Touch Kobo Touch future firmware feature request thread

[PeterT]

@Geco and @Akerbos:

I think you will find that there are currently NO ePub 3 readers on sale.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Rockin

...

Horizontal Tap regions - top 1/3 for page back and bottom 2/3 for page forward so I can read righty or lefty and switch my hand holding back and forth whenever I like.

...

I like this idea, along with more options.

How about an option where tapping anywhere on the screen page advances (you can use swiping for page back). 99% of my reading is sequential, and I don't care for swiping normally.

[voom]

Most of the standard epub3 would probably work as most features can fall back to something an epub2-reader can understand; for TOC at least if the author adds the toc.ncx as well, which is allowed for fallback.

[Geco]

Originally Posted by voom

Most of the standard epub3 would probably work as most features can fall back to something an epub2-reader can understand; for TOC at least if the author adds the toc.ncx as well, which is allowed for fallback.

Indeed, but consider that also basic HTML format is different: from (theoretically) XHTML 1.1 or similar to HTML5 + CSS5 + SVG (and maybe even MathML, I don't remember). So... not so simple, I think. It's probably easier to work in parallel on a new viewer software to add "one shot" within a firmware update that to go by steps... I think.

[voom]

HTML5 + CSS5 + SVG (and maybe even MathML, I don't remember)

For many books with simple markup going to html5 should not make a big difference, of course once additional formerly unsupported html5-possibilities are applied, the problems start. a lot of that relates to multimedia and video an audio-features would not work on the KT anyway. CSS in epub3 supports CSS 3 (probably just a typo) and MathML-support is also included...

I definitely agree, that this should be a one-step-upgrade, probably it would even be best to detect the epub-version and use seperate interpreters for each version...

What I meant with the fallback is that it was probably attempted to design epub3 in a way so that epub2-interpreters would allow me to use them at least on a basiv level. But then I tried opening an epub3 in Sigil and it doesnt open it at all. Calibre opens it just fine and will probably do a good job in converting 3 to 2 for incompatible devices...

[Wendy]

One more really annoying thing.

"This is currently not available in your region."

Where the hell do these guys think I live? Timbuktu? I'm in mainland Europe and Kobo sells itself as "the first international e-reader". Yeah, you can buy it here - albeit not very easily - but there are NO magazines or newspapers available.

Not even the Android App works on my boyfriend's brand new tablet. I mean... why offer all these things and shout them out to make people buy the thing and then not even deliver half of them? The only thing I got as advertised was the hardware. Firmware was updated immediately and changed for the worse and any additional material such as magazines/apps is only supported in Canada (and I'm assuming the US).

Plus: The search on kobo - browser, desktop, kobo touch - is horrible.

[Akerbos]

Two new feature proposals:

Go to page -- expected to be particularly useful in large PDF files, such as textbooks.

Override CSS font-family -- some ebook authors try to be clever and define "good" fonts for their text in CSS (Arial in one case...). This currently overrules any font choice I can make on KT. Please allow me to enforce my chosen font (for text) no matter what.

[Thra11]

Originally Posted by Akerbos

Override CSS font-family -- some ebook authors try to be clever and define "good" fonts for their text in CSS (Arial in one case...). This currently overrules any font choice I can make on KT. Please allow me to enforce my chosen font (for text) no matter what.

I often encounter the same issue, but with margins. The margin size choice made on the KT should (at least as an option) override whatever the epub file says.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Akerbos

Two new feature proposals:

Go to page -- expected to be particularly useful in large PDF files, such as textbooks.

Override CSS font-family -- some ebook authors try to be clever and define "good" fonts for their text in CSS (Arial in one case...). This currently overrules any font choice I can make on KT. Please allow me to enforce my chosen font (for text) no matter what.

Originally Posted by Thra11

I often encounter the same issue, but with margins. The margin size choice made on the KT should (at least as an option) override whatever the epub file says.

+1.

And line spacing.

[Ham Cannon]

Originally Posted by John F

How about an option where tapping anywhere on the screen page advances (you can use swiping for page back). 99% of my reading is sequential, and I don't care for swiping normally.

I second this suggestion. Also, Instapaper support would be fantastic. It's already built-in to the iOS apps, it should be available on the Touch as well.

