Libra 2 or Forma

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

My experience has been that publishers will sometimes lock their margins so they're not adjustable with the manual margin adjustment slider.

On my part, I never met publisher locked margins (I'm not speaking of PDFs of course), and I've read many books from many different publishers.
I do fiddle with TOCs, getting rid of publicity in the books and such in Sigil, a few other things in Calibre's "edit books", but never margins.

[kickerofelves]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

I would choose the Forma without a second thought. The extra inch of screen real estate is worth more than any feature benefit of a smaller reader.

This sums it up for me. I have the Oasis & PW III; 90% of my reading is on the Forma because of that extra screen space.

[LDB]

+1 for the 8 inch screen. The only thing that could make the A1 better would be if it was taller, not wider, and had buttons at the bottom. I'm reading a book now on my Oasis just because I got it free or maybe 99c and it is $10 for Kobo. I'd rather read it on the A1 but not $10 worth.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Deobulakenyo

Not for me. When reading ebooks, sometimes my eyes and my brain gets tired in expecting one page to be completed when there are a lot of texts on it. when the screen is smaller, more turn pages feed the anticipation of progressing. Yes, i know i can make the fonts larger to make up for this but it becomes an unnatural reading process for me looking at humongous fonts.

But i do get the allure of large screens (more battery efficient especially if not using the frontlight as it requires less turn pages).

I like my libra 2 because of the screen clarity and contrast but if a smaller (Clara) E-Carta 1200-screened Kobo becomes available, i will get one for more portability and and on-the-go reading whenever i go out.

for mangas, i use my Likebook P78 and sometimes read manga also on my Libra 2, but mostly on the boyue due to the larger screen.

You could make the L/R margins larger and the line spacing larger in order to have less text on screen. But I've never heard a reason like yours for wanting a smaller screen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by anacreon

On my part, I never met publisher locked margins (I'm not speaking of PDFs of course), and I've read many books from many different publishers.
I do fiddle with TOCs, getting rid of publicity in the books and such in Sigil, a few other things in Calibre's "edit books", but never margins.

Margins and paragraph spaces are the reasons I got into editing eBooks to fix the formatting. I'm not 100% sure, but it may be using px for the margins is what causes the locks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by LDB

+1 for the 8 inch screen. The only thing that could make the A1 better would be if it was taller, not wider, and had buttons at the bottom. I'm reading a book now on my Oasis just because I got it free or maybe 99c and it is $10 for Kobo. I'd rather read it on the A1 but not $10 worth.

Buttons at the bottom are awful. Sony had buttons at the bottom and they were terrible to use because of where they were.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by anacreon

On my part, I never met publisher locked margins (I'm not speaking of PDFs of course), and I've read many books from many different publishers.
I do fiddle with TOCs, getting rid of publicity in the books and such in Sigil, a few other things in Calibre's "edit books", but never margins.

I just noticed now that I had Cat's Cradle on my KA1 and the margins aren't locked, but the right margin is twice as wide as the left margin such that even on the narrowest possible margin setting the right margin is still too wide. I believe I was mistaken and it's actually justification that is locked. The point being that having an 8 inch allows these ebook formatting quirks to be tolerated without undermining your ability to enjoy the book.

I can see how it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole of editing books. Trying to "unlock" either fonts or margins has caused me to become at least passably familiar with the edit function in calibre.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Deobulakenyo

Not for me. When reading ebooks, sometimes my eyes and my brain gets tired in expecting one page to be completed when there are a lot of texts on it. when the screen is smaller, more turn pages feed the anticipation of progressing. Yes, i know i can make the fonts larger to make up for this but it becomes an unnatural reading process for me looking at humongous fonts.

But i do get the allure of large screens (more battery efficient especially if not using the frontlight as it requires less turn pages).

