KOReader vs patched Nickel?

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Nope, you're utterly wrong about this, absolutely no Catch-22 situation here. The reason I don't read PDF ever on my reader is that my reader is too small, and the few PDFs I do read need not only larger screens but also color displays. I don't even read many PDFs on my 10.1 tablet, I read most of the PDFs I do read on my 28-inch monitor.

Apparently when you said PDF, you actually meant something like "large diagrams" or "comics." Those may well be unusable on a Kobo tout court, but they would be at least equally unusable in an EPUB, so it simply doesn't make sense to associate that issue with PDF.

I've disabled Pocket on my Kobo, which I think shows exactly how much I value that kind of service. I ditched my Dropbox account years ago too, not interested in services of that kind either.

This isn't a commercial enterprise. We're not going to pretend you're missing out by not using KOReader if you're happy with what you've got. But if you're genuinely curious, just install the program. And Plato too. It's available as a double feature.

Ignoring everything else, I find Nickel much less pleasant to use because the file management is beyond awful, page turning while reading is slow and its lack of kerning is atrocious. I see Plato as the good version of Nickel. KOReader's not necessarily as polished or as intuitive as Plato (and it can be rather exhausting to prevent well-intentioned programmers from making that worse) but on average it offers vastly more options if you're willing to explore a little.

Broadly sketched, my ecosystem consists of Archive.org (facsimile DjVu/PDF), DBNL (EPUB/facsimile PDF), Gallica (facsimile PDF), Project Gutenberg (EPUB), Humble Bundle (EPUB/CBZ/PDF), OAPEN (digital native & facsimile PDF), academic papers (digital native & facsimile PDF), independent authors (EPUB), long form articles saved in Wallabag (EPUB), and occasionally Wikipedia articles saved through KOReader (EPUB).

KOReader is primarily interesting if you feel like you're missing out on something along those general lines because of the inferior Nickel experience. But if you're perfectly happy in kepub land, chances are there's nothing to be found here. And that's okay.

[Jellby]

Perhaps the question is: what do you miss in Nickel? What kind of experience or feature would you like that you don't currently have? What do you think could be improved? It might be that some of this is already in KOReader or something else.

Other things I missed (more or less strongly), and found in KOReader:
* True page (i.e. screen) numbers, with reliable (at least with my books) pages-to-finish and pages-to-next-chapter counters and/or ticks in progress bar. (By the way, see for example this book for usable, in my opinion, PDF with the kind of progress bar I wanted.)
* Permanent clock while reading (optional).
* Style tweaking control without patching, survives upgrades.
* Reliable "back to previous position" action (I was tired of having to set a bookmark before viewing a footnote, in case the previous position got lost and there was no "back" link, which happened very often).
* More reliable annotation/highlight support, that doesn't disappear, lock the reader or refuse to highlight the fragment I want.

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by Jellby

(By the way, see for example this book for usable, in my opinion, PDF with the kind of progress bar I wanted.)

That PDF is a very peculiar example. It will be more than usable in almost anything that can open PDFs. It'll be a bit slower to turn pages in Nickel but that's about it.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Perhaps the question is: what do you miss in Nickel? What kind of experience or feature would you like that you don't currently have? What do you think could be improved? It might be that some of this is already in KOReader or something else.

Other things I missed (more or less strongly), and found in KOReader:
* True page (i.e. screen) numbers, with reliable (at least with my books) pages-to-finish and pages-to-next-chapter counters and/or ticks in progress bar. (By the way, see for example this book for usable, in my opinion, PDF with the kind of progress bar I wanted.)
* Permanent clock while reading (optional).
* Style tweaking control without patching, survives upgrades.
* Reliable "back to previous position" action (I was tired of having to set a bookmark before viewing a footnote, in case the previous position got lost and there was no "back" link, which happened very often).
* More reliable annotation/highlight support, that doesn't disappear, lock the reader or refuse to highlight the fragment I want.

Thanks!
A big part of the reason for asking is that I hadn't found a comprehensive list of KOReader's features, despite scouring the GitHub homepage and the Wiki. Thanks to the replies in this thread, I now have one. From the list you give above, persistent style control that survives upgrades is very appealing, and if KOReader tracks progress more accurately than Nickel, that too would be a plus. In my experience the issues with "back to previous" and highlighting seem to have been addressed in recent firmware updates, at least in the kepubs I always read

[Jellby]

That may be significant. I never read kepubs, so your experience and mine will probably be different.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Jellby

That may be significant. I never read kepubs, so your experience and mine will probably be different.

Thanks. I did wonder about that. I convert all my books to kepub before transferring via Calibre, and at least in the most recent firmware, the only two issues that persist from the list you gave are the hassle of having to re-enable the patch for advanced font control each update and the erratic and inconsistent measurement of reading progress.

[Uncle Robin]

I guess another key question is - does KOReader read kepubs? I have 650 on my Kobo, and no epubs, and the thought of having to swap them all gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I guess another key question is - does KOReader read kepubs? I have 650 on my Kobo, and no epubs, and the thought of having to swap them all gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

It should read KePub.

[NiLuJe]

It does indeed (after all, it's just an ePub).

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

It does indeed (after all, it's just an ePub).

Thanks, I thought that most likely, but wanted to be sure before trying it out.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Frenzie

Apparently when you said PDF, you actually meant something like "large diagrams" or "comics." Those may well be unusable on a Kobo tout court, but they would be at least equally unusable in an EPUB, so it simply doesn't make sense to associate that issue with PDF.

I don't read comics at all, and only very seldom heavily diagrammatic books, and I meant exactly what I said

the few PDFs I do read need not only larger screens but also color displays

.
I made no criticism of PDF as a format (I've probably read 2 DJVU files in my entire life, with no plans on increasing that number in the foreseeable future). You asserted that the reason I didn't read PDFs on my reader was because I had not tried alternate software, I corrected that by explaining that the reason is entirely hardware based.

[Frenzie]

And my contention is that it matters how well the software deals with the limitations of the hardware. The hardware may be "too small" for the original document, but when the software can quickly and conveniently ignore margins, zoom to columns, reflow wide text columns, etc. that's seldom an issue. On other document viewing apps that's typically implemented by manual zoom and pan. On a 60 Hz screen that's merely less convenient, while on an ereader I'd call it almost completely unworkable.

The same can even apply to color display. Naturally a grayscale device cannot actually display color, but the visual results of the resizing and dithering algorithms can make a big difference in perceived accuracy and ugliness. Software and hardware are strongly intertwined.