Clara HD Do you prefer EPUB or KEPUB?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

Okay thanks I tried it but it doesn't look the same. See attached pic.

No header and large footer. Highly asymmetric. Yuck!

So it is all about these orphans and widows and not the footer. Well I just don't see it on kepub and since it is easier to buy and sync ebooks in that format, and what I said about epubs looking awful on my devices still stands.

Yes, it isn't a problem with the footer, it is how the book is rendered on the page.

Thanks for showing me not to waste anymore time with epub, even if that wasn't your intent. I don't want to put alot of work in monkeying around with patching and editing css style files just to make it look as beautiful as kepub already does.

Strangely enough the problem is that the epub renderer is fairly faithful to the epub specs. And those specs set the defaults widows and orphans to 2. That means the text is pushed to the next page in situations like this (there will be 2 or three lines of that paragraph on the next screen). This is one of the places where the specs are bad.

For kepubs, Kobo can do whatever they want. They own the format and whatever they decide is correct. In this case, they have decided to ignore any widows and orphans and just fill the page.

This is easy to fix by editing the CSS in the books. Or, if you use calibre, you can configure the driver to tweak the CSS during the send. But, if you like kepubs otherwise, then stick with that.

[mathil]

Yes, I would say that KEPUB is for those people who can deal with a minor lapse in typographic quality in exchange of saved time and effort. I imagine there are plenty of long-time eReader users here who know how to tweak epubs to their liking, but most people don't care, don't know how to, or don't want to use their time to make their ebooks readable. The KEPUB format generally takes care of that with minimum effort, and if one really doesn't like the footer/header, there are always the patches (who are, again, very easy and quick to implement, and something that only needs to be done once per firmware update).

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

Okay thanks I tried it but it doesn't look the same. See attached pic.

No header and large footer. Highly asymmetric. Yuck!

So it is all about these orphans and widows and not the footer. Well I just don't see it on kepub and since it is easier to buy and sync ebooks in that format, and what I said about epubs looking awful on my devices still stands.

Thanks for showing me not to waste anymore time with epub, even if that wasn't your intent. I don't want to put alot of work in monkeying around with patching and editing css style files just to make it look as beautiful as kepub already does.

And when I loaded the same 2 books as kepubs, it was hideous to me . The top of the topmost line of text was cut off, and the last line of text on a page was just the top of some letters, couldn't even tell what the text was. If I fiddled with adjusting the font size long enough, I could get that to mostly disappear, but to me that's worse than just simply patching and sticking with epubs. I also really dislike the header on every page with kepubs, and don't care about reading stats at all.

But you've found your perfect fit, so stick with kepubs. I really wasn't trying to sway you to epubs, just showing you that epubs do format very nicely on the Kobo readers.

Be glad Kobo gives us the choice to read the way each of us wants!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

And when I loaded the same 2 books as kepubs, it was hideous to me . The top of the topmost line of text was cut off, and the last line of text on a page was just the top of some letters, couldn't even tell what the text was. If I fiddled with adjusting the font size long enough, I could get that to mostly disappear, but to me that's worse than just simply patching and sticking with epubs. I also really dislike the header on every page with kepubs, and don't care about reading stats at all.

I see it occasionally but usually just the top of the risers at the bottom of the page or bottom of the descenders at the top. From what I can see, it is a problem with an embedded font. I assume some setting in the font is not correct to set the line spacing or height or something. I've never been bothered enough to look more, I just change the font.

And nearly every time I have seen this, the problem is with a Charis font or one derived from it.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I see it occasionally but usually just the top of the risers at the bottom of the page or bottom of the descenders at the top. From what I can see, it is a problem with an embedded font. I assume some setting in the font is not correct to set the line spacing or height or something. I've never been bothered enough to look more, I just change the font.

And nearly every time I have seen this, the problem is with a Charis font or one derived from it.

I believe it can happen with any font, embedded or sideloaded. Increasing the line spacing a bit always fixes it for me. Kepubs don't work well with very tight line spacing.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I see it occasionally but usually just the top of the risers at the bottom of the page or bottom of the descenders at the top. From what I can see, it is a problem with an embedded font. I assume some setting in the font is not correct to set the line spacing or height or something. I've never been bothered enough to look more, I just change the font.

