IF you could design the user interface for the next Kobo Firmware

[theonna]

Originally Posted by davidfor

You don't need calibre for this either. In fact, by choosing the extended driver, you have specifically chosen to use an unsupported feature of the reader (sideloading kepubs). The rest, shelves or even just getting books on the devices, calibre is the simplest way to do it as it is for a lot of the other readers.

You telling me, that there is a way to put few thousand books onto shelves without Calibre? I am in agreement with you, I am not used to Calibre, and just used it's default settings. It is to the Kobo credit, that I even had to use it, right?

Originally Posted by davidfor

As to the status line and other things, Kobo are the designers of the software, and have decided that is the way to go. Making a suggesting is reasonable, but demanding is not.

I am sorry, Kobo designers managed to create the worst handled pages of all the readers on the market, the slowest sync of content on the market today. I am not demanding, just stating facts. I should not need to learn to use css, Calibre to just comfortably use reading device for reading. It is reasonable to expect that.
I hope Kobo managers understand it is not demands, it is reasonable expectations and unfortunately endless frustration, when they are not met.

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, how do you not have full control over synchronization? It only happens when you trigger it: push the button or connect to the PC and use the desktop app. You don't want to synchonize, then don't. And from the fact you are sideloading books so many books, it doesn't sound like you need to sync at all.

Well, ideally, you should be correct- load my library, my Kobo books and never plug my ereader again. But, life is not perfect,
I loaded my books first using just file browser on my computer. Waited of hour and a half for Aura to process the lot, notice- no Calibre, figured I got 200+ page library and no way to organize it without some help, so I decided to remove all the books, using my computer file manager again, and so I did, after that Aura just pretended that books were still there, so I had to relog...because whatever I did Aura did not want to update it's database. Then I went on to figure out shelves, Calibre, css, orphans and widows, took hours...and about 5 synchronizations. And I still have to create my own specific sub collection for Aura only, so it is fast, current and displays correctly...Because I want to know how to do it the way I like it, and you should agree, I have a lot to learn with Kobo. And it feels that I shouldn't have to.

[TechniSol]

Theonna,

I was finding humor only in the notion that Calibre processing times were directly the fault of Kobo... Perhaps you're a teensy bit over invested in all this on a personal basis, and I can see how you might connect the dots to arrive at that, but it's surely more frustration than fairness showing. Though I can appreciate looking at it in terms of overall time required to accomplish a task.

I would simply suggest to you that if so fundamental a thing as a file browser is a make it or break it issue, you'd be better served with one of your other readers and should have researched the issue ahead of time.

[guma]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The problem is that everyone disagrees over whether these are bugs or not. As far as I can tell, the line height, orphans and widows and margins seem to be working according to the CSS and epub specs. Doing something else would get complaints in other ways.

From the use case perspective not applying the setting the user defines (in the menu) for margins, line spacing and fonts with ebooks containing css styles clearly is a bug. This could be fixed in two ways: (1) notify the user that the book prevents changes or (2) override the book settings.
Doing just plain NOTHING if the user applies changes via the respective menu is a bug since you can't expect the user to know whether an ebook has inbuilt css styles nor that the reader will always 'respect' these (thereby not respecting the user's ideas about how the book should be displayed).

As for the windows and orphans settings: while awkward defaults may technically not qualify as a bug the default settings are a major annoyance to many people. (Another example are the hyphenation settings for some languages). And it does not matter who recommends these defaults. Could be easily solved by just making these settings a user definable option.

From a design-philosophy point of view: It should be fairly easy to implement a global option for the user to switch between 'book defined' and user defined rendering settings. That would serve both 'camps' just fine. The 'unconditionally respect the book defined styles'-argument - in my opinion - unnecessarily sacrifices a major advantage of an e-reading device, namely the possibility to adjust things to your liking.

Reading through user opinions here shows that it is not possible to please everybody at the same time unless there are options to adapt the book display to each individual's liking.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by theonna

You telling me, that there is a way to put few thousand books onto shelves without Calibre? I am in agreement with you, I am not used to Calibre, and just used it's default settings. It is to the Kobo credit, that I even had to use it, right?

Yes you can put as many books onto shelves as you want using the device. It takes ages and probably isn't practical, but you can do it. calibre just makes it faster.

And you didn't use calibre with its default settings. You specifically loaded an extra plugin that messes with the files as they are sent to the device. That meant it took longer to get the books onto the device. And I am pretty sure that it took longer to process then when the device sees them. I haven't done the tests to compare, but loading a epub as a kepub produces about twice as many database records as when loaded as an epub. There will be a difference, I just don't know how much

I am sorry, Kobo designers managed to create the worst handled pages of all the readers on the market, the slowest sync of content on the market today. I am not demanding, just stating facts.

Maybe you aren't demanding, but you have gone way beyond just stating facts.

I should not need to learn to use css, Calibre to just comfortably use reading device for reading. It is reasonable to expect that.

Fair enough on the CSS. But, unless you are have a small number of books, you will need another application to help manage them. Calibre is the best application for that. Kobo probably say to use ADE for sideloading.

