Libra Colour Finally Got Rid of the Libra Colour!

[Defenderland]

After waiting five months for Kobo to deliver the promised functionality, I cancelled the purchase and returned the device.

I bought it because I have to read a lot of web articles with graphics. So color was very important because on the Kindle Paperwhite, for example, red lines cannot be distinguished from blue lines. Reducing the time spent reading on the monitor and doing this work outside when the weather is nice was an easy decision for the Libra Color.

Unfortunately, no one mentioned anywhere that after so many years, Kobo still has serious software problems:


1. The app that Kobo promotes the Libra Colour with and recommends for reading web articles on the Libra, doesn't work reliably. It often leaves out the graphics. That was a great experience right from the start. I put together a reading list of articles, put it in the green with cola, cake and Libra and then all the graphics were missing.

I could hardly believe that, because I had done a lot of research.

Unfortunately, it's all just advertising junk and fanboy chatter. Hence an absolutely useless "function" that is heavily advertised.

Before I bought the Kobo, I even checked that Rakuten was not a Chinese company, because my experience with Boox cured me of that forever. Rakuten is Japanese. Normally known for high-quality hardware AND software. Well, that's how it goes.

2. But all was not lost, because the Libra also has Dropbox integrated.

So I set up Dropbox on the PC. Now I just had to find a browser extension to create e-books from web pages.

While I have three solutions for my Kindle Paperwhite, all of which work flawlessly, it was a problem to even find an extension that reliably extracts the article and allows you to download it as ePubs (Send to Kindle is much more common and also much more practical: with a preview to check and then just a single click...).

After a long search, I found 'EpubPress', which works really well. Download to the Dropbox folder and the book appears on the Kobo after syncing.

Great.

2. But I hadn't reckoned with the terrible Kobo software, which ruins this solution too:

So I start reading happily and get to the first diagram. It's too small, so I try to enlarge it. Oops! Instead, the text is zoomed and the graphic stays fixed.

I couldn't believe it, but it's true:

The Libra Colour can't display ePubs properly, it doesn't allow zooming in graphics!

3. After fine-tuning the layout, the layout disappears every time you zoom: there isn't even the option to save layout presets like on the Kindle.

And to top it all off: the font size isn't even shown as a number, there's just a slider. Good luck finding the adjusted and fine-tuned setting again.

4. There is also no category for new books that have not yet been assigned to a category (I think this is an extremely important feature, because all new articles that you send to the Kindle automatically appear in the "uncategorized" category).
The Kobo does not have this. So if you read a lot of articles every day, you either have to laboriously assign 20 to 40 articles to a category first (have fun with the slow eInks), or you quickly end up in a huge mess.

Such features do not sound spectacular, but for everyday use they separate the wheat from the chaff...

Sorry Kobo, this is not a glorious page of Japanese engineering. This is more like Chinese planned economy.
I am glad to be rid of the device and am eagerly awaiting the Kindle Colorsoft.

[Aleron Ives]

You can zoom images in KEPUB but not EPUB. Anyway, it sounds like you'd be better served by an Android device than by either Kindle or Kobo if you're not actually reading books.

[hatuluang]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

After waiting five months for Kobo to deliver the promised functionality, I cancelled the purchase and returned the device.
...
I couldn't believe it, but it's true:
The Libra Colour can't display ePubs properly, it doesn't allow zooming in graphics!
...

Conversion of epub to kepub can zoom images, display reading stats, preview footnotes and display book synopsis.
Kepub is a term used to describe the eBook format designed for Kobobooks.

Ref: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kepub

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

You can zoom images in KEPUB but not EPUB. Anyway, it sounds like you'd be better served by an Android device than by either Kindle or Kobo if you're not actually reading books.

The Kindle, except the color, has all the functionality I need.
Have you ever used one Anfroid eInk productively?

Android eink devices are even worse and have 'real' Chinasoftware. From sometimes unresponsive buttons to a totally illogical software layout, with important settings often hidden in the third submenu, while unimportant tasks are wasting space.


Kindle software usability is top notch and I don't understand, how competition even can implement sideloading the most important ebook format, but then does not allow to zoom the graphics.
That's the Chinese method to make features only so that they help to sell the product, but no afterthought that only a good implementation creates a respected trade mark over time and will bring customers back.

[hatuluang]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

The Kindle, except the color, has all the functionality I need.

lol,
You don't know or deliberately don't know that the epub file you use on Kindle has been converted to a format designed to use in Kindle such as mobi, azw3, and the recent one is kfx. So you can zoom images on your Kindle.

You cannot use epub directly on your Kindle, the conversion is done when you use Send to Kindle or other offline tools.

ref: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile...n-your-kindle/

[Quoth]

The kindle and Kobo are best for reading novels. Poorer for other content and very poor for web content, interactive and photo/graphics.

