Firmware3.17.0 Discussion

[Nick_1964]

Originally Posted by Alan_S

And, interesting side note, from my time zone, your post is written in 11:11.

Time for internet to get it's own timezone
But they have many moderators, so maybe it was by accident..they even post #facts in my language on the main Kobo facebook page..

[freekobo]

Originally Posted by melovesflying

Has the pinch-to-zoom bug in Aura FW 3.15 been resolved?

No, of course not, why would Kobo want to fix bugs? they like to make them

FYI
* `Disable pinch-to-zoom font resizing` patch is included in the main archive.

[uboot]

Upgraded my Mini from 3.16 to 3.17 (inkl. disablesickel), no factory reset, partial upgrade via Kobo Start Menu:
=> Ghosting is the same, i.e. strong ghosting for pop up menus like highlighting menu, but no ghosting elsewhere
=> No problems otherwise.

Page turns feel a bit slower, though, but this can be due to increased device temperature We have 38C right now and my brain is already throttling down....

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by uboot

Page turns feel a bit slower, though

I once had the impression that page turns were slower or faster after a firmware upgrade myself, but that feeling went away and I wouldn't be suprised if there weren't any changes at all in that regard in most of those firmware upates, so the entire thing is esoteric.

Didn't notice any difference in 3.17 on my H2O. Page flips are neither particularly fast nor particularly slow, it's entirely in the okay zone.

At first I thought it got significantly faster indexing new books, but that's because it processed only half of them

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by freekobo

No, of course not, why would Kobo want to fix bugs? they like to make them

THIS! I’m really annoyed that people fooled me into buying a Kobo reader, I think this thread is just another embarrassment for Kobo (and they don’t even care)...

[PeterT]

FFS; all you are seeing here is the usual YAPPING users. Trust me, the majority of Kobo users's don't see these issues.

Heck; I don't see them.

Do I apply patches or mods to my device?

NO; coz I am happy with the experience I have.

[arspr]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Can you point me to the definition of "normal usage"? Reading the type of PDF that causes sickel to kick in when generating the cover image is probably a fairly unusual action. It is for me. I have them on my device but only because someone here complained about something and I loaded some large and complicated files to see what happened.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Sorry, but the average Kobo user probably doesn't care because they aren't seeing any reboots. Be honest Jon, how many times did you see the device reboot before you patched sickel out? Personally, the count is 2. And both times I did something deliberately to see if it would reboot. Both times I chose to look at books that are on my devices purely to debug problems reported on this site. So, my normal usage will not trigger a wrong sickel reboot. My son's usage will not trigger a wrong sickel reboot. My wife's usage will not trigger a wrong sickel reboot. My mother-in-laws usage will not trigger a wrong sickel reboot. My belief is that not very many users will trigger a wrong sickel reboot.

At the moment, I can trigger this in two ways: going to a library list showing covers when one specific PDF is on the list and opening that PDF. That's one out of the 15 or so PDFs on the device.

GeoffR has a restart by opening the reading stats immediately after rebooting. I can't reproduce this. My guess it is related to the size of the database. Specifically, the number of books and the number of rows in the Events table. You would also get a restart if you had the bad luck that the last book being read was one that triggered the restart when the cover was generated.

Someone mentioned a problem with creating a bookmark. But, I'm not sure if this was with 3.17.0, or 3.16.10. I have made at least 50 annotations since I had 3.17.0 on my devices and haven't had a problem.

If there is another way to consistently get a restart with 3.17.0, I missed it. Please point it out so I can see if I can reproduce it.

Now, do I think Kobo got this right? No. I can see the point of what they are doing, but I'm not convinced it is a good idea. And they have something wrong with either the timing or when it gets involved. Hopefully Kobo will solve the problems quickly.

I'm re-reading your posts for my 100th time and I just cannot understand how the hell you defend Kobo. And I am specially astonished because you are a coder yourself...