And nearly every time I have seen this, the problem is with a Charis font or one derived from it.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I believe it can happen with any font, embedded or sideloaded. Increasing the line spacing a bit always fixes it for me. Kepubs don't work well with very tight line spacing.

Jackie_w is right, it can happen with any font. There is no embedded font in either of the books I tried, and the font in the screenshots that I just about always use is Roboto Slab, a sideloaded font. I have seen it happen with Lexia Dama as well that I used to use.

It's really not worth it to me to troubleshoot either as I still would prefer epubs over kepubs. But it's definitely not limited to embedded or Charis fonts.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I believe it can happen with any font, embedded or sideloaded. Increasing the line spacing a bit always fixes it for me. Kepubs don't work well with very tight line spacing.

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Jackie_w is right, it can happen with any font. There is no embedded font in either of the books I tried, and the font in the screenshots that I just about always use is Roboto Slab, a sideloaded font. I have seen it happen with Lexia Dama as well that I used to use.

It's really not worth it to me to troubleshoot either as I still would prefer epubs over kepubs. But it's definitely not limited to embedded or Charis fonts.

I didn't say it was limited to Charis, just that most times I have seen it was with a Charis font. From my books, they seem to be the most popular for embedding, so I sort of expect it when I recognise the font. When I did first see it, I sideloaded some Charis variants and they all had the same issue at the font size and line spacing I like to read at.

But, I don't think I have seen this with any of the installed fonts. Maybe I'm just not using the right settings. If I had, I would have reported it promptly to Kobo. As it is, until something demonstrates it is something else, I will continue to assume it is the font definition.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Jackie_w is right, it can happen with any font. There is no embedded font in either of the books I tried, and the font in the screenshots that I just about always use is Roboto Slab, a sideloaded font. I have seen it happen with Lexia Dama as well that I used to use.

It's really not worth it to me to troubleshoot either as I still would prefer epubs over kepubs. But it's definitely not limited to embedded or Charis fonts.

I can make it happen with the built in font "Gill Sans", and I agree it can probably happen with any font. I'm using kepub, full screen, patched, small line spacing and small font size, old firmware.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, I don't think I have seen this with any of the installed fonts. Maybe I'm just not using the right settings. If I had, I would have reported it promptly to Kobo. As it is, until something demonstrates it is something else, I will continue to assume it is the font definition.

I think you've said in the past that you don't patch. I suspect this is probably why you don't see the problem with the built-in fonts. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why Kobo have set their default minimum line spacing as large as they have. I think it's 1.0 (1.0 whats, I don't know). The minimum after patching is 0.75 (although this is user-configurable).

There are definitely 'toxic combinations' of font-family/font-size/line-height. For example, I was able to recreate haydnfan's massive whitespace at the bottom of many pages (even in a kepub), by adjusting font-size for Avenir at minimum (patched) line spacing. It's also quite easy to get cut-off last lines with Georgia plus very small line spacing.

If you patch line spacing, to get a 'good' result, you just need to be a bit flexible with your settings.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I think you've said in the past that you don't patch. I suspect this is probably why you don't see the problem with the built-in fonts. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why Kobo have set their default minimum line spacing as large as they have. I think it's 1.0 (1.0 whats, I don't know). The minimum after patching is 0.75 (although this is user-configurable).

There are definitely 'toxic combinations' of font-family/font-size/line-height. For example, I was able to recreate haydnfan's massive whitespace at the bottom of many pages (even in a kepub), by adjusting font-size for Avenir at minimum (patched) line spacing. It's also quite easy to get cut-off last lines with Georgia plus very small line spacing.

If you patch line spacing, to get a 'good' result, you just need to be a bit flexible with your settings.

No, I don't patch, so if this is an issue when people have been playing with the firmware like this, then I don't consider it a bug. Hopefully Kobo have tuned things to the best way. Plus, pushing the line spacing down like this could be hitting problems with small line heights in the actual fonts.

From memory, Kobo's line spacing is a multiplier. I think that effectively means the number is in em units. I know it was discussed a long time ago. I think it was one of the reasons I created the Kobo Utilities plugin - so I could fiddle with the font settings.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, I don't patch, so if this is an issue when people have been playing with the firmware like this, then I don't consider it a bug. Hopefully Kobo have tuned things to the best way. Plus, pushing the line spacing down like this could be hitting problems with small line heights in the actual fonts.

