Firmware 3.8.0 released

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

This bug was reported on Page 2 of the thread. The only way to get rid of a bookmark now is from the annotations page. Hold until the menu pops up and one of the choices is to remove the bookmark, that works.

And the problem was passed to Kobo. It should be fixed in the next firmware.

[TechniSol]

Mmmmm. So far I have a pretty good idea just which finger Kobo was going for on this whole one finger lighting adjustment...

I must not only place my forefinger(surprise -shame on you for thinking I meant that other slightly more obvious middle finger!) all the way against the left bezel on my Glo, but I must also rotate said finger so my nail is parallel to the bezel... Seems a little bit tight. If one is not RIGHT(uh, LEFT ) up against the bezel, at least on mine, forget it... I think they need to relax the tolerances just a wee tad(precise engineering terminology), and allow for a bit o' Kentucky windage. Nice feature, thank you kindly Kobo, but the implementation is a bit lacking, at least on my Glo. But, you are so headed in the right direction! Now if you'd just offer those of us with a really bright Glo the option of shifting the whole range down globally so a brightness setting of 1 doesn't still look like a very oddly shaped flashlight pointed directly at my eyes, I'd be thrilled to pieces!

[Nick_1964]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Mmmmm. So far I have a pretty good idea just which finger Kobo was going for on this whole one finger lighting adjustment...

I must not only place my forefinger(surprise -shame on you for thinking I meant that other slightly more obvious middle finger!) all the way against the left bezel on my Glo, but I must also rotate said finger so my nail is parallel to the bezel... Seems a little bit tight. If one is not RIGHT(uh, LEFT ) up against the bezel, at least on mine, forget it... I think they need to relax the tolerances just a wee tad(precise engineering terminology), and allow for a bit o' Kentucky windage. Nice feature, thank you kindly Kobo, but the implementation is a bit lacking, at least on my Glo. But, you are so headed in the right direction! Now if you'd just offer those of us with a really bright Glo the option of shifting the whole range down globally so a brightness setting of 1 doesn't still look like a very oddly shaped flashlight pointed directly at my eyes, I'd be thrilled to pieces!

I don't use it at all, it has been set on a value (9) since the beginning and I never had to change it.
If I put it on 8 the light starts flickering a bit with no regular interval and that is annoying.. it is an old issue of the Glo that when the light is dimmed to much the LED lightning can flicker a bit but maybe you never stumbled in to it because just one point higher and it is constant.
First I was afraid that the lightning was maybe defect, but a search on this forum told me that it is common.
The AURA HD i also have has a different lightning method,the light is projected on a layer underneath the screen, but I had several devices where the layer wasn't good and the light pops out like dead pixels on a camera, I had to change it 4 times at the shop before I got one that doesn't have this fault.
So on both readers I never changed the slider for the light.
Maybe random, but on both Glo and Aura HD it sometimes happens that the screen doesn't respond to sliding for the next page or tipping every now and then, I really have to hold my finger a bit longer before it changes and then the first 20 pages or so do change smoothly,and then I have to "press" again before it want to go further..I hoped it was out with this firmware,but it still happens every now and then..

[arspr]

Just because I have just remembered...

The issue (explained here and here) with ToC entries which point to the very same HTML file is also present in 3.8.0.

(I discovered it in 3.5.0, but how old is it in fact?) Remember it only affects kepubs, (at least sideloaded ones); epubs work fine.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by arspr

Just because I have just remembered...

The issue (explained here and here) with ToC entries which point to the very same HTML file is also present in 3.8.0.

(I discovered it in 3.5.0, but how old is it in fact?) Remember it only affects kepubs, (at least sideloaded ones); epubs work fine.

This is NOT a firmware issue. It's an error in the eBook. The NCX is not supposed to be pointing to the same place in the same file more then once. If you do need to have two or more NCX entries point to the same place, then what need to do is but in as many IDs as you need and point to each entry with a different ID.

[gyedema]

I installed 3.8 on my Aura, but the one-finger light function doesn't seem to work at all. I have, however, still the "two-finger swipe" option in the menu. Is this correct?

