Kobo Bug thread

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Part of it may be that you appear to have confused publishers with stores; B&N doesn't care what the books you buy from them look like, as they have no control over that. As for publishers' apathy, most of the complaints go to the stores, which have no reason to pass them along. Besides, by that time they already have your money; why would they worry about changing the book? What are you going to do, not buy a second copy?

Basically, I'm saying that ebooks don't work better due to widespread apathy, lack of investment in ebooks as a proper platform, and misdirected complaints. Get the complaints to the right places, and maybe things will change.

You are right. I was bizarrely thinking of Barnes and Noble as a publisher although I do know better. I should have been referring to stores. Kobo is a store, Amazon is a store. Sorry for being confusing.

Not sure what you mean about the complaints though. Are the publishers complaining to the stores that their books appear too much like the way paper books are laid out and they want them harder to read? Stranger things have happened of course.

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Lucas Malor

I quote myself

So Kobo uses the Adobe software as a black box, complete in itself while others just call individual library functions? Or am I misunderstanding?

Which PC version corresponds the closest to the one that Kobo uses? I will try 2.1 and see.

Thanks

Helen

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Not sure what you mean about the complaints though. Are the publishers complaining to the stores that their books appear too much like the way paper books are laid out and they want them harder to read? Stranger things have happened of course.

If people have complaints about ebooks, they don't talk to the publishers, who could actually fix their usually-sloppy formatting if there was enough demand. Instead, they talk to the stores, who can't do anything except maybe offer a refund. In some rare cases, they'll complain to the device manufacturer, but that's a real crapshoot.

In short, we have a perfect situation here for a lack of useful feedback. The people who get it can't use it, and the people who need it don't get it.

[Lucas Malor]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

So Kobo uses the Adobe software as a black box, complete in itself while others just call individual library functions? Or am I misunderstanding?

Or Kobo just don't developed a workaround for the bugs we are examining. We can't know for sure, since:

1. this is not an open source SDK
2. Kobo and the other ereader companies do not have a transparent bug reporting system

So what we can do is just guessing.

[Lucas Malor]

@Rev. Bob: the problem is not the books, but the different ereaders. If I write a book usually I test it with the ereader that I mostly care. For the majority of people this is enough. The problem is that ereader softwares does not folllow standards. This is the same mess with pages that you write for Internet Explorer only.

Anyway this is a little OT, since this _is_ an ADE bug

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Lucas Malor

@Rev. Bob: the problem is not the books, but the different ereaders. If I write a book usually I test it with the ereader that I mostly care. For the majority of people this is enough. The problem is that ereader softwares does not folllow standards. This is the same mess with pages that you write for Internet Explorer only.

In my experience, the huge majority of ebooks out there are overformatted. The combination of overspecified CSS and sloppy HTML leads to a predictable result: ebooks that look very different on different devices. On the other hand, ebooks with clear, simple code work a lot better - there's just less to mess up.

The software isn't blameless, but GIGO is a more significant factor.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I also have a hard time understanding why a publisher, Barnes and Noble for example, would intend a book to have/display spaces between each and every line several times the height of the characters.

As far as I know, Barnes and Noble isn't a publisher other than their Classics series however I also have a hard time understanding why some publishers love overly complex and sloppily implemented layouts. Some ereaders will override the styling built into the book -- as example, again using Barnes and Noble, there were the presets on a Nook Simple Touch while Kobo evidently made the decision to display the book the way it was intended to be displayed with minimal capability to override styling.

One nasty side effect for some ebooks is that those sloppy, complex styles tend to have issues when using devices with different renderers or even different display resolutions.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I don't pretend to understand how renderers work. I have the impression due to people saying it is the Adobe engine responsible for rendering epubs, that it is (the renderer) somewhat independent. But others seem to indicate that reader manufacturers/developers have quite a bit of control. Perhaps you could explain which is right if you have time.

As far as I know -- and I have not done any hands-on work with the Adobe RMSDK -- it does allow control over quite a few optional components. After all, SDK is software development kit. There is a certification process that must be gone through before you can sell a device, application, etc. that uses the RMSDK. The process includes testing base functionality, optional components, navigation, etc.

