kepub or plain old epub?

[Elektron]

I read Harry Potter.epub on my H2O2 and it had every introductory "picture" (every chapter) in the middle of the screen. When I kepubified it then the pictures moved to the left side. Weird. I don't see a reason to use kepub though.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Elektron

I read Harry Potter.epub on my H2O2 and it had every introductory "picture" (every chapter) in the middle of the screen. When I kepubified it then the pictures moved to the left side. Weird. I don't see a reason to use kepub though.

That will be because you have set the Justification button in the [Aa] menu to either left-justified or full-justified. The override CSS file used for kepubs is more aggressive than the override for epubs. Try setting it to 'Off'.

If you don't plan to use kepubs then I won't elaborate, but there are kobopatches which may help with the (over-)aggression.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Crowriver

Just a quick update or sitrep if you like.

Glo, plus two Touch devices loaded with books and manga.

I ditched the Mini due to battery requiring replacement, also small screen size inadequate for manga despite zoom function in latest firmware (which is great, and very good the Mini can run it). I used the plugin KoboTouchExtended (suggested by davidfor upthread) to load books from Calibre, and just dragged and dropped cbz files onto the device after optimising and processing with KCC.

I can report that family are pleased with their Kobo readers and all happily reading away.

The last line is the important thing.

For the CBZ, calibre can handle them and send them to the device. It won't touch them in anyway, so you can use KCC on the files and put that copy back in the library. The advantage of using calibre for this, is that on the next connect, it can update the metadata on the device to show the comic title, author and other details to match what is in your calibre library. The device doesn't read this from the CBZ or CBR and just uses the filename as the title.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elektron

I read Harry Potter.epub on my H2O2 and it had every introductory "picture" (every chapter) in the middle of the screen. When I kepubified it then the pictures moved to the left side. Weird. I don't see a reason to use kepub though.

KePub has a bug where you need to make sure the alignment (left or justified) is specified in CSS. And in the Aa menu, justification needs to be set to off or alignment will be wonky.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

KePub has a bug where you need to make sure the alignment (left or justified) is specified in CSS. And in the Aa menu, justification needs to be set to off or alignment will be wonky.

The screenshots I posted in reply to your "first line bug" complaint about kepubs prove this latest rant to be another flight of fancy, ungrounded in any semblance of reality.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

The screenshots I posted in reply to your "first line bug" complaint about kepubs prove this latest rant to be another flight of fancy, ungrounded in any semblance of reality.

Can you go to an even smaller line height? I read mostly with a smaller line height.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Well, okay, I didn't measure anything to the mm, so don't crucify me with "Correctly".. but you can eyeball a test if you compare an oder, low DPI Device and a new 300DPI device, with a 1 inch indent.

Both Epub and Kepub will indent something that looks like 1 inch on the Low DPI device. On the High DPI device, the epub will still indent about 1 inch, but the Kepub indent will look like half that.


It's been my guess that the distance to pixels is hard coded in the Kepub renderer, and was calculated back when readers for 168DPI (or whatever the DPI was back then.)

I found that indents in em are correct on kepub and epub, but indents in pt are correct on EVERY epub ereader I tried and conversion to mobi and KF8, and correct on kobo epub but wrong on kepub.

I know that em is the preferred web way and ebooks use CSS & HTML. But the convention is that 12pt = 1em and not a physical distance. Also any wordprocessor I've looked at doesn't do em. So very many ebooks would need the pt size on margins and particularly indents converted from pt to em.

Since no-one apart from Kobo seems to use the kepub format, I read everything on a Kobo in epub. Then it looks more or less the same as any decent app on the phone, the Sony and on the Kindle as KF8.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It isn't needed, unless you want it. The features of kepubs include:

• Popup for footnotes
• Can zoom images
• In-book progress stats
• Slightly faster page turning (but not fast enough that I notice it)

The features of epubs include:

• Uses Adobe page numbering
• Supports rendering features such as ligatures

The only kepub feature I miss is image zooming, and only occasionally. The footnote feature doesn't always work. Also a tiny superscript [1] is hard to use. I think if there ARE footnotes the word/phrase should be part of the link and it should be in an appendix with links back. It it's one line then the note should be marginalia in the next paragraph break. Footnotes on ebooks are generally terrible. I do like the idea of a pop-up note, but since it's poorly supported on ereaders and apps generally and is erratic on the kepub, it's like client side image maps. Should have been there from the very start but that ship has gone.

I'm not fussed about ligatures other than ones indented by the author (æ, œ as needing ones for fl, fi etc are font & kerning issues, not authoring) or page numbers. I'd only use page numbers on a paper book with a contents page or index, with the system TOC and search they are not needed on an ebook. I've not used them in any other sense since school and ONE lecturer at University. Then everyone had the exact same paper editions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

the convention is that 12pt = 1em

The same convention has 16px = 1em.

[Crowriver]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The last line is the important thing.

For the CBZ, calibre can handle them and send them to the device. It won't touch them in anyway, so you can use KCC on the files and put that copy back in the library. The advantage of using calibre for this, is that on the next connect, it can update the metadata on the device to show the comic title, author and other details to match what is in your calibre library. The device doesn't read this from the CBZ or CBR and just uses the filename as the title.

Yes I've noticed this and had a few comments on it. Suppose it depends on the cbz whether there's good metadata embedded or not. The thought of manually editing it all in Calibre is not something I'd look forward. Might try using Calibre on the next batch though and see what happens...

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Crowriver

Yes I've noticed this and had a few comments on it. Suppose it depends on the cbz whether there's good metadata embedded or not.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, but the Kobo devices do not read any metadata from CBZ files. One reason is that there is no official standard for them to follow.

The thought of manually editing it all in Calibre is not something I'd look forward. Might try using Calibre on the next batch though and see what happens...

Calibre can read the metadata from comics, or parse the filename to get the basic details. Or you can download the metadata. From memory, there is at least one plugin to help with metadata for comics.

And I should stop there. I don't read comics and, beyond some experiments, haven't truly explored the best way to handle them.

[Crowriver]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, but the Kobo devices do not read any metadata from CBZ files. One reason is that there is no official standard for them to follow.

What I meant was I had comments from readers that there was no author displayed, just the title or file name. Unlike with the kepubs. It would make sense there's no metadata on cbz because it's basically some images in a zip archive...

Originally Posted by davidfor

Calibre can read the metadata from comics, or parse the filename to get the basic details. Or you can download the metadata. From memory, there is at least one plugin to help with metadata for comics.

And I should stop there. I don't read comics and, beyond some experiments, haven't truly explored the best way to handle them.

The Kobo readers seem to be able to do the same, i.e. they will give the file name, which if meaningful contains the title at least. I may look into metadata plugins: if the data can be downloaded and that process automated in some way, that would be useful in future.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Calibre can read the metadata from comics, or parse the filename to get the basic details. Or you can download the metadata. From memory, there is at least one plugin to help with metadata for comics.

There used to be ComicRack which was like Calibre but geared toward CBZ/CBR files. Though honestly, it was always too fiddly and overwhelming with options.

Development has died, though you can still download it from various places.

When it works, it's beautiful, but more than one time I've had everything set and ComicRack decided to screw up forcing me to start over.

[Crowriver]

Looks interesting, but Windows and Android only. I am a Mac user.....I have a few Android devices but I never envisaged organising comic collections on them.

As for Calibre plugins, there seems to be this:
https://github.com/dickloraine/EmbedComicMetadata

Still not sure how you get hold of the metadata. Maybe you have to manually enter it, in which case that's a no from me: life's too short!

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Crowriver

Looks interesting, but Windows and Android only. I am a Mac user.....I have a few Android devices but I never envisaged organising comic collections on them.

On Android, ComicRack is more of a comic reader. You do your organizing on the desktop and your reading on an Android.

Though to be honest, there are several other Android comic readers that worked as well or better.