How good are Kobos for pure sideload

[radius]

What I mean by this is:

- regular epub books loaded through file transfer instead of Kobo's desktop app (and only regular epub, not kepub)
- my personal favourite set of fonts (because I don't like any of the stock ones all that much)
- will keep wifi off as much as possible and therefore not sync with bookshelf in the cloud; but might use web browser to download books from my personal cloud server in reading emergencies

I get the sense from following the forum that I will lose capabilities if I use a Kobo in this way, but it isn't clear to me exactly which ones.

For example, I believe I will lose:

- advanced font display options (but keep line spacing and margin options?)
- text layout slightly less advanced with epubs versus kepubs (will I get kerning, ligatures and hyphenation? )
- extra metadata provided by Beyond the Book
- collections/tags/bookshelves? I can't remember if I can create and populate these solely on device versus using the application or Calibre

Is that right? Anything I missed? To me, the main selling point of Kobos is the convenience of finely graduated font sizing on device so without that I'm not sure what else I would like better on Kobo.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by radius

What I mean by this is:

- regular epub books loaded through file transfer instead of Kobo's desktop app (and only regular epub, not kepub)
- my personal favourite set of fonts (because I don't like any of the stock ones all that much)
- will keep wifi off as much as possible and therefore not sync with bookshelf in the cloud; but might use web browser to download books from my personal cloud server in reading emergencies

I get the sense from following the forum that I will lose capabilities if I use a Kobo in this way, but it isn't clear to me exactly which ones.

For example, I believe I will lose:

- advanced font display options (but keep line spacing and margin options?)
- text layout slightly less advanced with epubs versus kepubs (will I get kerning, ligatures and hyphenation? )
- extra metadata provided by Beyond the Book
- collections/tags/bookshelves? I can't remember if I can create and populate these solely on device versus using the application or Calibre

Is that right? Anything I missed? To me, the main selling point of Kobos is the convenience of finely graduated font sizing on device so without that I'm not sure what else I would like better on Kobo.

Sounds about right. I only side-load, but I do use Calibre for that (so collections are available). I have turned on my wifi once per device (first the H2O, then the One), I only found out about that desktop application after I had my H2O for a year, and I use my own font (same reason as you).

At the font bit, the only thing you miss is making the font heavier. You can set margins and line spacing.
I have hyphenation, not exactly sure what you mean with kerning and ligatures though (and too lazy to look it up).
Don't know what that "Beyond the Book" is, so I can't comment on that.
Again, collections I have, because I do use Calibre.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Sounds about right.

Sound about wrong.

Side load ePub and you get kerning & ligatures if the font in use has them. You get hyphenation though you an load a better hyphenation dictionary to get better hyphenation. As to if the line spacing and margin controls work depends on how the ePub is coded. most will work. With Calibre, you get very good collection control. You even get series and the description (as long as you have the description in the book's entry in Calibre).

You can load your own fonts and are able to adjust the weight of truetype fonts as long as you have patched the firmware and turned on the Advanced Font Control patch.

If the ePub has no DRM or you've stripped the DRM, you can use Calibre's editor to tweak the ePub as you want.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by radius

For example, I believe I will lose:

- advanced font display options (but keep line spacing and margin options?)
- text layout slightly less advanced with epubs versus kepubs (will I get kerning, ligatures and hyphenation? )
- extra metadata provided by Beyond the Book
- collections/tags/bookshelves? I can't remember if I can create and populate these solely on device versus using the application or Calibre

The only one of those you lose with sideloading is the "Beyond The Book" info, and most books don't have that anyway.

Advanced font options work the same in ePub and KePub, except that the KePub reader has a bug that shows up at very narrow line spacings, whereas ePubs work perfectly at all line spacings. Edit: And the adjustable weight/sharpness works for both OTF and TTF fonts in KePubs, but only for TTF fonts in ePubs. Most of the built-in fonts are TTF. It makes no difference whether the books are siideloaded, just whether the fonts are sideloaded.

ePub text layout is more sophisticated than KePub: The ePub reader supports OpenType kerning and ligatures, and has better hyphenation and justification algorithms. The KePub reader supports "old-style" kerning (which most fonts don't have, but you can add yourself using fontforge) but not ligatures. Edit: But the KePub reader supports hyphention of left-justified text, the ePub reader only hyphenates fully-justified text.

