Touch Reading manga is touch and go on the kobo touch.

[Linusrg]

I'd like to say all my manga are in the kepub format, as I buy manga directly from the kobo store.

When I first start up a manga after booting up my kobo, (not waking it from sleep) page turning is really smooth and everything. Then after a while, turning pages starts to get slow, and as it gets slow, it also sometimes starts to turn two pages at a time. First turning one, then like 10 seconds later, without me even tapping the screen, it turns to the next page. (I didn't even tap twice when trying to turn a page once.) It also sometimes seems to think that I've tapped in a different location than actually did, resulting in bringing up the reader menu, or turning back a page, or turning the page in the right direction AND bring up the reader menu. It almost feels like the screen needs calibration and all these issues would be fixed. But I am pretty sure it is capacitive, so I know that isn't possible. But if it IS resistive, and there IS a way to calibrate it, please let me know. If anyone has any idea what's going on and how to fix it, please let me know. I am on the latest firmware too.

[davidfor]

Which Touch is it? If it is one of the original Touch's, then it is uses IR touch. And I think the Touch 2.0 is as well. Clean under the edges of the bezel. Any muck caught under the bezel can block the IR beams and cause weird touch problems. This was a big problem for the original Touch.

I don't know about the performance. I have never noticed any real performance issues with kepubs except when opening very large books. But, I don't read manga and I do not know how these are constructed. It could be a resolution issue. All versions of the Touch have a 600x800 screen. The images will need to be downscaled to that for display. If the book has multiple images in a single internal, that could cause problems as all would be rendered in one pass.

And for the record, for your device you have, "None. (who cares)". We do. It helps us to answer questions when it appears to be a device specific problem.

[Linusrg]

OK sorry bout that, I'll get around to changing it. And a lot of these issues seemed to pop up too, after I wanted to test out different firmwares by downgrading to them. So maybe that's it too?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Linusrg

And a lot of these issues seemed to pop up too, after I wanted to test out different firmwares by downgrading to them. So maybe that's it too?

Did you do a factory reset when downgrading the firmware? You can generally go back a few versions, but, you can't go back to far.

[Linusrg]

I downgraded to 1.9 first, without formatting. This caused a bootloop. Fortunately the reset combo worked and I got it back up and running. Then I tried out 2.0 and 3.0 too. Finally going back to the latest version, because of all the restrictions kobo puts in place if you stay on an older version. Plato is now gone, due to a format I did, but I was trying out Plato before downgrading my device, and during my time using it my kobo was a little buggy. But after uninstalling Plato things seemed to fix themselves. When I'm not reading manga and just using other parts of the os, things seem to be a lot less buggy.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Which Touch is it? If it is one of the original Touch's, then it is uses IR touch. And I think the Touch 2.0 is as well. Clean under the edges of the bezel. Any muck caught under the bezel can block the IR beams and cause weird touch problems. This was a big problem for the original Touch.

I don't know about the performance. I have never noticed any real performance issues with kepubs except when opening very large books. But, I don't read manga and I do not know how these are constructed. It could be a resolution issue. All versions of the Touch have a 600x800 screen. The images will need to be downscaled to that for display. If the book has multiple images in a single internal, that could cause problems as all would be rendered in one pass.

And for the record, for your device you have, "None. (who cares)". We do. It helps us to answer questions when it appears to be a device specific problem.

They are pretty big. Usually 50MB+. Basically they are just image files in a folder with maybe a ToC, enough HTML to make sure images fill the screen, one image per page, and pages flip right to left. Kindle Comic Converter will spit out ePubs pretty close to retail releases. At least in my collection most images are well above 800x600 targeting high PPI readers. Depends on publisher, release date and all that though for exact resolution.

[Linusrg]

Yah true. There is defenately something funky with the stock reader though. When I tried the ultimate manga reader with a pirated version of the book I bought, it was a lot smoother. I just dont wanna do that BC its piracy, and there is no option to use my own books.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

They are pretty big. Usually 50MB+. Basically they are just image files in a folder with maybe a ToC, enough HTML to make sure images fill the screen, one image per page, and pages flip right to left. Kindle Comic Converter will spit out ePubs pretty close to retail releases. At least in my collection most images are well above 800x600 targeting high PPI readers. Depends on publisher, release date and all that though for exact resolution.

It has been a while since I tested KCC, so had to check. KCC produces a kepub that is one page/image per file. That means it will render each page separately. Which will probably mean slower page turning but should be consistent throughout the book. It also resizes the images for the screen size. That should reduce CPU and memory usage.

I haven't had a good look at what comics and manga that Kobo has in the store, so I don't know how they are constructed. Do have free manga to look at? Or a suggestion for one that I can at least look at the preview.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Linusrg

I downgraded to 1.9 first, without formatting. This caused a bootloop. Fortunately the reset combo worked and I got it back up and running.

That would definitely be a bad idea.

Then I tried out 2.0 and 3.0 too. Finally going back to the latest version, because of all the restrictions kobo puts in place if you stay on an older version.

There are various older versions of firmware that are popular for different reasons. But, if you are downloading books from Kobo, you will need to stay on the current version. Though there is probably a hack to stop the firmware update.

Plato is now gone, due to a format I did, but I was trying out Plato before downgrading my device, and during my time using it my kobo was a little buggy. But after uninstalling Plato things seemed to fix themselves. When I'm not reading manga and just using other parts of the os, things seem to be a lot less buggy.

As I said, I've never noticed any real issues with kepubs. But, I don't read comics or manga.

