Aura HD Kobo Aura HD

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gadget_girl

I received my Aura HD the other day. I've had a couple people locally ask me which e-reader I prefer, given the ads they've seen on TV & online, since they have seen me reading. And I usually ask them if they prefer to buy books or use the library. For library users, the Kobo devices, or Sony, are nearly the only choices. Kindle just isn't supported well for us locally. But if you buy your books, then it's a matter of the better bookstore etc. Makes it easier to choose. I love the Aura, the light is great, the fonts & sizes are good. I have no complaints, it does what it is supposed to do and delivers my stories without the big heavy bookbag to tote around.

The reason for my choice of a Kobo when I was updating my ereader was that it used epub which was supported by almost every ebook store I looked at and was supported by the local libaries. At that time, quite a few ebook stores did not support AZW. I also found the tools to allow me to play with epubs were superior to the tools for any of the Amazon formats -- compare Sigil to MobiPocket as an example.

Regards,
David

[chrisparker]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Your both right.

With FW2.5.0, Kobo started to generate and save cover images for books on the SD card onto the SD card. But, they are generating them at a MUCH lower quality than for books in the main memory. I have no idea why they would even consider doing this.

The next calibre will handle this and allow you to send the covers over at the same time as the book. These will be much better quality.

Thanks for that. I'll try it later this morning.

I've already run up against the 'widows and orphans' bug, where large paragraphs start on a new page leaving a lot of white space behind. I tried reconverting a book in Calibre with the additional CSS, but that didn't work. Will the new Aura driver address this in any way?

Sorry for all the questions - my first Kobo having owned Sony and Nook in the past...

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by chrisparker

I've already run up against the 'widows and orphans' bug, where large paragraphs start on a new page leaving a lot of white space behind. I tried reconverting a book in Calibre with the additional CSS, but that didn't work. Will the new Aura driver address this in any way?

No, the driver makes no changes to the books they are sent over. Most of what you are talking about is personal preference and not bugs.

A prime example of this is widows and orphans. As far as I can tell the Kobo firmware treats this exactly how it is supposed to be. The default values in CSS for them is two. When reading a book without these set, the firmware uses that value. