Firmware 4.8.10956

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Just a curiosity: does Kobo distributes this FW to those devices?

They did, if you chose "beta" or "bestbuyca" as your affiliate it updated the Touch automatically over WiFi when synced. That's how I updated my Touch.

[Nemo1984]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I didn't remember, but I've gone through the files and checked all that I opted to use (I don't think I missed any). I was pretty much "going in blind," so I don't know if my choices made a lot of sense or not. Here's the list (I think it's complete) of all the patches I enabled.

In the libnickel.so.1.0.0 patch:
Custom font sizes
Freedom to advanced fonts control
ePub disable built-in body padding-bottom
Fix three KePub fullScreenReading bugs
Force user line spacing in KePubs
Force user line spacing in ePubs (part 1 of 2)
Force user font-family in ePubs (Part 1 of 2)
ePub constant font sharpness
KePub constant font sharpness

In the librmsdk.so.1.0.0 patch:
Disable orphans/widows avoidance
Force user line spacing in ePubs (Part 2 of 2)
Force user font-family in ePubs (Part 2 of 2)

In the nickel patch:
Disable reading footer

I have something similar, but with these:

patch_name = `Default ePub serif font (Georgia)`
patch_name = `Default ePub sans-serif font (Avenir)`
patch_name = `Default ePub symbol font (Symbol)`

It might effectively be some font missing in the older devices that causes blank epub.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by rcentros

They did, if you chose "beta" or "bestbuyca" as your affiliate it updated the Touch automatically over WiFi when synced. That's how I updated my Touch.

Ok,thanks.

[tea2]

I have a KA2 and it's behaving very weirdly with the fonts and I get the blank page, especially on a book that I recently purchased from Kobo with the blank-page flashing. It also keeps delaying switching between books on the main menu. So if I read one, close it, read another, it shows the old one for a long time and then suddenly switches over. It's very jerky and slow, with page-turn delays and menu-press delays. I am just reading on my phone (ick) until something new happens (unless I'm sitting outside).

[mayrain]

Originally Posted by tea2

I have a KA2 and it's behaving very weirdly with the fonts and I get the blank page, especially on a book that I recently purchased from Kobo with the blank-page flashing. It also keeps delaying switching between books on the main menu. So if I read one, close it, read another, it shows the old one for a long time and then suddenly switches over. It's very jerky and slow, with page-turn delays and menu-press delays. I am just reading on my phone (ick) until something new happens (unless I'm sitting outside).

I have also KA2 and I have unfortunately noticed similar behavior. Especially it seems that this behavior occurs in my case with books that have been bought from elsewhere than Kobo store. The books are in EPUBv2 format and have "Social DRM" in them (just watermark). These books crash the reader application, and the books occasionally show only a blank page when opened. A reattempt requires rebooting the device. In these books, editing the font family does not work, and font justification does not work either.

Kobo support said that it was not a reader issue, and the bookstore told me to use some other reader. I went debugging the issue a bit, but when unzipping the EPUB, I didn't find anything extraordinary rather than some exotic obfuscated fonts. I'm wondering also if the CSS definitions are preventing me from adjusting some of the font properties. I'm not sure where to continue from here, and if it's a reader issue or epub issue. What is also interesting about the issue was that my old Kobo Mini was able to show the books correctly, which is using older 3.19.x firmware.

Continuing to debug the issue later and checking out if I can find anything any tips are welcome!

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by mayrain

I have also KA2 and I have unfortunately noticed similar behavior. Especially it seems that this behavior occurs in my case with books that have been bought from elsewhere than Kobo store. The books are in EPUBv2 format and have "Social DRM" in them (just watermark). These books crash the reader application, and the books occasionally show only a blank page when opened. A reattempt requires rebooting the device. In these books, editing the font family does not work, and font justification does not work either.