I don't use collections, but I think they are the same for ePub and kePub, you can manage them on the device or using Calibre. The only difference is that sideloaded books don't sync their collection status to the Kobo server.

[Stevex]

I use exclusively side-loading epubs via Calibre.
The only thing I realise doesnt work so well is footnotes.
As already stated I tidy up everything in Calibre or sometimes Sigil first and everything looks and hyphenates etc the way I want it. The Kobo is a very open device and I do not use a fraction of what it can do in my impression.

[GeoffR]

Actually I'm not sure whether "Beyond The Book" info is supported at all anymore, even in books synced fom Kobo. All the books I've read lately just show a list of related books when I tap the BTB icon. In the past some publishers made a half-hearted effort to include something relevant to the current book such as maps or photos of locations in the book, but I haven't seen anything like that for a while.

[ZodWallop]

I only sideload to my Kobo. I never use the desktop program, have not bought a book from them and now have my wi-fi turned off. As you can see, I'm their most valuable customer

Advanced font control can be enabled for side-loaded fonts with a patch. As mentioned though, advanced mainly has to do with the weighting of fonts. Font size, line spacing and margins are available whether you patch or not.

I think Beyond the Book only works on books purchased from Kobo. I've never used it. I use Calbre to manage my metadata and collections.

[rashkae]

Line spacing will not work on many books, but that depends on the book code. The Epub reader doesn't override line-height in the epub's css, but if you remove any unwated linespacing from the book, then the slider works perfectly. You don't get footnote preview, that is to say, if you press a footnote link, you will be taken to that page instead of a pop up window. However, actually getting the footnote link without triggering page turn can be very difficult. Images/pictures will not have zoom capability. Performance on page turns is greatly reduced. This won't really no noticeable in regular reading unless the pages are graphic heavy, but is *very* noticeable if your trying to flip pages.

As of recent firmwares, search in book does not work well in some epubs. What triggers this problem is still unknown.

On the plus side, there is no header with book title on Epubs, so you gain more screen space. There is no need for patches for the hidden "Remove Header and Footer" option to work properly, so you can gain even more screen real estate easily. You will be able to display progress bar and page numbers for the entire book, and the Kobo will be able to track them properly, even if the book doesn't have a TOC (Table of Contents) specially formatted to be compatible with Kepub. Honestly, if it wasn't for the Search now being broken, I would be using Epub instead of Kepub for my reading now. (Albeit, I would have to shrink the High Def pictures in some of my books. The Kobo Epub reader is just too slow at handling images larger than the the Kobo Screen.)

[Blossom]

If you enable the override font patch that Geoff made. All sideloaded epubs will use your font even if the publisher specifies another font.

Sent from my XT1528

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Actually I'm not sure whether "Beyond The Book" info is supported at all anymore, even in books synced fom Kobo. All the books I've read lately just show a list of related books when I tap the BTB icon. In the past some publishers made a half-hearted effort to include something relevant to the current book such as maps or photos of locations in the book, but I haven't seen anything like that for a while.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think Beyond the Book only works on books purchased from Kobo. I've never used it.

Yes, Beyond the Book only worked on purchased kepubs, but it was dropped at least two years ago. The only part left is the related books function.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by rashkae

The Epub reader doesn't override line-height in the epub's css, but if you remove any unwated linespacing from the book, then the slider works perfectly.

How would I go about doing this? The line spacing problem has kept me from adopting the Kobo as my main eInk reader.

[rashkae]

As a quick and dirty, you an convert epub to epub in Calibre. In the Look and Feel options, Styling tab, put "line-height" in the Other CSS Properties box.

Also of note, a patch to force user line spacing is included with the community patches. They are full of good tweaks.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

How would I go about doing this? The line spacing problem has kept me from adopting the Kobo as my main eInk reader.

Isn't there a patch for this that's overrides line spacing in a epub?

Sent from my Nexus 7

[radius]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. This is exactly what I wanted to know, and takes away any barriers for trying a Kobo.

(I'm a Sigil + filesystem metadata guy instead of Calibre, so maybe I just liked to always walk uphill haha)

[PeterT]

There is a hack in the developers forum called AutoShelf that assigns books to collections based on the directory that they are stored in.