[Device Plugin] Kobo Touch Extended Driver

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Beaupedia

Brand new Kobo owner and came here with the same question. These guys, especially davidfor, are being absolute jerks to you. There is really no reason for it. They could have chosen not to respond. It's disappointing and a major turnoff to have this be my first interaction here after getting my Kobo. Sorry you dealt with it. I can only hope others here are more patient, less condescending, and more kind.

To quote a message that was posted by @davidfor in the thread about the release of firmware 4.22.15190 which was referenced in @NiLuje's response to @mirage's post in this subforum—a thread which @mirage stated he had read:

Originally Posted by davidfor

Firmware 4.22.15190 has been released for all devices except the Mini. There aren't many visible changes. The changes that I know of are:

• Search filter in store can filter on languages.
• Busybox has been upgraded to 1.31.1.
• dosfstools has been updated. This should reduce the frequency that Windows reports the device file system is dirty.
• The bug where the menu bar in kepubs displayed the wrong icon is fixed.
• In the store, the filter in the different featured list no longer has the misleading "Featured" entry.

For calibre, there are no changes except to bump the supported firmware version.This will be in the next calibre release. Until then, it is safe to use the "Attempt to support newer firmware" option in the drivers.

This question has been beaten to death in the Kobo devices forum—a quick search on "Attempt to support newer firmware" in that forum showed 169 hits. I admit searching in the calibre forum only showed 8 hits. A Google search on "Attempt to support newer firmware" site:mobileread.com came up with 282 results while "Kobo database version unsupported" managed a respectable 146 results. A search on "Your Kobo is running an updated firmware/database version. As calibre does not know about this updated firmware, database editing is disabled, to prevent corruption. You can still send" site:mobileread.com managed a mere 87 hits while leaving the "s off got 123 hits. More often than not, I find Google does a better job of searching MobileRead than MobileRead's builtin search does.

OTOH, the issue has nothing to do with the KoboTouchExtended driver as it would also happen with calibre's builtin KoboTouch driver. Perhaps the calibre Devices subforum or the Kobo Reader forum would have been better choices in which to post his query.

Just for the heck of it though it may be encouraging thread necromancy: Failed: Kobo database version unsupported?.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Beaupedia

Brand new Kobo owner and came here with the same question. These guys, especially davidfor, are being absolute jerks to you. There is really no reason for it. They could have chosen not to respond. It's disappointing and a major turnoff to have this be my first interaction here after getting my Kobo. Sorry you dealt with it. I can only hope others here are more patient, less condescending, and more kind.

If your first post had been a similar question, you would have gotten a very different response. If you want to see what that would have been, you can do a search for one of the many times the question has been asked.

But, for all of @mirage's protestations, they are not a newbie. My response was because I had read posts from @mirage and knew that. Was it petty of me? Probably. Do I particularly care, not really.

[Beaupedia]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Do I particularly care, not really.

That much is very obvious. In the future you may want to consider just not responding as an option.

[davidfor]

And the Oscar for completely misunderstanding what is going on goes to...

Originally Posted by Beaupedia

That much is very obvious. In the future you may want to consider just not responding as an option.

[giddie]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And the Oscar for completely misunderstanding what is going on goes to...

Just to clarify for those that are unaware: davidfor is the maintainer of this plugin (and several others). When you're answering the same questions multiple times about something you've used your free time to give away, I understand that a bit of snark might sneak through. Doesn't mean it's OK; just human

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by giddie

Just to clarify for those that are unaware: davidfor is the maintainer of this plugin (and several others). When you're answering the same questions multiple times about something you've used your free time to give away, I understand that a bit of snark might sneak through. Doesn't mean it's OK; just human

Just a correction: I'm not the maintainer of the extended driver, but, I help where I can. I am the maintainer of the built-in KoboTouch driver. The extended driver extends that. Hence, a lot of the function seen in the extended driver comes from that. Including the basic device support and hence the warning that started this.

[tourneur]

I have some questions regarding some setting under the Extended tab:

- There are checkboxes for 'Hyphenate files' and 'Disable hyphenation'. How are they different from one another?

