Touch - Cover display issues resolved at last

[Hoods7070]

This might help those who have had/are having problems with their Touch not displaying covers correctly - which has been driving me nuts for weeks. (I did not find a solution on the forum although the topic has been discussed.) I was doubly baffled because I knew that at certain times the device DID show covers correctly - I now know why. Calibre appears to be the problem.

Anyway, in my case my device was (mostly) showing a wide white left hand border everywhere. I ended up reducing my device library to a solitary book then tried every sensible aspect ratio and cover size I could think of, to no avail. (I was using Calibre, and the Cover Resize** plugin to do this.) In the end the solution was relatively simple.

I deleted the Calibre files on the device, and made sure there were no images left over in the Kobo>images folder. (Which also got rid of many MBs of residual recommended books rubbish, reacquired after a factory reset - which I'd done as another step in my testing.) So, ultimately, there were no images, and no Calibre metadata/driveinfo etc. files on the device.

I then dragged and dropped my books directly from my PC into the device, and everything now displays perfectly. I have tested this extensively and it hasn't failed yet. When drag and drop is used, and the reader has been ejected (via Windows) it rebuilds the CORRECT multiple-image structure for the Kobo. This information is otherwise read from the Calibre metadata info files, it seems, as only one image (the main cover) is put into the device images folder by Calibre. I should note that these files are exactly the same files I was putting on before, from my Calibre library. This means I can still use Calibre for all the converting, cover resizing and so on, just NOT to put stuff on the device.

Note: If you subsequently open Calibre with the device connected, it rewrites the metadata and driveinfo files onto it, but this does NOT affect the books already on the device.

** It would see bad covers have nothing to do with the plugin. That doesn't seem to mess with anything other than the dimensions of the cover as requested. It seems that Calibre, on the other hand, degrades the jpg, so that red becomes full of artifacts and things like outlined fonts display badly. Using the method I have described, covers remain at the jpg level at which you saved them.

HTH