Kobo Firmware 2.6.1

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Anak

An average user doesn't contact the company, posts on the internet, fora or blogs.
An average user simply stops using the product if it doesn't meet up to its expectations regardless if it is (relatively) easy to fix (e.g. by a firmware update) or not (e.g. hardware limitations/constrains).
And probably also tell their friends about their product experience ("don't by product X of company Y".)
But never contact the company to inform is their negative user experience can be solved.

What I find is that I get asked about ereader issues by my co-workers as well as family, friends, neighbours and people who know someone who knows me. For the most part, I offer what help I can thought that has often simply resulted in me checking various fora for solutions. Only a small minority will want to contact the manufacturer for support -- almost everyone has their horror stories about bad experiences with customer disservice, most would simply write off the whole ereading business as a waste of their time.

For some it's turned a negative experience into a positive, for others, the problem is not easily solvable such as one friend who was given a Paperwhite by her family and discovered she couldn't download books from the local library (no Kindle support as yet for bclibrary.ca). The only option was to swap ereaders for one that supported epub format (actually, pdf as well but while a lot of the library book collection are in epub and pdf with some in epub only but there seem to be none in pdf only). She's as happy with the Glo as she was with the Paperwhite for reading because she can crank up the font size to read in bed without her glasses but she did prefer the way the Paperwhite felt in her hands. Baby duckling syndrome?

Overall, I'd have to say most of the people I meet are reading one to four ebooks a month either by purchase or via library loans. A very different group from most of those posting here who have hundreds if not thousands of ebooks in their collection. However, those books per month are likely to be purchased from Kobo and the pennies add up.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jackastor

I am wondering if Kobo may have pulled the updates due to possible issues.... just speculation on my part but I have a strong feeling that is the case. If I am wrong then I will happily accept that I was wrong.. but somehow I don't think so!

It's possible they have pulled the update. The only bug I've seen so far that might have caused that decision is the png graphics display bug. If so, we should see a 2.6.2 or higher update shortly. Otherwise, it may just be the usual soft rollout that Kobo favours. Soft sounds so much nicer than sllooowwww.

Regards,
David

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Is it just me or is 2.6.1 processing covers in the background? I have noticed the tile will show x number of books added, display 3 non covers randomly then add the covers as i go to the home screen on my glo. Anyone else notice this?

The Glo has always done this. How fast it happened probably depends on the size of the cover in the file. I mainly noticed it after putting an SD card in with new books on it.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The Glo has always done this. How fast it happened probably depends on the size of the cover in the file. I mainly noticed it after putting an SD card in with new books on it.

The glo has never ever done this before 2.6.1 ..


Jack

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

The glo has never ever done this before 2.6.1 ..

It didn't do it on tiles because it didn't have them. But, if you were paging through the library and the covers hadn't been generated, it would display text covers and then replace them with the real cover. The same could happen on the home screen if you sent five new books. Both were actions were more noticeable on the slower Touch.

[guma]

Originally Posted by taming

It's nice that the SDk can support PDF reflow, but the epub2 standard did not require that device manufacturers program for it. Very few of them chose to do it. My understanding has been (and please correct me if I am not getting this right) that it didn't work all that well for things with large images, illustrations, tables etc. when viewed on smaller devices.

PDF reflow sure does not work perfectly well with every pdf out there but it is very useful for a very great number of pdfs - and it would hurt nobody if it were an option. Arguing against including this (readily available) functionality since it might not work perfectly well on every single pdf seems rather pointless to me.

Originally Posted by taming

I don't expect that Kobo will make any additions to epub2 support, at this point. I think that we are pretty much stuck with what we are seeing now until epub2 goes away and whatever is in the pipeline for epubs with the new standard replaces it. There may be some fixes possible through the driver for folks who use calibre--though I'm betting not reflowable PDFs.

Assuming you are speaking for KOBO here: From a customer perspective this point of view is just plain not acceptable. epub2 is the current standard and should work properly. Even if epub3 comes along at some point in the future many people will still have epub2 files they want to read.

Originally Posted by taming

Maybe this is one "problem" that is best solved by using a bigger device. Maybe that 13 inch Sony that is being talked about?

Best solved: yes. Is this an excuse for not offering the best possible pdf reading experience on a small device: no.