[crystal3]

oops wrong forum

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by ArmorDog

I will go on record as one of approximately three people who like the shortlist along the bottom of the new home screen.

I think it is okay, since I can access the shortlist faster that way.

It would be much nicer if I could select which 5 books would be displayed, not (seemingly) random Kobo epubs. If I could place the 5 books I intend to read next (or the one I'm reading plus 4 others), it would be nice.

I've got a really long "wish list", but my current top three "priority categories" would be:

1.Horizontal tap options - or being able to set tapping on the screen wherever I like to go forward, swipe to go back.

I switch hands often, and can't swipe holding my Kobo in just one hand, so for swiping I need both. But that would be okay since I rarely have to go back (if tapping anywhere on the screen would go forward).

Right now, when I change hands, I have to change the setting, too - which is annoying.

Using the home button 'short press' to go forward and 'long press' to go to the home menu would be great, too.

Also you could place the menu touch area in the upper left corner (like dog earing in the upper right corner). Much less likely to hit menu by accident when using tapping to go forward.

All of that should be added, so it's optional, of course - not replacing other options.

2.Adding better dictionaries. English-German is totally useless to me. Once your fluent enough to read books, you won't need translations for "table", but for words like "stultify". Most of the words have translations to French, but not to German.

Also there should be an option to select the perferred/standard dictionary (like English-German). I don't care much for English-French, since my French is worse than my English.

Being able to add our own dictionaries or change entries in the current ones would be great, too.

Also being able to switch from translation to definition (and vice versa) without having to close the menu and selecting the word again. That's highly annoying if I don't get a translation and have to go back through all of the marking and menu again...

All in all the menu is not that well made. A pop-up definition with drop-down to select further options would be good.

3. User customizable shelves/collections and using tags for collections/sorting.

It's annoying, for example, that my sideloaded news and magazines don't go into the news folder. I'm in Europe, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't buy Kobo news/mags. I think that epubs tagged with "news" should go into the news folder.

And I should be able to select which books go where and be able to delete folders I don't need and add others I do need.

If the books aren't automatically sent to the folder/shelve I think they should be in, I should be able to put them there.

I've got about 550 eBooks and it's getting annoying by now. And shortlist doesn't help.

Well, there's much more I'd love to see implemented/changed, but these would be really important for me.

I have to add more requests (though not as important as 1 to 3): Make user loaded fonts completely work with epubs as well (not only standard).

Currently bold, italic and bold italic only work in kepubs. Just the standard works for epubs.

Everything that works for kepubs should work for epubs as well, since the Kobo is advertised as an "open" ebook reader. Though I don't really mind that I can't share to Facebook or sync my book activity, it should be possible with non Kobo epubs...

I also noticed that kepubs are slow compared to epubs. That might be because of the strange decision to split them in chapters and show pages per chapter. If the "chapters" are only about a page or two long (like titlepage, dedication, contents) it takes rather long to go to the next chapter. No simply tapping the screen a few times to reach the start, because it always displays "loading" when changing the chapter and takes a few seconds to show text or images.

Also the firmware home button should set a bookmark, too - not only the hardware home button.

[albaran]

sorry double posting

[albaran]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Make user loaded fonts completely work with epubs as well (not only standard).

I have loaded several typefaces, 4 fonts for each one (regular, italic, bold, bold-italic). PMN Caecilia LT Std, Droid Serif, Roboto and some others display correctly regular, italic, bold and bold-italic text for standard epub (not kepub).

Charis SIL display in bold only. Adobe Calson Pro: bold text as regular, italic as bold !

It will be nice to be able to display titles as sans-serif and text as serif:

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6
{color:black;
text-align:center;
font-weight:bold;
font-family: sans-serif;}
one can do that with the Calibre viewer and the FBreader.

bye, albaran

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by albaran

Charis SIL display in bold only. Adobe Calson Pro: bold text as regular, italic as bold !

Charis SIL and Verdana both don't work properly in epubs (tried several epubs, too), but in kepubs they do.

I've tried the fonts you've mentioned and all of them work in all possible combinations (including bold italic, underlined and strikethrough).

Roboto acted kind of weird, though. First time selecting it, bold was shown as standard and vice versa, but after selecting it a second time, it worked and has been working since then.

It's either a bug that needs to be fixed or we need more insight in how it works...