Kobo support said that it was not a reader issue, and the bookstore told me to use some other reader. I went debugging the issue a bit, but when unzipping the EPUB, I didn't find anything extraordinary rather than some exotic obfuscated fonts. I'm wondering also if the CSS definitions are preventing me from adjusting some of the font properties. I'm not sure where to continue from here, and if it's a reader issue or epub issue. What is also interesting about the issue was that my old Kobo Mini was able to show the books correctly, which is using older 3.19.x firmware.

Continuing to debug the issue later and checking out if I can find anything any tips are welcome!

Does it still happen if you convert it to kepub?

[davidfor]

I was able to reproduce the blank page/99% problem with my Glo last night. In general, when it happened, I had the font set to "Publisher Default" and the book set the font to something as well. I was expecting this to mean there was an embedded font, but it seems it happens when the font family is set. For example, on of the books had this:

body {
    font-family: Palatino, Malabar, Merriweather, 'Droid Serif', serif;
}

The books that failed were all the epub versions of books purchased from Kobo. And I haven't done any clean-up of the code.

I did see the problem with Georgia selected as the font, but I'm pretty sure it was only happening after opening a few books quickly. There is probably some memory leaks involved that make it more likely as you go along.

And for people who are seeing this, how many books do you have on the device? Anyone seeing it with just a few books?

[GeoffR]

The problem wth ePubs going blank then closing when turning a page could be triggered on my Glo in earlier firmware versions by either of:
* Selecting "Kobo Tsukushi Mincho" from the Aa font menu
* Selecting "Kobo UD Kaguko" from the Aa font menu

In firmware version 4.8.10956 it can now also be triggered by either of:
* Selecting "Publisher default" from the Aa font menu.
* Reading a book where the publisher has forced the use of "serif" or "sans-serif" font families.

For those who are patching the firmware, the two patches to enable to fix the new problems in 4.8.10956 are:
* `Default ePub serif font (Georgia)` (in librmsdk.so.1.0.0.patch)
* `Default ePub sans-serif font (Avenir)` (in librmsdk.so.1.0.0.patch)

(Edit: The `Force user font-family in ePubs` patch might also solve the problem, because it prevents the publisher from selecting any fonts. But using it means embedded fonts won't work, and the whole book will be displayed in just the one font selected from the Aa menu.)

Originally Posted by davidfor

And for people who are seeing this, how many books do you have on the device? Anyone seeing it with just a few books?

My Glo has 1158 books (385 synced KePubs, 773 sideloaded ePubs) and currently 10 sideloaded fonts, database size is 105MB.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And for people who are seeing this, how many books do you have on the device? Anyone seeing it with just a few books?

When I originally upgraded, I had 29 books on my Kobo Touch, all but two of them were KePubs (this is were I locally store my Sony/Kobo library (such as it is -- now also on Calibre). All KePubs I tested worked fine with the new features. Both of the ePubs had the Constantia font embedded. I also have the Constantia font loaded on the Touch. The one book (longish with lots of footnotes) The Glories of Mary, is the one failed immediately. It originally came from Amazon (.mobi format) and was converted with Calibre to ePub. The other, On Fairy Stories, was originally an essay (short, 48 pages once converted to ePub) that I converted from PDF (from PDF to text, to LibreOffice .odt, to ePub via Calibre). This one -- more or less -- worked, although it was slow and would kick me out of the book if I tried changing fonts too many times. After discovering the ePub issues, I loaded The Hobbit (also moved over from the Kindle from AZW3 format (I think)) on to the Touch, and it failed completely. So then I loaded the patches, ePubs worked and I've added another Kindle -> ePub book (The Hunger Games Trilogy) and it works without issue. But I think one of the patch choices I made overrides the Publisher's Default, because if I go to Publisher's Default the font doesn't change. Which is fine with me as I always use Constantia anyhow and I've side-loaded the font.

I don't know if any of this helps, or just makes it all more confusing.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

The problem wth ePubs going blank then closing when turning a page could be triggered on my Glo in earlier firmware versions by either of:
* Selecting "Kobo Tsukushi Mincho" from the Aa font menu
* Selecting "Kobo UD Kaguko" from the Aa font menu

I can confirm this on my Kobo Touch. Selected Mincho in the Hunger Games Trilogy (which was working fine using Constantia) and it immediately triggered the bug. Returned to Constantia font and all is good again.