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by gyedema

I installed 3.8 on my Aura, but the one-finger light function doesn't seem to work at all. I have, however, still the "two-finger swipe" option in the menu. Is this correct?

It's not supposed to work on the Aura. I read that somewhere here on MR. 1st post:

[New Feature for Glo/Aura HD] One-finger brightness control: When light is on, swipe finger up/down along left edge of screen while reading to adjust brightness

You'll note it does not say Aura.

[trishau]

Thank you to everyone here for all the info and for making these FW files available! I have been going crazy waiting for an update for my Glo 3.3.0 and have just installed the 3.8.0 FW. So far so good and the side swipe for brightness adjustment is wonderful!

[Stephjk]

I've just synced and 3.8.0 is now on my Glo. I, too, love the new light control! :-)

[arspr]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is NOT a firmware issue. It's an error in the eBook. The NCX is not supposed to be pointing to the same place in the same file more then once. If you do need to have two or more NCX entries point to the same place, then what need to do is but in as many IDs as you need and point to each entry with a different ID.

Can you point where in the epub specs this occurrence is pointed as invalid?

More over I'm not using fragment ids... I'm just pointing to the very same html file.

And, as a matter of fact, as I said this issue happens in kepubs, but NOT in epubs (and it doesn't happen either in Calibre, or in ADE, or in my PRS-650, ...)

But I concede that maybe Kobo has specifically broken/removed it their hidden and unknown kepub specification as they have broken widows and orphans, page-break-whatever CSS property, support for several chapters (toc entries) in the same html file which plays wrong with the in-chapter page numbering and chapter jumping features,...

So yes, maybe they are not allowed in kepubs, even if kepubs are supposed to be better than epubs. Who knows.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by arspr

Can you point where in the epub specs this occurrence is pointed as invalid?

Here you go. The following error is from epubcheck 3.0.1 when I have an NCX with two entries pointing to the same place.

ERROR: A. A. Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh 02 - Winnie the Pooh # (v5.0) - Copy.epub/OEBPS/toc.ncx(13,41): assertion failed: different playOrder values for navPoint/navTarget/pageTarget that refer to same target

ERROR: A. A. Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh 02 - Winnie the Pooh # (v5.0) - Copy.epub/OEBPS/toc.ncx(14,41): assertion failed: different playOrder values for navPoint/navTarget/pageTarget that refer to same target

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by arspr

But I concede that maybe Kobo has specifically broken/removed it their hidden and unknown kepub specification as they have broken widows and orphans, page-break-whatever CSS property, support for several chapters (toc entries) in the same html file which plays wrong with the in-chapter page numbering and chapter jumping features,...

Hmmm... hardly hidden and unknown. The ACCESS Netfront Book Viewer EPUB edition uses the EPUB3 specification as it's basis. See the IDPF webpages for more information -- http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/ep...lications.html. You can also check readium.org's website as well. Kobo's current publications seem to wrap <span> tags around everything but other than that oddity, most of the differences between how ebooks are displayed seems to be due to rendering differences between the Adobe RMSDK and the ACCESS NetFront renderers.

And yes, there are several areas in the EPUB 2.0.1 specification which have been clarified, deprecated or removed in the EPUB 3.0.1 specification. There are documents available on generating EPUB2/3 compatible ebooks though most of them make for turgid reading best suited to a night when insomnia looms.

Regards,
David

[arspr]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Here you go. The following error is from epubcheck 3.0.1 when I have an NCX with two entries pointing to the same place.

I'm not so sure...

I'm no expert but in the NCX spec you can explicitly read (check the original source to see the correctly formatted text ):

8.4.3 playOrder Attribute

(This section is normative.)

The playOrder attribute is required on each pageTarget, navTarget and navPoint. It provides a means to collate all pageTargets, navTargets, and navPoints into a single ordered sequence that reflects their order in the normal playback sequence of the book as presented in the spine and SMIL file(s). playOrder is a positive integer; the first playOrder value in a document shall be 1. When the content elements of any pageTargets, navTargets, or navPoints reference the same SMIL time container, they must have the same playOrder value. playOrder must increase by one for each unique SMIL time container referenced by any pageTarget, navTarget or navPoint.

