[Device Plugin] Kobo Touch Extended Driver

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by hpfr

You mean kepubs, right?

I'm using the method from the one-click install thread which installs Nickel. I haven't been able to find instructions to bypass Nickel, although I'm interested in this since I don't have a Kobo account or Overdrive. Has someone documented installing Plato this way and using Calibre with it? I get what you're describing with the database vs. simple folder-based usage but I don't know the difference between the two plugins you mentioned with respect to Plato.

For what it's worth, I was able to connect my ereader to Calibre while Plato was running and the books transferred fine, even though I'm still using Kobo Touch Extended (with the extended features checkbox unchecked), although the native reader couldn't see the books.

I'm new to this scene; apologies for my ignorance. I've done my best to search the forum for these questions but didn't find much success. Thanks for your help.

Sorry, I don't use any of the alternative readers on these devices. There was a method using KSM to go straight into KOReader, but, KSM has not been updated for recent devices or firmware.

If the only thing you do in nickel is to open Plato and never return, then you can consider adding hiding the books from nickel so that they do not get imported. Then Plato can show them to you. And using one of the drivers mentioned would be better. But, if you are opening Plato for a book and then returning, you will probably need the books to be imported. All this is discussed in the Kobo forum. But, as I don't use it, it is something I would have to research.

[hpfr]

Awesome, you can't edit posts older than five minutes, so I had to retype that, and then the forum just decided to eat my post action, so third time's the charm, I guess? Maybe it's time to move to Discourse or something...

I did find standalone.sh after digging around the installation guide's commit history, although baskerville has since removed mention of it, which is concerning.

I see now that Calibre's Device menu is missing the book I added while Plato was running, so I understand the database thing now. I guess Kobo Touch Extended can't modify the database while Plato is running, so I might as well use one of the plugins you mentioned which does similar folder actions as Kobo Touch Extended without the native Kobo database modifications?

[ownedbycats]

Question: If I use the driver's collection management to remove a Kobo store book from my Reading List collection, the Kobo's wifi sync puts it back. should I just remove it from within Kobo itself?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by hpfr

Awesome, you can't edit posts older than five minutes, so I had to retype that, and then the forum just decided to eat my post action, so third time's the charm, I guess? Maybe it's time to move to Discourse or something...

I think there is a minimum number of posts before you are allowed to edit your posts.

I did find standalone.sh after digging around the installation guide's commit history, although baskerville has since removed mention of it, which is concerning.

I see now that Calibre's Device menu is missing the book I added while Plato was running, so I understand the database thing now. I guess Kobo Touch Extended can't modify the database while Plato is running, so I might as well use one of the plugins you mentioned which does similar folder actions as Kobo Touch Extended without the native Kobo database modifications?

The driver does not make changes to the database when sending new books (except in one case). It puts them on the device and when they device is disconnected, the device runs the import process and adds the books to the database. When you next connect the device, the driver will read the database and see those books.

If you put books on the device in such a way that the books are not imported into the database, then the driver will not see them. That could be done by using calibre to put the book on the device, but, going directly into Plato when you eject the device. Or, if Plato has a way to download a book, it will probably not be added to the database.

The driver will update the database for the following reasons:

• Resending a book to replace it. The database gets updated in a way that the device will not treat it as a new book.
• Metadata updates. The database is updated but the actual book is not.
• Collection management.

The other work the KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended drivers do is:

• Generate and send covers.
• Send kepubs.
• Append some CSS to the stylesheets.

Very little of the above is useful if you do not use nickel. It is all about using a Kobo ereader as a Kobo ereader.

As I said, if you are not using nickel, you are probably better off not using either of the KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended drivers. The other suggestions do disc scans looking for books and do not attempt to do anything more.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: If I use the driver's collection management to remove a Kobo store book from my Reading List collection, the Kobo's wifi sync puts it back. should I just remove it from within Kobo itself?

The driver changing the collections a purchased is on should work. It should mark the collection entry so that a sync will delete the entry on the server. If you have multiple devices, you can get some interesting. I have to admit I haven't explicitly tested this for a while. I can see it works the other way, add a book to a collection and it has synced to another device that hasn't been connected.