Originally Posted by Linusrg

Yah true. There is defenately something funky with the stock reader though. When I tried the ultimate manga reader with a pirated version of the book I bought, it was a lot smoother. I just dont wanna do that BC its piracy, and there is no option to use my own books.

I would expect that the Ultimate Manga Reader to be using CBR or CBZ as the format. Depending on how it is doing it, that probably explains the difference.

I did grab a free manga from Kobo to have a look: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/att...itan-sampler-1. It was a fairly random choice, but, I couldn't bring myself to try one of the Harlequin or Mills & Boons comics that were shown when I searched. And I was surprised that I had watched a movie based on it last year.

Paging through it on my Touch is pretty slow. It took over two seconds to turn the page. (Except the first page, but, that's because I was tapping the wrong side of the screen. Kobo loaded it as RTL and I didn't think of that ) But, I didn't notice it get slower as I went along. It is has 66 pages, so it might not be long enough to trigger the slowdown.

I did try loading it as a CBZ and epub. For that, I downloaded the epub version and added it to calibre to strip the DRM. Then I sent it to the Touch twice. For one copy, I changed the extension to CBZ. That's enough to have the book handled as a comic book. The epub code is ignored. Both worked and the CBZ was noticeably faster at under a second to turn the page. The epub didn't work well as it didn't centre the image properly. That would be easy to fix.

I also tried the kepub on my Clara HD and Libra H2O. On these, the page turning was much faster, probably better than half a second. That makes sense as these have newer and faster CPUs than the Touch. And they have more RAM, 512MB vs the 256MB in the Touch. And the images did look better.

It is probably worthwhile trying it as a CBZ. I don't think there is any real advantage over kepub except the syncing to the Kobo server. That does make it easy to get the books and will sync the reading status if you use multiple devices or the Kobo apps.

[salamanderjuice]

It's been a while since I checked but if IIRC kepub is the only easy way to get the image to use the entire screen and have RTL page turns. The Kobo epub renderer does neither, and for CBZ I think you need to edit the database to get RTL page turns. Although maybe Kobo added an option for that now? Seems minor I know but it personally bothered me at least to always use kepub for them.

I'm wondering if it's a memory leak somewhere in the process since it becomes a problem as time goes on. That probably wouldn't cause the screen to wig out but maybe it's just slowed to such a crawl that touches are sufficiently delayed to look like it's wigging out? Might not be an issue on the readers with more memory and only really affects the Touch as it has less to play with.

[Linusrg]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

It's been a while since I checked but if IIRC kepub is the only easy way to get the image to use the entire screen and have RTL page turns. The Kobo epub renderer does neither, and for CBZ I think you need to edit the database to get RTL page turns. Although maybe Kobo added an option for that now? Seems minor I know but it personally bothered me at least to always use kepub for them.

I'm wondering if it's a memory leak somewhere in the process since it becomes a problem as time goes on. That probably wouldn't cause the screen to wig out but maybe it's just slowed to such a crawl that touches are sufficiently delayed to look like it's wigging out? Might not be an issue on the readers with more memory and only really affects the Touch as it has less to play with.

It kinda reminds me of how the apple a5 chip devices responded to things on its 9, so it probably is slowdown. What someone posted earlier said, that when they tested a kepub vs a cbz, the cbz comic format was way faster. So I think that the kepub format may just be heavier in general slowing things down on older devices.

[Linusrg]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That would definitely be a bad idea.

There are various older versions of firmware that are popular for different reasons. But, if you are downloading books from Kobo, you will need to stay on the current version. Though there is probably a hack to stop the firmware update.


As I said, I've never noticed any real issues with kepubs. But, I don't read comics or manga.



I would expect that the Ultimate Manga Reader to be using CBR or CBZ as the format. Depending on how it is doing it, that probably explains the difference.

I did grab a free manga from Kobo to have a look: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/att...itan-sampler-1. It was a fairly random choice, but, I couldn't bring myself to try one of the Harlequin or Mills & Boons comics that were shown when I searched. And I was surprised that I had watched a movie based on it last year.

Paging through it on my Touch is pretty slow. It took over two seconds to turn the page. (Except the first page, but, that's because I was tapping the wrong side of the screen. Kobo loaded it as RTL and I didn't think of that ) But, I didn't notice it get slower as I went along. It is has 66 pages, so it might not be long enough to trigger the slowdown.

I did try loading it as a CBZ and epub. For that, I downloaded the epub version and added it to calibre to strip the DRM. Then I sent it to the Touch twice. For one copy, I changed the extension to CBZ. That's enough to have the book handled as a comic book. The epub code is ignored. Both worked and the CBZ was noticeably faster at under a second to turn the page. The epub didn't work well as it didn't centre the image properly. That would be easy to fix.

I also tried the kepub on my Clara HD and Libra H2O. On these, the page turning was much faster, probably better than half a second. That makes sense as these have newer and faster CPUs than the Touch. And they have more RAM, 512MB vs the 256MB in the Touch. And the images did look better.

It is probably worthwhile trying it as a CBZ. I don't think there is any real advantage over kepub except the syncing to the Kobo server. That does make it easy to get the books and will sync the reading status if you use multiple devices or the Kobo apps.

OK I think I know what's happening. I did look into how the ultimate manga reader stores comics, and it stores them as plain jpg files, probably just like how cbz files are made. So I think the extra code needed to run a kepub just slows things down on the touch's older hardware. At least when it comes to kepubs and pictures, as plain text books in the kepub format seem to run quite well.