Kobo Glo HD

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I took a couple screenshots this morning. The books have all the same settings, same Kobo Nickel font, etc, and yet only the kepub was displayed correctly. The sideloaded ebook was shown with the wrong justification and wrong line spacing.

FYI If by 'wrong justification' you mean it didn't respond to the Kobo justification button in the device's font settings, this is likely to be due to 2 different things:
- the existing css settings in the epub/kepub
- whether you use the epub renderer (Adobe) or the kepub renderer (Access)

The 2 renderers take a different approach to trying to override any existing text alignment in the book's css. The kepub renderer is more aggressive (and too clumsy IMO) but is more likely to respond to the Kobo justification button with the penalty that text which should be centre- or right-aligned is also overridden by the Left or Full-justify button.

A well-formatted epub will respond perfectly correctly to the Justification button. Unfortunately common-sense css seems to be anything but common in most purchased ebooks - unless you're prepared to fix them yourself - which most people won't want to do.

Regarding the line-spacing, as others have said, Kobo Nickel is just about the worst option available unless you like really wide line-spacing.

The above and many other things can be improved by applying one or more Kobo Patches, but I don't suppose it's reasonable to have to patch your Kobo before reviewing it.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Try this: tap the page over and over quickly. This should cause the pages to flip through quickly. Doesn't happen. It sort of blanks out. Something's not right.

Does 3.15 do this on other devices? Do other Kobo devices perform this way? I agree with Nate. It's most likely the FW. Sorry to be a downer.

That happens on my Glo HD and regular Glo. What's happening is that I'm tapping to advance the pages much faster than any e-ink screen can render them. So it keeps advancing but stops bothering to render the pages (there's really no need to since you're just advancing pages ahead), or else it would have to stop advancing the pages as the other choice.

Which oddly is what the PW2 does, it just stops. Keep tapping and it just quits responding after a few taps and no longer advances the pages at all. I thought that like the Kobo it might just stop rendering the text and after awhile it will catch up and it'll pop to another page where it should, but it never did that either. There is another way on the PW2 that brings up a smaller page where you can advance quicker, and there it does render the pages, but at a slower pace.

So I really have no problem with the Kobo readers just having blank pages but letting you keep advancing the pages.

Now compare that to the many-years-older Sony PRS-350 and they both fail miserably. You can keep your finger held in the swipe position and it will keep advancing and rendering each page fully and perfectly, and faster than the PW2 does with the special option pulled up to advance pages.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I was too! It's made such a big difference. I'm glad you found it the same. I convert everything to kepub now.

I used to use kepub all the time. So I am back to it again, I finally got the settings on my Glo to work right with kepubs AND epubs. Of course now that I have the Glo HD, the Glo is just a back up device....

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Indeed! Of course, part of the fun is looking for new cases. It almost makes me want a new ereader.

I had to order a new red Glo case for my Glo HD. My other slim cases are dark blue and brown, too hard to remember what's what.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by jiminrussell

H20 on the left, Glo HD on the right: Font size as close to the same as I could get them and light set to 35% on both, same font on both (Charis SIL CompactLarger from JSWolf)
edit: replaced the image with one that has less ambient light.

Thank you. In your picture, the Glo HD looks sharper.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Fx_

About the font weight thing.

To give a better proof of concept, I decided to do it myself (not too shabby for my first epub :P).
Here is an epub, I created with font weight that varies in thickness (boldness). It's going to be nearly one week before I receive my Voyage, so I couldn't test it out (your feedback/screenshot would be greatly appreciated).

Give it a try, hopefully you find it useful.

Here's a photo comparing 2 readers with this epub (although I have no idea how a shadow hack can work, seems to be totally ignored by one and reverts back to a default on the other). It was taken with overhead lights off so there wouldn't be any shadows. Which side is better? I should add that both readers had the light at 100% and tried to get the font size as close as possible, preferably so it fit on one page.

Regardless of which would give the better reading experience (and that's probably going to be subjective per person), your method of showing that the Kindle can do bold fonts is only because you're embedding the font in each and every epub. That needlessly triples the size (or more) of each epub, and that's not something I'd ever want to do. I make it a point of stripping out fonts when a publisher insists on putting them in a book because it's just wasted space on the reader. With Kobo, it will use the font you added one time to the reader and you can apply those fonts to every book on the reader, apply 1 font to one book, another font to a different book, etc. Again, a much better system for myself.

[JSWolf]

delete post

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I have a PW2 and a Kobo H20 and just tested the page turns on both devices turning pages at the same time using the same book file. I'm using kepubs files on my H20. The H20 page turns were ever so slightly slower than the PW2. The difference is slight, only milliseconds, and nothing I would even notice if I didn't do a direct comparison.

Now using epubs files on the H20 it is very noticeably slower. So that's my experience, for what it's worth.

But which firmware version are you using on your H2O? Some say 3.15.0 is slightly faster than before.

[sparklemotion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But which firmware version are you using on your H2O? Some say 3.15.0 is slightly faster than before.