A possible issue is if the clocks aren't all correct. When calibre removes the book from the device, it sets a timestamp to the current time. That is used when syncing to decide which entry should be kept. If one of the clocks was off, that could cause a problem. I had a similar problem with a book. I accidentally set the time on the device to one year ahead. Then I started a new book. The sync happened with the wrong time. After that, every time the device synced, it picked up the entry from the future and the book would appear as my current read, but, at the beginning of the book. And it synced to all of the devices. I had to finish it with WiFi off and then move it to the archive to get it out of the way. Once I got past that date, I was able to bring it back with no problems.

[ownedbycats]

Only one device.

The timestamp thing does have one thing: shortly before the books re-appeared, I misclicked and ran the option to fix the time in Kobo Utilities. I didn't think it did anything but it's possible it was wrong before?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Only one device.

The timestamp thing does have one thing: shortly before the books re-appeared, I misclicked and ran the option to fix the time in Kobo Utilities. I didn't think it did anything but it's possible it was wrong before?

That will set the time on the device to the computers time when you ran it. Unless the computers time was way out, it should only be out by the amount of time between when you ran it and when you disconnected the time. The time should be checked whenever the device connects to WiFi. But, if the time is to far out, it won't update.

A possibility in all this is timezone issues. I can't remember if the database uses UTC or is local time. Or is local time but marked as UTC. There are some inconsistencies and if the computer timezone is different to the device, it would probably compound them.

[ownedbycats]

Does the Kobo keep time internally with a CMOS battery? A dead CMOS battery on my old computer caused all manner of timing issues.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Does the Kobo keep time internally with a CMOS battery? A dead CMOS battery on my old computer caused all manner of timing issues.

No idea. I have never noticed the time being out by much except when it was something I did. They seem to keep time when turned off, but, that could be using the main battery. I haven't noticed any problems after having the battery run out, but, I was also not checking the time.

[NiLuJe]

There's indeed an RTC (e.g., a hardware clock, CMOS is an x86 thing), and Nickel resyncs the system clock to the RTC on resume, to prevent potential time-drift issues with the system clock during suspend (e.g., extremely noticeable on the Nia. Probably affected older devices once upon a time, because George confirmed that this was introduced countless years ago to avoid just such issues).

[ownedbycats]

Question: Is there a way to prevent a specific collection from being created on the device?

I have a temporary "Send to Device" tag added to #kobocoll for reading list reasons (seemed the best place to put it). It worked fine before because when I connected the second time to restore bookmarks on my updated fics it removed it. Now I don't have to connect a second time so it stays there.

I have another alternative in mind if that's not an option but that'd be a bit more work to set up.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: Is there a way to prevent a specific collection from being created on the device?

I have a temporary "Send to Device" tag added to #kobocoll for reading list reasons (seemed the best place to put it). It worked fine before because when I connected the second time to restore bookmarks on my updated fics it removed it. Now I don't have to connect a second time so it stays there.

I have another alternative in mind if that's not an option but that'd be a bit more work to set up.

I don't set any tags for my send-to-device lists, so I don't see that. But, you should be able to put the list name in the "Ignore collections" field in the driver configuration. While that was implemented for collections managed on the device, it should work for this as well.

You should also be able to use square brackets around the name - "[Send to Device]". The code seems to say to ignore tags like that. But, it has been a long time since I tried that, so I don't know if it works properly.

[ownedbycats]

I tried Ignore collections, but that just prevented it from being deleted. [Square brackets] did work though I might also do that for my Kobo Store collection because I don't really need that on my device.

[leclettico]

The plugin (or Calibre?) doesn't recognize new Kobo Elipsa.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by leclettico

The plugin (or Calibre?) doesn't recognize new Kobo Elipsa.

The recognition for devices are in the drivers in calibre. And, the KoboTouch driver does not recognise the Elipsa yet. I have most of the changes needed, but, have not been in a hurry as the device has not actually been released. I will check it in soon.

But, if you have one, can you tell me the firmware version it has?