IF you could design the user interface for the next Kobo Firmware

[DNSB]

[QUOTE=theonna;2537891Fix idiotic space management- make all margins user configurable, including preference for having or not the top and bottom status lines. Make smallest interline distance smaller, .8 at least, so users can configure their own preferences better./QUOTE]

Are you out of your gourd? Do you even know what setting the line height to .8 would do? See the attached image. 1.0 as the absolute minimum, 1.05 would be better.

Please try to remember that white space is our friend. There are good reasons as to why Adobe's product default to a line height of 1.2. Anything less than 1 only works if you want to use all capitals so no ascenders or descenders.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

PS my T1 and my antique PRS 600 have far more books (8000 plus 0n 600) and can do the collection thing in less than 5 seconds with 1400 collections on the antique 600 and well over 1000 on the T1.

Helen

The problem is that building the database does take more time. All the data has to be entered in the database, hopefully with some error checking and then committed. If you watch the process, you can see the KoboReader.sqlite.journal files being created and destroyed as the database is updated. The benefit -- if done properly -- is that searching a database is much easier and faster than searching a mass of files looking for information. You pay in time and CPU cycles at one end or the other.

Sheesh... I'm starting to sound like a Windows 8 evangelist since it has dropped the start menu and much else for search. Where's that I-love-myself jacket anyways...

Regards,
David

[meeera]

Fix the italics bug and the widows/orphans issue.

Let the user choose to override line height, margins, font etc regardless of whether these are specified in the epub.

Full screen reading mode.

More options for display instead of single externally-imposed design decision (eg title bar, etc).

Give the user an upfront choice of whether to download new firmware.

"Simplified view" option when browsing library to pack a lot more books onto one page.

Accessible mode option in the OS, so that people who can only read larger fonts can still operate the device easily.

[theonna]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are you out of your gourd? Do you even know what setting the line height to .8 would do? See the attached image. 1.0 as the absolute minimum, 1.05 would be better.

No I am fine with my gourd.
The line height appearance depends on on the specific font. Some of them are just fine with .8 and some look cramped with 1.5. As it is now even with standard Kobo fonts the line height appears at least 30% more than it should.
I've been setting reading preferences on very many reading devices, and believe me there are plenty that look just fine with .8. For some people who read fast and a lot- it helps to maximize the use of the page space- small margins all around, small line height means more reading enjoyment. Again I am suggesting giving people control, so each can choose what is personally more comfortable.

In spite of my prior arguments to the contrary, I would like to see a full screen reading mode. I like the idea that an ebook can present a story as a story without any distractions, such as the title or reading statistics. Reading statistics includes basic stuff, such as the current "page number". (Just to be clear: I like the idea. I also recognize that Kobo's market may necessitate features that I deem unnecessary, and I am not going to hold that against them.)

Even though I am more than willing to deal with ebooks as they are formatted, I like the idea of specifying how much white space I want. I like extra white space, within reason. I like indented paragraphs. I like blank lines between paragraphs. I like moderately sized margins. It is nice to be able to specify how much white space. I am not going to hold it against Kobo if they use reasonable system wide or document specified defaults.

I like being able to specify fonts for books. CoolReader is my favourite Android application because it allows fine-grained defaults for fonts. In reality, I don't need this much control. For me, I am happy so say "sans serif" for headings, "serif" for body, and "fixed width" when appropriate (e.g. code blocks in books on programming). Of course, I am also happy to deal with reasonable defaults.

Overall, I'm not too picky. Of course, I have preferences. I am also willing to deal with what I'm given. My preferences for fiction are described above, so I won't go into much more detail there. My preferences for non-fiction closely match my preferences for fiction, probably because I understand the limitations of the device, so I will avoid making demands there too.

Yet there is one thing that I will be more demanding about: documentation. I was highlighting and annotating text today and stumbled across a way to make it easier today, even though I've been using Kobo readers for about a year. A big part of the reason for the discovery taking so long is that I found a way that worked a year ago, and the documentation didn't describe the more effective way that I discovered today. That is not forgivable in my mind. I understand making it easy to discover a feature and I understand making the steps in using that feature simple. Yet it should also be easy for "power users" to use that feature more effectively, and the effective use of a feature really ought to be described in it's documentation.

So make it easy to discover and use a feature in the basic scenario, but also make the feature efficient to use (and document how to use it efficiently) for the more experienced users.

