Glo Kobo Software Update 2.5.2

[Quexos]

Well said

Originally Posted by aceflor

Seriously though, why can't you just accept the fact that FOR YOU and some others not having this space is ok, but FOR US it is not ? We are not saying we want a page this way or that way for all, we are saying we would like the choice. You are saying we should just shut up and swallow it, so do not be surprised at the reactions you are getting.

That is usually the reaction of a corporation that is successfully growing. They want total control and decision of all you can and cannot do. Let us hope it does not go that far, let us hope Kobo remains customer friendly and keeps developing for the benefit of us readers.

Originally Posted by ShellShock

Have Kobo ever officially declared they want to support the community extensions, or at least make them possible? It seems to me that they turn a blind eye. But what if someone released alternative reader software for kepubs? I suspect Kobo would act to try to shut it down by changing the firmware so the alternative no longer worked.

[DomesticExtremis]

Well, I got 2.5.2 yesterday, and the top bar is there for me.
Personally, I don't mind it, it balances the bottom bar aesthetically,
and even on the Mini it doesn't eat up that much screen real estate.

Ideally it would be a configuration item like the display of page numbers
in the margin is. I can see no reason why Kobo can't add more config items
to the Reading Settings - in fact they probably should.

Then again, I can't see how I could spin this out into eighteen pages of
debate, so I'll stop there.

[david_e]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Oh really ? Were you that happy ? I do hope you have had other highlights in that area since 6th grade...

Not my moment, just a slightly interested bystander trying to pretend not to be.

Originally Posted by aceflor

Seriously though, why can't you just accept the fact that FOR YOU and some others not having this space is ok, but FOR US it is not ? We are not saying we want a page this way or that way for all, we are saying we would like the choice. You are saying we should just shut up and swallow it, so do not be surprised at the reactions you are getting.

Prove it.

Should you bother to look at what I've actually said you'll see I've never said it should or should not be an option, only that I felt people were overreacting. I shared my opinion. I've not asked anyone to agree with me, nor tried to sway anyone else's opinion, just shared my own.

Apparently that bothers you to the point that you're willing to lie,

Originally Posted by aceflor

,,,You are saying we should just shut up and swallow it...

as I've never said anything resembling your statement, not outright, nor have I implied it.

I saw a few comments about the loss of 20% of the usable screen and proved to myself that is incorrect. I don't see any reason for anyone to object to me sharing this, too.

Originally Posted by aceflor

...so do not be surprised at the reactions you are getting.

I am more than comfortable with any kind of exchange anyone is interested in having. I won't sit back and be quiet because other people don't like or agree with what I have to say.

[roger64]

Hi

Time for a little story maybe.

Once, I think it was in Vancouver, a grumpy old bachelor had a favourite restaurant which proposed both Asian and local food on its menu. True, he did not enjoy so much Asian food - how wrong of him but we can't help -, but he enjoyed very much the local food (call it haggi, frog legs or whatever else).

He did not even look at the girls around, or even at the nicely decorated room. This man was so unbelievably narrow-minded that he just cared about his own plate.

So, this day, he sat down with a wolfing appetite and ordered his usual haggi. Surprisingly, the cook had decided to drown his beloved food under a 3/8 inch topping of a -delicious- sweet and sour sauce. The cook was all the more bewildered when he got back the dish maybe a little quickly... It was a real haggi after all, all the recommended tasty ingredients were there and there was even more to it... How unpleasant people can be!!

Indeed. I even wonder if there is any advice to give to the distressed cook...

[Solicitous]

18 pages and no screenshots? Can't be that bad the title bar can it?

[ShellShock]

Must...not...take...the bait...

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

18 pages and no screenshots? Can't be that bad the title bar can it?

Not really any need for screenshots - it's the same title bar that you get with kepubs, and we all (pretty much) know what that looks like.

[track]

I have the Mini, and screen space is REALLY at a premium, so I thought that putting the book title across the top would make a huge difference. To me it does not. To others it will, and it would be nice to have this as an option. But I still wish it wasn't there! I try and cram as many words on the page as I can comfortably read - being a reasonably fast reader - so run with smallest readable font for me, close line spacing, no borders etc. Not disagreeing with any other's person's views.
One bug that I have had for a while, and which I haven't seen mentioned, (sorry if I am wrong) was the 'disappearing books' every time I turned the Kobo off. The books were there but not showing. Out of 100+ books I was always left with some 15 or so. Not sure whether all these were from the Kobo library, but very likely. Therefore I always just put the Mini to sleep, and not turned OFF. If I connected to a charger -not necessarily a computer - for just a couple of seconds, then, magically all my books showed up. Weird! Now with the latest update, this bug seems to have disappeared. Hopefully for good.
I do feel sorry for those good folk who bought a Kobo, expecting it to be a stress free way of reading, and have absolutely no idea what is happenening when bugs appear. I've had to sort out a few issues on my wife's Mini, (she not being at all savvy), although my Mini seems to have suffered more. As an example of this she has not suffered with the 'disappearing books' bug...

