Aura ONE Kobo Aura One owners thread

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by Akbar

It seems that Aura One screen is not significantly bigger, nor much better (brightness, contrast etc) than that of H2O. And as some people say, neither the screen refresh rate is any faster on the One than on the H2O. If I have a 6" e-reader, I would have welcomed the significant increase in screen size. But having a H2O, for me it is really difficult to justify buying it.

Hmph, fair enough, for me though, anything that makes my reading experience a little bit better is a must have purchase. Lifes too short to waste on ugl(ier) looking books!

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by rashkae

There is no doubt that this was the finest reader I've used, in terms of screen and display. But once again, glitchiness with the user interface have frustrated me beyond tolerance, and I'm sadly forced to shelve it. (Sadly, because this was above my disposable toy budget.) Maybe next year. But a large part of me hopes I've learned my lesson when it comes to buying Kobo devices.

That's a shame. I was pretty amazed with the ergonomics of the Kindle Oasis but that screen was just too awful. At least with the Kobo it's mostly software issues that bother me, which can be easily updated with firmware updates so im happy to hold onto it.

I know its been something like decades but I would really like the luxury of exporting my favourite quotes out of the book! I delete books as soon as im done (which on my H2o made it a lot faster so no options there) and the highlighting is a bit of a sloppy mess too. The software is quite a ways off from being as zippy as the Kindle. Page turns are slow and sometimes unresponsive, and hitting certain buttons always hits a button a little way off from the actual button you press?

And Amen to the Comfortlight Pro, somebody mentioned that it 'wasnt a gimmick' and makes me wonder how I used to read on all those hideous blue-light screens previously! Blegh!

[sparklemotion]

Originally Posted by robertpolson

Long-term Kindle user. Any tips on highlighting text? Compared to year of Kindle experience, Kobo highlighting technology sucks to the point where I may even return it.

The only tip I can offer is that on my H2O I put my finger slightly above the text I want to highlight. It's definitely not as precise or zippy as it is on kindles, but doing it that way works fine for me.

[bsabiston]

Hello,
I just got a Kobo Aura One -- have always had Kindles and upgraded every year, but I've been frustrated that they stubbornly stick with that tiny six inch screen. So I was excited about the Aura One.

So far, it seems pretty cool. But I downloaded a book preview to see what reading is like -- and the freaking text only fills a relatively small rectangle in the middle of the huge screen! WTF is up with that? It's about the same size as the Kindle I am replacing. What the hell is the point of boasting this large screen if you aren't even going to use it to fill with text. That is the most harebrained thing I have ever seen.

Is there a setting to have it fill the entire screen with text?
Also was not too happy that there was no light to indicate charging when it was first charging up when the power was off. I had to leave it on the whole time just to be able to tell it was charging.

EDIT: I did find a way to change the margins, and that improved things. Also I think the book I was looking at had a weird formatting built into it. I looked at another book and it wasn't so bad. So things are not as dire as they seemed, I overreacted a bit.

Thanks
Bob

[Canuck_in_Japan]

There is a "hack" if you're willing to use a text editor to add a line of text which will allow you to remove the header and footers which will fill the screen even more.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Well, I'm giving up trying to get the full screen view with KEPUBs fixed. However, when using EPUBs, that do work with the full screen view, features such as Time To Read, and chapter length previews and such stop working. There is no way to see where you are in the book, except when calling up the menu and then looking at the table of contents tab.

Normal EPUB view is not an option: it wastes 2cm of space on the bottom of the screen to show you the page number and the page looks highly unbalanced.

edit... what the hell... I'm paging through a few EPUBs, and sometimes, half the screen is just blank. Is that *STILL* the age-old bug that needs "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0}" set in the EPUB? Damn. I can't believe that. A screen as big as the size of a desert, and you have to *still* go through hoops and loads of undocumented stuff to get it to be used.

Now it comes down to:
- Use KEPUBs in normal mode, with header and footer, but with reading progress
- Use EPUBs in full screen mode, hoping the orphan/widow CSS fixes the blank bottom of the page bug so you can use the entire screen but losing reading progress functions
- Use KEPUBs in full screen mode and live with cut-off fonts.

edit: an orphans/widows addition completely destroys the rendering of the EPUBs I've tested. At this point, the best balance between screen usage, a balanced page, and functionality is to use KEPUB in the normal (header+footer) rendering mode. Any other mode has very annoying problems. EPUB is usable in full screen mode, but each page has a random blank part on the bottom, of 0 lines to half a screen. In normal mode, 2cm of the bottom of the screen is used for showing the page number, which costs you like 4-5 lines text.