Then again, I'd be more than happy with a port of CoolReader and bypassing Kobo's software altogether. (Alas, I also recognize that probably won's happen. Sigh. The peril of being a realist is that you're also a pessimist.)

[meeera]

I'm going to fine-tune my wish for full-screen reading mode, and add that I'd like the option for a very low-profile bar at the very bottom of the screen to indicate progress, turning from clear to black or grey to black as you progress through the book. Chapter ticks should be optional on this bar, as some might find them more distracting than useful, while others will very much like the ability to see how close they are to the end of the chapter.

[guma]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Before adding or removing any of the existing features, I would want Kobo to work on fixing the bugs. Make sure everything works. Don't change, add, or remove anything until the bugs are fixed.

Fix it all. Just fix fix fix and fix until it's all fixed.
Kobo has the buggiest firmware going and that's not a good thing to have.

This!

... and make firmware updates optional.

... after that has been done introduce more user definable options with regards to the basic page rendering style (headers, footers, margins, page numbering approaches, hyphenation, a general option to switch between user defined and book embedded styles ...)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by theonna

No I am fine with my gourd.
The line height appearance depends on on the specific font. Some of them are just fine with .8 and some look cramped with 1.5. As it is now even with standard Kobo fonts the line height appears at least 30% more than it should.
I've been setting reading preferences on very many reading devices, and believe me there are plenty that look just fine with .8. For some people who read fast and a lot- it helps to maximize the use of the page space- small margins all around, small line height means more reading enjoyment. Again I am suggesting giving people control, so each can choose what is personally more comfortable.

Sorry but I'll have to disagree with you. Unless you are using a font with an incredible amount of white space around each glyph, a line-height: 0.8; directive means overlapping the lines by 20% which is very unlikely to look like anything other than crap. As in the sample supplied where the descenders on one line are overlapping the ascenders on the next line, that is what you can expect from using a line-height less than 1. It's not pretty and it's not readable. About the only exception would be using a font with no lower case letters and hence no ascenders or descenders. Unfortunately, all upper case is much less readable than mixed or lower case -- the only reason the original Teletypes used all upper case was a management decision -- "You can't spell God with a lower case g." was the story I heard.

I read fast, I read a lot and I wouldn't care to read such a squashed page unless absolutely forced to. Your choices obviously are different.

Regards,
David

[theonna]

DNSB
Here, I made a page with several fonts, where line height is .8
As you can see all are readable and I think as a minimum line height goes it is a good starting point.
As far as search versus file manager goes- file manager is far easier and faster to implement for users with different language books, than search, it is a work around, but I do not expect to have search in languages that are not supported yet to be available any time soon. Also file manager is something that I can do work once and then use it on many devices if I need to, shelves must be recreated and each device has them their way. Even without need for different languages, I'd always take file manager over shelves.

[GeoffR]

On the homescreen I would revert to the old layout for the Glo (I don't much like the new tiled home screen), but remove the wishlist from the bottom of the screen and put it in the bookshop, and use the extra space for a few more small book covers.

Main new features I would add are extra sort options (sort by series, by word count, by publication date), and a user stylesheet to allow overriding default settings for top/bottom margins, orphans/widows, etc.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by theonna

DNSB
Here, I made a page with several fonts, where line height is .8
As you can see all are readable and I think as a minimum line height goes it is a good starting point.

That is a pretty limited example. It is readable, but looks strange because of all the repeated text. More importantly, nowhere in it do the risers and descenders meet or even come close.

Try the attached ePub. It sets a different line height for the first few paragraphs from 0.7 to 1.3. Looking at it on either my Glo or Touch, none of the fonts would give me a comfortable read under 1.0. And I think I would choose 1.1 for most fonts.

[TechniSol]

If you're going to do the tiled thing make the most important tile, the current book being read, centered and largest. It should be the central focus. Centered vertically as well, or nearest the top below the top menu line. Make Search a persistent tile/button if it's going to just open another screen. If you're doing the tile bit, make the other menu type choices(Library, Bookstore, Reading Life) buttons or tiles as well. Left justified text menu items as they are now look sloppy, they could at least have been centered.

When you long press on a tile, allow the user to select Tile Type and Persistence as well as Dismiss it. Why is there an Open option when clicking it does that? Size might be a nice option if it can be offered for each location/tile type.

If you're doing a visual representation make use of the available elements like size, position, shading to indicate prominence in the interface. The current reading title should be front and center on the page with everything else subordinate to it, as it will be most used. Even the old style card deck or carousel employed that usage as it made sense visually.