I'm pretty sure it is caused by a bug in the Qt libraries used to render KePubs and text in the device GUI, because the same problem happened in the book synposis when Kobo lowered the line-height to 1em for some devices, and then went away again when they increased it to 1.4em.

The problem is noticed most my those who patch because one of the patches allows the line-height to be set below what Kobo normally allows to be set from the slider, however it can also be easily reproduced on stock firmware with built-in fonts by setting the line-height in the book's stylesheet in a way that prevents the line-spacing slider working. E.g.:

div.narrow { line-height: 0.75; }

<div class="narrow">... some text that crossed a page break, especially noticable in books translated from Nordic languages with character names like Åke or Åsa ...</div>

In actual books the line-height is commonly set to 1em for titles or lists such as the "other books by this author" page, and if the titles are seperated by <br/> instead of each in their own div and the list is long enough to need two pages then the problem can occur.

Edit: I think The worst effect of the bug on normal readers is not that they might on rare occasions encounter the problem reading a KePub, but that it prevents Kobo from extending the line-spacing slider to allow narrower settings. I would guess that quite a lot of normal people reading on Kobo devices have their line-spacing slider set at minimum, and if narrower settings were available they would use them, especially for some fonts such as Kobo Nickel. But Kobo won't allow narrower settings because they are trying to work-around the bug.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, I don't patch, so if this is an issue when people have been playing with the firmware like this, then I don't consider it a bug.

I agree. Not a Kobo bug, just an observation.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, I don't think I have seen this with any of the installed fonts. Maybe I'm just not using the right settings. If I had, I would have reported it promptly to Kobo. As it is, until something demonstrates it is something else, I will continue to assume it is the font definition.

Attached is a very simple ePub I just made called Åsa and Åke. It doesn't contain any line-height styles, it just uses whatever is set from the line-spacing slider.

Using the KePub reader on my Glo with firmware 4.9.11073, built-in Amasis and Avenir Next fonts, line-spacing slider set to the stock minimum (1.0), and font size 32. I can see the problem when a page break occurs inside a paragraph: there are dots at the bottom of the page, which are parts of the rings of the letters Å from the following page.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Attached is a very simple ePub I just made called Åsa and Åke. It doesn't contain any line-height styles, it just uses whatever is set from the line-spacing slider.

Using the KePub reader on my Glo with firmware 4.9.11073, built-in Amasis and Avenir Next fonts, line-spacing slider set to the stock minimum (1.0), and font size 32. I can see the problem when a page break occurs inside a paragraph: there are dots at the bottom of the page, which are parts of the rings of the letters Å from the following page.

Yep, I can see it. And if anything is going to demonstrate the problem with a font, it has to be that letter.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yep, I can see it. And if anything is going to demonstrate the problem with a font, it has to be that letter.

The attached book Fluff demonstrates a similar problem on the KePub reader, but in the horizontal. To observe, set the margin slider to minimum and set justification button to full justification.

The problem is that the KePub reader clips the letters at the right and left edges of the page even though there is room to display them on the screen, and it happens with every one of the built-in fonts. The problem doesn't occur in the ePub reader with any font. (Edit: To clarify, the ePub reader clips if there is not enough room left on the screen, but allows the glyps to extend into the margins; the KePub reader clips even when there is room left in the margin.)

The common feature with the problem demonstrated by the Åsa and Åke book seems to be that the KePub reader can't properly handle glyphs that extend into the page margin, either vertically or horizontally. If all fonts with such glyphs are faulty, then all of the built-in fonts are faulty including Kobo's own Kobo Nickel, Kobo Tsukushi Mincho, and Kobo UD Kakugo fonts.

Since the problems happen with a wide range of fonts in the KePub reader, but with none of the same fonts in the ePub reader, then either all of those fonts are faulty in a way that only affects the KePub reader, or there is a fault in the KePub reader or whatever third-party libraries the KePub reader uses to handle fonts. I think the second is more likely.

[Edit: I think this book demonstrates the underlying problem affecting stock firmware, but for others reading note that there are work-arounds available for this problem either by patching (for synced KePubs) or automatic stylesheet modifications by Calibre (for sideloaded KePubs) that work in full-screen mode, or in normal reading mode just keep increasing the margin slider until the problem goes away. Similar to the vertical version of the problem, where the work-around is to just keep increasing the line-spacing slider until the problem goes away.]