Firmware 4.6.10075

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by drjd

Just upgraded my Glo from 4.6.9995 to 4.6.10075. It seems comparatively faster in page turns, highlighting the texts and dictionary lookups.

Same for my Aura HD. Especially highlighting is a lot faster and, what's even more important, far more precise, even on multi-line highlights, which always used to be hard to get right.

[Incanus]

Originally Posted by npr

The Mark5 update downloaded and installed in my Aura. Definitely feels faster.

I've a 2013 AURA and I've had little luck with upgrades lately: I do keep over 10.000 ebooks on my SD Card (with lots of help from Calibre, mind you) which most likely is the main reason for my time response problems on newer firmware.

How many books do you have on the Aura?

Do you use the main memory or an SD Card?

Awaiting your kind reply,

Incanus

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

The interface even gets in the way of the word you highlighted. (Random screenshot where I selected 手紙 (letter) and the interface covers the 紙 character)

As you can see from the screenshots, this doesn't happen on either my KA1 running FW 4.6.9995 or my original Aura running FW 3.19.5761.

I went to the same characters in the same passage of Harry Potter as you to test it out. The text boxes do not cover the selected characters for me. Instead, one of the toggles will slightly overlap one of the characters. However, the character is still easily recognizable and the toggle can be moved very easily as well.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

And to successfully select 手紙 in the first place, it starts you out with just 手 or just 紙 (or another character off), you have to move one of those pins (one of them also covers up part of the 手 character),

Only one character will be initially selected, and then you must move the toggles to select any other needed characters. Yes, that is the same for me on both devices. Not a huge problem for me. However, I find the KA1 on FW 4.6.9995 to be much more accurate than the Aura on FW 3.19.5761.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

and if you end up selecting 手紙を (one surplus character) dictionary comes up with nothing.

This is true if one is using the native Kobo Japanese dictionary. However, as you can see from the screenshots, if you use tshering's Japanese - English kanji dictionary (which I have renamed Deutsch - English dictionary for reasons listed in the thread on tshering's dictionaries), mistakenly selecting a surplus character does not interfere with obtaining the dictionary definition.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

Ruby/Furigana also completely gets in the way of the selection.

I haven't really found furigana to be much of an issue on either of my devices. The screenshot with 丁寧 (teinei) selected was from my Aura.

Overall, I find the Japanese reading experience to be pretty good on both my devices. There are periodically a few glitches. And the KA1 is definitely more accurate than the Aura. But perhaps the Aura would function better if I updated it to the latest FW. However, I am keeping it at its current FW 3.19.5761 because I was having issues with reading in Chinese on any later FW I tried.

Not really sure why your experience seems to be so much different. Which FW and device are you using?

[rashkae]

[Message Deleted, posted in wrong thread, sorry]

[davidfor]

Looks like this has been released to the Aura H2O. That makes it look like Kobo are releasing it to a new device each day. But, I don't expect it to be released to the other affiliates.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

Agree with you there. It also seems unable to recognize many inflected verbs.



That's not my experience on either my original Aura or my KA1. Most of the time, I find it pretty easy to move the toggles around to select a word or phrase. There are occasionally problems when a word/phrase spans two lines or two pages.

Perhaps my differing experience is because I tend to read in slightly larger font when reading in Japanese?

I can’t seem to get it to select what I want ever. Doesn’t really matter the font size. It’s pretty crap compared to what Amazon’s got which usually gets the right word, handles verb conguagtions and includes a good Jap->Eng dictionary. Oh and page numbers work. It doesn’t seem like page numbers in Japanese on eInk Kobos is a thing although they show up in the apps so I’m not sure what’s up with that.

I’ve ended up just using my Denshi Jisho when I want to look something up, Kobo’s is just too bad.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

I can’t seem to get it to select what I want ever. Doesn’t really matter the font size.

That's really weird because I would guess that you are using a KA1 from the device you have listed under your user info. I seldom have any problems selecting words or phrases on my KA1 except when the words/phrases span lines or pages.

On my original Aura it was surprisingly different. I hadn't used it for ages to read Japanese. At first, it was extremely frustrating to try and select specific text. But soon I got used to it again. Curiously, I found that it was easier to select text when I had the lookup dictionary set to one of tshering's Japanese - English dictionaries than when I had it set to Kobo's native Japanese dictionary. Not sure why that should be.

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

It’s pretty crap compared to what Amazon’s got which usually gets the right word, handles verb conguagtions and includes a good Jap->Eng dictionary.

Have never owned a Kindle so I can't speak to that. However, I am surprised that Kobo doesn't have a Japanese - English dictionary. Wrote them years ago requesting such a dictionary and saying that I would even be happy to pay to be able to install a decent one. I think there are a lot of people who would be willing to pay a little bit to be able to install particular dictionaries. Could be a lucrative revenue source for less in-demand language dictionaries.