I hope Kobo managers understand it is not demands, it is reasonable expectations and unfortunately endless frustration, when they are not met.

Asking to fix bugs is completely reasonable. Asking for new function that is completely different from any on the device currently, not so much.
[/QUOTE]
Well, ideally, you should be correct- load my library, my Kobo books and never plug my ereader again. But, life is not perfect,
I loaded my books first using just file browser on my computer. Waited of hour and a half for Aura to process the lot, notice- no Calibre, figured I got 200+ page library and no way to organize it without some help, so I decided to remove all the books, using my computer file manager again, and so I did, after that Aura just pretended that books were still there, so I had to relog...because whatever I did Aura did not want to update it's database. Then I went on to figure out shelves, Calibre, css, orphans and widows, took hours...and about 5 synchronizations. And I still have to create my own specific sub collection for Aura only, so it is fast, current and displays correctly...Because I want to know how to do it the way I like it, and you should agree, I have a lot to learn with Kobo. And it feels that I shouldn't have to.[/QUOTE]

Firstly, we used the term "synchronisation" differently. For the Kobo devices, when I talk sync, I am talking syncing to their servers. That only happens for books purchased Kobo and downloaded to the device.

The rest of what you describe sounds like what I expect to do with any new device: play with it until I have it setup the way I want or as near as possible to that. About the only thing you did that I didn't, was to put all the books on the first time. I tried a few first to see how it worked.

But, you did stumble on a "feature" that I had completely forgotten about. For books put onto the main memory, of the file disappears for whatever reason, the device does not remove the book from the database. They are still showed in the library list and give an error when you try to open them. They might disappear if you power off, but I haven't tried that recently.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by theonna

Of course, there are about billion Chinese, another billion of Indians, half a billion of Russians, but who cares about them, not significant market, right?

Hmmm.... Kobo has already added Japanese.

As for adding Chinese? Looking at some of the Chinese companies manufacturing ebook readers for the Chinese market suggests that they are being squeezed out by cheap tablets and handheld devices. When I last looked, quite a few of them had gone out of the ereader business. It will be interesting to see how Amazon does selling the Kindle in China though it does have an advantage in owning its proprietary ebook format.

With the news that Amazon has cut their orders for eInk screens to around 20,000 per month which has been referred to as enough to repair existing Kindles but not supply any new ones unless Amazon is planning on using another technology. Add in the news that Liquavista has been bought from Samsung by Amazon, it would appear that Amazon is not going to be making eInk Kindles for a good chunk of 2013 and the next Kindle ereader will have a Liquavista colour screen.

You can already read Cyrillic with the correct font -- however the population of Russia is below 145 million not 500 million. Given that the Kobo firmware is based on Linux, adding a Cyrillic keyboard is doable if Kobo thought the market was worthwhile.

As for India? Population is 1.27 billion but how many languages are used? 30 languages with over a million speakers? Hindi with Devanagari script may be the official language with about 400 million speakers but that still leaves a lot of people who are not happy with having Hindi stuffed down their throats. I seem to remember being referred to as a behanchod for suggesting that India should go the way of China and standardize on a single language. One of the few Punjabi words I know. Most of the rest are even less polite.

Regards,
David

[theonna]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And you didn't use calibre with its default settings. You specifically loaded an extra plugin that messes with the files as they are sent to the device.

My Calibre has 3 Kobo plugins installed- Kobo, Kobo touch, Kobo extended.
I could have loaded extended one, I am not sure if I did, or it just came with it. But that all goes to the same thing- I had to use third party software to manage my library on Aura, there is this forum, thank you! , but it is not like everything is spelled out in one message. Calibre has very many features and options, and it is not always exactly clear what each does. I admit, I am not yet professional user of Calibre.
DNSB Sorry, I did not look up actual population of China, Russia and India. But even if you choose to discount residents of those countries, you are still left with considerable quantity of expats in the countries, where Kobo sells its readers, who would really benefit from having a file manager.
TechniSol
Ebook readers are my hobby. I've been using devices to read long before eink readers appeared on the scene. Just click my signature, every photo there is of a device that had been in my hands. I find Aura HD a very solid, very comfortable to hold device, with great potential, I am being vocal about what in my opinion would make it more convenient for a lot of users.
I am getting a bit annoyed that somehow the whole point of having an ebook reader- i.e. being able to read comfortably and set reading preferences to your liking, is commonly ignored.
I can easily switch devices, most people commit for a longer time, why not think of them and improve their reading experience?

[TechniSol]

Theonna,

I'm all for improvements, but I think it unrealistic to expect a major paradigm shift in the core of the software.

The database is a rational approach in that the information must only be collected once, not every time the system is booted, or files are looked for. This should result in less time overall for various tasks to be performed as in theory the information must only be collected once and only updated as changes occur.

