Glo Kobo Software Update 2.5.2

[Quexos]

My understanding is that the ads are optional. There are two same PW models one with and one without ads for a little extra. But correct me if I'm wrong, I don't use Kindle.

Originally Posted by 93terp

I ABSOLUTE do not miss the ads/"special offers" on the Kindle! One of the things I like the most about my Kobo Aura!

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I actually like the spaces between paragraphs. For me it's more comfortable to read that way, so I always format my ebooks to have them.

Also I can not really understand the obsession with how many lines of text you have on the screen. It's not like the reader gets any heavier with the books having more pages. And turning the page is very fast and easy. (Not saying that people aren't entitled to their opinions or that other people's preferences are stupid or anything - I just don't really get it...).

Having used a Kobo Touch before, I get much more text on my screen than I used to before (75 pages in my comfortable font sizes on the touch vs. 48 on the Aura, different font size - else it would still be 61 to 48). But I really just checked that once.

And I must admit I really didn't care about the amount of pages turns needed to finish a book before and don't know - as long as we are talking about a few lines and pages. But reading some people (not everyone, of course) it sounds as if the amount of page turns had doubled.

Still voting for options, of course. And I think an "Advanced Options" section would be great. I don't think it needs to be some config file. A check box in the settings to show or not to show advanced options would be enough, I think.

Coming from a Kobo Touch, or even a Glo, which probably have the same kind of formatting than the Aura, I understand why you would see the Aura as a better alternative. But coming from a PW, and with all the fuss that has been made around the Aura having the bigger screen, what a joke, because how exactly is a bigger screen doing me any good under those circumstances?

It is not only about page turns or format. It is about a brand needing to be be coherent with their unique selling proposition. I really like the flexibility that Kobo offers in terms of fonts configurations for instance, or line spacing. But they are losing this advantage if they start messing up with page format and trying to impose one format for all. This direction, should they intend to keep it that way, is in complete contradiction to the configurable formatting, which really is part of their success. I will quote their own words :

Personalize your fonts
Customizing your reading experience is simple. TypeGenius allows you to select your preferred font from a choice of 10 styles and 24 sizes, including Kobo Nickel. Kobo Nickel is our exclusive font, designed to leave more ink on the page for a more comfortable read. You can also adjust the sharpness and weight of each font – a feature exclusive to TypeGenius – and set your margins to create your perfect page.

I am not inventing it, it is on their website.

@Quexos : you are right, there is a with or without ads PW, and even if you buy the ads version one, you can pay afterwards to get rid of the ads and thus have an ads-free version anytime.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by roger64

We have font options, line-height options, margins options, why can't we have a few formatting options (if only for advanced users)? This idea seems to reach a consensus here.

I'm all for options - if they work well, of course.

If, for example, I could set the firmware to display a blank line between paragraphs without having to reformat my book, that would be nice.

Also I'd like to have options for top and bottom margins (like for the side margins).

I like the KePub formatting, but that does not mean I want that to be forced onto ePubs (or readers who dislike it). They could make that optional, though. Something along the line of "use KePub-formatting" (if that is possible, that is).

BTW: With Kobo Nickel I get much less text on my screen since the line height (even at "zero") is much higher than when I'm using Georgia, for example.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Coming from a Kobo Touch, or even a Glo, which probably have the same kind of formatting than the Aura, I understand why you would see the Aura as a better alternative. But coming from a PW, and with all the fuss that has been made around the Aura having the bigger screen, what a joke, because how exactly is a bigger screen doing me any good under those circumstances?

Lots of people (like me) will probably not use the same font size on the Aura as they used to on a device with lower resolution.

I read at a font size that's 3 degrees smaller than I used to use for my Touch and it is still as comfortable to read.

That results in much more text on the screen, of course, than if you would use the same font size.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I'm all for options - if they work well, of course.

If, for example, I could set the firmware to display a blank line between paragraphs without having to reformat my book, that would be nice.

Also I'd like to have options for top and bottom margins (like for the side margins).

I like the KePub formatting, but that does not mean I want that to be forced onto ePubs (or readers who dislike it). They could make that optional, though. Something along the line of "use KePub-formatting" (if that is possible, that is).

Yes, that would be real good.

[Anak]

I've made my motivated opinions in previous messages in this post but all will add some additional thoughts in this post.

There are actually two top and bottom bars

1. settings menu. To change font settings, access TOC (bottom bar), or general device settings (top bar) etc.
2. reading mode. Showing booktitle, pagenumbers etc.