[Yamada]

Originally Posted by guma

PDF reflow sure does not work perfectly well with every pdf out there but it is very useful for a very great number of pdfs - and it would hurt nobody if it were an option. Arguing against including this (readily available) functionality since it might not work perfectly well on every single pdf seems rather pointless to me.



Assuming you are speaking for KOBO here: From a customer perspective this point of view is just plain not acceptable. epub2 is the current standard and should work properly. Even if epub3 comes along at some point in the future many people will still have epub2 files they want to read.




Best solved: yes. Is this an excuse for not offering the best possible pdf reading experience on a small device: no.

EPUBs and PDFs aren't the same thing...

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by guma

Assuming you are speaking for KOBO here: From a customer perspective this point of view is just plain not acceptable. epub2 is the current standard and should work properly. Even if epub3 comes along at some point in the future many people will still have epub2 files they want to read.

I think taming is talking for herself. I think I agree with taming that Kobo is not going to do much with the current epub2 reader application. I think it is on life support. But from what I can tell, Adobe already stopped working on their part of this. That makes it harder for the other companies to continue updating their reader applications.

Personally, what I expect to happen is for Kobo to drop the current reader for epubs and move everything into the ACCESS reader. There is still a lot of work to do to get there, but I can see that as a direction. It will only work if they drop the need to "kobify" the epubs and use a different method for tracking position and bookmarks. They should adopt the method in the epub3 standard. This works with epub2 as it is what the calibre viewer uses.

The exception to the above might be DRM protected epubs. Unless Adobe give them something to decode them so they can be rendered in a different reader, the existing reader might stay just for books with Adobe DRM.

All that is idle speculation. It seems reasonable, but whether it is correct, only time will tell.

[Joques]

Arrgh, still not here! (Bought in UK). I want the new homescreen so bad! It fixes my biggest pet peeve with the UI, which is that it takes too many presses to get to the shelves!

[taming]

Originally Posted by guma

Assuming you are speaking for KOBO here: From a customer perspective this point of view is just plain not acceptable. epub2 is the current standard and should work properly. Even if epub3 comes along at some point in the future many people will still have epub2 files they want to read.

Nope. Just me. A Kobo user and close follower of Kobo news. I consider it recreational research. Kobo might consider it stalking. Kobo does not share this kind of information with me or with the beta group. It is speculative, but not unreasonable from what I have gleaned from my research.

FWIW, I am a 61 year old social worker in Central Alberta, not a developer or techie of any sort.

[taming]

On the subject of research. Kobo's Jim Dovey has point for Kobo's work on development of the readmium project. He talks about the adobe sdk and the readmium developed epub3 sdk beginning at about 37 minues in on this ebook ninja podcast: http://ebookninjas.com/2013/05/10/ep...104-jim-dovey/

[Anak]

I just mentioned PDF reflow because Kobo decided not to activate/implement it because it will not work/guarantee to work under every circumstance.
But they do offer some "extras" that are also not guaranteed to work.
Kobo might think epub2 is almost end of life and are focused to epub3. So I don't think they will make huge changes to their current epub2 implementation.

I don't know how robust the fall back options to epub 2 of the coming epub 3 renderer are. A second dedicated epub2 renderer would tackle most problems.

[taming]

Originally Posted by Anak

But they do offer some "extras" that are also not guaranteed to work.

The difference I see, Anak, is that the extras are not related to using the device to read books.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It didn't do it on tiles because it didn't have them. But, if you were paging through the library and the covers hadn't been generated, it would display text covers and then replace them with the real cover. The same could happen on the home screen if you sent five new books. Both were actions were more noticeable on the slower Touch.

Yes but that was no generating covers in the back ground like the glo seems to be doing. That was specifically when you paged through the books the covers were loaded and saved to a file.Completely different from what I have observed with the tile interface.

Regards

Jack

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Yes but that was no generating covers in the back ground like the glo seems to be doing. That was specifically when you paged through the books the covers were loaded and saved to a file.Completely different from what I have observed with the tile interface.

OK, it generates the images on demand. But, it does this without hanging the interface. You could go to the next page before all the images were generated. I'm not sure I can see how this is different for the tiles.