Glo Kobo Software Update 2.5.2

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Anak

• I didn't use the term "wasted space".
• I dind't say anything about a comparison of digital books with printed books (or even implied)

Is English your native tongue? It's not mine, so maybe that's why there has been some confusion...

When did I say you used the term "wasted space"? This term has been used in this thread quite often, but I didn't mean to imply that you said that.

Also I never said you compared digital books with printed books. That was an analogy of mine.

True, I do not like the header (in its current form) but I didn't my mention my dislike in my post.

Well, but you called that a "shortcoming" and I assumed that you don't like shortcomings.

I said the header and footer are relatively wide, caused by a huge margin and the position of the text on the screen.
Some (not all) readers have a header and/or footer too. But these are generally much smaller because the margins are smaller and the text position is closer to the edge of the screen. E.g. The Cybook Odyssey HD has an option to turn the headers and footers on or off (seperately! Header and footer are also smaller). The Icarus Sense has a full screen mode, In the non full screen mode small header and footer are shown.

It would be nice to have something similar for Kobo readers, as options. But that has been said many times in this thread.

Yes, it is caused by formatting not the use of a different rendering engine. A conversion from epub to kepub with the KoboTouchExtended plugin goes well (Thanks, jgoguen!).
Yes, Kobo tries to follow the original layout but because Kobo adds some own code to the kepub to make sure all Kobo functions work correctly (font size, line height, annotations etc.). Some code functions as a wrapper around the original code and this code is a sort of a "catch all", which is understandable as it is to costly to do it on an individual basis or manually. This Kobo code can have a huge influence on the output (e.g. add white lines between paragraphs). But true not with every kepub.
Kobo probably decided to add code to the software (epub) to turn a epub into a kepub instead on the hardware side (device or software app) because it was easier to implement and cheaper to get the desired output.

I think that the KePubs you can buy from Kobo have been formatted that way intentionally - like I add a blank line after every paragraph when formatting my ebooks because I like it that way.

If I don't do that, I don't get a blank line, even if I sideload my books to my ereader(s) as KePubs. So I'm not really sure what you mean to say.

If

• original Kobo kepub does contain blanc lines between paragraphs, and the
• original epub does have no blanc line between paragraphs, and the
• user generated kepub (epub conversion to kepub with the KTEP) does not contain a blanc line between paragraphs, then

the blanc line between paragraphs are caused by the Kobo Code.

Somehow Kobo seems to think the blank lines after paragraphs are desirable and they formatted their KePubs that way. But no one forces a Kobo user to buy and use those KePubs. So I still don't see how that makes the comparison fair. The comparison should be made between two books that are formatted the same way, not to differently formatted ones.

Header and footer, okay, but not the formatting. I can't blame my Kobo ereader for showing three blank lines after each paragraph and have superwide margins in a book if I formatted it that way.

No, you don't compare different formats with each other you compare readers.

Yes, but that's not what the review does. By using two differently formatted ebooks it's no fair comparison if you want to show the amount of text on the screen.

And if possible with the same book or same paragraph. And use the default publishers layout of the book.

That was not done in the review either...

So books should look nearly identical, any differences are caused by the reader (engine) or css overrides/changes.

Should - but only if you use identical ebooks (or at least equally formatted ones) which was not done in the review.

Kobo does not control the local environment of an in shop product comparision of different ereaders. If the comparision is done with kepubs that have a blanc line between paragraphs the output looks quite different when compared to the other ereaders. And potential buyers may think it is odd or even that there is something wrong.
So a fair in shop comparison depends very strongly on which books (kepubs) are preloaded on the device. I consider this tricky for Kobo.

That's true... ideally you could load an ebook of your own onto each device to look how it is displayed. But it's rather unlikely that you'll be allowed to do so.

[Anak]

No, English is not my native tongue. Jaden, I didn't mean to offend you or Terisa de morgan.

I tried to write it as neutral as possible but as both of you mentioned there were some slips. Yes, I did use shortcomings and that is expressing some kind of dislike.
The rest was added for some further clarification (which you do not have to agree with).

Putting our own personal preferrences aside.
If in a direct product comparision a kepub is used on a Kobo device and a regular epub on other devices and the latter look more or less identical and the Kobo notably different then I'm not convinced a potential buyer will walk away with a Kobo device (most of the times).

Hand shake.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Anak

No, English is not my native tongue. Jaden, I didn't mean to offend you or Terisa de morgan.

Don't worry, I'm not offended at all.

I tried to write it as neutral as possible but as both of you mentioned there were some slips. Yes, I did use shortcomings and that is expressing some kind of dislike.

It's sometimes not easy to be neutral. One expression can make the difference. And I'd say it's even more complicated if the language is not one's native tongue.

Putting our own personal preferrences aside.
If in a direct product comparision a kepub is used on a Kobo device and a regular epub on other devices and the latter look more or less identical and the Kobo notably different I'm not convinced a potential buyer will walk away with a Kobo device (most of the times).

It depends on what the potential buyer wants, of course.

Some might find the blank lines nice, others disctracting, others might not even realize the difference (or will not care).

Lots of people will not have chances to even test the devices in a store. At least that's the case over here.