This is not new as the discussion in this thead is mainly about what I describe here as "reading mode". But I'll think it is useful to make an explicit distinction between the two.

• settings menu. No changes have to be made to the settings menu. Ofcourse Kobo could apply any changes to it if they'll think it will improve navigation or general usability of the device. The relative wide margins can be left unaltered.
• reading mode. The bars only show information that requires no user input. Meaning, the relative wide margins can be reduced to a more moderate size. The information presented in these bars could be placed closer to the edge of the screen. Use the same font size for the top and bottom bar (to me the font size used in the bottom bar seems a little bigger than the top bar, but may actually be the same size) or a slightly smaller font size that frees up a little more space for actual reading purposes. But the best thing Kobo could to make the bars fully optional in reading mode.

In my opinion there shoud be a

• full screen mode (book information bars are optional)
• no hard page margins. The Kobo user agent uses hard left and right margins in kepub (about 10px or so) that can not be made smaller. These margins come on top of the margins that are already set in the epub itself. Minimum margins of the user agent should be zero. Ofcourse Kobo could set the default of initial margins setting to its current settings.
  My stand is that the viewport of the device should be equal to the maximum resolution of the device itself. And not cropped by 10px on the left and right. This may seem small but but cropping the screen output (only for left and right margins) itself is unnecessery.
  

In reading mode this means that the actual viewport for reading purposes should be

• in full screen mode: identical to the maximum screen resolution of the device (Touch 800×600;AuraHD 1440×1080).
• show book information while reading: identical to the maximum screen resolution of the device decreased with the sizes of the top and bottom bars. This is can be with small margins or relative wide margins (current situation)

[taming]

I want to throw something in the mix. Kobo's proprietary format produces books that are ePubs, and, in fact, they are ePubs that some have said are much closer to being fully ePub3 compliant than pretty much anything out there. At one point. it was assumed the Adobe would do the "heavy lifting" to create ePub 3 compliant software/renderer for for the parallel ePub format we commonly think of when we say "ePub".

This has not been the case.

Now take a look at: http://readium.org/readium-foundation-announced

Readium.org Launches Open Source Foundation, EPUB 3 SDK Project
MARCH 25, 2013

Paris Book Fair (Salon du livre) March 25, 2013 (PRESS RELEASE) – The Readium.org open source initiative today announced its evolution into a formal consortium of member companies fostering a community of open source projects for digital publishing. Also unveiled today was a new Readium SDK project to develop an EPUB® 3 rendering engine optimized for native apps on tablets and other devices.

Initial members of the new Readium Foundation include ACCESS, Aldiko, Bluefire Productions, Baker & Taylor, Benetech, Bokbasen, DAISY Consortium, Datalogics, De Marque, DILICOM, eBook.de, Eden Livres (a joint venture of Gallimard, La Martinière and Flammarion), Editis, Evident Point, Feedbooks, Firebrand Technologies, Hachette Livre, IDPF, Izneo, Kobo, LIA (by Italian Publishers Association), Mantano, Numilog, Rakuten, Sony Corporation, TXTR, and Vibal Publishing House.

Readium.org was launched in 2012 by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and supporters in order to develop a browser-based reference implementation of the EPUB 3 standard. Its initial project has matured into a popular Chrome browser extension (available on the Chrome Web Store), which supports all EPUB 3 functionality. The codebase has been adopted as the nucleus of several browser-based “cloud” readers, including the new Bookshare Web Reader, and the project will continue on that vector as “Readium Web”.

Today marks the public announcement of a new “Readium SDK” open source project that is developing implementation of EPUB 3 for native applications, optimized for high performance on resource-constrained mobile devices. Kobo made a substantial donation of code and architectural leadership to help seed the Readium SDK project. Several other supporters have also begun contributing resources and expertise, including Bluefire Productions, Evident Point, and IDPF.

To oversee both projects, and to undertake other future activities to develop commercial-grade open source technology to accelerate industry-wide adoption of EPUB 3 and HTML5, over two dozen leading companies in the global digital publishing industry have joined together to form a new membership-based nonprofit Readium Foundation. Readium Foundation is vendor-neutral and open to all, and will operate transparently to improve completeness and consistency of support for EPUB 3 across implementations. Each of the founding member companies has committed to significant financial and/or development contributions.

Quotes from members about the launch of Readium Foundation and Readium SDK are available at http://readium.org/foundation_sdk_launch_quotes.

About Readium.org / Readium Foundation

Readium Foundation (Readium.org) is a Delaware non-profit membership corporation (501c(6)), established in 2013 to develop commercial-grade open source components to advance digital publishing for EPUB and the Open Web Platform. To learn more about Readium SDK and Readium Web, access source code and other resources, and learn how you can participate in the Readium.org community, visit http://readium.org .

