Touch Firmware 2.1.5 - Thanks

[dakini]

Originally Posted by Tintin

I have found recently, even pre update that if I put my Touch on sleep, the battery drains, but not if I power off! This seems a bit of an anomalie because I thought it just used power with page turns. My wifi is off by the way.
Could be a dubious side loaded book file to blame although why I don't have a clue.
Afer all the excitement of update, which I like, I am too exhausted to do a reset at this stage. Will just see how it goes over next few days!

Originally Posted by ltr

The battery lasts about 10 days in Sleep and about 40 days in Power Off. Sleep requires much more power since the memory is active along with other components readied to display the book immediately.

ltr

yeah, i always power off. it takes more energy to power back on, but ltr's right that power off saves the battery best.

i've been fooling with my kt today, and it looks like my battery drain might be due to the book i was reading. i'm keeping an eye on thigns for a week or so, but reading a different book today the power drain wasn't as pronounced.

fingers crossed!

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by MisterBuggie

I am looking at a book right now with a working cover. The original cover was pretty ugly, so I changed it with the metadata editor in Calibre. When I open up the epub on my PC in Calibre's reader, the first page is the ugly cover. When I open it up on my KT, the first page is the new cover I chose. And the KT displays the new cover when I put it to sleep. I did not use any other software to change the cover.

So if Calibre itself doesn't edit the epub, and the KT isn't reading the cover from the image, does that mean that the KT driver in Calibre switched the cover on the first page during transfer?

Huh. It means something in calibre's been changed over the last 20 or so versions since I last edited an epub...

[danskmacabre]

After using 2.1.5 for several days now I've not had one reboot and it runs very smoothly and very fast.
I should add that I read all my ebooks from an SDcard which has often been symptomatic with random reboots with previous firmwares.

Also, I had lots of reboots with 2.1.4, so clearly a fix has been put in to address this issue in 2.1.5.

[davidfor]

OK, I made a statement about how the Kobo devices get the cover images. What I said was correct, but didn't take some other things into account.

So, the simplest case is that an epub is put onto the device. The epub is added to the library and when needed, cover images are generated from the first page of the epub.

If you then edit the epub and change that first page and put in on the device again, the cover image won't be updated. The new version of the epub will be the one you read, but if the cover images have already been generated, they won't get changed.

What the above means is that if you change the cover on the book, you have to delete it from the devices library before putting the book on the device if you want the cover images to change.

Now, for the rest of this, I am going to assume the first page of the epub is simply displays an image. Inside the epub is an image and the appropriate code to display it as the first page.

Now, when sending a book to a device from calibre, it updates the metadata to whatever is in the calibre library, but it doesn't change the cover image. So, when you look at the book in the devices library, the cover is still the first page of the epub.

You can fix this via a conversion or using the Modify ePub addon. Both can put the current calibre cover image into the epub and make sure it gets displayed as the first page.

The Kobo Touch driver in calibre has three cover related options. The black-and-white option is simply so that the file sizes of the cover images will be smaller. The other two, "Upload covers for books" and "Always upload cover" are about when to put covers on the device. "Upload covers for books" will copy the covers over if the book is already on the device. This is useful in the case where you resend the book to the device after it has generated the cover images. It replaces the generated cover images with whatever calibre has in its metadata. If "Always upload cover" is checked, the driver will put the covers on the device when it sends the book over the first time.

The above is for epubs in the main memory of the device. Other books types should be the same, but I haven't done as much testing with them.

For books on SD cards, the situation is different with FW 2.1.4 and later. With the earlier firmware, the device generated the cover images and stored them in the main memory. From 2.1.4, it doesn't do this. The cover images are not saved anywhere. They are generated when needed and then discarded.

That should cover everything, but if anyone sees something I've missed or want clarified, I'm happy to rave on some more.

[MisterBuggie]

Sorry to insist david, but I'm trying to understand exactly how this works, as there still seems to be something missing... To summarise:
1. change the cover in Calibre: that just generates a new image file stored in the same folder as the epub
2. send to device (with cover options checked): Calibre will put the image file (properly renamed or modified) into the .kobo/images folder
3. when the book is opened: if there's nothing in the .kobo/images folder it will take the first page of the epub
4. if you want to change the first page of the epub, you have to install a plugin or software to do it

That still doesn't explain why in Calibre, the first page of my books is the old cover, but once I've sent to my KT (using Calibre), the first page is the new cover. I have not added a single plugin to Calibre, nor used any other software.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MisterBuggie

Sorry to insist david, but I'm trying to understand exactly how this works, as there still seems to be something missing...

Don't worry about asking. When I write posts like mine above, I expect questions as either I make an assumption on knowledge or miss something. Plus, when the questions come, I know that someone actually read the post.

To summarise:
1. change the cover in Calibre: that just generates a new image file stored in the same folder as the epub

Correct.