I'd consider making the current book visually centered, depicting smaller half occluded covers next to it for last read, and allow scrolling that list of say 5 items by swiping. Below it I'd consider doing a line of tiles doing the same for most recently added items, perhaps with an option to switch precedence and make either row of covers the larger depending on which was being scrolled through.

Optionally, allow for a one button press, or gesture that takes the most prominent row of tiles and turns the display landscape with just them for the largest display for the wider carousel or card deck format to quickly scroll through the last five or ten items. This would be great to enlarge covers that don't display well smaller.

As for all the other requirements, fix the bugs and figure out what is taking so long to build what should be a very simple database with less than 10 fields, and probably a few hundred to a thousand characters necessary per book. Why is the current database averaging 40K per book as reported by some? No wonder it is godawful slow to paw through. If need be, strap on the big boy pants and dump the Sqlite crap and roll your own. This is a mobile device, it should be lean and mean, not subject to bloat imposed by using a system unnecessarily complex for a minor task. If it's annotations taking up all that room, bust them out of the dbase, slap them in a simple text file and reference the file in the dbase. You don't need all that overhead in memory to deal with, leave it on the storage, not in RAM. Heck, a linked list and a couple of presorted indexes would make this thing fly. It's simply unconscionable that certain functions take so long with such a beefy processor at 1GHz.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

On the homescreen I would revert to the old layout for the Glo (I don't much like the new tiled home screen), but remove the wishlist from the bottom of the screen and put it in the bookshop, and use the extra space for a few more small book covers.

Main new features I would add are extra sort options (sort by series, by word count, by publication date), and a user stylesheet to allow overriding default settings for top/bottom margins, orphans/widows, etc.

I definitely like the tiled interface. But as a compromise why not allow us to choose the style? Tiled or Kick it Old Style...


regards

Jack

[Ken Maltby]

I purchased a reading device from Kobo, I gave them money so
that I could own the reading device. I now consider it mine,
I paid for it. It is mine to use as I wish.

Kobo's firmware does everything it can to negate my
ownership and make the operation of the device dependent
upon Kobo. They are intent on retaining control over the
device through a forced "synchronization". They have
convinced most owners that this is to provide the "owners"
with a useful service, just like with most "connected"
services, the service providers (in this case Kobo) gather
and maintain information on the users of the service,
for marketing and other purposes. They claim that this
tracking of your use of the device is to provide you with
interesting statistics for your use, of your use, and to
better tailor Kobo's ebook offerings to match your needs.

I see no problem with telling Kobo to keep their hands off
the device I paid good money for, it is mine - not theirs
anymore. They may consider it their marketing tool, but I
own it and intend to sever as much of their connection to
my property as I can.

I reject the argument that consumers must accept the after
purchase control of the device, as a part of a "Terms of
Use", or the idea that purchasing the device means you
are obligated to support Kobo's marketing efforts.

The position of some, in forums like this, that "You
can't complain or argue against Kobo's maintaining control
of the device, because you could have just not purchased
the device from Kobo", is also one that I reject.

I fully intend to find a way to remove Kobo's ability to
decide what will be displayed on "my" home screen, or
otherwise use the forced synchronization process to gain
control of my device. I will continue to call for a
change to the firmware, to allow the disabling of
"features" I find intrusive. I will continue to search
for an alternative firmware to free my device.

If this offends some diehard Kobo supporters, too bad.
You do what you want with your device and I'll do as I
wish with mine.

Luck;
Ken

[BookBunny]

Oh, forgot to add, I'd rather see the sql database gone or its use reduced to a minimum. Storing bookmarks, annotations and whatever could be easily done with an XML file for each book.

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

long eared rodent

Lagomorph!

Originally Posted by DNSB

*snip*
Regards,
David

1) Having a file browser does not prevent you from searching. Having no browser however does prevent you from browsing around. Granted, you could do that with an extensive search and properly tagged books, but that would still be more hamfisted than just browsing your folders directly.

2) You pick a book, and say "I want that displayed on my homescreen" (e. g. "pinned"). The current way the home screen is handled is awful. Opening a few books (to look something up for example) pushes what you're currently reading off-screen, and so does adding new ones. Pinning would force the pinned books to always stay there.

3) I have no problem with the reading right now, but that doesn't mean I'm against a better solution. Just don't fix what's not broken.

4) Tagging on the reader does not exclude tagging in other ways.

5) Squeak.

6) Eh, shelves are just another name for playlists.