Cross device Sync

[PeterT]

Interesting series of posts on Threads from mtamblyn of Kobo..

See https://www.threads.com/share/_w5Boajyy/

The next month is going to be busy for us here at Kobo, but here's a little something that snuck out in advance:
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We know some of you have been driven slowly crazy by the way your reading progress on the Kobo app doesn't always correctly sync with your ereader, or your ereader to your app. Annoying. Bad experience. No one liked it. So...

We rebuilt the entire bookmarking and progress syncing system from the ground up. The old one hails back to our earliest days of making ereaders and it was in a scary part of the code that no one wanted to touch. But intrepid engineers strapped on the miner's helmets, packed snacks and energy drinks, and went deep into Kobo's syncing infrastructure and rebuilt big pieces of it from scratch. Now we have...

a thoroughly modern way of figuring out which change to a book's progress is most recent, giving everyone a much more accurate way of deciding where in the book you are now. Want to move over to this brave new world? Here's how you do it:

(First off, this only matters if you are an ereader+app user. Or a multi-ereader user. if you aren't trying to keep two devices in sync, this hasn't been a problem for you and I'm sorry to make you read this far.

if you are using an ereader, go into Settings > Device Information, Repair Your Kobo Account. Or for apps, sign out of your account and then sign back in. Sorry about that. But we need to reload and rebuild your library with all new progress tokens.

(Signing out and back in to your account on your ereader works too but Repair is usually quicker.)

You have to do this for all devices you're signed in to, i.e. your phone, iPad, your three ereaders, cat's ereader, etc. But you only have to do it once, and when it's done, everything will stay nicely sync'd up from now on. ❤️

I've not tried any of this but....

[Sirtel]

I expect it's for direct Kobo downloads only, so it's useless to me.

[nana77]

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.
Not a big problem, but it messes within Storygraph too now, if not paying attentions.

[Apollyon202]

Wait, is this actually only for non-sideloaded books?
Not that I've ever used more than one device at once, but if this is the big improvement in firmware 5.x, along with the clock in the book, then looks like I'm staying on firmware 4.x for another 5 to 10 years mate.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by nana77

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.

I've had this problem as well. I've also noticed a new (to me) problem, where I usually have My Books set to display only books I'm currently reading, and when I finish a book, it returns to My Books, but the book I just finished is still in the list, even though I'm not reading it anymore. This causes Nickel to get confused, and the book's status will spontaneously change from Finished to 99%, apparently because it can't understand why a finished book would be displayed in the list of books I'm currently reading. I then have to change the view to display all books, change the book's status from Finished to Unread, and then change the status to Finished again.

Ah, the joys of reading on a portable computer.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by nana77

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.
Not a big problem, but it messes within Storygraph too now, if not paying attentions.

I totally agree with this feature.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

Wait, is this actually only for non-sideloaded books?

Yes. He clarified this at least in this reply on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/mtamblyn.bs.../3mv7sjajkz22i

Sorry - not sideloaded. But a person can dream…

[Cactus Chef]

Do we think this will change the way the KEPUB-specific spans work?

[JSWolf]

I would like to have a normal ePub work with the KePub renderer without the need for the spans. And if that ever comes to pass, then allow us to choose KePub or RMSDK and update RMSDK to the latest version.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Do we think this will change the way the KEPUB-specific spans work?

Strictly speaking, the kepub spans still make location easier for highlighting but in version 5 are no longer needed. I tested this by sending an ePub3 renamed to .kepub.epub and a fixed layout ePub3 renamed to .fxl.kepub.epub and contrary to the GitHub page, highlights, notes and bookmarks worked. When I sent the fixed layout ePub3 as .epub, it displayed as a fixed layout ePub.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would like to have a normal ePub work with the KePub renderer without the need for the spans. And if that ever comes to pass, then allow us to choose KePub or RMSDK and update RMSDK to the latest version.

Since RMSDK is only going to be used to support Adobe ADEPT DRMmed ePubs, what is the ROI to Kobo for updating to the latest RMSDK?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Since RMSDK is only going to be used to support Adobe ADEPT DRMmed ePubs, what is the ROI to Kobo for updating to the latest RMSDK?

Because what is being used now is old and does not support ePub3. I've seen a number of eBooks using features that won't work properly in the old RMSDK on a Kobo. If I wasn't editing those eBooks, then some things would fail to work.

Using rem is a big fail on RSMDK. It needs to be em. text-variant: small-caps; won't work. Media queries don't work. And there are other things that won't work.

So when an ePub is not properly coded for backwards comparability, the eBook could break under RMSDK.

[DNSB]

Jon, have you ever considered that since Kobo started using the ACCESS NetFront BookReader EPUB Edition renderer and their later ePub3 compatible renderers, ePub3 compatibility in RMSDK has been less and less important. With their v5 firmware, RMSDK is basically a dead end. Yes, there are some things that RMSDK still does better but most of their users would never notice the difference. Heck, I've pointed out differences to people and the usual reaction has been that they can see any difference. And that larger group is likely a bit more important than us typography freaks on MobileRead in terms of their business model.