I am using 3.12.1. I don't upgrade often. If all is running well, I tend to wait in case it makes things worse.

update - ok I updated to 3.15.0 and compared the page turns again. I still think the PW2 is ever so slightly faster. That said, it is so negligible to me that it's really not worth a thought. I'm certainly not saying that the H20 is slow, I just made the comparison as people were wondering. I love the H20, it's all I use these days as the screen is amazingly even. I just think kindles are faster in general, but for page turns the difference is extremely slight.

Also note, I'm using kepubs, not epubs. I'm going to add an epub and see if there's been a speed increase. Before they were very slow.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I am using 3.12.1. I don't upgrade often. If all is running well, I tend to wait in case it makes things worse.

update - ok I updated to 3.15.0 and compared the page turns again. I still think the PW2 is ever so slightly faster. That said, it is so negligible to me that it's really not worth a thought. I'm certainly not saying that the H20 is slow, (except with epubs it is) I just made the comparison as people were wondering. I love the H20, it's all I use these days as the screen is amazingly even. I just think kindles are faster in general, but for page turns the difference is extremely slight.

I've not yet switched to 3.15.0 yet because of my battery level. I'm waiting until after a full charge.

I've found the page turn to be fast enough. By the time my eyes are back to the top of the page, the page is turned and ready to be read.

One of the fastest Readers I've seen is the Kindle. The new internals with the lower (800x600) resolution screen make it very fast.

[sparklemotion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've not yet switched to 3.15.0 yet because of my battery level. I'm waiting until after a full charge.

I've found the page turn to be fast enough. By the time my eyes are back to the top of the page, the page is turned and ready to be read.

One of the fastest Readers I've seen is the Kindle. The new internals with the lower (800x600) resolution screen make it very fast.

I'm not too fussy with how fast the pages turn really, but I did find the H20 very slow with epubs previously. I just tried an epub on 3.15.0 and it is much faster now, comparable to kepubs, I'd say. Very nice to know.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I'm not too fussy with how fast the pages turn really, but I did find the H20 very slow with epubs previously. I just tried an epub on 3.15.0 and it is much faster now, comparable to kepubs, I'd say. Very nice to know.

Thank you for that. I look forward to installing 3.15.0. I just have to sort out the patches before I do the full recharge.

[Fx_]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Here's a photo comparing 2 readers with this epub (although I have no idea how a shadow hack can work, seems to be totally ignored by one and reverts back to a default on the other). It was taken with overhead lights off so there wouldn't be any shadows. Which side is better? I should add that both readers had the light at 100% and tried to get the font size as close as possible, preferably so it fit on one page.

Thanks for your post, it made me smile. I though everyone here ignored me (had a bad start here lol, tried to clear my name but that post got deleted )

I agree it was basically a proof of concept, and not for everyone. However, the other way around to look for this proof of concept is that any custom-readers (cool-reader, and others?) could implement such functionality. In this way, fonts only have to be installed once, and if the default fonts supports numerical weighing then no extra fonts are needed!

Back to the picture. Hmm, the right one I think its Glo HD (better rendering of epub?), and the left one is Voyage with epub converted to mobi format or the old azw (not the newest one, hence the rendering issue[?]). Yet, the led is tricking me to believe that the right one is actually Voyage. Difficult call... I'd be sticking with my first choice (the right one appears to me it's Glo HD).


One more thing, I included a smaller epub (2.15KB) with only shadows in order to increase the boldness (look inside the epub for more info). You might like this approach more.

Some of the text won't be rendered correctly as I set some unrealistic values, but that's ok.

You don't have to bother yourself with any pictures this time. Your word is enough.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

FYI If by 'wrong justification' you mean it didn't respond to the Kobo justification button in the device's font settings, this is likely to be due to 2 different things:
- the existing css settings in the epub/kepub
- whether you use the epub renderer (Adobe) or the kepub renderer (Access)

The 2 renderers take a different approach to trying to override any existing text alignment in the book's css. The kepub renderer is more aggressive (and too clumsy IMO) but is more likely to respond to the Kobo justification button with the penalty that text which should be centre- or right-aligned is also overridden by the Left or Full-justify button.

A well-formatted epub will respond perfectly correctly to the Justification button. Unfortunately common-sense css seems to be anything but common in most purchased ebooks - unless you're prepared to fix them yourself - which most people won't want to do.

Regarding the line-spacing, as others have said, Kobo Nickel is just about the worst option available unless you like really wide line-spacing.

The above and many other things can be improved by applying one or more Kobo Patches, but I don't suppose it's reasonable to have to patch your Kobo before reviewing it.

I stuck the file on my Aura HD to see how it displayed the ebook, and it showed the same problem. You're right, this was a badly made ebook (the justification is hard-coded).

I thought Baen made better ebooks than that, but I guess not.

Damn. I hate missing details like that.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Fx_

Back to the picture. Hmm, the right one I think its Glo HD (better rendering of epub?), and the left one is Voyage with epub converted to mobi format or the old azw (not the newest one, hence the rendering issue[?]). Yet, the led is tricking me to believe that the right one is actually Voyage. Difficult call... I'd be sticking with my first choice (the right one appears to me it's Glo HD).

So which one are you saying looks better, the right or left?

[Fx_]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

So which one are you saying looks better, the right or left?

Despite viewing this picture on LCD. I'd go with with the left one, it's easier on my eyes.


Have to mention this, in case I changed my opinion when I wake up. It's 2:00AM here