The real questions when one runs into over long pauses are what are they doing, and why is it taking so long? As fast as the processor is, one must wonder what takes so long for large shelves to be displayed. My guess is they are processing all of something rather than just enough to start displaying the first page and continuing to process in the background while allowing the relatively feeble human to see and injest that first page. Even a slow system should stay ahead of a human as long as there is no ability to jump far ahead, and even then should only bog down for the time to process one page and display it.

With such an approach the lag time becomes shelf length independent and relates directly to the processing time necessary only to process/display one page of the shelf. I have few shelves, and only enough items on them to require a few pages to display the entire shelf.(OK, one with 99 items, but it's quick too) My shelves display quickly. I think they would only require a bit of re-coding to achieve this(if they don't have it already), as long as it is possible to run a second task in the background to continue whatever processing they are consuming so much time with. They might even find the most efficient use of that task would be to only process a few pages ahead, rather than the whole shelf if that would keep up well ahead for most casual browsing and minimize power requirements. I would think an algorithm based on percentage would be most efficient so that as shelves grow ever larger the same percentage of pages are processed ahead by the background task rather than a set number of pages.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@Theonna: I hate to say it, but the chances of seeing Kobo supply a browser interface for Kobo is identical to the chances of Microsoft releasing a security patch for Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1..

Oh Come on PeterT, I think you doubt Microsoft too much. Its actually more likely they will release a security patch for Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1......

regards

Jack

[theonna]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Oh Come on PeterT, I think you doubt Microsoft too much. Its actually more likely they will release a security patch for Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1......

regards

Jack

That is a vote of confidence!

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Theonna,

I'm all for improvements, but I think it unrealistic to expect a major paradigm shift in the core of the software.

The database is a rational approach in that the information must only be collected once, not every time the system is booted, or files are looked for. This should result in less time overall for various tasks to be performed as in theory the information must only be collected once and only updated as changes occur.

The real questions when one runs into over long pauses are what are they doing, and why is it taking so long? As fast as the processor is, one must wonder what takes so long for large shelves to be displayed. My guess is they are processing all of something rather than just enough to start displaying the first page and continuing to process in the background while allowing the relatively feeble human to see and injest that first page. Even a slow system should stay ahead of a human as long as there is no ability to jump far ahead, and even then should only bog down for the time to process one page and display it.

With such an approach the lag time becomes shelf length independent and relates directly to the processing time necessary only to process/display one page of the shelf. I have few shelves, and only enough items on them to require a few pages to display the entire shelf.(OK, one with 99 items, but it's quick too) My shelves display quickly. I think they would only require a bit of re-coding to achieve this(if they don't have it already), as long as it is possible to run a second task in the background to continue whatever processing they are consuming so much time with. They might even find the most efficient use of that task would be to only process a few pages ahead, rather than the whole shelf if that would keep up well ahead for most casual browsing and minimize power requirements. I would think an algorithm based on percentage would be most efficient so that as shelves grow ever larger the same percentage of pages are processed ahead by the background task rather than a set number of pages.

You know we all talk about the processor speed. But I wonder if the processor is scaled down and not running as fast as it could to bring the extended battery life. Now on that note, the desktop software that Kobo supplies is next to useless. It seems to me that it should no ifs or buts about it handle all our ebooks from epubs to kepubs etc. and Create the data base for the kobo device. Thus using full computer power to speed this issue up including the rendering of covers. And then send it to the unit. Seems a common sense thing to do.

Regards

Jack

[Bittybye]

Books removed from the main library when you put them in a shelf

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by theonna

That is a vote of confidence!

I was trying to be sarcasitically funny, but I guess maybe I fell off the mark a little there.

Jack

[zztush]

Originally Posted by Bittybye

Books removed from the main library when you put them in a shelf

I like this idea.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by zztush

I like this idea.

I don't. The library list should be all the books. Add that the books can be put into multiple shelves, it doesn't make as much sense.

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by guma

From the use case perspective not applying the setting the user defines (in the menu) for margins, line spacing and fonts with ebooks containing css styles clearly is a bug. This could be fixed in two ways: (1) notify the user that the book prevents changes or (2) override the book settings.
Doing just plain NOTHING if the user applies changes via the respective menu is a bug since you can't expect the user to know whether an ebook has inbuilt css styles nor that the reader will always 'respect' these (thereby not respecting the user's ideas about how the book should be displayed).

As for the windows and orphans settings: while awkward defaults may technically not qualify as a bug the default settings are a major annoyance to many people. (Another example are the hyphenation settings for some languages). And it does not matter who recommends these defaults. Could be easily solved by just making these settings a user definable option.

From a design-philosophy point of view: It should be fairly easy to implement a global option for the user to switch between 'book defined' and user defined rendering settings. That would serve both 'camps' just fine. The 'unconditionally respect the book defined styles'-argument - in my opinion - unnecessarily sacrifices a major advantage of an e-reading device, namely the possibility to adjust things to your liking.

Reading through user opinions here shows that it is not possible to please everybody at the same time unless there are options to adapt the book display to each individual's liking.

I am not adding anything new to this discussion by saying so, but I feel EXACTLY the same way.