I live in a bigger city so it's not that big a problem. Still I could not find a store that had an Aura on display. And the devices the shops have on display sometimes don't work or don't have books on them.

An even bigger problem of the Kobo readers IMHO is that you have to register them before you can even access the menu or use sideloaded books. And that's what stores often don't do so potential buyers will not even have a chance to test them.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Ok this is probably a little over my league. I opened the first .html file within the epub.zip then I opened that html file by adding .txt so that I can see what's inside and modify if necessary and the closest thing to what you mention which is @page goes like this:
@page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; }
If that's what defines the position of the cover, maybe I could add margin-left and margin-right values ?

Also to make it all even more confusing, I forgot to mention that on my computer the e-book cover looks normal, it's only in my Kobo reader that it's stretched.


Well because a specific css sheet is for a specific book isn't it ?
if it was all standard then all css sheets would be exactly the same.
But when you look at them they are widely different, some for instance apply text rules with the name "p", others with the name "body" etc ... When through caliber it all becomes "caliber1" "caliber 2" etc ... which is even more confusing when you try to locate a value that for instance would rule indents.
In the meantime, do I just randomly cram the new code here provided and where exactly ? Just before "@page" ? Or at the very beginning (cause there is still some weird code before that)

A simpler way to get started with the CSS if you use calibre at all is to use the internal viewer to inspect the CSS.

Select a block of the problem text and right click on it then click inspect.

This will pop up a list of the CSS for that selection and has boxes you can uncheck to see the effect of a particular CSS.

Makes it fairly easy to see just what you need to change.

Then you can use tweak epub to change the stylesheet and preview the result, and rebuild the book if it is good.

It is not as sophisticated as sigil, but usually works for me in getting rid of unwanted line spaces, indents, margins etc. in under 5 minutes. or adding them)

Helen

[Quexos]

Ok I'm checking a book in calibre. What is this internal viewer ? is that achieved by pushing the little magnifier icon at the top left ?
then from there how do you get to the css ?

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

A simpler way to get started with the CSS if you use calibre at all is to use the internal viewer to inspect the CSS.

Select a block of the problem text and right click on it then click inspect.

This will pop up a list of the CSS for that selection and has boxes you can uncheck to see the effect of a particular CSS.

[speakingtohe]

select the book and click view or hit the V key

Helen

[Quexos]

I'm right there, but I now view the text normally, I don't see any css codes ...

EDIT: ok nevermind, I found it, gotta select some text then right-click.
Thanks for the tip, I'll check into this to see if it helps ...

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

select the book and click view or hit the V key

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Sorry my mouse died. You select the text you want to examine and it will trun yellow
Right click on the selection
Click inspect
A window will pop up with several panes.
The pane with matched CSS Rukles will have something like this in it with checkboxes that appear when you mouse over it.

.calibre1 {
border-bottom: 0;
border-top: 0;
display: block;
margin-bottom: 0.3em;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
margin-top: 0.3em;
orphans: 0;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
widows: 0;
}

Helen

[Ripplinger]

You can find the entire stylesheet.css by going down further in the tree in the left pane and open up the Styles folder, and then open the *.css file there. Some books might name it something other than stylesheet.css, but the file will end in .css. Then you can compare each style to text within the book to see the differences.

Edit: Sorry this was for using Sigil, not Calibre, if that wasn't clear.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Ok I'm checking a book in calibre. What is this internal viewer ? is that achieved by pushing the little magnifier icon at the top left ?
then from there how do you get to the css ?

As you are in calibre, I suggest you let calibre do the hard work. Select the book and find the "Polish books" function in the toolbar. Press the button and a window will open with several options. One of them is to update the cover. Select that and press the OK button. Calibre will then update the cover. If it can. it simply replaces the existing cover. If it has problems working out exactly what the cover is, it inserts a fie at the start with the cover. The code in this is pretty much what we have been talking about.

After you do the above, have a look at the file and new code so you can see what we are talking about.

If you don't have "Polish books" on the toolbar, you need to add. This is done by opening the Preferences, and pressing "Toolbar" near the top. In the drop-down, select the toolbar or menu you want it on. I have it on the main toolbar. Find the icon for it (a little brush) in the left list, select it and press the right pointing arrow between the lists. You can adjust where it is in the toolbar by selecting it is in the right hand list, and pressing the up or down arrows on the right.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Anak

No, English is not my native tongue. Jaden, I didn't mean to offend you or Terisa de morgan.

I was not offended at all. I only made the comment because of my own OCD with some terms/facts, that's all. English is not my mother tongue (and I write quite harsh even in my mother tongue, sorry), so I can sound rude/angry, but that's not true, sorry.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

A simpler way to get started with the CSS if you use calibre at all is to use the internal viewer to inspect the CSS.

Select a block of the problem text and right click on it then click inspect.

Thanks for the tip about using "inspect" in Calibre to use the WebInspector. It's very helpful if you have multiple css files with possibly conflicting entries to be able to see which css selector is active for a particular section of text.

BobC

[Prestidigitweeze]

[Edit: Just saw the 2.6.1 thread: Never mind!]