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by david_e

Not my moment, just a slightly interested bystander trying to pretend not to be.




Prove it.

Should you bother to look at what I've actually said you'll see I've never said it should or should not be an option, only that I felt people were overreacting. I shared my opinion. I've not asked anyone to agree with me, nor tried to sway anyone else's opinion, just shared my own.

Apparently that bothers you to the point that you're willing to lie,



as I've never said anything resembling your statement, not outright, nor have I implied it.

I saw a few comments about the loss of 20% of the usable screen and proved to myself that is incorrect. I don't see any reason for anyone to object to me sharing this, too.



I am more than comfortable with any kind of exchange anyone is interested in having. I won't sit back and be quiet because other people don't like or agree with what I have to say.

I am not a lier. You are very well implying that we should stop this, in your eyes, ridiculous complaint (now you are going to answer :"Lier ! I never said it was a ridiculous complaint, I never even implied it!". But. You. Very. Well. Implied. It.).
If we stop complaining, things will stay as is, which you apparently are very happy with, so it would be your win and our loss. I don't give a rat's behind about you winning (after that last great experience in 6th grade, I really think you should have another gratifying experience soon), but I do mind about buying a 6.8" display because it was advertised as bigger and giving more text space but in the end not having that at all. Again, there are better 6" display devices around, and for a much better price too.

I'll leave it at that, I just wish that the die-hard kobo fans would understand that kobo needs to cater not only to their hard-core customer cluster if they want to grow.

[geormes]

Would removing the <title> </title> line from the CSS free the space or result in a blank space?

[meeera]

Originally Posted by david_e

I saw a few comments about the loss of 20% of the usable screen and proved to myself that is incorrect. I don't see any reason for anyone to object to me sharing this, too.

The 20% comment was about the top title bar and the bottom page-number/menubar combined.

I have no Aura to hand, so I had to whip out my Glo. Not counting any margins whatsoever, just the heights of the actual bars:

Screen height: 12.5 cm
Menubar: 1 cm
Top title bar: 0.8 cm

Comes to 14.4%, pre-margins. (Now, personally, I can see the reason for the menubar at the bottom; I'm much more fussed about title bar distraction than about screen real estate, but what I really really want is a choice. We had that, and now it's been taken away.)

Either way, however, "you are willing to lie about it" is a pretty rubbish thing to say, I reckon. How about assuming good faith, and saying "That's not the measurement I'm getting - let's compare?"

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by meeera

Screen height: 12.5 cm
Menubar: 1 cm
Top title bar: 0.8 cm

Just to add to the Glo info, I have my Aura to hand:
Screen height: 13.8 cm
Menubar: 1.1 cm
Top title bar: 1.1 cm

[ShellShock]

With the font I use on my Aura the title bar takes about 3-4 lines of text. Same for the bottom bar. Those are lines I would rather have for reading. I also find the title bar distracting; every time I turn the page, there it is again, and I keep reading it. Nope, still hasn't changed...guess I am still reading the same book ;-)

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've seen many a ghodawful book with a beautiful cover. I've seen great books with lousy covers. Perhaps showing my lack of visual orientation but I seldom make a decision to purchase a book based on the cover. Admittedly I do get a chuckle out of the sheer number of covers where you are forced to the conclusion that not only did the cover artist not read one word in the book but that its entirely possible that they have never read any books.

I agree. It's about what's inside, not about the cover. And I've read a lot of books with really horrible covers. Especially the part about the cover artists is so true... but I think it has gotten better, though I still sometimes wonder what some cover artists/designers thought (or if they even thought something at all beside of "I have to finish that by *insert date*").

A good thing about ebooks is that I can change the cover in many cases or give them covers if they came without.

I get to see those covers and recognize books by it, even if the covers are really small on my reader (like the thumbnails in list view). So it's a plus if the covers are nice - or at least recognizable.

Originally Posted by ShellShock

But without an open source system we have to trust Kobo not become more restrictive and not to introduce changes that break community add ons.

Uh, it is an open source system.

There are closed source components to be sure, yet a lot of products that are based upon open source software are also a blend of open and proprietary. Could Kobo become more restrictive? Sure, yet so can open source developers. The people who develop open source software own the rights to that software. They may not be able to claw back the rights to existing code, but they can do so with new code. That new code can even break community contributions if they so desire.

Kobo has been decent to third party developers in the past. They know that people are modifying their devices, yet they have not introduced new restrictions on old devices and they haven't locked down their new devices. (Well, I don't know about their Android based products -- but Android is Android.) You are free to regard them with suspicion if you so desire, but that doesn't mean that they are going to do anything that is deserving of our wrath. Yes, watch them with a wary eye. Yet don't condemn them for something that they have yet to do.