Originally Posted by GeoffR

For those who are patching the firmware, the two patches to enable to fix the new problems in 4.8.10956 are:
* `Default ePub serif font (Georgia)` (in librmsdk.so.1.0.0.patch)
* `Default ePub sans-serif font (Avenir)` (in librmsdk.so.1.0.0.patch)

Will add these patches tomorrow. Thank you.

So it was all a font issue? I'm guessing the "Force user font-family" patch is what is currently allowing my ePubs to work in this firmware release on my Kobo Touch?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by rcentros

So it was all a font issue? I'm guessing the "Force user font-family" patch is what is currently allowing my ePubs to work in this firmware release on my Kobo Touch?

Yes, the `Force user font-family in ePubs` patch should also work, but it has other effects too, such as preventing embedded fonts being used (even when "Publisher default" is selected.)

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Yes, the `Force user font-family in ePubs` patch should also work, but it has other effects too, such as preventing embedded fonts being used (even when "Publisher default" is selected.)

That's it then. I may "unpatch" that when enabling the font patches. Thanks.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by rcentros

So it was all a font issue? I'm guessing the "Force user font-family" patch is what is currently allowing my ePubs to work in this firmware release on my Kobo Touch?

It is only indirectly a font issue. The issue is memory. The devices are running out of memory when opening the books. The change to in the default font has triggered the problem because of the way the the Adobe RMSDK handles them. And because of their size. And that is why the problem is being been seen more on the Touch and Glo. These only have 256MB RAM vs the 512MB in the later devices.

For the record, this is the reason that Kobo pulled the update. But, it appears it was reported to them as a problem with books sideloaded from ADE. The issue is the limited memory on these device and how it is managed:

• The Adobe RMSDK is inefficient with how it handles the fonts.
• The number of books the device knows about does affect this as the metadata is loaded into memory rather than continuously reading the database. That limits the memory available for other purposes.
• Any embedded fonts take up more memory (needs these plus the fallback font for missing glyphs).
• Adobe DRM protected books were probably worse.
• Executables take up memory.

Of course, there are ways to handle this. An obvious one is to drop the memory used by the metadata when a book is opened. But, that would lead to the obvious complaint: "It takes ages to get back to the book list when I open a book". It is all a trade-off.

In any case, Kobo are working on this, but I don't have a idea of a release date. It is probably not to far out, but I wouldn't bet on it happening before the weekend. In the meantime, those who already have 4.8.10956 and don't see any problems shouldn't worry about it. For others, setting the default font to something other that Publisher Default or the two Kobo fonts will reduce the incidence of this occurring.

One thing I can I can't remember seeing mentioned is black covers. Another effect of this problem is that some sideloaded books can end up with black covers on the device. I have seen this on my Glo but hadn't connected the dots. This usually happens when a few books are sideloaded in a batch and the books that end up in the "My books" tile get black covers. The import process has to open each book to get the metadata and the covers are generated by rendering the first page of an epub. That is going to hit the memory issues and as a lot of things are happening quickly, it makes it worse.

[patrik]

Last night in bed I noticed a huge change in the strength of the light. Usually I read (in the dark) with the light with something like 10-17%.

But with this firmware I had to use the lowest possible (1%). Anything above say 7% lights up the room.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by patrik

Last night in bed I noticed a huge change in the strength of the light. Usually I read (in the dark) with the light with something like 10-17%.

But with this firmware I had to use the lowest possible (1%). Anything above say 7% lights up the room.

Oh, no! That doesn't make me happy at all! I always use 1% brightness in the evening already, when there are still lights on, and I'd prefer to have the setting lower than 1%... I can't read in the darkness as the Glo light is waaaay too bright. I hope the change in brightness is not for all devices...