I think Kobo should really get their act together with regard to rendering files and offer an official option to turn headers and footers off.

If changing the orphans and widows broke the rendering of the epub, then you made a mistake. Odds are you broke the stylesheet. If there is an error in the stylesheet, then the epub renderer will completely ignore the stylesheet. Which means the epubs will revert to defaults for all styles.

As to whether Kobo should be respecting the styles in the book and using the published defaults where the styles and attributes are not specified in the book, I'll leave for an argument elsewhere.

But, I would suggest using 1 for the the widows and orphans. The CSS specs do not allow 0, so it is unpredictable what will happen.

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by bsabiston

So far, it seems pretty cool. But I downloaded a book preview to see what reading is like -- and the freaking text only fills a relatively small rectangle in the middle of the huge screen! WTF is up with that? It's about the same size as the Kindle I am replacing. What the hell is the point of boasting this large screen if you aren't even going to use it to fill with text. That is the most harebrained thing I have ever seen.

Is there a setting to have it fill the entire screen with text?
Also was not too happy that there was no light to indicate charging when it was first charging up when the power was off. I had to leave it on the whole time just to be able to tell it was charging.

EDIT: I did find a way to change the margins, and that improved things. Also I think the book I was looking at had a weird formatting built into it. I looked at another book and it wasn't so bad. So things are not as dire as they seemed, I overreacted a bit.

Thanks
Bob

I have noticed this too, particularly with new books, the formatting is done in such a way that it looks like it should fit nicely on a six inch reader... though to be honest I kind of liked the feel of the extra margins!!!

Most of the faults of the ka1 lie in the software which I imagine will be updated with software updates... in about six months time, if we're lucky!

[mathil]

Originally Posted by robertpolson

Long-term Kindle user. Any tips on highlighting text? Compared to year of Kindle experience, Kobo highlighting technology sucks to the point where I may even return it.

In my experience, doing it until you get used to it.
What happened to me was the opposite - I'd been using exclusively Kobo devices for years when I bought a Kindle Paperwhite 3 in Japan to use exclusively with Japanese books. I already had an account with Amazon.co.jp and it was on sale for 50% off, so I just figured that with everything I'd always read here on the Kindle, its interface, the dictionary, the highlighting being better (and I was going to do lots of it, considering I'm still studying Japanese) I could give it a try. Well, for the first few weeks I was about to either return it or throw it out of the window - I had great trouble highlighting stuff. It would highlight the entire sentence instead of a single word, the arrows wouldn't stop where I wanted them to and the highlighted part would just disappear when I was trying to fix that. Not to mention accuracy issues, absurd to me considering that I kept the Kindle's font at almost double the size (comparatively) and with a bigger line-spacing than what I normally use on my H2O, plus it was capacitive.
It got way better over the course of a few weeks as I figured out how to use it. Different manufacturer, different system I guess. I can now use the Kindle with ease, more or less, now that I figured out how it responds. Still can't use it as precisely as I can use the Kobo, but I figure that will come with time.
(I use KEPUBs, all sideloaded through Calibre. I've never used the Adobe renderer, I only know from reading here that it's supposed to be worse.)

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by Akbar

It seems that Aura One screen is not significantly bigger, nor much better (brightness, contrast etc) than that of H2O. And as some people say, neither the screen refresh rate is any faster on the One than on the H2O. If I have a 6" e-reader, I would have welcomed the significant increase in screen size. But having a H2O, for me it is really difficult to justify buying it.

Light at 100%, same font size (except 5th photo), same line spacing, same margin

From left to right:
* book page, default type: 3 1/2 more lines
* pdf full page and pdf full page width: I can read it at length with the One, I gave up long ago with the H2O
* tile pages: the tiles are bigger, easier to choose from - same on Home page
* poetry: font size reduced on the H2O to have same line width/page content. This is an extreme example, and I would read it on the One with a slightly bigger font, but even with much shorter lines, poetry looks much better on the One.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by davidfor

If changing the orphans and widows broke the rendering of the epub, then you made a mistake.

