Aura HD Considering Aura HD, supplementing KPW1

[cybmole]

there are a few things that are less slick on Kobo that they were on my Sony & probably are on KPW:

1, TOC entries do not also show page numbers. If I want to see where chapter ends, on sony I would just look at toc for page number of next entry. not shown on KObo for epubs
2. go to a bookmarked page. the intuitive open annotations & press once or twice does not work - you have to open annotations, select one, then go to settings in bottom right, then choose show bookmarked page from a small additional menu... crap
3. show all notes ( across all books) - this is impossible. - it was easy on Sony

but even with those niggles the aura HD is a very pleasant reading experience

[eschwartz]

1. ToC on Kindle will show page numbers, if the book has page numbers that is. All it takes is the .apnx sidecar file which is on all Amazon-downloaded books, and calibre can create a rough guide as well.

2. Bookmarked pages. Well, you'd have to deliberately mess that one up. I can confirm Amazon didn't mess it up. Tap on a listed annotation on the annotations list, and it opens.

3. List all annotations. Well, all annotations when created are added to a file (appears as a "personal document") called "My Clippings.txt" but if you sync the annotations from your other kindle, they don't get printed to this file.

[cybmole]

[QUOTE=eschwartz;2772567
2. Bookmarked pages. Well, you'd have to deliberately mess that one up. I can confirm Amazon didn't mess it up. Tap on a listed annotation on the annotations list, and it opens.

[/QUOTE]
kobo must go out of their way to recruit programmers with that "mess up" skill set

tapping/holding/shouting at the highlighted annotation does absolutely nothing !

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by cybmole

2. go to a bookmarked page. the intuitive open annotations & press once or twice does not work - you have to open annotations, select one, then go to settings in bottom right, then choose show bookmarked page from a small additional menu... crap

There are some general rules in the Kobo interface:

• Tapping something in a list opens it.
• A long press on an item in a list will usually show a menu.
• Tapping a text window will turn the page. The direction depends on where you tap.
• Italics generally represent something that can be tapped. Tapping the italics text will open a menu, dialog or something else.
• A horizontal swipe will turn the page. The direction depends on the direction you swipe.
• A plus at the end of a line of text means it is too long for the space. Pressing the plus shows the full text in a pop-up.

The first two are what you need for the annotations list. Tapping the annotation will display the details of the annotation. A long press displays the menu. The first item is "Display on page".

[Katsunami]

I've been reading reviews and looking at pictures on the internet. I find it very hard to understand that each and every one shows books with a truly crap layout.

- Huge spaces
- Often left aligned
- Often only 24 or less lines on screen
- Either very few characters per line (45-50-ish, like the Kindle), or a huge amount, making sentences look way too long and too wide.

And then, jandrew comes along, and shows me a beautiful KEPUB layout that looks as if it's a book's page put into a frame.

Are the reviewers using "real KEPUB's" downloaded directly from the store, and are they laid out so badly?

If that is the case, I can stop paying attention to pictures online, because my entire library is EPUB, and each and every book is made up like the one I've posted. (Apart from maybe the chapter header.) If it's not, I make it that way before putting it into my library. I'd surmise that therefore, all my books will (can) look like the one jandrew showed, which I'm totally fine with.

Now for one of the last questions:

Can all the extra stuff such as apps, games, reading life, social media stuff and so on be disabled and/or removed from the home screen? I have zero interest in this.

(Pity that the reader doesn't show page numbers in the TOC, and does not support TOC levels; the Kindle does have page numbers in the TOC, and does support one level.)

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can all the extra stuff such as apps, games, reading life, social media stuff and so on be disabled and/or removed from the home screen? I have zero interest in this.

The Home screen contains 'Tiles' for the things you accessed most recently, therefore, if you never play a game, a tile for it won't be created. The games are hidden away under Settings - Beta features. Settings is a tiny 3x3m icon in the top right of Home screen - so completely unobtrusive. I don't use any of the 'social' features hence there is nothing social on my Home screen. In any case unwanted tiles can be easily got rid of with long-press - Dismiss tile. And davidfor's Kobo Utilities calibre plugin (see plugin forum for details) can set up a trigger on the Kobo's SQLite database such that selected tile types won't 'stick'.

