[Device Plugin] Kobo Touch Extended Driver

[skip_sands]

thank you guys. will be looking forward to what's coming next to this great plugin. thanks for the hard work.

[gers1978]

Is there any way of adding an option to the plugin that actually replace the cover inside the ePub (similar to the Modify ePub plugin) when you send the book? I prefer to actually replace the cover inside the epub rather than just Upload the cover, but I keep forgetting to run Modify ePub before I send them!

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by gers1978

I get the following error in Calibre when trying to send a particular book to my Aura HD:

You missed an important step from the first post for reporting bugs:

Originally Posted by jgoguen

Submitting Bugs
Found an issue? Have a new feature request? Great, I want to hear from you! Go to the GitHub issue tracker and submit a new bug report. To save us all time, please make sure to include the following details:

• What version of calibre are you running? If this is not the latest version, you will likely be asked to upgrade and confirm that the bug still exists.
• What version of the plugin are you using? If this is not the latest version, you will likely be asked to upgrade and confirm that the bug still exists.
• What Kobo device you're using and what firmware version
  • To get the Kobo firmware version, from the Settings page choose Device Information and look for the line beginning with Software Version about two-thirds of the way down the page.
• For issues processing books, whether or not you are able to send me a book that demonstrates the problem. Please be aware of your local copyright laws and any legal restrictions which may prevent sending me a book!
• The calibre debug log showing the issue, where applicable
  • To get the calibre debug log, select Preferences -> Restart in debug mode and reproduce the issue. The calibre debug log will be displayed shortly after closing calibre.

Although I may ask you to send me links to files by PM or email, any issues sent to me through any means other than the GitHub bug tracker (including email, PM, etc.) may be silently ignored. This is not because I don't care! It's because I have a terrible memory, the GitHub issue tracker is my "to-do list" for this plugin, and there's been instances where I've seen a post or PM here and promptly forgotten all about it until I happened to stumble across the post again later. If you aren't sure if you have an issue, feel free to post here and we can work together to decide if you need to make a new GitHub issue or not. If you are sure you have an issue, or if you have an error or exception from calibre, post a new issue. It isn't necessary to post here when you make a new issue, I get notified of all new GitHub bugs and I check the list regularly. The worst that could possibly happen on GitHub is the same that could happen here: I'll tell you that it's not a bug and you'll have the opportunity to convince me otherwise!

Originally Posted by gers1978

Is there any way of adding an option to the plugin that actually replace the cover inside the ePub (similar to the Modify ePub plugin) when you send the book? I prefer to actually replace the cover inside the epub rather than just Upload the cover, but I keep forgetting to run Modify ePub before I send them!

No. I would need to require that you manually place every single cover image in a specific location with a specific file name format which would be more onerous and error-prone than just telling you to remember to run Modify ePub.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Is there any way of adding an option to the plugin that actually replace the cover inside the ePub (similar to the Modify ePub plugin) when you send the book? I prefer to actually replace the cover inside the epub rather than just Upload the cover, but I keep forgetting to run Modify ePub before I send them!

As Joel said, it would be a horrible thing to have to code. Luckily, calibre already does this when you send a book. But, it still needs to find the cover. If the cover isn't being replace when you send the book, with any driver, then the cover page definition is not good. The other ways of doing this, Modify ePub, Polish books and a conversion, all attempt the same method, but if it doesn't work, they force the cover page in.

[davidfor]

Could someone try something?

Open a sideloaded kepub and select some text in the first sentence of a paragraph and the second sentence. Then save that as a highlight or an annotation.

When the screen is redisplayed, what is highlighted? Here, the highlight starts at the beginning of the next paragraph and continues to the end of the file. That is usually the end of the chapter, but I happened to test this on a book that I had combined several chapters into one file. But testing another book had the same problem.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Could someone try something?

Open a sideloaded kepub and select some text in the first sentence of a paragraph and the second sentence. Then save that as a highlight or an annotation.

When the screen is redisplayed, what is highlighted? Here, the highlight starts at the beginning of the next paragraph and continues to the end of the file. That is usually the end of the chapter, but I happened to test this on a book that I had combined several chapters into one file. But testing another book had the same problem.

Do you mean to highlight from the beginning of the first sentence until the end of the second or the very first words of the paragraph and some words in the second sentence?

[tlaine]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Could someone try something?

Open a sideloaded kepub and select some text in the first sentence of a paragraph and the second sentence. Then save that as a highlight or an annotation.

I highlighted the first line of a paragraph, then the 2nd sentence over 2 lines. Returned to the home screen, went back to the page and initially there was no highlighting but it flashed and what I had highlighted was there.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by samhy

Do you mean to highlight from the beginning of the first sentence until the end of the second or the very first words of the paragraph and some words in the second sentence?