The pdf file that 3.17. cannot manage because its thumbnail generation causes a reboot is just a 29 Mb one...

And this failure happens 100% of the time. So if you just have one file like this one, BANG!!!!, you are dead. You won't be able to browse your Library because each time you reach the page containing that file the device will restart...

So Davidfor, you are wrong. Your son will probably trigger it if he has scanned comics or fanzines in his device...

AFAIK, Kobo says that they support pdfs. So they MUST support EVERY kind of pdfs. I don't care if they are a collection of photos, OCR text, AutoCAD digitalized graphics or whatever. Specially when we are not talking about torture-test pdfs...

This is not a 1GB pdf file or something like that, (and this is not any of the two issues described in the pdf performace thread). It's a damn less than 30 MB file which only has one particularity: it's just a collection of images with no text...

Davidfor, NTFS is supposed to support files up to 16TB (approximately). Would you defend Microsoft if one system choked with a 100GB file because that kind of files are not "common"? Or would you defend them if they choked with file names containing "ñ" when they are supposed to support Unicode?

And I don't give a damn if less than 1% people read scanned comics, Kobo say they support pdfs, so therefore DO IT!!!

WTH! I myself build some computation Excel spreadsheets (with VBA macros in some cases) in my work... And I had NEVER EVER suffered an issue remotely similar to this one and you can imagine which is my Q&A team...

More over I cannot defend Kobo in any way when the solution is as easy as increasing the threshold time...



And please, Davidfor, test the Upgrade Dictionary process I've also posted because I am 95% sure that you get a reboot after it. (I cannot test it anymore because I've patched my 3.17 installation).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

I once had the impression that page turns were slower or faster after a firmware upgrade myself, but that feeling went away and I wouldn't be suprised if there weren't any changes at all in that regard in most of those firmware upates, so the entire thing is esoteric.

Didn't notice any difference in 3.17 on my H2O. Page flips are neither particularly fast nor particularly slow, it's entirely in the okay zone.

At first I thought it got significantly faster indexing new books, but that's because it processed only half of them

Were page turns sped up (on the H2O) in 3.16.0 or 3.16.10? I went from 3.15.0 ro 3.17.0 and I did notice a speed up of ePub (RMDSK) page turns.

[arspr]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Silly question.... If you use calibre to preload the pdfs and manually generate lower resolution covers for them and use the kobo extension to also load those covers with the pdfs, does it still hang generating the covers or does it use the smaller preloaded ones and work ok?

I don't know, and I cannot test any more as I have my FW patched against sickel.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by arspr

The pdf file that 3.17. cannot manage because its thumbnail generation causes a reboot is just a 29 Mb one...

And this failure happens 100% of the time.


AFAIK, Kobo says that they support pdfs. So they MUST support EVERY kind of pdfs. I don't care if they are a collection of photos, OCR text, AutoCAD digitalized graphics or whatever. Specially when we are not talking about torture-test pdfs...

This is not a 1GB pdf file or something like that, (and this is not any of the two issues described in the pdf performace thread). It's a damn less than 30 MB file which only has one particularity: it's just a collection of images with no text...

And I don't give a damn if less than 1% people read scanned comics, Kobo say they support pdfs, so therefore DO IT!!!

More over I cannot defend Kobo in any way when the solution is as easy as increasing the threshold time...

And please, Davidfor, test the Upgrade Dictionary process I've also posted because I am 95% sure that you get a reboot after it. (I cannot test it anymore because I've patched my 3.17 installation).

So far on my updated H2O (3.17.0 no sickle patches), I have had zero restarts from sickle. Not one.

I have downloaded various dictionaries - no restart (Reported by a handful of users as a 100% cause for sickle to trigger)

I have checked the rewards - no reboot (Reported by Geoff as 100% trigger)

I haven't tried loading a PDF because I generally dislike them. However consider that the PDF you're talking about is several times larger than the average ebook, and contains images which generally ereaders pause over.