I like my libra 2 because of the screen clarity and contrast but if a smaller (Clara) E-Carta 1200-screened Kobo becomes available, i will get one for more portability and and on-the-go reading whenever i go out.

for mangas, i use my Likebook P78 and sometimes read manga also on my Libra 2, but mostly on the boyue due to the larger screen.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You could make the L/R margins larger and the line spacing larger in order to have less text on screen. But I've never heard a reason like yours for wanting a smaller screen.

[LDB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Buttons at the bottom are awful. Sony had buttons at the bottom and they were terrible to use because of where they were.

Top would be ok too, just as long as they aren't on the side so it becomes more square than book shaped which also makes it too wide to fit well in a jacket pocket.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by LDB

+1 for the 8 inch screen. The only thing that could make the A1 better would be if it was taller, not wider, and had buttons at the bottom. I'm reading a book now on my Oasis just because I got it free or maybe 99c and it is $10 for Kobo. I'd rather read it on the A1 but not $10 worth.

I envision an ereader half as thick and half as heavy as the ones we use now. It should appear visually like just the e-ink screen itself. I think they could make it now, but those of us complaining about the Sage's battery life wouldn't be pleased.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by martinot

I agree 100% with the difference between 8" and 7" for reading books. I also agree that for comics or many PDFs 10" is the minimum. Good comments.

I would like an 8" Libra. The sage alas is not that. Way heavier, poor battery, and writing which I would never use but adds to cost and probably makes the screen worse

[93terp]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

I would choose the Forma without a second thought. The extra inch of screen real estate is worth more than any feature benefit of a smaller reader.

Agree. The other difference, which doesn't get mentioned that much, is that the Forma has a flush-with-the-bezel screen, whereas the Libra does not. The battery life on my Forma has been nothing but outstanding.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

I just noticed now that I had Cat's Cradle on my KA1 and the margins aren't locked, but the right margin is twice as wide as the left margin such that even on the narrowest possible margin setting the right margin is still too wide. I believe I was mistaken and it's actually justification that is locked. The point being that having an 8 inch allows these ebook formatting quirks to be tolerated without undermining your ability to enjoy the book.

I can see how it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole of editing books. Trying to "unlock" either fonts or margins has caused me to become at least passably familiar with the edit function in calibre.

The right margin being larger then the left margin is because of the ADE page numbers on the right side of the screen or window.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The right margin being larger then the left margin is because of the ADE page numbers on the right side of the screen or window.

Interesting. When I turn on epub page numbers, they can and will overlap the text since the right margin is not adjusted.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

I just noticed now that I had Cat's Cradle on my KA1 and the margins aren't locked, but the right margin is twice as wide as the left margin such that even on the narrowest possible margin setting the right margin is still too wide. I believe I was mistaken and it's actually justification that is locked. The point being that having an 8 inch allows these ebook formatting quirks to be tolerated without undermining your ability to enjoy the book.

For the record, someone's description of what is happening with margins is wrong. It was what happened a long time ago. At that time, the margins setting acted as a multiplier of the margins in the book. If the book had margins set to 1em or other relative units, then the slider multiplied that. But, if the book had the margin set to absolute elements, they could not be changed.

Kobo changed this so that the margins acted around the page. They have effectively added whitespace around the text and the margins slider affects how wide this is. So the margins become what the publisher has set plus what the margins set.

Also, for something the above, you can use my Kobo Utilities plugin to set the margins for the book. It can set them separately so that you could set the right margin to zero and the left to 1 or whatever works. You would lose the settings if you change them when reading the device, but, it might help to improve the reading experience for this book.

I can see how it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole of editing books. Trying to "unlock" either fonts or margins has caused me to become at least passably familiar with the edit function in calibre.

I agree with the rabbit hole. My tendency is to try the book and fix it when I don't like it. The formatting has gotten better and it is usually easier to fix now. Unfortunately, once I start...that rabbit hole becomes very deep

You could try the CSS modify function in the driver. This appends some CSS to the end of each stylesheet in the book when it is sent to the device. You might be able to override the margins with that. Because the styles used are different, you would need to fiddle with it to get it right for the largest number of cases.