Readium and the Readium logo are trademarks of Readium Foundation. EPUB is a registered trademark of the IDPF.

I don't know the full implications of this, but it occurs to me that what we have always thought of as ePubs (which was really Adobe 's take on the earlier ePub standard) is, in the new world of ePub3 compliance, on the verge of going the way of the DoDo, and that what we think of as kepubs, are part of (and perhaps leaders in) the new world of ePub 3.

Looking at the article above, note who is involved in this. Also note that Kobo apparently donated a whole lot of code for this project. I have no idea what the future is going to look like, but I suspect that Kobo has a better idea of that future than we might think.

I also suspect that Kobo won't be doing much in the way of development for the current Adobe based ePubs. I am willing to bet that they have learnt from this thread that a sizeable number of people do not want addons to that, but I am also willing to bet that the adobe epub is going to go away, at some point. And not just for Kobo devices, but across the board.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by taming

I don't know the full implications of this, but it occurs to me that what we have always thought of as ePubs (which was really Adobe 's take on the earlier ePub standard) is, in the new world of ePub3 compliance, on the verge of going the way of the DoDo, and that what we think of as kepubs, are part of (and perhaps leaders in) the new world of ePub 3.

Are you telling us that from now on, or soon enough, all "epubs" on any given epub compliant e-reader device are going to look like they look on the Aura with 2.5.2 ?

You do realize you are giving Amazon a great selling point, right ?

[taming]

No, i think that every vendor will have its own spin on things like whether or not there is a title at the top of the page, and buyers may decide that they like one company's take on it over another, but that the old ePubs will disappear.

From what I have read on MR, not everybody is enamored of the way Amazon's Kindle books look/perform, either.

I am not giving Amazon anything, btw. I am just an end user with an interest in following the news, just like you.

[Anak]

@taming.
Yes, I'm glad that Kobo takes an ative role or participation to turn the epub3 standard into full epub3 rendering engine (like Readium) and tries to keep it as open (not meaning open source) or light (in the case of lightweight drm) as possible. I appreciate the efforts Kobo is taken towards the epub3 standard and is worth (and fair) to mention here.

But their implementation on there devices they add some unnecessery things to the standard (epub2, epub3). E.g. like a fixed bottom margin after each paragraph.
Which shouldn't be there. They aren't there in paperbooks. And not really essential to improve readability on digital devices (in most cases I would say, to the contrary). But if Kobo wants this "feature", they should have added (should change this to) a top and bottom padding option to the font settings menu (like the left/right margin setting) to adjust the space between paragraphs. This padding feature is relative easy to add. It improves both flexibility and user experience as the user can adjust it to his/her own prefered setting.

The perfect device doesn't exist. But by keeping options optional it can be almost become near perfect.

[taming]

I am not intending to join the discussion on specific preferences. That is not why I wrote the post. I just wanted to throw something that had not really been discussed, but seemed important, into the mix.

[llcj]

I am one of those people who purchased a Kobo partly because of its UI and formatting. When I finally got my hands on a Kindle, my first reaction was "this is what all the fuss is about, not at all impressed."

As many others have said, having the option to change this aspect of formatting would be ideal.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Coming from a Kobo Touch, or even a Glo, which probably have the same kind of formatting than the Aura, I understand why you would see the Aura as a better alternative. But coming from a PW, and with all the fuss that has been made around the Aura having the bigger screen, what a joke, because how exactly is a bigger screen doing me any good under those circumstances?

Aura's screen is not only bigger, but also has a higher pixel density. Fonts, some favourites from the paper world (Caslon, for example) should, in theory, look better on higher pixel density screens. In theory, a smaller font size should also look better on Aura... so, I still want it.

But I have not seen one in store yet, and will definitely not upgrade before I scrutinize it for myself. Aside from software growing pains, there is nothing wrong with 3 Touches owned by my family, they are doing the job.

[filmo]

Review notes difference highlighting text between the Paper White and Aura with Paper White being what I call more responsive. Maybe this is because Paper White has capacitive touch and Aura has IR touch or just programing. Could also contribute to some of the screen front lighting differences, not just the light diffusion layers.

[Anak]

Well, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words or in this particular case a Aura HD video review is worth a thousend words.
Basically all complaints made here are addressed in that video review.
I really hope Kobo watches this and other reviews of the Aura HD and takes the comments/issues made in them seriously and tries to solve or improve them.