- What does 'cleanup epub markup' do and is it recommended?

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by tourneur

- There are checkboxes for 'Hyphenate files' and 'Disable hyphenation'. How are they different from one another?

'Hyphenate files' will ensure books have rules for hyphenation if they don't already exist, 'Disable hyphenation' will remove any such rules if they do exist. If both are selected, 'Disable hyphenation' takes precedence.

Originally Posted by tourneur

- What does 'cleanup epub markup' do and is it recommended?

Currently it does two things:

• Removes artifacts present when exporting a Microsoft Office document as an eBook.
• Removes empty headings (e.g. '<h1></h1>'

I always recommend it, but it's not necessary for standards compliance and sometimes publishers use empty headings (or '<br>', or empty '<p>', or so many things other than the correct way) for spacing so it may change the appearance of the book. If you care more about seeing the book as close as possible to the way it left the publisher, this setting may occasionally break that for you.


The reason for removing empty headings but not other empty content tags is Table of Contents generators frequently look for headings. Having empty headings can cause empty ToC entries to be added.

[Leonatus]

Originally Posted by jgoguen

The reason for removing empty headings but not other empty content tags is Table of Contents generators frequently look for headings. Having empty headings can cause empty ToC entries to be added.

That's true, but I realized that on my Kobo, when the <h1> tag is completely missing in a html file, the (Kobo-)header will automagically named by "START", which I think is considerably ugly. On the other hand, leaving an empty <h1></h1> tag, will leave either nothing (only the page counting) or the header of the last chapter=the last html file.

This might be something for a patch, perhaps.

[tourneur]

Thanks very much jgoguen!

[Beaupedia]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And the Oscar for completely misunderstanding what is going on goes to...

I never misunderstood, I absolutely knew your role here, but you still were acting like a jerk.

[bongoman]

I'm new to the Kobo world and am enjoying my Forma very much.

I'm side loading most of my books from my Calibre library of ePubs.

I've settled on not explicitly converting to kepub and thereby avoiding keeping multiple formats in Calibre, and instead am letting KoboTouchExtended convert to kepub during the process of sending to the Forma.

This is the only extra Kobo specific plugin I've installed apart from Kobo Utilities.

This seems to be working well for me.

In the event that I actually wanted to modify the ePub, I'm guessing I can do an ePub to ePub conversion in Calibre, or use the Modify ePub plugin OR edit the ePub directly itself.

Does this all sound like a reasonable approach to working with kepubs and my Forma?

Does KoboTouchExtended use any of the Calibre settings for conversion

Also, do I need to explicitly disable the Kobo Touch plugin for the Extended plugin to operate properly?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Beaupedia

I never misunderstood, I absolutely knew your role here, but you still were acting like a jerk.

Sorry, but this demonstrates that you don't understand what is happening.

And for the record, I've made no claim one way or the other relative to the last part of your statement. In fact, I effectively acknowledged this in my first post.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Beaupedia

I never misunderstood, I absolutely knew your role here, but you still were acting like a jerk.

Do you know how often that exact question has been asked and answered? How often @davidfor has answered?

Perhaps my post where I gave the number of results of some searches might have helped you to understand the number of repetitions of that question.

Generally, when I answer the question, I look at the number of posts. 1 to 10 and a recent join date, you get a pass. 90+ posts and a member for 7 years? Pull one of the other ones, it's got bells!

It may be a bit unfair to treat a noob differently from a seasoned veteran but that's life. It doesn't help when the question is asked in a thread unrelated to the source of the problem?

BTW, did you look at the thread I mentioned in conjunction with a comment on thread necromancy? That thread's original post is dated 2012-Sep-22. If my search could find it, I assume that others are going to be to search and find as well.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by bongoman

Does this all sound like a reasonable approach to working with kepubs and my Forma?

Yes, if you keep in mind that it's necessary to remove the book in the ereader so the modifications can appear there (calibre doesn't automatically send the book if you modify the content).

Originally Posted by bongoman

Also, do I need to explicitly disable the Kobo Touch plugin for the Extended plugin to operate properly?

It's recommended, yes.