Firmware 2.8.1 ?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

Thanks for the screenshot. That layout looks almost perfect to me. Did you use the kpg.exe from Metazoa's post on the russian forum? I think a dedicated thread for Metazoa's mod in the dev forum would be a good idea. If there already is one, please direct me to it

As the old saw goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I just have to remember to disable screenshots after I download the image.

I used the 04 version of the patcher which comes with the 2.6.1 and 2.8.1 configuration and libnickel files. I had to run the post through a translator since my Russian is very rusty (a couple of years of university Russian for the Sciences decades ago).

There is a link in PeterT's sticky at the start of the Developer Corner but last time I looked it had the link to the 03 patcher. The 04 patcher is at http://rghost.net/47967901.

When I first installed it, had fun resetting the font size and line spacing sliders. There is an occasional issue with lines moving to the next page but that seems to be an issue anytime the line height is set below 1.2 which might be why Kobo originally set the minimum line height to 1.225. I have also had a couple of syncs that took a lot longer than prior to trying the patch but not sure is that is a patcher issue or not since long sync times have been mentioned for quite a while.

For me, the bigger item was disabling the WiFi auto off since it was a pain making sure WiFi was on when I tried a telnet or ftp session.

Good luck!

Regards,
David

[ectoplasm]

Originally Posted by DNSB

...For me, the bigger item was disabling the WiFi auto off since it was a pain making sure WiFi was on when I tried a telnet or ftp session.

Thanks for the details. I'll be running the patch as soon as my Aura arrives. I know what you mean about Wifi sleep. I tend to sideload epub's on my tablet via FTP also, and I enable the "keep WiFi on during sleep" setting in Android to make it easier. So I'll be activating FTP on the Kobo also.

Do you notice a difference in battery life with WiFi on all the time? I assume you can still manually toggle off Wifi if you want? One scenario I hope the Kobo will work for me is to have good battery life in case of the rare extended power outage (atlantic hurricane season!).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

Thanks for the details. I'll be running the patch as soon as my Aura arrives. I know what you mean about Wifi sleep. I tend to sideload epub's on my tablet via FTP also, and I enable the "keep WiFi on during sleep" setting in Android to make it easier. So I'll be activating FTP on the Kobo also.

Do you notice a difference in battery life with WiFi on all the time? I assume you can still manually toggle off Wifi if you want? One scenario I hope the Kobo will work for me is to have good battery life in case of the rare extended power outage (atlantic hurricane season!).

I haven't noticed a change in battery life but I've only been turning on WiFi when I need it. WiFi does turn off it you use the WiFi enable/disable button. After enabling WiFi, I just open the web browser to make the connection and then it stays on until I disable it. Just handier than my previous open web browser or trigger a sync and then connect before idle timeout and disconnect. If I forget to disable WiFi, when the Aura goes to sleep, WiFi will turn off and stay off until the next time it's used which also limits the battery drain.

Regards,
David

[miyata]

I applied that MZ_04 patch and for starters only activated the footer part, worked like a charm for me and did what I wanted it to do, to give me two more lines of text.

Edit:
After doing that on a few but not all pages I still noticed one missing line, so added "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0;}" to the css in calibre and now Everything looks like I wanted it to on all pages.

Odd though, that for that to accomplish I have to patch the Firmware and re-css my ebook, can't imagine non computer afine people doing that, guess they just stay unhappy if they had the same wishes as I did or complain to Kobo support...

THX for pushing me in the right direction...

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by miyata

Edit:
After doing that on a few but not all pages I still noticed one missing line, so added "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0;}" to the css in calibre and now Everything looks like I wanted it to on all pages.

Odd though, that for that to accomplish I have to patch the Firmware and re-css my ebook, can't imagine non computer afine people doing that, guess they just stay unhappy if they had the same wishes as I did or complain to Kobo support...

If you are a Calibre user you don't need to reconvert all your books to zero the widows/orphans. You can do it with the new option in the calibre Kobo driver. In fact, this is more effective than the reconvert option because it will also remove any conflicting widows/orphans options in each epub during the send-to-device.