And no, if your usage is that of 1% of the usage of those using Kobo's you really can not expect the company to code around your usage. It just wont happen.

Should Kobo extend the timeout? Probably. Is it anywhere near the 'omg the sky is falling and it's all Kobo's fault' situation you're trying to make it? Nope. The typical user, those 99% folks, will not see this issue. They wont care if sickle is there because for them it's effectively not there.

[Desdinova]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

So far on my updated H2O (3.17.0 no sickle patches), I have had zero restarts from sickle. Not one.

I have downloaded various dictionaries - no restart (Reported by a handful of users as a 100% cause for sickle to trigger)

I have checked the rewards - no reboot (Reported by Geoff as 100% trigger)

I haven't tried loading a PDF because I generally dislike them. However consider that the PDF you're talking about is several times larger than the average ebook, and contains images which generally ereaders pause over.

And no, if your usage is that of 1% of the usage of those using Kobo's you really can not expect the company to code around your usage. It just wont happen.

Should Kobo extend the timeout? Probably. Is it anywhere near the 'omg the sky is falling and it's all Kobo's fault' situation you're trying to make it? Nope. The typical user, those 99% folks, will not see this issue. They wont care if sickle is there because for them it's effectively not there.

And that particular PDF is one that other devices choke on as well, because its a AES256 bit encrypted one. Several readers on my iPad choked on it too - and as I said in that thread, that suggests an issue with the PDF format.

Infant, the only software that read that file for me without problem was Adobe Acrobat or the official reader plugin. All third party apps had real problems with it

[Desdinova]

Originally Posted by arspr

And this failure happens 100% of the time. So if you just have one file like this one, BANG!!!!, you are dead. You won't be able to browse your Library because each time you reach the page containing that file the device will restart...

So Davidfor, you are wrong. Your son will probably trigger it if he has scanned comics or fanzines in his device...

AFAIK, Kobo says that they support pdfs. So they MUST support EVERY kind of pdfs. I don't care if they are a collection of photos, OCR text, AutoCAD digitalized graphics or whatever. Specially when we are not talking about torture-test pdfs...

This is not a 1GB pdf file or something like that, (and this is not any of the two issues described in the pdf performace thread). It's a damn less than 30 MB file which only has one particularity: it's just a collection of images with no text...

You still haven't answered my point about this particular type of PDF is problematic for a range of devices.

[Desdinova]

Originally Posted by arspr

And I don't give a damn if less than 1% people read scanned comics, Kobo say they support pdfs, so therefore DO IT!!!

WTH! I myself build some computation Excel spreadsheets (with VBA macros in some cases) in my work... And I had NEVER EVER suffered an issue remotely similar to this one and you can imagine which is my Q&A team...

They do support PDF's. But malformed or problematic PDF's are always going to appear. Find anyone who says they can support 100% of PDF's - Ive had adobe reader itself choke over certain PDF's..

[Desdinova]

Originally Posted by Nick_1964

No.. the fact that they deleted my 2 ones means they maybe don't like the issues.
I am not a kobo basher/hater but I also don't like every new bug they release,and to be really honest, I don't care of one person complains or thousands.. if I have a self resetting device I don't really think immediately of posting it directly to Kobo, I go to my reseller.
And 3.17 isn't out wide spread.. my own affiliate is still at 3.15..

I've brought issues to the attention of Kobo on their FB page and never had one deleted, so thats odd.

[johnnyb]

I am 100% on the side of people criticizing Kobo for their poor software. Individual issues aside, Kobo needs to improve speed, stability and (stock device) versatility. They are not there and the developers generally have no real control.
The Kindle (which is arguably a system less open to outside sources) supports PDFs by far better than Kobo (and they dont even sell these files). While not offering an open reader they are hundred percent more committed to making life less painful for a greater number of users. Kobo isn't and they prove that with every iteration of the poor mess they call a firmware update...