Kobalt: an alternative reader app for Kobo devices

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by fogice

It would also be nice if the chapter and title information WASN'T IN ALL CAPS. Why oh why did Kobo decide that looked nice?

All caps is a design choice. Hey, I did it in Kobalt, too. I tried both. I'll make it a setting

[MrSilverstrike]

Beta 3 is now available with many improvements. Upgrading can be done via the website. For the changelog, look here.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Beta 3 is now available with many improvements. Upgrading can be done via the website. For the changelog, look here.

Save changed reading progress to Nickel every 30 seconds while reading and before sleep, so the sleep screen can show the current progress.

Is this smart? In one 60 minute reading session, this would result in 120 writes on a NAND drive.

[rantanplan]

Oh, you added a QT-6 version, I'll immediately install this on my Tolinos <3

[rantanplan]

If I try to open a book with DRM, I get this view:



I know that Kobalt doesn't support protected books but I'd have expected that Kobalt either throws an error message and closes or that it would automatically open the Nickel reader.

[MrSilverstrike]

Please wait for official Tolino support for a bit: how book progress is saved and such is different there, and I literally don’t handle it yet. Stay tuned, it’s coming in the next beta probably

[rantanplan]

I should have checked the website

[jackie_w]

@MrSilverstrike

I've installed beta3 on both an AuraOne and a Libra2. I'm having some problems with font settings. It has always been my No.1 priority for any reading app I've ever used.

The following is what I want and, so far, have always been able to "find a way", albeit often via hacks, kobopatches etc.

1. Main body text: displays my personal choice of serif font (currently sideloaded MinionPro).
2. CSS font-family:sans-serif displays a sans-serif font. A personal choice would be ideal, but 'Legible Next' is OK.
3. CSS font-family:monospace displays a monospace font. A personal choice would be ideal, but 'IBM Plex Mono' is OK.
4. CSS font-variant:small-caps displays a true SmallCaps font (not an ugly simulation). Ideally the SmallCaps chars (if any) within the font currently being used.
5. If there are any embedded fonts (e.g. fancy headings/dropcaps, "handwritten" letters etc.) then they should be visible.

In beta3:

• If I have 1 & 4 then I lose 2, 3 & 5.
  
• If I choose Publisher Fonts then I have 2, 3 & 5 but I'm forced to use Libron for 1 & 4. I'm not really a fan of the slab serif look in books.

Am I missing something?

In beta2 it was possible to select my default font as MinionPro then choose Publisher default (whose button then displayed a message that it was using MinionPro). So I had 1, 3, 4 and 5. The only thing missing was 2 (sans-serif), which seemed more like a bug than a deliberate decision because 3 (monospace) was working OK.

I may be in a minority of one but this fonts situation doesn't feel like progress. Are there any potential future options/tweaks which would give me what I've always been able to achieve in the past?

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Am I missing something? [...] I may be in a minority of one but this fonts situation doesn't feel like progress. Are there any potential future options/tweaks which would give me what I've always had in the past?

Right.

As it stands, the font override works the same as it does in Kobo's reader app: if you choose anything but the publisher fonts, you get that font everywhere. It's a blanket rule.

Otherwise, the rules are simple:

- serif fallback: Libron
- sans serif fallback: Legible Next
- mono fallback: Plex Mono

What you're asking for is essentially a way to customize these, right? I can add that for you.

Perhaps via a userstyle.css file. You would be able to put anything in there you'd like to apply to all books. Would that help?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Otherwise, the rules are simple:

- serif fallback: Libron
- sans serif fallback: Legible Next
- mono fallback: Plex Mono

What you're asking for is essentially a way to customize these, right? I can add that for you.

Perhaps via a userstyle.css file. You would be able to put anything in there you'd like to apply to all books. Would that help?

Thanks for your quick reply.

Customising the serif fallback is my "must-have" but customising all 3 when Publisher Fonts is selected would be just about perfect.

If you think it could be done via a userstyle.css file that would suit me fine and I'm more than happy to test it for you.

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

As it stands, the works the same as it does in Kobo's reader app: if you choose anything but the publisher fonts, you get that font everywhere. It's a blanket rule.

Just my POV but all the Nickel kepub CSS overrides are too aggressive. The Nickel epub CSS overrides are better, but still not perfect for me. I do appreciate that it's impossible to please everyone with a one-size-fits-all set of CSS override rules. That's why some of the kobopatches were created to allow the user full control. Obviously kobopatch is not as user-friendly as just having an optional simple user-created userstyle.css file on the device (or however you planned to implement it).

Personally I prefer much gentler overrides, i.e. at body level only, for all of font-family, line-height and text-align properties.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you can do!

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Personally I prefer much gentler overrides, i.e. at body level only, for all of font-family, line-height and text-align properties.

That's where the custom `userstyle.css` file would work really well, too.

I think I'll do it this way, then. It also gives everyone a chance to declare their own global overrides so they don't need to edit each book's CSS.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

Right.

As it stands, the font override works the same as it does in Kobo's reader app: if you choose anything but the publisher fonts, you get that font everywhere. It's a blanket rule.

Otherwise, the rules are simple:

- serif fallback: Libron
- sans serif fallback: Legible Next
- mono fallback: Plex Mono

What you're asking for is essentially a way to customize these, right? I can add that for you.

Perhaps via a userstyle.css file. You would be able to put anything in there you'd like to apply to all books. Would that help?

I'm just following this thread for now, grateful for all the beta testers and for your remarkable responsiveness to queries and suggestions, but this post raised a query for me:

How will the font-choice setup work with different scripts? For example if I'm reading a book of poems written in devanagari with either English translation or Roman transliteration? Or, once I've mastered it, a more extreme example would be Urdu and English - one RTL script, one LTR. What steps will users need to take to adress those kinds of use cases?

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I'm just following this thread for now, grateful for all the beta testers and for your remarkable responsiveness to queries and suggestions, but this post raised a query for me:

How will the font-choice setup work with different scripts? For example if I'm reading a book of poems written in devanagari with either English translation or Roman transliteration? Or, once I've mastered it, a more extreme example would be Urdu and English - one RTL script, one LTR. What steps will users need to take to adress those kinds of use cases?

Currently, Kobalt falls back to various multi-language fonts if certain glyphs or scripts aren't supported.

If a font doesn't support Cyrillic or Urdu, for example, the fallback fonts should still render those characters correctly, whether they're RTL or LTR. If the epub is valid and correctly declares those paragraphs as being LTR, they should be rendered correctly.

So you can generally choose the regular (Latin) font you prefer, and rest assured that the fallback options will render whatever text correctly.

If you're asking whether it'd be possible to use a particular font for a particular language fallback if the main font doesn't support that... well, that isn't currently customizable, but if your main font has coverage for those characters (i.e. you get an Indian font which supports Latin + Devanagari) it should just... work and that font will be used for your main text and Devanagari.

In the future, I could make these "font fallbacks" customizable for folks who like to bring their own favorite fonts.

I maintain a whole automated set of screenshots as part of the validation process which shows all of these supported fallbacks (these screenshots don't show all cases, but it's to give you an idea of the scope of what I'm aiming to support):

[Uncle Robin]

Thank you for that very helpful response. That's good to know as is, because currently I'm OK using Arial Unicode as my default for both Latin and devanagari when needed, even though there are other devanagari fonts I prefer. I'm currently only learning to read Urdu, so even though nastaliq is NASTY to learn to read, I'm sure by the time I've mastered the script I'm sure Kobalt will allow wetware implants for fallback fonts.