Just checked and I still have a bookmark for the Reader Mobile 9 certification but I can't seem to find one for the new Reader Mobile 10. Here's the link: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe...on_Process.pdf. Check around page 9 for the optional components such as PDF reflow.

When I originally read the certification document, the requirement for display capture made me wonder if that's why Kobo has the screenshots capability to allow sending images of the screen for the certification process.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

And yes I have seen some ugly books, many of which are not displayed well by any reader/app/program. Even some books available on overdrive leave a lot to be desired. Generally I can fix them and I am not overly fussy.

Pretty much if the book can be fixed, this suggests that it is an issue with the book's styling and not an issue with the Kobo. GIGO.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

But I have seen many more that display just fine on other readers, programs, apps. In fact they closely mimic a paper book. Why have there not been big protests from publishers when these books are displayed with normal spacing, consistent margins etc. if they were intended to be displayed with the big gaps and other peculiarities?

You've already paid for the book? Generally, I test an iffy book on ADE 1.7.2 as my way if deciding if the problem is with the ereader or the ebook. I'd say about 80% of the issues I want to fix are ebook problems.

Unlike traditional book design where there are centuries of previous art -- probably, black art -- which has yielded rules that allow designing a book with cohesive format, style, layout, etc. into an attractive package, some ebook publishers seem to have hired high school students with no experience in book design to handle their ebooks creation needs.

One recent horrible example for my wife was an ebook she purchased which clocked in at 23MB. 500KB of text, 50KB of miscellaneous files and 2.3MB of images, the remainder was fonts. On her PC's screen, the book looked like a fine example of the old Macintosh ransom note letters. Her ereader looked worse since some of the text was specified with absolute sizing (chapter headings at 50px) while other text was specified in % and em which allowed scaling to the display and resizing using the font size slider. OTOH, the embedded fonts worked.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am obviously missing the big picture

One small publishing house I grumbled at informed me that they check their ebooks on a Kindle and did not really care what they looked like on any other device. It does take some care to generate an ebook with simple styling that looks good on multiple devices but it is doable. But as I was informed, "80% of our sales are through Amazon" with the unstated corollary that they do not worry about the other 20%.

Eschew the absolute, embrace the relative!

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

If people have complaints about ebooks, they don't talk to the publishers, who could actually fix their usually-sloppy formatting if there was enough demand. Instead, they talk to the stores, who can't do anything except maybe offer a refund. In some rare cases, they'll complain to the device manufacturer, but that's a real crapshoot.

My last attempt to complain to a publisher basically ended up with me being informed that they tested their ebooks on an Amazon Kindle since that was 80% of their business.

Regards,
David

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My last attempt to complain to a publisher basically ended up with me being informed that they tested their ebooks on an Amazon Kindle since that was 80% of their business.

And that's why I'm doing my own coding for my novel. Keeping it simple and basic, with no room for device misinterpretation.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

And that's why I'm doing my own coding for my novel. Keeping it simple and basic, with no room for device misinterpretation.

I'm beginning ( ) to think that we should move this discussion elsewhere. Thread-jacking at it's worse!

Regards,
David

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm beginning ( ) to think that we should move this discussion elsewhere. Thread-jacking at it's worse!

Regards,
David

Shouldn't that be worst


Helen

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Shouldn't that be worst


Helen

True, that was one of my wurst typos.

Regards,
David

[Lucas Malor]

That's why I wanted a new thread to be started for each bug!

[Lucas Malor]

Anyway, @bobb40, if you'll attach your testcase to the post where you describe the bug, I'll open a new section for ADE bugs and I'll add the bug to it.

[bobb40]

Originally Posted by Lucas Malor

Anyway, @bobb40, if you'll attach your testcase to the post where you describe the bug, I'll open a new section for ADE bugs and I'll add the bug to it.

I've attached it, and added a comment saying so after all other text. I don't understand the ADE/Access discussion which assigns this bug to ADE; if comments of my original post confuse the issue, tell me what to alter or remove. Thanks.