Nickelmenu on 5.x firmware

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does V5 have a newer version of RMSDK?

How can I find out? device information only lists that it uses Adobe Reader Mobile licenses but no version.

[rantanplan]

Sorry for spamming. You can update the Kobo ereader.conf like this:

[DeveloperSettings]
EpubSideloadedRenderer=RMSDK

And it'll use RMSDK for sideloaded epubs. Not sure if that also works for kepub or if this has it's own keyword.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Sorry for spamming. You can update the Kobo ereader.conf like this:

[DeveloperSettings]
EpubSideloadedRenderer=RMSDK

And it'll use RMSDK for sideloaded epubs. Not sure if that also works for kepub or if this has it's own keyword.

Even if it's not any newer, it works and obviously works better then the chromium mess.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even if it's not any newer, it works and obviously works better then the chromium mess.

Yeah, Kobo royally fucked this up. Hopefully they'll fix it at some point. Though it has made improvements with every firmware update.

[Falkor]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Currently it's bad. The reader ignores most css right now.

It does a lack a couple of features, but most CSS works for me.

Notable omissions:

• break-after/page-break-after / break-before/page-break-before –*there's just no way to trigger a page break other than splitting the content into separate html files.
• gap
• widows
• orphans
• letter-spacing
• line-height (I guess they just ignore it because the user is supposed to set the line height)
• hyphens (hyphenation can only be activated with the justification button –*which messes up the layout)
• initial-letter

On the plus side, transform is supported.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does V5 have a newer version of RMSDK?

I've had some cases in which the stylesheet was being ignored in V4, but not in V5, so I guess it's slightly newer (but not much).

The nice thing about V5 is that you can set your preferred renderer in the developer menu.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How good is the typesetting on v5.x with DRM-Free ePub?

I do miss the CSS features above, but other than that the typesetting is fine.

The renderer does have some issues, though. It's extremely slow and I keep crashing it when trying to change settings. And sometimes it will cut off the first/and or last line on a page.

[JSWolf]

How does the justification button mess up the layout? What are widows and orphans set to in chromium? If they are not 1, I'd find it annoying. Line height is not a problem if I can set it with the slider, but not the default 1.3 an unpatched Kobo defaults to as the lowest value.

[Falkor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How does the justification button mess up the layout? What are widows and orphans set to in chromium? If they are not 1, I'd find it annoying. Line height is not a problem if I can set it with the slider, but not the default 1.3 an unpatched Kobo defaults to as the lowest value.

It sets everything to justified. RMSDK handles this better, it only changes the text-align setting for the body tag, so if some elements are set to right aligned, left aligned or centered because they need to be set that way, they won't be changed.

Same for the font-family: if you change the font in RMSDK, it only changes the setting in the body tag. Headings and other elements that for some reason need a special font are not affected. Much better than changing the font everywhere.

For headings I often need a much smaller line height (see attachments). I tried to style this like the original book. Looks alright in ADE, Thorium and Calibre.

The kerning problems here are caused by the font, btw. font-kerning in CSS is supported.

[JSWolf]

Would you mind showing a photo of an actual page with real fonts used for reading? Thanks.

[PeterT]

I'd love to see a list of ePubs that people have issues with Kobo and their rendering. Ideally include either a source for the book or a scrambled copy and a description of what issues are sern

[Falkor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you mind showing a photo of an actual page with real fonts used for reading? Thanks.

My reading fonts are fine at minimum line height, but some of the included fonts are not. I guess the range of the slider could use some tweaking.

The real issue I’m having is with headings. They just don't look the way I style them.

[JSWolf]

Thanks. That really does need hyphenation. What's the smallest line height you can get with the slider?

[Falkor]

With english books it's OK, but german compound words really require hyphenation.

Both screenshots are with minimal line height. I looked it up in the Kobo eReader.conf and it shows readingLineHeight=1.05
, but apparently the device stores different settings for different books, so I don't know if that's the actual setting we see here..

[JSWolf]

So you probably can edit the line height in the conf and as long as you don't use thr slider, it will stay that way.

[Falkor]

I guess so, but as the reading fonts I use don't give me any problems with line height, I have yet to try that.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Falkor

I guess so, but as the reading fonts I use don't give me any problems with line height, I have yet to try that.

It;s a good idea to try it in case you ever do want to lower the line height and so those of us not on v5 firmware will know if it works. If we can't have patches, we need to know about workarounds.