NickelTypeFix: a mod for better typography and typesetting (kepub only)

[Falkor]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Yes, headers are unaffected by the justification override that Kobo ships. The same thing actually happens with images once NickelTypeFix is installed, so it's more consistent (as images in ebooks are often part of the header). I think that's actually the right behaviour... but perhaps it should be a setting, whether justification applies to everything or not.



Don't get me started on the new renderer... The 5.x renderer also doesn't do letter spacing (at all). I actually have a version of NickelTypeFix for the 5.x firmware that I'm testing... if you're feeling adventurous I'd be happy to post a pre-release that's available for testing.

Yeah, I've been annoyed about letter spacing. But hey, at least the default spacing is usable now. For about a year and a half it was really narrow and difficult to read. I had to use RMSDK back then.

Lack of support for line height is also annoying. Headings with line breaks can look quite horrible.

And they don't support page breaks via CSS.

For hyphenation one has to use the justification buttons. If it would behave like RMSDK and only change the justification in the body tag this would be fine..

During the last two years they haven't managed to get the font weight slider to work –*all it does is switch between regular and bold –*and the default weight in RMSDK is way too light nowadays –*which is really annoying as the publisher font's weight can't be changed..

They keep tweaking some font rendering settings. A couple of versions ago some diffcult fonts like times new roman actually looked decent at small sizes. Not anymore. The screen is quite capable, though. Koreader can make almost any font look good. They really need to work on this.

On the plus side it supports transform. And I've seen a couple of things that it renders more accurately than 4.x. And it doesn't add annoying spaces to dashes...

I sure feel adventurous and could give NickelTypeFix a try..

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by Falkor

I sure feel adventurous and could give NickelTypeFix a try..

Well... here you go, for 5.x I tentatively named it NickelReaderFix: NickelReaderFix_for_software_5.18.zip

For the 5.x version I'm including in this comment, here's what it does (so far):

- Improved text appearance and ligatures.
- Preserved publisher letter spacing.
- Corrected drop-cap spacing.
- Consistent hyphenation after changing justification.
- Restored missing custom-font previews.
- Centered reading progress / header when the clock is hidden.
- Reduced unnecessary header and footer screen flashing.
- A few page-turn optimizations.
- Fewer premature or incomplete page displays.

For the mod to work, you must add: webkitTextRendering=optimizeLegibility to the Reading section in your Kobo's configuration file, as is the case with NickelTypeFix.

Unzip it and you should get a Kobo.tgz file. Drop this Kobo.tgz in .kobo and eject to install it. To remove it, simply remove the .adds/nickel-reader-fix folder and reboot your e-reader.

If a new update releases (e.g. 5.19 or something), I recommend removing this preview before upgrading, just to be safe.

As an aside: the font weight slider sadly does not work and that's because the previous version of the renderer used some mechanism (CSM) that is no longer present in the reader. It is one of those things I'm trying to integrate (well, an equivalent replacement) into the mod for 5.x before any release that I consider official, actually.

For optimal results, change the font size or line spacing after installing, or your book may display stale pages. (5.x takes screenshots of each page as a cache, which to me seems wildly inefficient btw)

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Yes, headers are unaffected by the justification override that Kobo ships. <snip>. I think that's actually the right behaviour... but perhaps it should be a setting, whether justification applies to everything or not.

You may know this already, but just in case you don't...

For kepubs Nickel uses this as the default override CSS when you change "Justification" in the [Aa] menu:

div, p { text-align: %1 !important; }

where %1 is the placeholder for your selected Justification setting. It's a bit of a blunt instrument. This is why poorly designed books which use <p> or <div> tags for the headings markup (rather than the proper <h1>, <h2> etc tags) display badly when you choose something other than "Off" as the Justification setting. It's not just headings though. Centred scenebreaks (e.g. <div class="break">***</div>) are much more likely to be forced to the left because they almost always use a <p> or <div> tag.