[miyata]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If you are a Calibre user you don't need to reconvert all your books to zero the widows/orphans. You can do it with the new option in the calibre Kobo driver. In fact, this is more effective than the reconvert option because it will also remove any conflicting widows/orphans options in each epub during the send-to-device.

I'll try that, these are just my first attemps in using calibre/epub/aura, only got that stuff for like six weeks, before that it was paper (I work in a big Library) but most of those printed fonts got too small for me to read...

[ectoplasm]

Originally Posted by miyata

..
Odd though, that for that to accomplish I have to patch the Firmware and re-css my ebook, can't imagine non computer afine people doing that, guess they just stay unhappy if they had the same wishes as I did or complain to Kobo support...

I agree with this, although I'm definitely in the computer tech category. I've gotten used to the idea of needing to tweak books in Sigil to suit my preferences.

As a developer myself, I would definitely give the user options. That doesn't mean you need pointless options for every little thing, but there have been a lot of requests for the things in Metazoa's patch, so to me it seems like a case of not getting the job done.

[babadockia]

Originally Posted by DNSB

There is a patcher from Metazoa which can reduce the lower margin though you then have issues with trying to select text at the bottom of the screen. For your comments about paragraphs, you might want to try adding widows:0; and orphans: 0; to the epub's css -- Calibre can do this for you by adding "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0;}" in the "Common Options" => "Look and Feel" => "Extra CSS" field. Basically, widows and orphans are intended to prevent lines from being left at the bottom or top of a page. You can google them for more information.

I've added a screen capture of a page after apply Metazoa's patch using FW 2.8.1 and the default configuration file. As you will notice the page number is too small to be really useful but you do get a couple of extra lines on the screen.

Regards,
David

how did you do that screenshot? what magic did you use?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by babadockia

how did you do that screenshot? what magic did you use?

You add the following to the configuration file:

[FeatureSettings]
Screenshots=true

Then using the power button will take an screenshot. The side-effect is that you can't use the power button to put the device to sleep or turn it off.

The screenshots are saved in the root of the main memory.

[babadockia]

Originally Posted by davidfor

You add the following to the configuration file:

[FeatureSettings]
Screenshots=true

Then using the power button will take an screenshot. The side-effect is that you can't use the power button to put the device to sleep or turn it off.

The screenshots are saved in the root of the main memory.

thx a ton

[Vorath]

Yesterday updated my Aura to 2.8.1 and now I think it's flickering way more when looking up a word in a dictionary. When holding down a word, it flashes once to show a toolbar at the bottom of the page; then it flashes again to show the definition. When closing the definition, the screen flickers twice in rapid succession.
I don't remember it doing that before or maybe I'm just imagining. Does anyone else have this problem?

[Warchild]

Originally Posted by Vorath

Yesterday updated my Aura to 2.8.1 and now I think it's flickering way more when looking up a word in a dictionary. When holding down a word, it flashes once to show a toolbar at the bottom of the page; then it flashes again to show the definition. When closing the definition, the screen flickers twice in rapid succession.
I don't remember it doing that before or maybe I'm just imagining. Does anyone else have this problem?

Its just a screen refresh. I didn't even notice it really until you pointed it out.

[Vorath]

Originally Posted by Warchild

Its just a screen refresh. I didn't even notice it really until you pointed it out.

Yes, it's a screen refresh. But I feel there were fewer of them before the update. I can't be certain though.

[MacEachaidh]

My Aura has just recently updated to 2.8.1, and I'm noticing a page-turn bug where, sporadically, a tap on the right of the screen makes the screen flash (like the regular sixth-page refresh, but it's not due) and then, in rapid succession it turns three pages. I'm pretty sure I'm not multiple-tapping.

I haven't noticed this happening before I went to 2.8.1. Have others experienced it? Is this a known issue of this firmware?

[treadlightly]

I've had white (blank screen) flashes occasionally on a page turn after updating to 2.8.1, but previously had never seen them.