Libra 2 Search for specific word in Kobo Reader

[svenlind]

A few days ago I was reading a book with very long chapters on my Libra 2.
I decided to continue reading the book on my Forma. As the chapters were large I decided to search for a characteristic word.
But that did not work at all.
I then tried the same procedure on my Oasis and the Calibre Reader with the same book. Here it worked as expected.
Is it not possible to search for a specific word/phrase in a Kobo Reader?

The books on my Kobo reader are epubs converted to Kepub using the KoboTouchExtended plugin.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by svenlind

A few days ago I was reading a book with very long chapters on my Libra 2.
I decided to continue reading the book on my Forma. As the chapters were large I decided to search for a characteristic word.
But that did not work at all.
I then tried the same procedure on my Oasis and the Calibre Reader with the same book. Here it worked as expected.
Is it not possible to search for a specific word/phrase in a Kobo Reader?

The books on my Kobo reader are epubs converted to Kepub using the KoboTouchExtended plugin.

It works inside a book and only in that book. There's no option to search for a word across the whole library, like on the Oasis.

Searching for a word or a phrase within a book works for me.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

It works inside a book and only in that book. There's no option to search for a word across the whole library, like on the Oasis.

Searching for a word or a phrase within a book works for me.

Thank you for your reply. It made me try some more.

I am on the first page in the book.
I then do this:
Tap on the middle af the page.
Tap the search icon.
Write the word I wish to find
Select Current Read

The phrase I am looking for is from the footbridge
I am 100 % sure that it is there. If I change the search to from the foot there is a match.
Searching only for footbridge gives no match. If I select to search in the dictionary I get a correct description of a footbridge.
The book is "Dune Messiah" if I search for Muad there are a ziilion matches.

If I search for the very special word Godbuk that is located where I wish to go to. There are no matches.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Thank you for your reply. It made me try some more.

I am on the first page in the book.
I then do this:
Tap on the middle af the page.
Tap the search icon.
Write the word I wish to find
Select Current Read

The phrase I am looking for is from the footbridge
I am 100 % sure that it is there. If I change the search to from the foot there is a match.
Searching only for footbridge gives no match. If I select to search in the dictionary I get a correct description of a footbridge.
The book is "Dune Messiah" if I search for Muad there is a ziilion matches.

If I search for the very special word Godbuk that is located where I wish to go to. There are no matches.

That's strange. I just tried and had matches for words such as "innocent-faced" and "riverboats", and a phrase containing the word "onlookers". So I have no idea what's going on with your Libra.

[DNSB]

Oddly when I look at a copy of Dune Messiah that I just borrowed from the public library, I find two instances of footbridge. The first in in the phrase "gentle arc of a footbridge constructed of crystal-stabilized gold" while the second is in the phrase "he crossed over on the high footbridge from his Keep". I could not find the phrase "from the footbridge".

There could be differences in the editions that might account for this.

[davidfor]

A possible problem is that it has to be an exact match. If there are non-display characters within the word, such as a soft hyphen, the search won't match. Or if for some reason, the word is broken by tags, it won't work. If for some reason the book had:

<span>foot</span>bridge

The search would not find the word "footbridge". And while I would be surprised to see the above code, though only a little, I have seen something like:

<i>this</i> <i>is</i> <i>in</i> <i>italics</i>

That will look fine, but, searching for "this is in" will not find the above.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Oddly when I look at a copy of Dune Messiah that I just borrowed from the public library, I find two instances of footbridge. The first in in the phrase "gentle arc of a footbridge constructed of crystal-stabilized gold" while the second is in the phrase "he crossed over on the high footbridge from his Keep". I could not find the phrase "from the footbridge".

There could be differences in the editions that might account for this.

I get exactly the same results if I do the search for footbridge in my Oasis or the Calibre reader.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by svenlind

A few days ago I was reading a book with very long chapters on my Libra 2.
I decided to continue reading the book on my Forma. As the chapters were large I decided to search for a characteristic word.
But that did not work at all.
I then tried the same procedure on my Oasis and the Calibre Reader with the same book. Here it worked as expected.
Is it not possible to search for a specific word/phrase in a Kobo Reader?

The books on my Kobo reader are epubs converted to Kepub using the KoboTouchExtended plugin.

Have a look at the code in the eBook and see what may be going on. You will need to look at the KePub.

Another thing to try is loading the ePub and not converting to KePub and try searching.

[svenlind]

Now a really strange thing. If I put the book on my elderly Kobo Glo that I haven't used for a very long time all searches are correct. Also the search for the strange word Godbuk

The searches do not work on Libra 2 or my Forma.
Firmware versions:
Kobo GLO and Libra 2: 4.30.18838
Kobo Forma: 4.28.18220

[Moonbase59]

Search algorithms in e-readers should really be improved. It might might be hard to detect spans and other formatting, but it should be relatively easy to handle "specials" like Unicode zwj, zwnj, nbsp, shy, other kinds of whitespace and ligatures when searching. Sigh.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Now a really strange thing. If I put the book on my elderly Kobo Glo that I haven't used for a very long time all searches are correct. Also the search for the strange word Godbuk

The searches do not work on Libra 2 or my Forma.
Firmware versions:
Kobo GLO and Libra 2: 4.30.18838
Kobo Forma: 4.28.18220

Well, I then deleted the file on my Libra 2 and sideloaded it once more from Calibre. Now everything works. Just one of those things.
To alle who replied

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by davidfor

A possible problem is that it has to be an exact match. If there are non-display characters within the word, such as a soft hyphen, the search won't match. Or if for some reason, the word is broken by tags, it won't work. If for some reason the book had:



The search would not find the word "footbridge". And while I would be surprised to see the above code, though only a little, I have seen something like:

<i>this</i> <i>is</i> <i>in</i> <i>italics</i>

That will look fine, but, searching for "this is in" will not find the above.

Thank you for that explanation. It was not the case here. But I think it explains why I quite often get a fun result when I press a word to search for in the dictionary. It results in something like this

Your search for word did not give any results. The nearest match is word.

And then follows the description.