If you're a Kobopatch user, one of the oldest patches for libnickel.so.1.0.0, Un-Force user text-align in div,p tags in KePubs, lets you change the override to:

body { text-align: %1 !important; }

i.e. a less severe override. This matches what default Nickel does for standard epubs in the Adobe renderer.

ETA: For the sake of clarity I'm only talking about fw 4.xx. I've no idea whether fw 5.xx has changed many previously "well-known facts".

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If you're a Kobopatch user, one of the oldest patches for libnickel.so.1.0.0, Un-Force user text-align in div,p tags in KePubs, lets you change the override to:

body { text-align: %1 !important; }

i.e. a less severe override. This matches what default Nickel does for standard epubs in the Adobe renderer.

Right, I should probably apply that as part of the mod for 4.x too. From a CSS perspective that's indeed a less invasive style to apply, and likely results in more "correct" rendering.

Although one has to wonder if that'll make a big difference in purchased books, which likely are already "optimized" for the kepub renderer (unsure, I haven't looked at any markup since these are encrypted). Sideloaded kepubs are a different story, of course.

(This rule for fw 5.x is different and simply forces text-alignment for everything, including headers etc. I'm unsure about the actual CSS rule off the top of my head, but it works differently.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

You may know this already, but just in case you don't...

For kepubs Nickel uses this as the default override CSS when you change "Justification" in the [Aa] menu:

div, p { text-align: %1 !important; }

where %1 is the placeholder for your selected Justification setting. It's a bit of a blunt instrument. This is why poorly designed books which use <p> or <div> tags for the headings markup (rather than the proper <h1>, <h2> etc tags) display badly when you choose something other than "Off" as the Justification setting. It's not just headings though. Centred scenebreaks (e.g. <div class="break">***</div>) are much more likely to be forced to the left because they almost always use a <p> or <div> tag.

If you're a Kobopatch user, one of the oldest patches for libnickel.so.1.0.0, Un-Force user text-align in div,p tags in KePubs, lets you change the override to:

body { text-align: %1 !important; }

i.e. a less severe override. This matches what default Nickel does for standard epubs in the Adobe renderer.

ETA: For the sake of clarity I'm only talking about fw 4.xx. I've no idea whether fw 5.xx has changed many previously "well-known facts".

If you use !important for classes that have center used with div or p, will center work in you justify via the Aa menu?

[elyonson]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If you open the kepub and then the [Aa] menu, what have you set as "Justification" (bottom line)? Try setting it to "Off". Are the chapter headings now centred?

Yes. In most kepubs I bought, when the Justifiction is Off, the title and the image that accompanies it is centered. When I use Full Justify (which is my preference, especially after with the NickelTypeFace mod) the headings get Justified Left. The paragraphs look really good with the NickleTypeFace mod but the Title is on the left. I guess I can just get used to it. I know now it's in the CSS which I kind of don't want to touch because (1) IDK how, and (2) my books are Kobo Store bought and I don't want to dump, edit CSS, and re-upload them.

I came from Kindle, and they have a custom typeface that looks sleek and proper, no matter which justification you use. I kind of annoyed that Kobo doesn't do the same thing.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Well... here you go, for 5.x I tentatively named it NickelReaderFix: Attachment 225959

For the 5.x version I'm including in this comment, here's what it does (so far):

- Improved text appearance and ligatures.
- Preserved publisher letter spacing.
- Corrected drop-cap spacing.
- Consistent hyphenation after changing justification.
- Restored missing custom-font previews.
- Centered reading progress / header when the clock is hidden.
- Reduced unnecessary header and footer screen flashing.
- A few page-turn optimizations.
- Fewer premature or incomplete page displays.

For the mod to work, you must add: webkitTextRendering=optimizeLegibility to the Reading section in your Kobo's configuration file, as is the case with NickelTypeFix.

Unzip it and you should get a Kobo.tgz file. Drop this Kobo.tgz in .kobo and eject to install it. To remove it, simply remove the .adds/nickel-reader-fix folder and reboot your e-reader.

If a new update releases (e.g. 5.19 or something), I recommend removing this preview before upgrading, just to be safe.