And then if you go to the epub/OPF spec about modifications over the general ncx spec:

2.4.2: NCX Exceptions in Usage for Publications

The NCX as defined in the ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 Standard Section 8 is ideal for OPS applications, however, some exceptions are noted herein. In the standard, the links from the NCX to the Publication point to SMIL (http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-SMIL2-20050107/) documents. For OPS Publications, the links will point to an XML elements in the source OPS Content Document. This difference causes the following exceptions to be noted from Section 8 in that standard:

smilCustomTest is not used in the OPF application of the NCX;
audio is not used in the OPS application of the NCX;
clipBegin (%SMILtimeVal, REQUIRED): is used for identifying the start of an audio segment, and hence not used in the OPF application of the NCX;
clipEnd (%SMILtimeVal, REQUIRED): is used for identifying the end of an audio segment, and hence not used in the OPF application of the NCX;
content Description: Pointer into SMIL file to beginning of the item referenced by the navPoint or navTarget. Note: In the OPF application of the NCX the pointer is to an XML element and not a SMIL location.
DTBs Spanning Multiple Media Units are not relevant in the Publication context because OPS Publications are significantly smaller than multimedia files.
The list of required metadata provided in http://www.niso.org/workrooms/daisy/...5.html#NavMeta does not apply to EPUB; the only required meta is that which contains a content reference to the OPF unique ID. For backwards compatibility reasons, the value of the name of that meta remains dtb:id.
playOrder attributes are not required. Although playOrder attributes are not used to sequence SMIL content, if present, they should contain valid values that reflect the linear document reading order. This could, for example, be used when one is navigating a pageList to find a corresponding location in the navMap.

So OPF spec says:

• Change SMIL by links and NCX spec is more or less OK.
• playOrder is not needed, but if used, keep it coherent.

And NCX spec explicitly allows entries with the same content (with just one condition about playOrder).

(Nevertheless, I'll perform some test "deleting/fixing" playOrder just to be sure, as in my book every single item has a different playOrder as normally expected, so it's not strictly following the NCX spec.)

[arspr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... hardly hidden and unknown. The ACCESS Netfront Book Viewer EPUB edition uses the EPUB3 specification as it's basis. See the IDPF webpages for more information -- http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/ep...lications.html. You can also check readium.org's website as well. Kobo's current publications seem to wrap <span> tags around everything but other than that oddity, most of the differences between how ebooks are displayed seems to be due to rendering differences between the Adobe RMSDK and the ACCESS NetFront renderers.

And yes, there are several areas in the EPUB 2.0.1 specification which have been clarified, deprecated or removed in the EPUB 3.0.1 specification. There are documents available on generating EPUB2/3 compatible ebooks though most of them make for turgid reading best suited to a night when insomnia looms.

Regards,
David

I knew that ACCESS is in theory an epub3 renderer (although epub3 has not killed widows and orphans, doesn't it?, but Kobo/ACCESS has... ). And I also knew that ncx are not "used" in epub3.

But in any case, I have a "pure" epub2 book, so unless you are fully crazy in your software design, even if it is an epub3 reader, it should work with the old epub2 books. So it should work even if the book doesn't include any kind of the new and improved ncx-like whatever ToC format (because as already said it's not an epub3 book but an epub2 one...). So it should work with the repeated toc entries which are explicitly mentioned in epub2+ncx spec, (unless I'm making some mistake somewhere).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And yes, there are several areas in the EPUB 2.0.1 specification which have been clarified, deprecated or removed in the EPUB 3.0.1 specification. There are documents available on generating EPUB2/3 compatible ebooks though most of them make for turgid reading best suited to a night when insomnia looms.

Regards,
David

I've been noticing that some new eBooks are being made as ePub 3 which is rather (IMHO) silly because there's nothing in them that need to be ePub 3 instead of ePub 2. However, it's fairly easy to switch them back to ePub 2 and do away with unnecessarily being ePub 3.