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Oh and page numbers work. It doesn’t seem like page numbers in Japanese on eInk Kobos is a thing although they show up in the apps so I’m not sure what’s up with that.

Yeah, that is quite odd. Hadn't really noticed that until today when I left my current place in a book to take the screenshots in my previous post. Took a little bit of time to navigate back to where I had been reading before. A bit of a nuisance that.

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

I’ve ended up just using my Denshi Jisho when I want to look something up, Kobo’s is just too bad.

I usually have a tablet handy for searching for vocabulary which tshering's dictionaries don't pick up. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by how good tshering's dictionaries are.

[isaak]

Originally Posted by WiBu

Any 4.6.10075 update news about KA1?
Did anybody try it?

I have successfully installed (sideloaded) and patched my KA1 with this firmware.
No issues so far.
The red-green LED during charging has not been corrected.

[WiBu]

@isaak
Thanks for your info!

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

Yeah, that is quite odd. Hadn't really noticed that until today when I left my current place in a book to take the screenshots in my previous post. Took a little bit of time to navigate back to where I had been reading before. A bit of a nuisance that.

That's sounds a bit like the oddity of the KEPUB format which, for the strangest reason, needs special span tag markers all over the book for it to be able to remember the reading positions. If you simply take a regular ebook and just rename it to .epub.kepub, reading progress won't work.

However last time I tried (years ago by now, I'm sure) the KEPUB converter couldn't handle Japanese particularly well either so I just ... did it myself by adding an empty <span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.123.1"></span> with incrementing numbers at the start of each paragraph.

With that you can go in and out of the book and not be kicked back to the start of the entire book or the current chapter you're reading; it starts you right at the very same page you left it as it should.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

That's sounds a bit like the oddity of the KEPUB format which, for the strangest reason, needs special span tag markers all over the book for it to be able to remember the reading positions. If you simply take a regular ebook and just rename it to .epub.kepub, reading progress won't work.

However last time I tried (years ago by now, I'm sure) the KEPUB converter couldn't handle Japanese particularly well either so I just ... did it myself by adding an empty <span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.123.1"></span> with incrementing numbers at the start of each paragraph.

With that you can go in and out of the book and not be kicked back to the start of the entire book or the current chapter you're reading; it starts you right at the very same page you left it as it should.

Nah, it remembers locations fine. It always opens to the same spot I left it in. There's just literally no page numbers for any book in Japanese. It's always percent. But again the apps have page numbers which makes it even weirder. Doesn't matter if you sideload KEPUBs or download them straight from Kobo you get no page numbers.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Nah, it remembers locations fine. It always opens to the same spot I left it in. There's just literally no page numbers for any book in Japanese. It's always percent. But again the apps have page numbers which makes it even weirder. Doesn't matter if you sideload KEPUBs or download them straight from Kobo you get no page numbers.

Yup, that's my experience as well. It always remembers my exact location in the book no matter how many times I open and close it.

The problem is when you want to navigate around within the book. Without page numbers, you can't tell it to jump right back to a given location. And with very large books, a percentage is just a bit too fuzzy for rapidly refinding your place after browsing elsewhere in the book.

I wonder if this lack of page numbers is just for Japanese books or does it also affect other books which employ a language with a vertical orientation?

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

That's sounds a bit like the oddity of the KEPUB format which, for the strangest reason, needs special span tag markers all over the book for it to be able to remember the reading positions. If you simply take a regular ebook and just rename it to .epub.kepub, reading progress won't work.

However last time I tried (years ago by now, I'm sure) the KEPUB converter couldn't handle Japanese particularly well either so I just ... did it myself by adding an empty <span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.123.1"></span> with incrementing numbers at the start of each paragraph.

With that you can go in and out of the book and not be kicked back to the start of the entire book or the current chapter you're reading; it starts you right at the very same page you left it as it should.

I would be happy to try and add Japanese support to my kepubify tool if someone gives me a few regexes for sentence boundaries.

[DrChiper]

Upgraded my Aura edition 2 to 4.6.10075 and it seems to work without a problem. However, did not noticed any speed improvements / degradation compared to 4.6.9995. It is/was sufficient quick.

I did noticed though that the right margin is now equivalent to the left margin: the extra right border pixels (noticeable when using the inverted screen setting) are now missing. This is nice

Could not notice further improvements, other than an updated user manual.

[Phyllis41]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Same for my Aura HD. Especially highlighting is a lot faster and, what's even more important, far more precise, even on multi-line highlights, which always used to be hard to get right.

I too feel so on my Kobo H2O. Or is it a visual illusion for me?