Kindle Paperwhite 2-Voyage Software Update 5.6.5

[mandy314]

Originally Posted by paipa

... No, the o is not tucked under Y in "You". Maybe it is for some Amazon books, but not for side-loaded documents. Same ugly letter spacing as it has always been. ...

Despite seeing some answers, I'm still confused if kerning is working, if o is tucked under Y in "You" at least with an "enhanced typesetting" kfx-book on a Kindle with an "enhanced typsetting" firmware.
Another surprise for me was that the updated Bookerly font has no Kerning table (ttf-format)! The info from the tool I used may be wrong though.

So - perhaps shalym (or someone else) could be so nice to look for a "You" in a kfx-book and take some sceenies with Bookerly, Baskerville, Caecilia and Palatino. Thank you.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by mandy314

Despite seeing some answers, I'm still confused if kerning is working, if o is tucked under Y in "You" at least with an "enhanced typesetting" kfx-book on a Kindle with an "enhanced typsetting" firmware.
Another surprise for me was that the updated Bookerly font has no Kerning table (ttf-format)! The info from the tool I used may be wrong though.

So - perhaps shalym (or someone else) could be so nice to look for a "You" in a kfx-book and take some sceenies with Bookerly, Baskerville, Caecilia and Palatino. Thank you.

Yes, kerning is working on kfx books. Attached 2 pictures (don't know how to do screenshots) the one out of search - no kerning or ligatures work in the search result - and one after following the link into the book. Clearly a difference. This one is Bookerly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A better question to ask would be "why not?". Maximising the rendering speed by taking layout calculations offline makes sense. You know, I'm sure, that a common complaint of Kobo users is slow page turns.

Actually, as of firmware 3.17.0, the page turn for speed ePub with my H2O has noticeably increased. It's not too slow and on-the-fly typesetting is much better as it does not require any pre-processing or some new format.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A better question to ask would be "why not?". Maximising the rendering speed by taking layout calculations offline makes sense. You know, I'm sure, that a common complaint of Kobo users is slow page turns.

Page turns are fine on Kobo. Its only the new Glo HD that is reported by some to have this problem.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, as of firmware 3.17.0, the page turn for speed ePub with my H2O has noticeably increased. It's not too slow and on-the-fly typesetting is much better as it does not require any pre-processing or some new format.

That is, if you think "requiring a new format" is a bug. Amazon probably sees it as a feature.

[mandy314]

Thank you, DuckieTigger. (Wonder, how they achieve this)

Now for the pre-rendering. [imho]Putting soft-hyphens or html-tags for hyphenation in the file is a good thing. It is inside the scope of html/css and can bring some advantages: uk vs us-hyphenation, exclusion of names of places/persons etc. Depends how good it is done by publishers/amazon. On the other hand, ligatures and kerning are font-dependent. Not all fonts have the same ligatures - Baskerville doesn't have a ff one, Bookerly has and with that the ffi/ffl triplets. Putting ligature-unicodes in files would break the font independence and may interfere with hyphenation. The same goes for kerning; not all fonts have the same kerning pairs. All things using font information should be rendered on-the-fly.[/imho].
I hope amazon is going along this route. But who knows ...

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Page turns are fine on Kobo. Its only the new Glo HD that is reported by some to have this problem.

No I'd agree with HarryT here. Its been a long standing 'complaint' that page turns on various Kobo models are a touch slower. I remember reading quite a few comments particularly from Sony users switching to Kobo. Just how much of an issue it is seems debatable, but then you can say that for any of the various issues that affect ereaders. Personally, I'd have more of a problem with the continual firmware tweaks that fix some issues, but ignore or introduce others. I also don't like the fact that using kepubs seems to help with page turns as I don't want to have to use another format, but here are Amazon doing the same thing with their font improvements.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

As a first time Kindle owner, is the firmware the same for all Kindles worldwide? I'm just wondering as my Paperwhite 3 was purchased in Japan but it's still on 5.6.1.1 and when I synced there were no updates to be downloaded.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

As a first time Kindle owner, is the firmware the same for all Kindles worldwide? I'm just wondering as my Paperwhite 3 was purchased in Japan but it's still on 5.6.1.1 and when I synced there were no updates to be downloaded.

Kindles have the same firmware world-wide.