You need a decent tablet, Nxtpaper or one of the other true matte paper-like screens.

I've Kindle and Kobo and had other eink. Kindle is actually a lot inferior to Kobo for managed metadata / library interface for the up to 18,000 novels (32 G). Almost no difference for reading.

Kobo is Japanese owned and based / designed in Canada. Images in epub don't zoom (and Amazon conversion of epub for Kindle reduces quality) because it was designed to read novels. Kobo has the kepub variation which does zoom, and you can easily convert, or even rename to have the image zooming.

But eink is best for novels.·

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by hatuluang

lol,
You don't know or deliberately don't know that the epub file you use on Kindle has been converted to a format designed to use in Kindle such as mobi, azw3, and the recent one is kfx. So you can zoom images on your Kindle.

You cannot use epub directly on your Kindle, the conversion is done when you use Send to Kindle or other offline tools.

ref: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile...n-your-kindle/

You don't even understand the difference if a unit/software does it transparently for the user!
Incredible.

[Defenderland]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The kindle and Kobo are best for reading novels. Poorer for other content and very poor for web content, interactive and photo/graphics.

You need a decent tablet, Nxtpaper or one of the other true matte paper-like screens.

I've Kindle and Kobo and had other eink. Kindle is actually a lot inferior to Kobo for managed metadata / library interface for the up to 18,000 novels (32 G). Almost no difference for reading.

Kobo is Japanese owned and based / designed in Canada. Images in epub don't zoom (and Amazon conversion of epub for Kindle reduces quality) because it was designed to read novels. Kobo has the kepub variation which does zoom, and you can easily convert, or even rename to have the image zooming.

But eink is best for novels.·

How about telling people outright, that the Kobo was useless for reading web articles, instead of leaving people in the dark?
That's what forums were used for - not anymore!

[1ily]

I don't read web articles so I was not aware of these issues, but if you want bugs fixed, you have to report them: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=211721

It is like this in every company. For Kindle you go to customer service. You can go to customer service for Kobo too if you want, but email is faster...

BTW Rakuten is a japanese company that purchased Kobo, a canadian company.

[PeterT]

I believe if you had done any searching on these forums you would have seen discussions on the shortcomings of Pocket / Kobo integration

One major issue is the manor in which Pocket categorizes saved web pages. Some pages are captured as Articles; others are stored as is. The Kobo integration is ONLY for articles; those are the only saved items that sync.


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[PeterT]

Posting to that Bug Thread is useless. Kobo do not look at it. Same with the Feature Request thread.



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[1ily]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Posting to that Bug Thread is useless. Kobo do not look at it. Same with the Feature Request thread.



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The post lists Kobo's official email that you can contact.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Defenderland

You don't even understand the difference if a unit/software does it transparently for the user!
Incredible.

Amazon's conversion to kfx or azw3 (depending on age of model) needs the internet twice.
It has a size limit.
Amazon will strip fonts if they think there are too many.
Image quality may be reduced.
It may not convert at all.

It's not a transparent process.

Calibre often does it better, though won't do KFX on Linux. The KFX output uses Amason programs installed on the local computer.

The forum is Mobile Read and the central aspect of content is ebooks and secondarily (but not exclusively) eink based readers, which are either epub (all except Kindle now), kepub and epub on Kobo. Mobi/Azw3 support is poor or missing on most readers other than Kindle.
Mobi was obsolete when Amazon bought it in 2005 and did first Kindle in 2007. KFX is really only on Kindle.

Also covered are apps for iOS, Android (and to an extent viewers on Mac, Windows and Linux).

Calibre is the best program (free) to convert and manage ebooks and does formats for discontinued ereaders.

You'd get better support for web content elsewhere as this is primarily about ebooks. Also phones, tablets, Chromebooks and laptops, are far better at web content than ereaders or ereader formats. The precusors of epub and mobi in the late 1990s were purely for novels! Mostly on PDAs, but some dedicated ereaders existed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I believe if you had done any searching on these forums you would have seen discussions on the shortcomings of Pocket / Kobo integration

One major issue is the manor in which Pocket categorizes saved web pages. Some pages are captured as Articles; others are stored as is. The Kobo integration is ONLY for articles; those are the only saved items that sync.


Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

IMO Pocket is "broken" anyway. I abandoned it years ago. I do one of:
1) Copy / paste to LO Writer and reformat using odt format. An extra docx save for Calibre.
2) Save Web page
3) Use wget to scrape an entire site.

Then use Calibre to convert to an epub. Method 1 is used if images or tables are important.

I only do that for content that is pretty big, otherwise I read the actual web content on phone, tablet, laptop, workstation. IMO no eink reader sensibly handles web content. My Android eink is pointless for browsers or web content compared with real tablet.

There is also a privacy issue with Pocket apart from the fact it doesn't work very well.