Touch Kobo Touch Firmware 2.0

[Shai-Hulud]

Originally Posted by meeera

*shrug* It's easy enough to convert 'em back again.

Furry Nuff if it's not a biggie & empirical evidence wins every time. Personally, the less hoops I have to jump through the better I like it

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I still haven't had a really long play with firmware 2.0, but add me to the list of those thinking of downgrading.

For some reason none of my kepubs are now willing to break a page in the middle of a paragraph. This makes some pages unusually short. It is pretty infuriating, and almost unreadable. Added to the bizarre font size issues, this is not encouraging me to get my books from Kobo.

Can anyone else confirm this paragraph behaviour, or is it just me? I think I could probably put up with everything else in the new update if I fix this.

It looks to be all kepubs, including freebies like The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.

[Xennex1170]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Can anyone else confirm this paragraph behaviour, or is it just me? I think I could probably put up with everything else in the new update if I fix this.

It looks to be all kepubs, including freebies like The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.

It hyphenates but doesn't break up a paragraph across pages... That sounds very odd.. I haven't had a chance to update the firmware yet and the more I read the less I'm inclined to try for the moment....

[DrNefario]

I haven't seen any hyphenation, to be honest. I have justification off.

I have now just established that it is something to do with Rockwell. It doesn't seem to happen with any other fonts. Maybe there's something weird about the font metrics that make the system not load enough text?

I do now feel like I can at least read my books with the new firmware.

[MisterMax]

I just went trough 2 days and more than 30 different combination of epub testing and optimization.
I think I've found a way to optimize the slow page turn speed on sideloaded epub for firmware 2.0.0.

I opened a new thread here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2159477 with all the details

Long story short: if you use Calibre, you can try to change a value in the epub output options.
Change the "Split file larger than" parameter from it's default value (260Kb) to the minimum value of 25Kb and then, regenerate your epub.
I've attached some screenshot showing how to change this parameter here

How fast page turn will be with this trick?

Kepub book: 1,26 sec
Sideloaded epub: 1,93 - 3,52 sec
Optimized Sideloaded epub: 1,71 - 2,21 sec

See this thread for the analysis, the page speed measuring method, the videos....

My optimized epub feel much better than standard epub, but they are still slower than a kepub.

This slow page turn bug need to be fixed by Kobo Dev Team.
Anyway, optimizing the epub using this "Split file larger than 25kb" trick make the firmware 2.0.0 more livable.

[m_bisson]

I'm getting inconsistent font sizes... some books are big and some are small. And the first page of a chapter is HUGE then it gets normal again after.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Can anyone else confirm this paragraph behaviour, or is it just me? I think I could probably put up with everything else in the new update if I fix this.

It looks to be all kepubs, including freebies like The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.

I haven't tested a kepub, but am reading "Middlemarch" from our MR library, and am getting this problem of short pages quite frequently, as George Eliot tends to write quite long paragraphs.

I also got a lovely hyphenation, in a description of a piece of furniture, which was made of:

sat-
in-wood

[DNSB]

Just a few more comments about my experience with the 2.0.2 update.

Having nothing better to do with a few spare hours, I opened up the update files going back to 1.9.11 and extracted the font files. I dumped those into the /usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/ folder in the 2.0.2 update .tar file. I also modified the english hyphenation to 60/60 at the same time. I then copied the modified files to the .kobo directory on the KT. After the pseudo-upgrade, I now have Amasis, Avenir, Delima, Felbridge, Georgia, Gill Sans, Rockwell, Times New Roman, Gothic MB101 and Ryumin fonts along with the sideloaded Charis SIL font. I now have 3 fonts with diacritics though Times New Roman is not my favourite font. It's a bit weird that Avenir when extracted on my desktop has regular, italic, bold and bold-italic variants but when I display it on the KT, bold, italic and bold-italic are all bold.

Otherwise, the cover page glitch came back after I sideloaded a couple of epubs and it took another expletive deleted factory reset to clean up the issue.

Overall, 2.0.2 still seems to be step forward from 2.0.0 for those who are willing to muck with their KTs.

[rjcroy]

Originally Posted by DNSB

...
Again, annoying to me but how many others edit their epubs on a regular basis?

Given the formatting problems I find with purchased epubs and kepubs I edit them and sideload them more often than not.

[JSWolf]

In version 2.0.x, is the font-family in body bug fixed?

The bug is that if you embed a font and then try to activate it by placing the font-family in the body CSS style, it gets ignored and the embedded font doesn't display.

[latepaul]

Has anyone had a problem with Kobo rebooting itself when opening side-loaded epubs?

Pretty much all my epubs are ones which have been converted via Calibre from either DRM-stripped mobis or text files. Anyway I discovered last night that when I try to open one it reboots itself. This seemed to be happening with just one book in the previous version of 2.0.0 but maybe I just didn't test enough other ones. In that case I did an epub-> epub conversion and that allowed me to read it but I'm not happy with that as a fix.

I'll probably go back to 1.9.17 despite preferring 2.0's features and look and feel generally. Which is a shame.

[dannyproy]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Has anyone had a problem with Kobo rebooting itself when opening side-loaded epubs?

Pretty much all my epubs are ones which have been converted via Calibre from either DRM-stripped mobis or text files. Anyway I discovered last night that when I try to open one it reboots itself. This seemed to be happening with just one book in the previous version of 2.0.0 but maybe I just didn't test enough other ones. In that case I did an epub-> epub conversion and that allowed me to read it but I'm not happy with that as a fix.

I'll probably go back to 1.9.17 despite preferring 2.0's features and look and feel generally. Which is a shame.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread the (cumbersome) solution I found was to factory reset and take out any SD card so no books are on the kobo, then plugin the kobo and upgrade to 2.0 . Once done, insert your SD card again to add your books back on to the library. It seems 2.0 is not great with upgrading side loaded ebpub libraries and works best generating a new library from fresh.

[magphil]

I just upgraded firmware, but instead of getting 2.0.2, I got 2.0.0 (r41166, 7/12/12) How can I get the 2.0.2 release ?

[PeterT]

@Magphil: 2.02 is NOT an official release....

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cyvros

Might just be me, but 2.0.2 seems to have fixed some of the font rendering issues, particularly with Charis SIL.

That means you can now use my enhanced Charis SIL (with smallcaps).

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=184056