Kobo Patcher

[ectoplasm]

In an effort to get the dragon font-size: 30px, I changed also the pheonix font-size to 30px, and that worked. Apparently compression is a factor when changing values. I'm not willing to try removing sections, I'll let someone else try that first

[parkher]

With 2.6.1, I eliminated the footer altogether - I prefer it this way.
With 2.8.1 it may not be as straightforward. Metazoa's patch generator seems to be the easiest way to modify the footer.
I did not switch to 2.8.1 yet, so I'm not sure.
But Metazoa says his patcher does not eliminate the footer in 2.8.1 completely.
Now he released mz_koboreaderpatch_06 where there are four additional things that you can do only with 2.8.1.

The new things exclusively for 2.81 are:

1. Removing the native fonts from the list (only from the list - the fonts themselves are still available if/when required) - it would be a good feature but I am using only one additional font so I still have it on the first page.

2. Controlling the brightness of the light with the step = 1% instead of 10% with +/- buttons - I don't use the light at all - so I don't care.
Actually, I do care - I want very much to be able to map the useless to me light on/off hardware button to "next page" so I could avoid touching the screen (yuck!!!) as much as possible

3. An additional Russian language keyboard layout (so, I assume there was a Russian keyboard already?) - so far I never attempted to use a Russian keyboard on Aura, so, I guess - I don't care.

4. The browser now should download any files - I never used the browser on Aura and I was not aware what files it could or could not download - so I don't care.

So, I don't see a compelling reason to move to 2.8.1 yet.


Here is mz_koboreaderpatch_06:

http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewt...c0ad98#1079433
or directly:
http://rghost.ru/48210870

[ectoplasm]

Originally Posted by parkher

2. Controlling the brightness of the light with the step = 1% instead of 10% with +/- buttons

Nice, I was fighting with this earlier today. The right setting for my eyes was around 35%, and it was a struggle to get the slider there.

Originally Posted by parkher

4. The browser now should download any files - I never used the browser on Aura and I was not aware what files it could or could not download - so I don't care.

I already had a lighttpd server on my home lan, so I just created a books folder, and point Kobo's browser to it. Seems to be a good way to sideload files.

[PeterT]

Updated initial post.

[parkher]

Metazoa released two other patchers, but they are for Russian language only so I am not adding the links to them. But scroll down a bit from the patcher 06 if you need them.

mz_browserfontfix_01 - it fixes cyrillic fonts in the browser so that there are no unnecessary spaces between letters.

mz_koborushyph01 - it adds Russian language hyphenation.
It is important for those who read books in Russian - previously a soft hyphenation was used (a special Calibre plugin), but now when the Russian keyboard is available, soft hyphenation screws up searches (or rather now people at last are using searches and find out that they are being screwed up). Soft hyphenation screws up the dictionary usage as well.
So now, it is no longer needed, the hyphenation is supported in Aura.

[treadlightly]

It would be great if Kobo had secret code to change the sleep screensaver style. Unfortunately I don't have metazoa's brilliant skills.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

It would be great if Kobo had secret code to change the sleep screensaver style. Unfortunately I don't have metazoa's brilliant skills.

+1 for that

Something to remove the enormous and unsightly 'Sleeping' message. I know it's sleeping, because I just switched it off! And if I wanted to know how much I've read I can look at that in the footer menu when the book is open. They have a great standard feature of having current book cover as sleep/poweroff full-screen then they deface it

[meeera]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

+1 for that

Something to remove the enormous and unsightly 'Sleeping' message. I know it's sleeping, because I just switched it off! And if I wanted to know how much I've read I can look at that in the footer menu when the book is open.

Hear hear about this ugly box. Why not just make the "Sleeping" message a small one-line footer, like the page count when you're reading?

[ectoplasm]

Since a big part of this patch is to fix the eyesore of the wasted space at the bottom, I thought I would share something I found. My latest side loaded epub had extra space at the bottom, even though I have applied the patch, and other epubs look good (close to the screenshot in post #13).

I had added the following via Sigil, same as my other epubs, but there was still extra space:

p, body { 
	widows: 0; 
	orphans: 0; 
}

It turns out there was a reference in each chapter:

<link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" />

This page template file had additional top and bottom margins that were affecting the Kobo rendering. I removed the margins from the xpgt file and it was fixed. The fact there was something outside the CSS that was affecting the margins was something new to me.

I think the xpgt is junk that should be removed. I'm thinking I'll have to make a cleanup process for Sigil to get epubs the way I like.

[ShellShock]

The xpgt file often specifies a big margin-top for the first page of a new chapter, which you may prefer (more "book" like). But this can be easily done in css too. Just be aware, that removing the xpgt file can affect the appearance of a new chapter.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

I think the xpgt is junk that should be removed. I'm thinking I'll have to make a cleanup process for Sigil to get epubs the way I like.

If you're a Calibre user you can install the Modify Epub plugin. One of its many useful options is Remove Adobe .xpgt files and links. You can clean up your whole Calibre library in one go. If your library is large it may take a while to run.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

Since a big part of this patch is to fix the eyesore of the wasted space at the bottom, I thought I would share something I found. My latest side loaded epub had extra space at the bottom, even though I have applied the patch, and other epubs look good (close to the screenshot in post #13).

I had added the following via Sigil, same as my other epubs, but there was still extra space:

p, body { 
	widows: 0; 
	orphans: 0; 
}

Once again, if you're a Calibre user you can have this happen automatically whilst Calibre is sending each epub to the Kobo. See this post for details. You set it up once then forget about it. The real benefit is that, not only does it set widows/orphans to zero for each epub but also removes any other conflicting widows/orphans settings.

[PeterT]

Lets all say it ... "Set it and Forget it".

[ectoplasm]

I'm a Calibre user, but 1) I don't like to have to physically connect my device every time I want to sideload a book. 2) I've not found a single CSS setting that works for me in every book.

So my current workflow is to tweak a book in Sigil, look at it in Adobe Digital Editions which renders very close to the Kobo, then copy to a folder on my server. Then I download at my leisure via the browser on the Kobo.

[miyata]

I used MZ_Patch 04 2.8.1 on an aura and the footer was tiny but still there, now I used 06 with
"Disable reading footer style" at value "no" and
"Custom reading footer style" at value "yes"
this lets the footer dissapear completly unless you touch the bottum of the screen. This is just the way I dreamed it to be.
At first I had those two settingy the othe way around which gave me the tiny footer...

As to Custom Sleepmode
+2

But I gues you allready read my other post 'bout that...