Kindle Paperwhite 2-Voyage Software Update 5.6.5

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by ssholloway

The text was obfuscated so I couldn't tell if the entire book was included. No graphics that I could see. I believe KFX obfuscated text is being discussed in a thread in the Kindle Formats forum.

Was t actually a book? Did it open as a book, on the device?

This is odd enough that I would suspect it of being a malformed download of some sort...

[cerem0ny]

Cmon Amazon - update the Android app with the new engine!

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by cerem0ny

Cmon Amazon - update the Android app with the new engine!

And PC and Mac, and update all Personal Documents as well!

[HarryT]

No, we don't want K4PC/Mac to be updated to use KFX files. Not yet, anyway!

[SCION]

Originally Posted by cerem0ny

Cmon Amazon - update the Android app with the new engine!

Seriously!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

And PC and Mac, and update all Personal Documents as well!

NEVER! We don't want KFX added to the Windows & MAC versions.

[barryem]

I think it's a safe bet that the Windows and Android and IOS apps will all get the new engine in time. Hopefully before that happens Calibre developers will make sure it can handle that so we can keep backing up our books.

I prefer not to lose formatting but I read e-books for a lot of years that were in plain text back in the days when that's all there was, and things like italics were rarely missed. I agree that it's a lot better to have them but they aren't essential.

Barry

[ssholloway]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Was t actually a book? Did it open as a book, on the device?

This is odd enough that I would suspect it of being a malformed download of some sort...

I hadn't tried transferring the text file to my PW2 but when I did, it doesn't show up at all. Not as a book nor as a document. I'd also think it was a malformed download except that I've re-downloaded this particular book several times with the same result.

To further muddy the water, I now have a couple of Overdrive library books on my PW2 that were wirelessly delivered as KTF books through Amazon. So I tried test downloads on them and got azw files. The only thing I noticed is that the library books were published in 2003 and 2007 so their original format was probably mobi/azw while the book corresponding to the text file was just published in June so it's original format may have been KFX. To test this theory, I bought a book published last week and it was delivered to my PW2 as KTF but when I downloaded it, I got an azw file. And yet another book, published last month, was delivered to the PW2 as azw but downloaded as an obfuscated text file. So much for that theory.

I'm out of ideas at this point.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, we don't want K4PC/Mac to be updated to use KFX files. Not yet, anyway!

Yes we do...

[HarryT]

Those of us who manage our ebook libraries with Calibre and rely on it for format conversion don't.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by ssholloway

... I'd also think it was a malformed download except that I've re-downloaded this particular book several times with the same result.

Have you tried different browsers? Maybe Chrome? The Apple discussion posted by jhowell in post #403 suggests it might be a Mac OS browser issue rather than a KFX issue.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by barryem

I think it's a safe bet that the Windows and Android and IOS apps will all get the new engine in time. ...

The Kindle iOS app has supported enhanced typesetting (KFX) since May. It had it before the e-ink Kindles.

Version 4.9 Posted May 21, 2015
At Amazon, we've been hard at work to make reading on Kindle even better and more enjoyable. Several exciting improvements offer faster reading with less eye strain. Available today on hundreds of thousands of books, and coming soon to all Kindle books.

Faster Reading, Less Eye Strain
Hyphenation plus smoother word spacing result in faster reading with less eye strain. Improved character placement increases word recognition speed at any font size.

Beautiful Page Layout
Drop caps, text, and images that automatically adapt to always look great no matter what your screen or font size. Print-like layout dynamically adjusts for any combination of screen size and font setting.

Large Fonts, Without Compromises
Enjoy reading with larger font sizes without compromising your reading experience. Page layout and margins automatically adapt to look great with even the largest font sizes.

Bookerly - The Font for Readers
Bookerly is a new Kindle exclusive font designed for reading on digital screens. Warm and contemporary, Bookerly is inspired by the artistry of the best fonts in modern print books but is hand-crafted for optimal readability at any screen size. Bookerly is available on most Kindle
books.

