Kobo Patcher

[Prestidigitweeze]

Now that I've actually slept after being awake for two days, I'm a Hank more lucid about my impressions of the patch.

The patch seems to achieve its primary advantage -- additional text onscreen -- by shifting the placement of the text, which has pronounced aesthetic drawbacks. In particular, I'm dismayed by the lack of space between kepub footers and the bottom of the screen, as opposed to the crushing blankness afforded the headers far above. Changing the size and height of the font seems not to affect the footers' basic placement.

What's interesting is that the patch's modification of kepub footers seems to need to load at first. When I rebooted initially, I was dismayed to see footers with asymmetries and amputations -- lone dashes on one side of the page numbers, odd fonts and missing text. This righted itself when I closed certain books and opened them again. I now see the word Loading occasionally before the page numbers appear as intended -- but, unfortunately, with chapter designations omitted.

All of this seems to make the response of my Aura HD a wee Tad slower; the activation of various book-constrained menus in the header and footer areas, a Scott bit quirkier.

People have expressed their delight at no longer finding odd page breaks in books -- a problem which is of course specific to Kobo firmware. However, with the patch, that issue seems to be replaced with endless orphans and widows.

It looks as though the infamous Kobo bug is really the side-effect of Kobo's attempt to avoid widows and orphans. I don't recall seeing many widows in the past, but now every introduction or chapter in a novel -- or individual letter in a collection of correspondence -- seems to end with one.

I also wonder why it would be desirable to have Wifi that didn't disable itself after some Wifi-specific task. Keeping it on merely drains the battery. I prefer it to shut off automatically once I've synced my library or downloaded a new book, which is what my Aura did before the patch.

For these reasons, I've decided keep two versions of the tgz file -- one which enables whatever features entailing drawbacks that become annoying over time, and another that restores the original settings on the device (which also involve annoying drawbacks).

The second file was created as per the instructions in the original blog entry:

How to remove a personal patch (returning the Reader to its original "factory" settings):

Replace the previous instructions to paragraph 4: "4. Any file with a text editor, do kpg.conf empty (or comment out all lines in it)." and execute it.

-- which Anak's suggestion accomplishes:

To revert the patched settings all you have to do is change

patch_enable = `yes`

into

patch_enable = `no`

and reapply the patch.

The last thing I might do before abandoning the patch (for the moment) is to try version 6. The giant bottom margins using stock look especially irritating now that I've played with version 7.

[jackie_w]

I'm guessing that the developer, Metazoa, uses only epubs, not kepubs, so the kepub aesthetics will not have been a consideration e.g. big header margin, small footer margin and leading dash in footer text. Those problems don't exist in standard epubs.

I'd also guess that many of the people enabling the 'decreased footer size' were also already taking steps to set widows/orphans to zero in their epubs. So seeing widows and/or orphans on many pages will be the norm for them.

Having said all that, on my AuraHD I did substitute the v05 setting for 'Decrease footer example' into the v07 kpg.conf file. The v05 setting does seem to give more control over footer height. I never installed v06 so I'm not sure what method was in use there.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Thanks for that, Jackie. Next time I'm in the mood to try the patch, I'll paste that bit you suggested from version 5 if it doesn't appear in 6.

The only reason I use kepub on my Kobo is out of laziness.

I prefer to download epub files from the Kobo Store on my PC and strip them for personal use, but I spend a lot of time between cities and can't always transfer files. I still haven't reconciled myself to putting my entire personal library on Dropbox or Copy and adding new books to the Kobo as needed from my GS4.

[ectoplasm]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

People have expressed their delight at no longer finding odd page breaks in books -- a problem which is of course specific to Kobo firmware. However, with the patch, that issue seems to be replaced with endless orphans and widows.

I was under the impression most people using the patch were sideloading epubs and not kepubs. That is my scenario. I'm very happy with the results, screenshot here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=13

I add a bit more margin on the left and right, but at least I can tweak it the way I want, rather than the big clumsy empty space that can't be reduced with the default firmware.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

I was under the impression most people using the patch were sideloading epubs and not kepubs.

