Kobalt: an alternative reader app for Kobo devices

[fogice]

Originally Posted by fogice

My stress test book doesn't load, but it fails gracefully and pretty quickly (89 MB, 3,762,349 words, 306 images).

WOW. Beta 4 actually loads my stress-test book! It takes about 5 minutes on my Libra 2, but it does load. I'm very glad there's a progress bar, otherwise I might have thought it was frozen.

[MrSilverstrike]

Originally Posted by fogice

WOW. Beta 4 actually loads my stress-test book! It takes about 5 minutes on my Libra 2, but it does load. I'm very glad there's a progress bar, otherwise I might have thought it was frozen.

Once it's loaded once, it should load reasonably quickly the next few times. Laying out 25k pages is still going to be slow, but it's better than not loading

[Acopdegarrotix]

This is truly a remarkable project and Beta 4 is a major step forward. In addition to the points others have already mentioned, I'm most pleased with the ability to set our own defaults for publisher fonts. Brilliant!

Now, what I do really wish is for Kobalt to support <figure> and <figcaption> so that the text flow won't be disrupted when an image doesn't have room enough in the page. I know they belong to ePub 3, but do you think anything could be done about it, please?


Thank you very much indeed.

[twistedpenguin]

I signed up here to come tell you that you're my hero! I love this Kobalt app! I had recently installed KO & Plato and was using Plato because KOReader is a lot more confusing than it needs to be. Kobalt is perfect! Extremely intuitive, well laid out and so handy to have my books open right from the Kobo home screen. Oh lord, thank you so very much!!!!

[Desertway]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm primarily a kindle user, but I do have a Clara as well. What bothered me about Kobo was the poor typography, and how font and weight were not always consistent among my books, even after I tried to patch. Kobalt took care of both issues. You work is deeply appreciated.

[rantanplan]

I'm having trouble finding my way through the large number of possible settings. Where do I turn off the clock?

[Acopdegarrotix]

It's on the Layout menu (Header and footer - Customize header and footer - Tap on the slot the clock is on and disable it).

[rantanplan]

Thanks. I did eventually find it myself too. It's not too intuitive.

And I think that is my general impression of the current beta. There's so much stuff to tinker with, and it's kind of all over the place.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Thanks. I did eventually find it myself too. It's not too intuitive.

And I think that is my general impression of the current beta. There's so much stuff to tinker with, and it's kind of all over the place.

That's not really my impression. There aren't all that many options (enough for most people, myself included), and they're not that hard to find. KOReader is much worse in this regard.

Any fewer options would be too few for me.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

KOReader is much worse in this regard.

Yes, and I use ZenUI (or ZenOS now, I guess) to get rid of all the clutter.

It doesn't really matter. IMHO the customisations for header / footer should be in the settings menu and not the navigation bar.

[mrmikey]

Thanks. I did eventually find it myself too. It's not too intuitive.

I'm of the opposite thought, I find it very intuitive and self explanatory.
Thanks Nico for an awesome app.

[Sirtel]

Another thing I noticed: I don't generally use header and footer at all, only the progress bar; but I tried to have the percentage of the book displayed in the right lower corner, and the footer is too large even when set to small - there's a large gap between the lowest row of text and the percentage, which could be substantially reduced, IMO.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Yes, and I use ZenUI (or ZenOS now, I guess) to get rid of all the clutter.

It doesn't really matter. IMHO the customisations for header / footer should be in the settings menu and not the navigation bar.

No, they would not be as easily accessible there. IMHO the current way is better.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No, they would not be as easily accessible there. IMHO the current way is better.

I don't understand. How often would you change the header / footer that you need them on speed-dial?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

I don't understand. How often would you change the header / footer that you need them on speed-dial?

I don't, but I'd want all the layout and text options to be more or less together, not some of them who knows where. That would be "all over the place", IMO.