Kobo future firmware feature request thread

[koboy]

Originally Posted by Semwize

It's not because of the number of books that he has such a huge size. I have ~2000 books and the database size is less than 200 megabytes. Such a large size makes me think of a database littered with something....

if you don't mind me asking you what is the total size/space taken up by your 2000 books? my 4897 books total size/space is 12.7GB on a 32GB micro SD card in the external micro SD card slot. i've compacted the database with SQLite Database Browser and checked it afterwards the result is it's ok.

best wishes koboy

[koboy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Firstly, I'm honestly surprised that your Aura stopped working with a 1GB databases. Considering it only has 256MB of RAM and no swap space, I'm surprised it didn't stop working a lot earlier. The database is read when the device starts and at least the structure for the book details is loaded. If that doesn't fit into the RAM, then the device is either continuously opening the database or just won't work properly.

But, are you sure about the number of books? 4897 books taking more than 1GB of database seems wrong. On my Clara HD I have about 9000 books and the database is about 180MB. The books are a mix of ePubs and kepubs with less than 100 books of other formats. But, the bulk of the database will be the entries for the books plus the ToC entries.

The bulk of the database will be the content table. This has one entry per book, plus entires for navigation. In general, the navigation entries are the ToC entries for the for format. But, there is always at least on. And for kepubs, there is one per manifest entry and one per ToC entry.

With that, the bigger the ToCs, the longer the descriptions, titles and author names, then the bigger the database. But, as I said, your database size to number of books seems off. The stats for my Clara HD are probably lower than average as it has a lot of short stories. The average number of ToC entries is 16 whereas the Libra H2O has about 900 books with an average of 82 ToC entries. That database is 87MB.

The other places that could take space in the database are the Bookmark and Event tables. You would need to have made a lot of annotation for the former to take much space. The Event table can have several rows per book that you have opened. So the space taken depends on how much you have actually read. And, to a certain extent, how you read.

thank you for this detailed explanation i do appreciate you taking the time to do it. i can assure you i do have 4897 books in total on my Aura taking up 12.7GB of space on my 32GB external micro SD card. i do however have a lot of Bookmarks so perhaps that may account for my large 1GB database.

i can restore the user partition/database from my last backuo which as 4888 books on it (9 books less) with Firmware 4.25.15875 on it and the Aura powers on and off fine and works 100% ok. if i restore my last backup and delete all the unnecessary Bookmarks and then compact/vacuum the database do you think it will make the database noticeably smaller?

best wishes koboy

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by koboy

if you don't mind me asking you what is the total size/space taken up by your 2000 books?

It's not enough, ~1.9 GB (epub). SD card is also 32 GB
You take up so much space because there are probably a lot of drawings or you don't optimize the covers.
And I agree with davidfor - the database should not take up so much space...

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

thank you for this detailed explanation i do appreciate you taking the time to do it. i can assure you i do have 4897 books in total on my Aura taking up 12.7GB of space on my 32GB external micro SD card. i do however have a lot of Bookmarks so perhaps that may account for my large 1GB database.

The freespace on the external card doesn't really matter. It's the space on the internal memory. That is were the database is. If that is overly full, it could be causing a problem. A simple issue could be rewriting the database of there is not enough space left.

i can restore the user partition/database from my last backuo which as 4888 books on it (9 books less) with Firmware 4.25.15875 on it and the Aura powers on and off fine and works 100% ok. if i restore my last backup and delete all the unnecessary Bookmarks and then compact/vacuum the database do you think it will make the database noticeably smaller?

Possibly. It really depends on how many bookmarks get deleted. If you do it, delete the rows in the Bookmarks table where "Hidden = 'true'". These are annotations that have been deleted through the interface but not cleaned up yet. They should be deleted either when a sync is done or the book is reopened.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by Semwize

It's not enough, ~1.9 GB (epub). SD card is also 32 GB
You take up so much space because there are probably a lot of drawings or you don't optimize the covers.
And I agree with davidfor - the database should not take up so much space...

thanks. i do have a lot of Delphi Classics books some of them are over 100MB in size with large ToCs and also have many drawings and photos.

best wishes koboy

[GiulioP]

Originally Posted by BilboBaggins

Why not to integrate local library networks, as for example the italian MLOL ( Media Library On Line ) ?

is it possible to install the Medialibrary app on the Kobo ereader? does it have android on it and if yes, which version? thankS!

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by GiulioP

is it possible to install the Medialibrary app on the Kobo ereader? does it have android on it and if yes, which version? thankS!

Kobo runs Linux.