The plus side of the tiles is that you get one-click Home screen access to your currently reading books, and also, if you like, to your favourite Collections.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

(Pity that the reader doesn't show page numbers in the TOC, and does not support TOC levels; the Kindle does have page numbers in the TOC, and does support one level.)

Just so you're clear on the nested TOC thing. The Kobos are happy to display all the nested items, it's just that they're shown flattened. By this, I mean you won't need to edit all your current books if they have nested TOCs.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

The Home screen contains 'Tiles' for the things you accessed most recently, therefore, if you never play a game, a tile for it won't be created. The games are hidden away under Settings - Beta features.

OK, thanks. (I still think that all those "beta features" are wasted time. Manufacturer's should concentrate on the reading experience. For stuff like games or apps, there are tablets. But that is just IMNSHO.)

Just so you're clear on the nested TOC thing. The Kobos are happy to display all the nested items, it's just that they're shown flattened. By this, I mean you won't need to edit all your current books if they have nested TOCs.

I'd expect it to do at least that, obviously. It'd be very bad if the reader would just not display the nested items.

The Kindle has two levels; any deeper levels are flattened into the second level.

This:

>Part 1
-->Chapter 1
---- Sub 1
---- Sub 2
-->Chapter 2

Will become:

>Part 1
-- Chapter 1
-- Sub 1
-- Sub 2
-- Chapter 2

At least, last time I had a book with three levels, but this only happened twice.

By the way: If I have to specifically edit EPUBs for a particular reader (apart from converting them to another format), while they are otherwise perfect and without problems, then I certainly don't want the device.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

By the way: If I have to specifically edit EPUBs for a particular reader (apart from converting them to another format), while they are otherwise perfect and without problems, then I certainly don't want the device.

Then it's only fair to warn you ... whilst I can see no reason why your existing epubs shouldn't transfer to/open/read on a Kobo, if you want the the font customisation options to work perfectly on every epub then you may need to consider how you normally set your epub css.

For example, when I buy a new book I often see hard-coded font-family and line-height settings on practically every body/p/div/blockquote class in the css file. Letting them remain there in the converted epub is a sure way of making the on-device Kobo font-family menu and line space slider ineffective. In fact, every css attribute, which the Kobo can override (in theory), needs to be used sparingly and with care in your epub's internal css to ensure all font adjustments remain possible.

[Katsunami]

Before I put a book into my "Finished" library, I rip out all embedded fonts and @font and font-family references.

I've not yet looked at a pure AZW3, but after converting or extracting an EPUB, I've had no problems with block quotes or repeated line-height or font-family declarations. That could be the books though; I've not bought many from Amazon up until now.

What I meant was that I don't want to change a book anymore after it's "perfect"; which means, no custom fonts except where necessary for special characters, and no EPUB errors as much as possible.

I use a lot of EPUBs from the Kobo store, which I convert to AZW3 using Calibre, and they work perfectly. To be honest, I expect an EPUB from the Kobo store to work correctly on a Kobo device after having it converted/changed to KEPUB...

[speakingtohe]

Anything that looks good on the kindle should be fine on the Kobo. That has been my experience. Sony is more tolerant of different styles etc. but you don't have a Sony so should not come into play.

I like the margins, even the top one better, but I don't like the chapter numbering.

DAvidfors Kobo utilities plugin is invaluable. Too many cool features to list, but you can actually have information on reading status, page position etc. loaded into calibre, and modify the home page, sort series collections by series. Like Sony it is very easy to change your collections without reloading books.

He has also a utility for modifying some CSS on the send to Kobo driver which will fix the widows orphans issue and some others.

The page count for epubs is the same as the count pages plugin ADE algorithm.

Helen

[arspr]

Helen, nothing can fix widows and orphans as they are "unspported" in kepubs...

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by arspr

Helen, nothing can fix widows and orphans as they are "unspported" in kepubs...

So I have read. I do not do usually do kepubs and the epub driver seems to deal adequately with the problem for non-drmed books anyway as does calibre conversion/edit with the appropriate settings even when sending as kepub. Maybe I am wrong about that? Wouldn't be the first time.

I am under the impression that the OP would be able to deal with this if necessary if not totally thrilled with the prospect.

Helen