Something like that. Just so long as the highlight includes the end of the first sentence and the start of the second.

Originally Posted by tlaine

I highlighted the first line of a paragraph, then the 2nd sentence over 2 lines. Returned to the home screen, went back to the page and initially there was no highlighting but it flashed and what I had highlighted was there.

That sounds like two highlights rather than the one I meant that include parts of the first two sentences.

[tlaine]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That sounds like two highlights rather than the one I meant that include parts of the first two sentences.

It seems I can no longer highlight nor remove the previous highlights. I'm using an Aura.

[tlaine]

@ davidfor Well that was a bit of an adventure. It did display the problem you described, I just couldn't find it for some time as mine happened much later and highlighted to the end of a particularly long chapter (Wolf Hall.) So mine highlighted what I did highlight and then jumped ahead many pages and highlighted to the end of the chapter. All's well now.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Something like that. Just so long as the highlight includes the end of the first sentence and the start of the second.

Ok, I did that and got the same result as tlaine. Nothing at first, then a flash and the highlight was right were it was supposed to be.
Edit: it was on the Mini

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by tlaine

@ davidfor Well that was a bit of an adventure. It did display the problem you described, I just couldn't find it for some time as mine happened much later and highlighted to the end of a particularly long chapter (Wolf Hall.) So mine highlighted what I did highlight and then jumped ahead many pages and highlighted to the end of the chapter. All's well now.

Originally Posted by tlaine

It seems I can no longer highlight nor remove the previous highlights. I'm using an Aura.

Originally Posted by samhy

Ok, I did that and got the same result as tlaine. Nothing at first, then a flash and the highlight was right were it was supposed to be.
Edit: it was on the Mini

Sorry, I should have suggested doing this near the end of a chapter. Especially as when I did it I was using a longish book that had all the chapters in one file.

The same thing will happen if you mark both the last and second last sentence in a paragraph. Or maybe I should say if the part of the first or last sentences is highlighted with any other sentence. It is to do with how the extended driver creates the spans for the ids. There is one for the full paragraph, then one for each of the sentences inside it, except the first and last. Purchased kepubs either have a span for the complete paragraph, or a span for each sentence. There is a complication if other tags are used in the sentence, but I haven't worked that one out yet.

Of course, there is a bug in the reader app when displaying the highlight. But it would be very low on Kobo priorities for fixing.

[AJvK]

Hmmm... I so wanted this to work, but the plugin doesn't seem to do anything for me... I see no difference whatsoever between books sideloaded with the Kobo Touch driver and the Extended driver.

Kobo Aura HD - calibre 0.9.33 - Extended plugin 1.4.1

I disabled the Kobo Touch plugin, made sure Enable Extended Features was checked and I specifically changed Bookshelf creation from author_sort to authors on the Extended plugin, then sideloaded a book to the Aura, but -like I said- no change in behaviour when I read the book. The book was added to the Shelf Clancy, Tom (which already existed), not to Tom Clancy as I would have expected. Also, when reading, all I see are the normal page numbers (i.e. for the entire book, not remaining in chapter).

Am I missing something, or did I do something wrong?

Edit: just to be sure, I sideloaded some novels form an author that wasn't already on the Aura. Same thing: a shelf was created Gould, Steven, not Steven Gould, and I don't see any of the Extended Features in these novels either...

[PeterT]

Did you restart calibre?

[AJvK]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Did you restart calibre?

Aaarghhh - you'd think I would have, what having worked with computers before. But no, I did not restart calibre.

I have now though, and it works. I have discovered some weird behaviour:
The first time I connect my Aura to my MBP, I get a growl notification saying Device: Kobo Touch/Glo/Mini detected. The calibre app window shows Connected to Aura HD. On subsequent connects, I get a notification Device: Kobo Aura HD detected. Don't know if this is intentional or a fluke, but while it happens consistently it doesn't impede functionality.

Regarding novels: after restarting calibre, all my existing shelves were updated to authors instead of author_sort. However, existing novels don't seem to get new features. So I deleted some novels, quit and restarted calibre, then re-added those novels, and now they do seem to display different behaviour: they display in much smaller font than the first time they were uploaded, in a fontsize I have never set manually.
I do see the chapter name in the bottom of the page, with pages remaining in that chapter, as expected, and also reading stats through the reading menu.

It just seems that I do have to re-add all books to get these benefits.

Also, one caveat: disabling the Kobo Touch device driver also deletes any plugboards hat depended on that driver. I must found that after deleting all novels, en re-adding a few. You need to create new plugboards with the KOBOTOUCHEXTENDED Device.

Thanks Joel for the plugin, and thanks Peter pointing out my rather basic error.