[PennyDred]

For me, things that would be nice to have are:

wifi that works with eduroam/govroam
an accessible sd card slot like the older models
seamless link through to wikipedia via word highlight
sheet music page background in basic notebook
configurable auto page turning

The first 2 of these seem to be tied up with Kobo's throttling of pdf use: it's like they simply don't want students/academics to use their devices, and I can guess why that is. But students become, or indeed are already, over 50 with poor eyesight like the rest of us! It's a good market to tap into as they are already reading. Making things affordable, easy and legal, might be a better way to avoid piracy IMHO.

[phlame64]

Originally Posted by hoichi

Speaking of Pocket, I'd like to have at least highlights and bookmarks for Pocket articles (yes, there are articles out there that need bookmarks. A public lecture transcript, for instance, can run more than 50 pages). That's when I might start actually using Pocket functionality. As of now, I prefer ePub export through Readability, because that gives me the usual reader for books.

I'd say this is absolutely still a much-needed feature.

[svkytbsld]

1) Get auto-rotating fx fixed. When I change hands on my Libra 2, the text first is rotating landscape, then rotating the portrait but fuzzy and smaller version, and then FINALLY take the correct rotation. This whole process even takes 1-1.5 seconds. Damn.

2) Avoid whole text being blurred when highlighting. Maintain the same crispness of beautiful text display while highlighting.

3) Refresh the page after highlighting so we don't have to see undone/false highlightings' ghost image.

4) Bring some kerning tool. Damn, I have to adjust whole pair of letters even for unproblematic serif fonts like garamond...

[fluffier]

Hello and thank you to all of you who keep this up.

Forgive if this has been asked for before. I would like to see a patch that allows one to have the same exact fixed distance between words. Right now it does not matter which justification I use, the distance between words (not letters) varies from line to line.

Maybe there is a way to do this without patching but I dont know how. Could calibre or some other piece of software fix this before I put the novel inside the ebook ?

Thanks!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by fluffier

Hello and thank you to all of you who keep this up.

Forgive if this has been asked for before. I would like to see a patch that allows one to have the same exact fixed distance between words. Right now it does not matter which justification I use, the distance between words (not letters) varies from line to line.

Maybe there is a way to do this without patching but I dont know how. Could calibre or some other piece of software fix this before I put the novel inside the ebook ?

Thanks!

If you use left justification (aka ragged right), the distance between words should be constant. If you are using fully justified text, the spacing between words needs to vary to fill the line. There is nothing to be done about that since it is needed to keep the line length constant. In print, the spaces between words and letters are varied on a very fine grained basis (micro-justification) to make text look more even but that takes quite a bit of computing power and I am not aware of any renderers that micro-justify.

To force left justification, add text-align: left; to the body definition in the CSS stylesheet and remove any text-align: justify; entries from the rest of the stylesheets. To allow choosing in the Aa menu, do not add the text-align: left; entry.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you use left justification (aka ragged right), the distance between words should be constant. If you are using fully justified text, the spacing between words needs to vary to fill the line. There is nothing to be done about that since it is needed to keep the line length constant. In print, the spaces between words and letters are varied on a very fine grained basis (micro-justification) to make text look more even but that takes quite a bit of computing power and I am not aware of any renderers that micro-justify.

To force left justification, add text-align: left; to the body definition in the CSS stylesheet and remove any text-align: justify; entries from the rest of the stylesheets. To allow choosing in the Aa menu, do not add the text-align: left; entry.

You can add text-align: left; to the body style in CSS. Just don't add a justify or left anyplace else in the CSS. Just having it in body allows the justification override to work. But remember, the bug where things like center in KePub doesn't work. So using the override if you are reading KePub is not a good idea.

[-stepan-]

I have two Kobo devices (Kobo Mini - with cover and without cover), and only 2 requests for future firmware versions. My wishlist is like this:

1. More control options for touch zones - as in the Moon Reader. At least one more option: the left and right zones - turn forward, the middle column - turn backward, and at the bottom and top in the middle of the row - the menu.

2. For firmware or patches: the function of inverting the display to immediately change the control zones. If the book is in the case, I invert the screen in portrait mode, then the control remains unchanged - if I grab it with my left hand (I'm right-handed), I won't be able to change pages forward without additionally changing the touch -zones. It's like the auto-rotate feature for gyro devices.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by -stepan-

2. For firmware or patches: the function of inverting the display to immediately change the control zones. If the book is in the case, I invert the screen in portrait mode, then the control remains unchanged - if I grab it with my left hand (I'm right-handed), I won't be able to change pages forward without additionally changing the touch -zones. It's like the auto-rotate feature for gyro devices.

Am I reading what you wrote correctly? You are asking for Kobo to support rotation on a device without the ability to sense orientation?