As an aside: the font weight slider sadly does not work and that's because the previous version of the renderer used some mechanism (CSM) that is no longer present in the reader. It is one of those things I'm trying to integrate (well, an equivalent replacement) into the mod for 5.x before any release that I consider official, actually.

For optimal results, change the font size or line spacing after installing, or your book may display stale pages. (5.x takes screenshots of each page as a cache, which to me seems wildly inefficient btw)

Is that for the new Kobo ACCESS Engine?

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Is that for the new Kobo ACCESS Engine?

It's for the new default ebook reader/renderer (not RMSDK!) on firmware 5.18.

From what I was able to gather, they internally refer to it as TENG (TolinoEngineRenderer) and it's based on Chromium and significantly more modern than the WebKit-based engine in 4.x.

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by elyonson

Yes. In most kepubs I bought, when the Justifiction is Off, the title and the image that accompanies it is centered. When I use Full Justify (which is my preference, especially after with the NickelTypeFace mod) the headings get Justified Left. The paragraphs look really good with the NickleTypeFace mod but the Title is on the left. I guess I can just get used to it. I know now it's in the CSS which I kind of don't want to touch because (1) IDK how, and (2) my books are Kobo Store bought and I don't want to dump, edit CSS, and re-upload them.

I came from Kindle, and they have a custom typeface that looks sleek and proper, no matter which justification you use. I kind of annoyed that Kobo doesn't do the same thing.

I also have a whole selection of Kobo Store bought books and they're quite inconsistent, so I can relate.

I'm thinking about expanding NickelTypeFix so you can select overrides if things bother you, like:

- force hyphenation on via CSS
- force alignment (soft and hard variants)
- line height
- and some more common issues

In terms of fonts -- and I am totally biased -- I recommend checking out this collection. In particular, I made Libron to act as a sort of open source replacement for Bookerly, Amazon's default font on Kindle.

[fogice]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

In terms of fonts -- and I am totally biased -- I recommend checking out this collection. In particular, I made Libron to act as a sort of open source replacement for Bookerly, Amazon's default font on Kindle.

It took me a couple of weeks of trying your various fonts, and I have also landed on Libron.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by fogice

It took me a couple of weeks of trying your various fonts, and I have also landed on Libron.

I agree Libron is lovely and easy on the eye.

[JSWolf]

Slab serif fonts are rather ugly.

[Apollyon202]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Slab serif fonts are rather ugly.

That's subjective, I agree with you to some extent, with one exception, I really like Caecilia font because it's very legible. Although recently I switched to Newsreader and Fern Micro. Serifs are better in general as they have a classic look but are also very legible.
By the way, my Libra 2 came from the factory without any slab serif font (without Caecilia) installed, so I guess slab serifs are not forced on (Kobo) people.

[Falkor]

I accidentally posted this on the Nickelmenu thread, too:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If you're a Kobopatch user, one of the oldest patches for libnickel.so.1.0.0, Un-Force user text-align in div,p tags in KePubs, lets you change the override to:

body { text-align: %1 !important; }

i.e. a less severe override. This matches what default Nickel does for standard epubs in the Adobe renderer.

The same would be nice to have for the user font. TENG overrides every single font, RMSDK only the one set in the body tag. I prefer the latter.

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Well... here you go, for 5.x I tentatively named it NickelReaderFix: Attachment 225959

Thanks, that seems to be workig well.
Is there any way to toggle this on and off with nickel menu? That would make it easier to compare the differences.

On a Mac this won't unzip properly, btw—unless one uses terminal.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

That's subjective, I agree with you to some extent, with one exception, I really like Caecilia font because it's very legible. Although recently I switched to Newsreader and Fern Micro. Serifs are better in general as they have a classic look but are also very legible.
By the way, my Libra 2 came from the factory without any slab serif font (without Caecilia) installed, so I guess slab serifs are not forced on (Kobo) people.

Caecilla and Bookerly are ugly slabs. Why Amazon feels slabs are good I have no idea.