Hey. I never make mistakes. I just hadn't finished typing.

()

Odds are you broke the stylesheet. If there is an error in the stylesheet, then the epub renderer will completely ignore the stylesheet. Which means the epubs will revert to defaults for all styles.

I assume that

body { widows: 0 !important; orphans: 0 !important; }

is correct? There is a big chance that I put a ; where a : should have been, or the other way around, or wrote a 1 instead of ! without seeing it. It sometimes happens because of my poor eyesight. A compiler immediately complains, but a plain text-editor doesn't.

But, I would suggest using 1 for the the widows and orphans. The CSS specs do not allow 0, so it is unpredictable what will happen.

I did use 0. I'll try 1 as well.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I actually like the natural light in auto mode....

Except if it's close to the indicated bedtime. Then the screen becomes really orange, especially if not looking straight at it. I think I'll set and leave the Natural Light setting to around 60% for a warm white.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Barty

Has anyone tried contacting kobo about this?

Seems like people have been complaining about this and the widow orphan bug forever.

I think Kobo doesn't care about it because most people don't seem to care.

I've set up an e-reader for something like two dozen (older) people over the years. Most of them get their books on their readers trough one of their children, or through me; then they stop by with a list of books they want. I buy those for them, using their own Kobo/Amazon account (but my own payment details), and then I sync the reader. They reimburse me for the books. I download the books and put them into a separate Calibre library as a backup.

These people just read whatever layout Kobo/Amazon provides.

Most people I have seen that use tablets, phones, or the cheapest e-reader in town use them as a means to read as cheap as possible: i.e., by pirating books. If you see the layout of what they read, your eyes start to bleed and your brain recoils in horror. Widows/orphans, half a letter cut-off on the right, or even half a blank page now and again are trivial matters; they're not even regarded as problems.

If all the text is there, then it's good enough.

I think, only readers that became used to reading pretty hard cover books that are printed and typeset perfectly get worked up over things like widows/orphans, or a few lost lines on a page.

To be honest, the default Kobo KEPUB layout is quite pretty, with the title on top of the page and the progress on the bottom. If you look closely at the comparison pictures I've posted, you'll see that the paperback has "Philip Athans" on the top of the left page and "Baldur's Gate" on the top of the right (all of them), and it uses quite a big space to display the page number.

I also have hard covers that are set up like this, and even have a margin of 2cm all around (my Dutch copy of Lord of the Rings, for example). I have no problem with it. The only reason why I have a problem with it on an e-reader is because the screens are already smaller than what a hard cover provides (and in the case of a 6 inch reader, even smaller than a paperback), so I consider it foolish to use big spaces of it for titles and page numbers.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Hey. I never make mistakes. I just hadn't finished typing.

()

I'll have to try that one on my boss

I assume that



is correct? There is a big chance that I put a ; where a : should have been, or the other way around, or wrote a 1 instead of ! without seeing it. It sometimes happens because of my poor eyesight. A compiler immediately complains, but a plain text-editor doesn't.

Either of those would do it. The epub renderer is very strict on errors. Anything wrong will mean the stylesheet isn't used. And the same can happen with the tags. Getting tag nesting wrong can make a book disappear.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Barty

Has anyone tried contacting kobo about this?

Seems like people have been complaining about this and the widow orphan bug forever.

What bug? The epub render handles widows and orphans correctly. If they are specified, they are respected. If they are not specified, the published default values are used.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I know... if you can find a book that works with the full screen option, or you'll lose about 1,5cm of screen real estate at both the top and bottom. I'm trying to find a way to permanently fix the problem... but it's harder than first imagined. The old css don't work reliably.

What is this full screen option? I don't have a title above my books (only a page number or rather percentage read at the bottom) and I don't have a lot of whitespace at the top margin (my top, left and right margins are the same). I think it's about 3 to 5mm (I don't like it closer).

[djazz]

Originally Posted by davidfor

What bug? The epub render handles widows and orphans correctly. If they are specified, they are respected. If they are not specified, the published default values are used.

The EPUB renderer handles widows/orphans and page-break css properties correctly, but the KEPUB renderer does not support them at all so they are ignored.
https://github.com/kobolabs/epub-spe...ment-226116264

You can report new issues here.