Kobo Firmware 3.5.0

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think it is worth it. It just looks better when the end of the page is more consistent and that looks better.

Originally Posted by Anak

Sure, it is just my opinion and I was trying to find some common ground as there is no perfect solution.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Me, I'm in it to read books as a consumer and to publish books as a formatter, so I'm on two of the three sides here. (Consumer, producer, renderer.)

When I'm reading, a blank line or two doesn't bother me. When I'm formatting, I want to write standards-compliant code and not have to worry about what Platform X or Device Y will do with it. That's why you'll always see me push for better standards compliance, both from producers and renderers; the more both of those sides demand compliant behavior from each other, the better an experience the consumers get and the less bloated the code can get.

I wouldn't object to a checkbox to switch between behaviors - "fill screen" vs. "follow defined w&o behavior" - but I would strongly object to just breaking standards.

[cybmole]

i'd like a checkbox for w&o ( and one for hypen-
ation while we are at it ) those are the 2 things where I currently have to force my preferences into each book with CSS - but I doubt it will happen.

some marketing /UI design expert at Kobo person will say - you can't have an option for widows & orphans because 99% of consumers will not know ( or care) what those are.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by cybmole

some marketing /UI design expert at Kobo person will say - you can't have an option for widows & orphans because 99% of consumers will not know ( or care) what those are.

And they'd be correct in saying so. We're the geekiest of their users, the extreme minority, the far less than 1%. It would be foolish for Kobo, or any other company, to cater to us at the expense of their much larger less-geeky base.

Now, that said, if such an option were tucked away in an "advanced settings" page the way the font fine-tuning options are...that might be a different story.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by cybmole

i'd like a checkbox for w&o ( and one for hypen-
ation while we are at it ) those are the 2 things where I currently have to force my preferences into each book with CSS - but I doubt it will happen.

some marketing /UI design expert at Kobo person will say - you can't have an option for widows & orphans because 99% of consumers will not know ( or care) what those are.

Sadly, I'm almost certain that 99% is an underestimate. The people you find in these forums tend to be the most vocal and (I think) knowledgeable but I also think that we are an extreme minority.

I suspect the best we can hope for is to convince them to bury an advanced menu with the options we would like. Hyphenation is two other cans of worms (RMSDK and ACCESS are different programs and from what I have seen, handle hyphenation in very different ways).

Regards,
David

[arspr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sadly, I'm almost certain that 99% is an underestimate. The people you find in these forums tend to be the most vocal and (I think) knowledgeable but I also think that we are an extreme minority.

I suspect the best we can hope for is to convince them to bury an advanced menu with the options we would like. Hyphenation is two other cans of worms (RMSDK and ACCESS are different programs and from what I have seen, handle hyphenation in very different ways).

Regards,
David

Yes I do agree about it. In the middle of the "if 0 works why should I change it to 1?" "discussion" one person said something like "why the hell do you discuss about w&o?, I just enjoy the books."

And I fear that is a very common situation. More over, if you ask a lot of people if they have w&o, LPB, hyphenation or just justified texts, (even having previously explained them what a justified text is), I fear the most common answer is going to be "are you somehow trying to insult me? 'Cos I don't like when people speak to me in Chinese..."

Nevertheless, the freak and techy guys like ourselves usually like the things working properly...

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by arspr

Yes I do agree about it. In the middle of the "if 0 works why should I change it to 1?" "discussion" one person said something like "why the hell do you discuss about w&o?, I just enjoy the books."

And I fear that is a very common situation. More over, if you ask a lot of people if they have w&o, LPB, hyphenation or just justified texts, (even having previously explained them what a justified text is), I fear the most common answer is going to be "are you somehow trying to insult me? 'Cos I don't like when people speak to me in Chinese..."

Nevertheless, the freak and techy guys like ourselves usually like the things working properly...

On the other hand if you had an ereader that was designed to optimise the high quality display of text (which would include all sorts of typographical things like hanging punctuation, w&o, ligatures) instead of just a normal ereader, would that be seen as a marketable advantage?

Higher resolution screens are one way ereaders are already doing this.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by arspr

Yes I do agree about it. In the middle of the "if 0 works why should I change it to 1?" "discussion" one person said something like "why the hell do you discuss about w&o?, I just enjoy the books."

And I fear that is a very common situation. More over, if you ask a lot of people if they have w&o, LPB, hyphenation or just justified texts, (even having previously explained them what a justified text is), I fear the most common answer is going to be "are you somehow trying to insult me? 'Cos I don't like when people speak to me in Chinese..."

Nevertheless, the freak and techy guys like ourselves usually like the things working properly...

Hey, you should hear my wife commenting on my spending 15-30 minutes editing an 300 page ebook when it takes me less than an hour to read it. She reads to enjoy her books and really doesn't notice or care about the layout or much else other than the text unless it has those (expletive deleted) thumbnail size images which she does notice. Guess who gets to work on that issue?

Regards,
David

[arspr]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

On the other hand if you had an ereader that was designed to optimise the high quality display of text (which would include all sorts of typographical things like hanging punctuation, w&o, ligatures) instead of just a normal ereader, would that be seen as a marketable advantage?

Higher resolution screens are one way ereaders are already doing this.

Nope, hi-techy gadgets are usually sold because they are "cool" as they have a very long list of specs and a pretty brand stamped on their back. Not because the customers actually read the specs and even less because they understand them.