Kindle now makes it more convenient for listeners to start or pause audiobooks with playback controls in the Library.

Also note the claim: "coming soon to all Kindle books"

[ssholloway]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Have you tried different browsers? Maybe Chrome? The Apple discussion posted by jhowell in post #403 suggests it might be a Mac OS browser issue rather than a KFX issue.

Hooray! Tried downloading the problem book with Chrome and it gave me an azw3 file. I had seen post #403 but forgot to check out the discussion thread it pointed to. Sorry for taking everyone's time with a problem that wasn't actually one.

[ssholloway]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I doubt that this has anything to do with KFX. There have been similar reports from MAC users going back years. For example: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6154180?tstart=0

Mac Safari was the problem.

[charleski]

It's been stated here (and elsewhere) that the kerning function of the new firmware doesn't apply to sideloaded AZW3 books no matter what you do. As I will show, this is not really true, though it turns out that you probably don't want it on your AZW3 books.

All these examples were produced from a Kindle Paperwhite 3 running FW 5.6.5. The books were created as epubs in Sigil, imported into Calibre and converted to AZW3 then loaded to the Kindle by USB.

I started by asking whether kerning works on embedded fonts, since those can be manipulated. I altered Fontin, a free font, so that the kerning between A and V was either elminated or greatly enlarged. On desktop ADE2 the resulting ePub looks like this:

On the Kindle, however, the kerning is completely disregarded:

This is true whether or not the font file contains the obsolete 'old style' kerning table or whether the contours are CFF or TrueType.

So far, so bad, but then I thought of adding a text-rendering statement to the css. To my surprise, optimizeLegibility worked, but only on an additional pair I'd added that was not using the embedded font. I had to switch to Bookerly (it turns out that Palatino and Futura also seem to display kerning), and it seemed inconsistent.

So I added another page carrying a set of examples of kerning pairs with large offsets that should be readily visible. The result is shown below. Bizarrely, kerning only works some of the time. The Bookerly font from Dalston-Maag has a huge number of occupied codepoints, and over 167,000 kerning pairs broken into a number of tables, but this inconsistency carried over to pairs from the same table as well (A-W kerns, but A-V does not).

[Image violates Posting Guidelines for size - MODERATOR]

Unfortunately, embedding the Bookerly font doesn't carry the same capability. I extracted the Bookerly font from the update package and embedded it using a different family name, and the pairs weren't kerned (I removed the Bookerly font from the attached ePub, but anyone interested can insert it back in to see).

The 'auto' and default property appears the same as 'optimizeSpeed' and 'optimizeLegibility' and 'geometricPrecision' have the same effect on kerning. Note the fubarred diacritics on the polytonic Greek Alpha near the bottom, this seems to be a bug in the font, as I see the same mess in ADE. I suspect Amazon paid DM quite a lot for their new font, and they need to go back and tell them to sort this out. (If you open the ePub in calibre's editor you'll also note that the pair that includes an Alpha with iota adscript is changed to use a capital iota, which suggests something is going on with the substitution script as well.)

So, enabling kerning requires turning on 'optimizeLegibility' in the css. The problem is that both 'optimizeLegibility' and 'geometricPrecision' are a disaster on the Kindle. The Kindle's main advantage is its snappy navigation, and that goes out the window as soon as you change the text rendering property. There's a significant pause as each new chapter file loads, and while page flips remain fairly fast for the first 6-8 pages, you'll suddenly encounter a prolonged pause and a full page refresh - it's the bad old days of eInk readers back with a vengeance.

What's worse, the Kindle's justification engine curls up its toes and pines for the fjords. Everything appears ragged-right, except for lines containing italics that should be justified (the book shown has text-align: justify in the body css):

And there are other weird features:


I've attached the ePub used to do these tests so people can look inside and play around with it. Just convert to AZW3 in calibre to see it on your Kindle.