The fact you've not received an "over the air" firmware update doesn't mean anything. OTA updates are rolled out over several months. Most of us here have probably done a manual firmware update.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Ok, thanks for the quick response.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by mandy314

Thank you, DuckieTigger. (Wonder, how they achieve this)

Now for the pre-rendering. [imho]Putting soft-hyphens or html-tags for hyphenation in the file is a good thing. It is inside the scope of html/css and can bring some advantages: uk vs us-hyphenation, exclusion of names of places/persons etc. Depends how good it is done by publishers/amazon.

I don't believe that soft-hyphens are inserted everywhere. There probably is an option to override automatic hyphens on a per word basis for exceptions. May that be either different rules by specifying a different language (e.g. in mixed language texts), forcing no hyphenation, and adjusting the placement with soft hyphens (names, places, madeup words).

It doesn't really matter if possible hyphen positions are inserted before or not - that is only half the problem. The actual hyphenation must be done on the fly to have it look right. It is a non-trivial problem and requires a very good algorithm (if Amazon is smart they use a multi pass algorithm). Otherwise with dumb hyphenation you can end up with hyphens everywhere - which looks stupid. What happens on Amazon's hyphenation looks very good - very seldom are hyphens displayed and I have never run accross a page with too many (e.g. there is no OMG, every other line is hyphenated). There is a fallback occasionally when hyphenation fails - sometimes a line is not justified when it should. I believe that is done when the hyphenation algorithm cannot decide fast enough on how to optimize gaps between words trying out different hyphen positions. I rather have very very few ragged right lines than a forced justification creating too much white space. Those lines would stick out like a sore thumb if forced.

Overall very happy with hyphenation on the Voyage. And if that requires a new file format to preprocess and assist the on-the-fly algorithm, then I am all for it. The results are amazing and good looking.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by soulfuldog

No I'd agree with HarryT here. Its been a long standing 'complaint' that page turns on various Kobo models are a touch slower. I remember reading quite a few comments particularly from Sony users switching to Kobo. Just how much of an issue it is seems debatable, but then you can say that for any of the various issues that affect ereaders. Personally, I'd have more of a problem with the continual firmware tweaks that fix some issues, but ignore or introduce others. I also don't like the fact that using kepubs seems to help with page turns as I don't want to have to use another format, but here are Amazon doing the same thing with their font improvements.

I have owned a Glo HD (which was slow) and I own a Aura HD (which is not slow). HarryT has owned an H2O I believe and he did not complain of page turn speeds at the time.

I've owned Sonys (Prs-600, 650, T1 and T2) and I can't say I noticed them being faster than the Aura HD.

Page-turn speeds on the Aura HD are fine with epubs as well as kepubs. You don't need to use a proprietary and unecessary format to access advanced topography features on the Kobo. They work fine and have worked fine for a long time on epubs on a Kobo. No page-turn lag except on the Glo HD (in my personal experience).

[cvkemp]

I can tell you this the page turns of ever Kindle I have ever owned or use, as had very fast page turns.

[mendesitba]

Does the new firmware version deleted the feature that named unread (or not yet open) pdocs and ebooks as "new"? My Kindle PW2 is not displaying " new" anymore, but I dont know if it was happening before, I just noticed it after the update.

BTW, my kindle is really really faster after the update. It does not lag anymore when turning pages, looking a word at dicr or browsing my library.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by soulfuldog

No I'd agree with HarryT here. Its been a long standing 'complaint' that page turns on various Kobo models are a touch slower. I remember reading quite a few comments particularly from Sony users switching to Kobo. Just how much of an issue it is seems debatable, but then you can say that for any of the various issues that affect ereaders. Personally, I'd have more of a problem with the continual firmware tweaks that fix some issues, but ignore or introduce others. I also don't like the fact that using kepubs seems to help with page turns as I don't want to have to use another format, but here are Amazon doing the same thing with their font improvements.

I'm pretty sure that this is due to terrible eink drivers and not processing power constraints for hyphenation. The German brand tolino has had hyphenation since the beginning (a bit inaccurate but greatly improved, never worse than Kobo) and they have since improved page turns and are on par with Kindle.
Bottom line: hyphenation isn’t really an awfully intense processing task, and if it is in your case, you’re doing it wrong (and I think Amazon’s solution is really inelegant)...