Do you really think that 99% of the people who, immediately upon launch, buy the next Apple iPhone 56sxz at $1000, are actually knowing why/how/if it is better than their previously owned 55s? Or if those "enhancements" are worth those $1000?

Pretty specs are just a selling trick, not the objective themselves...

[mahtin]

My main reason for buying the Aura HD was because it seemed to be the best- best for my eyes, which I use for reading a lot and only have one pair of. And they're getting old, and won't be replaced.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

On the other hand if you had an ereader that was designed to optimise the high quality display of text (which would include all sorts of typographical things like hanging punctuation, w&o, ligatures) instead of just a normal ereader, would that be seen as a marketable advantage?

Higher resolution screens are one way ereaders are already doing this.

It would be a marketable advantage for me, and probably for quite a number of us here. But as said before in this thread, we are an extreme minority, and it's simply not worth it for reader makers to bother with catering to us; there's not enough money in it.

What actually might help is the appearance of Android-based readers like the Onyx Boox T68. Others could write a reader app that did all that, without having to do the full OS (like the late and lamented OpenInkpot had to do for the Hanlin V3 back in the day). You already see that happening with the T68; lots of people run Moon+ Reader and Calibre Companion on them, and don't bother with the native reader.

[Anak]

Originally Posted by cybmole

i'd like a checkbox for w&o ( and one for hypen-
ation while we are at it ) those are the 2 things where I currently have to force my preferences into each book with CSS - but I doubt it will happen.

some marketing /UI design expert at Kobo person will say - you can't have an option for widows & orphans because 99% of consumers will not know ( or care) what those are.

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

And they'd be correct in saying so. We're the geekiest of their users, the extreme minority, the far less than 1%. It would be foolish for Kobo, or any other company, to cater to us at the expense of their much larger less-geeky base.

That sounds very much like a standard Kobo response. It is problaby true that most readers won't use it and that MR readers are amongst the most tech savvy of the Kobo user base.
And I also think that none of the suggestion mentioned here are going to be implemented even when this can be done quite easily.
Bookeen for example has a feature to turn ligatures on or off (if the font supports the ligatures feature).

Seriously, what I really expect from Kobo is that they fix the font issues of the embedded system fonts where italics are dislayed as bold or vice versa. I really wonder why they can not get that right.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by arspr

Nope, hi-techy gadgets are usually sold because they are "cool" as they have a very long list of specs and a pretty brand stamped on their back. Not because the customers actually read the specs and even less because they understand them.

No, I'm not saying market this as a spec, market this as a "our reader renders more beautifully than reader k", i.e. more of an appeal to their sense of aesthetics or sense of style.

Originally Posted by arspr

Pretty specs are just a selling trick, not the objective themselves...

Totally agreed, and if you look at companies like Apple (which you mentioned in a bit I clipped) they tend not to compete with long product feature lists; their appeal is more aesthetic/emotional.

[Anak]

But Kobo is no exception.
This is what Kobo says about syncing:

Get the free Kobo app and read across devices
Download the free Kobo app to your computer, tablet, and smartphone and all your reading - even your bookmarks - is synced so you can start reading on one device and pick up on another.

(From the specs)Your Kobo eBooks are stored safely in the cloud; retrieve them at any time. Your bookmarks and more are seamlessly synced across all your Kobo eReading apps and devices.

Kobo doesn't say this only applies to kepubs. They even don't mention the kepub format at all or reference to it with 'Kobos own proprietary ebook or epub format.'

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Anak

But Kobo is no exception.
This is what Kobo says about syncing:

Get the free Kobo app and read across devices
Download the free Kobo app to your computer, tablet, and smartphone and all your reading - even your bookmarks - is synced so you can start reading on one device and pick up on another.

(From the specs)Your Kobo eBooks are stored safely in the cloud; retrieve them at any time. Your bookmarks and more are seamlessly synced across all your Kobo eReading apps and devices.

Kobo doesn't say this only applies to kepubs. They even don't mention the kepub format at all or reference to it with 'Kobos own proprietary ebook or epub format.'

So, what else could they mean by "Kobo eBooks"?

[Anak]

Originally Posted by davidfor

So, what else could they mean by "Kobo eBooks"?

Simple, all ebooks bought in the Kobo shop because the don't limit this feature to one or a few file formats and Kobo doesn't mention a 'special kind of epub' in the list of supported file formats: Kobos proprietary epub, the kepub.
I could go a step further by saying every item bought in the Kobo shop and stored on Kobos servers. As you can't upload non-Kobo bought books it is clear that those can not be synced.

Supported file formats eBooks: EPUB, PDF, and MOBI.
Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and TIFF.
Text: TXT, HTML, XHTML, and RTF.
Comic Books: CBZ and CBR.

Based on the list above I would expect that syncing of epub, pdf and mobi files are automatically synced. Because these are types (formats) of ebooks.

BTW, I do understand your point but Kobo should state this more clearly.
Now they are very cryptic or creative with words to avoid to mention what they should have mentioned very clearly: syncing between devices is only supported for our own proprietary format. But that format is not on the list.

I don't blame them for advertising with a statement as "Automatic synchronization between Kobo devices." as long I can read in the product details or fine print that this exclusively and only applies to only one specific file format.