2. send to device (with cover options checked): Calibre will put the image file (properly renamed or modified) into the .kobo/images folder

Correct. Plus each version of the image file is resized to match what the device would have created.

3. when the book is opened: if there's nothing in the .kobo/images folder it will take the first page of the epub

Not when the book is opened, but when it is displayed on the home screen, the library lists or the cover is needed for sleep.

4. if you want to change the first page of the epub, you have to install a plugin or software to do it

That still doesn't explain why in Calibre, the first page of my books is the old cover, but once I've sent to my KT (using Calibre), the first page is the new cover. I have not added a single plugin to Calibre, nor used any other software.

Woops, I made a mistake. For some reason I was thinking that calibre doesn't attempt to update the cover in the book when sending to the device. It does. But, it only does this for books where it can work out what the cover image inside the book file is. If there isn't one at all in the book, it isn't added. If the name of the cover image or the structure of the book doesn't match what calibre looks for, it won't replace the image. I don't know exactly what the rules are, so I don't know when it doesn't work.

The addon I mention, Modify ePub, will make a lot of changes to an epub file without converting it. One option is to add or replace the cover. From memory, it does this in the same way that calibre does it above, but it might have another way that works in other circumstances. I use this as if I go to the trouble of finding another cover, I want it in the epub as well. You can also change or add the cover with an epub-to-epub conversion in calibre, but that makes changes to the epub that I don't like.

[MisterBuggie]

Ahhhh, finally it all makes sense. Thanks david

I think I might take a look at that plugin, now I know that for the versions on my PC, the cover hasn't really been changed. I would prefer the epub on my PC to be updated.

I'm really going to have to try and get into the workings of epubs and all that's possible. There's something I would love to see added to the epub, and that's extra content brought up by a tap on a name. A place name would bring up the map (especially useful when you're reading the fantasy or sci-fi genre), a tap on a character name would bring up a partial bio with the main info up until that point in the book (I'm bad with names). I'm not sure how much could be added into the epub itself, and how much would require changes to the reader's software.

But anyhow, about my little problem with covers not showing up. Does anything seem amiss with the info I posted earlier?

Originally Posted by MisterBuggie

Okay, I'm not sure what to check to see if something's taking up too much memory. I have over 1 GB free on main memory. I have around 200 books. The koboreader.sqlite file is 10 MB. However the .kobo/images folder is about 35 MB with 1149 .parsed files in it - 370 are from my books (the book title is in the file name), what on earth are the rest of them for?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MisterBuggie

Ahhhh, finally it all makes sense. Thanks david

Glad to be able to help.

I think I might take a look at that plugin, now I know that for the versions on my PC, the cover hasn't really been changed. I would prefer the epub on my PC to be updated.

There are a lot of good plugins for calibre. There is a list in the calibre forum to look at.

I'm really going to have to try and get into the workings of epubs and all that's possible. There's something I would love to see added to the epub, and that's extra content brought up by a tap on a name. A place name would bring up the map (especially useful when you're reading the fantasy or sci-fi genre), a tap on a character name would bring up a partial bio with the main info up until that point in the book (I'm bad with names). I'm not sure how much could be added into the epub itself, and how much would require changes to the reader's software.

If you want to look at the epub under the covers, right click on it in calibre and select "Tweak Book" and then select the explode option. This unzips the epub and shows you the contents to look at. Or, get Sigil which is an excellent epub editor.

I've seen something like what you want to do in a copy of "A Game of Thrones". Unfortunately, the info doesn't get shown in a popup. It goes to the page the info is on and you need to press a back button to get back to the text. Footnotes are done the same way in epubs.

But anyhow, about my little problem with covers not showing up. Does anything seem amiss with the info I posted earlier?

I just had a look at my .kobo/image directory. 1702 files of witch 1029 are for my books. The rest as split between covers for kepubs (including previews), the Kobo previews and what looks like the reading life awards That agrees roughly with your counts. You have plenty of space free on the device.

When I mentioned memory before, I was also thinking of the memory used while the device is running. The equivalent of the PCs RAM. With a lot of books, this could run out as well, but, you are nowhere near that (I've talked to someone with 5000 books on the device). If the covers are all displaying OK now, I'd ignore the original problem unless it happens again.

[MisterBuggie]

Been playing around with Calibre and plugins, namely Modify epub, Count pages and Quality check. Realised that I had some really bad epubs, although some are quite old (as epubs go). Oh and discovering that epubs are just renamed zip files with the actual text in html format was great. One of my books I'll be reading soon had a non standard character instead of an apostrophe throughout the book. Correcting it was easy.
So given that I've tweaked most of my books, I thought I might as well resend them all to my kobo. So I made the most of it and did a factory reset. Gives me a nice clean database to start from again

We'll see if the problem comes back...

EDIT: just checked the books that were giving me trouble. Cover showed up first time on all the ones I previously had problems with. So whatever was wrong seems to be right again

Thanks again for all the info david.