. 5.1.0 had major changes compared to 5.0.*, just as the 4.1.0 you are referring to has compared to 4.0.*

[JSWolf]

Is the line-height bug in KF8 fixed?

[ixtab]

No idea, I don't have KF8 books.

[dukesilver]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Is the line-height bug in KF8 fixed?

I'm currently reading dance with dragons, and when I select publisher font, the spacing between lines is too large. is that what the KF8 line-height bug is?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dukesilver

I'm currently reading dance with dragons, and when I select publisher font, the spacing between lines is too large. is that what the KF8 line-height bug is?

Yes, that is what the line-height bug is. The default line height set at it's smallest is still a bit large. You cannot fix it by putting a line-height command in CSS as line-height is ignored. They made this bug for firmware 5.1 and then duplicated it for firmware 4.1.

Originally Posted by dukesilver

I'm currently reading dance with dragons, and when I select publisher font, the spacing between lines is too large. is that what the KF8 line-height bug is?

In your case that is probably just due to the publisher's poor use of CSS in formatting line height. KF8 books were/are showing too large of line space when using the Kindle Touch's default settings.

I've still got 5.1.0 on my Touch. What was 5.1.1? Or did they skip 5.1.1?

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I've still got 5.1.0 on my Touch. What was 5.1.1? Or did they skip 5.1.1?

5.1.1 was shipped with some newer international devices (at least most reports came from european users), but it was never publicly released for download.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by ixtab

5.1.1 was shipped with some newer international devices (at least most reports came from european users), but it was never publicly released for download.

5.1.1 did not fix the "web jailbreak" bug. So it was replaced with 5.1.2 with the security fix before 5.1.1 was widespread or available for download. I think we can safely ignore 5.1.1 for hacks and for debricking purposes.

If 5.1.2 is to fix a bug in 5.1.1 that many, if not most, of us never had pushed to our Touch, then I wonder if they will need to push 5.1.2 to us? Perhaps we will not get 5.1.2 either? Not that it matters as it would apparently do us no good unless we have 5.1.1.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by ixtab

The most important improvement is that they closed a critical security hole. Other than that, no major visible differences for the time being.

As the version number states, this is a minor update from previous 5.1.* releases. 5.1.0 had major changes compared to 5.0.*, just as the 4.1.0 you are referring to has compared to 4.0.*

At your provided link, it says:

associates at heise Security have developed a proof-of-concept web page

At this MobileRead thread it says:

Originally Posted by mmatej

Hi all,
I have created simple web jailbreak for Kindle Touch 5.1.0. It exploits (recently) found security bug in browser and performs same steps as the current "universal" jailbreak version.

Interestingly, the video at the heise security announcement shows the VERY SAME web page provided in the MobileRead post.

So, did heise security actually HIRE MobileRead member mmatej, or was he already an employee of heise security when he made that web page, or is heise security claiming credit for somebody else's work (plagiarism)? Hmm...

So, WHO built that web jailbreak webpage then?

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by jswinden

If 5.1.2 is to fix a bug in 5.1.1 that many, if not most, of us never had pushed to our Touch, then I wonder if they will need to push 5.1.2 to us? Perhaps we will not get 5.1.2 either? Not that it matters as it would apparently do us no good unless we have 5.1.1.

You're getting something wrong here. Let's look at the (possible) time line:

t1: Amazon releases and pushes 5.1.0, but keeps developing internally.
t2: Eventually, they figure that 5.1.1 is good enough (or maybe needed because of some hardware change), and starts equipping factory-fresh Kindles with 5.1.1.
t3: We discover the security vulnerability in the 5.1.0 browser. The vulnerability is also present in 5.1.1. This puts pressure on Amazon to release a fix for both 5.1.1 and 5.1.0.
t4: 5.1.2 is released.

5.1.2 internally contains two different update "modules": one which affects 5.1.1 and is relatively small, and one which affects 5.1.0 and is somewhat bigger - because it also includes the changes between 5.1.0 and 5.1.1.

Anyway, the net result is that whichever firmware you had before the update, you will have a common 5.1.2 one after the update.

I suppose that Amazon will wait a few more days to see if there is any negative feedback from users manually installing the update, then start pushing it automatically to 5.1.0 and 5.1.1 devices.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by dukesilver

I'm currently reading dance with dragons, and when I select publisher font, the spacing between lines is too large. is that what the KF8 line-height bug is?

It doesn't matter if you're using publisher font or not (except 'Publisher Font' option is only available for some KF8 books). Line spacing is a little larger than with mobi, using the same Typeface and Spacing settings. (Though I'll say that in the case of DWD, I did look at a book sample and with the publisher font the spacing seemed too large at the Medium setting, but less so with regular/sans serif. But it may be just the font metrics rather than KF8 rendering per se)

It doesn't particularly bother me, and in fact I think it looks just fine with the font I typically use. But the problem is that when you switch between mobi and kf8, the appearance changes, which for typographically sensitive people can be annoying or distracting. Amazon would have done better to make sure the spacing remained the same, but I don't think we can assume that Amazon regards this as something they need to address in an update.

I would rather they offered finer-grained user control over line spacing (at least 5 settings instead of just the 3), and made text settings book-specific. Publishing guidelines advise against publishers mucking with the default line spacing, text size and typeface (when not embedding), and given the different screen resolutions, different built-in fonts on different devices, and now a variety of embedded fonts, there's no way for it to look equally good on all devices by default (typography is an art, and reasonable people will differ on what they think 'looks good'). For example, Sony PRS-T1 has a system-wide default, but it retains user's settings for each book (including Orientation). That works pretty well.

There are issues with specific books in KF8 format. For example "Wool Omnibus Edition" somehow has its font set about 3 notches smaller than normal. It looks fine on Fire, and in mobi. I don't know if this is an authoring issue or a bug with KT's KF8 rendering.

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

So, did heise security actually HIRE MobileRead member mmatej, or was he already an employee of heise security when he made that web page, or is heise security claiming credit for somebody else's work (plagiarism)? Hmm...

So, WHO built that web jailbreak webpage then?

I think it's just a bad translation of the german version. If you check back in the original thread, I linked to the german version (which was online before the english one). There it's clear that they have been able to verify the security vulnerability by setting up their own server with a page that can reboot the kindle (and/or send /etc/passwd to a server).

You should simply read the 3rd paragraph of the english article before the 2nd one, then it makes more sense.