My limited experience suggested that the fragmented footer issue was with kepubs (which employ different kinds of footer information), but the widow-orphan issue pertained to everything else, too. Pynch's epub versions of Joyce's letters and Beddoes' Poetical Works both had islanded lines at the tops and bottoms of pages.

Edit:

Originally Posted by ectoplasm

I'm very happy with the results, screenshot here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=13

BTW: If ever you're feeling generous and don't consider it a nervy request on my part, I'd love to try the kpg.conf you used to make your epub files look that way.

[Japes]

For those of us who don't have a clue, are there instructions anywhere on how to actually use or apply this?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Japes

For those of us who don't have a clue, are there instructions anywhere on how to actually use or apply this?

Try post #1 in this thread.

[Japes]

I have, thanks. Unless I'm missing something, that doesn't give any sort of instructions on how to actually use this.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Japes

For those of us who don't have a clue, are there instructions anywhere on how to actually use or apply this?

Originally Posted by muness

1. Download the zip file
2. Expand the zip file
3. Copy the contents of relevant subdir (2.6.1 or 2.8.1 based on which version you're running) to the directory that contains kpg.exe
4. Edit the kpg.conf file as you see fit (i.e. adjust patch_enable and/or comment or uncomment the blocks you want)
5. Run the kpg.exe. It will generate a KoboRoot.tgz.
6. Mount the Kobo, copy the generated KoboRoot.tgz by the .exe to the .kobo directory, unmount the kobo and let it reboot.
7. Profit!

The first post contains different links to different versions of the patch. Each link leads to a different post in Russian. Find the version you want, click on its link, examine the Russian post, click on the link within it and you'll be taken to the download page for the zip file mentioned in the explanation above.

You can generate the needed tgz file without tweaking anything at first. All you need to do is run the exe file.

[Japes]

For example, here is a post from earlier in this thread:
I used 60/60/10 and got a lower margin about 1 line high with a readable page number. The default of 5/5/0 put the half the page number off the bottom edge of the screen as well as making it too small to read in any event.

Otherwise, the advanced font settings for any font and WiFi not going to sleep are worth using the patch.

Regards,
David




Where is it that I'm changing those values in the kpg file?

[Japes]

I made some changes in that file, saved it then ran the exe file. Rebooted the Aura HD, and absolutely nothing has changed. LOL. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Japes

I made some changes in that file, saved it then ran the exe file. Rebooted the Aura HD, and absolutely nothing has changed. LOL. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you are using the v7 patcher, check my earlier message https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=128.

Basically for the lower area with v7, Metazoa simplified how the changes are applied by applying them to all devices -- make sense since it's doubtful that many of us will be applying changes to multiple Kobo ereaders. The changes that can be made are the height and the font size.

So comment out the first portion by placing a # in front of the first replace_zlib, remove the # from before the second replace_zlib and modify the height and font-size following the * {.

Other items, replace the libnickel.so.1.0.0 file before trying another change so you are working on the original file as you can trigger an error message otherwise.

After the executable has done it's work (I'd suggest working from an administrative level command prompt) and the results look happy, copy the KoboRoot.tgz file to your ereader's .kobo directory, safely eject and restart it.

Good luck,

Regards,
David

[Japes]

What do you mean by:

"replace the libnickel.so.1.0.0 file before trying another change so you are working on the original file as you can trigger an error message otherwise."

[Rugalb]

I am about to preorder an Aura after reading this thread. I have been using a Sony 505 for many years. But I have a couple of questions. Updating the device's firmware removes the patch? Is there any risk of bricking the device? Couldn't Kobo just implement these options in their firmware?

[ectoplasm]

I assume a new firmware would remove the patch. This is why I don't want my firmware automatically updated, until I know Metazoa has a working patch. I'm not sure how to prevent an automatic update, other than turning off wifi. Any clues to this?

Regarding the new Aura, it has a new firmware and I would also guess you need a new patch.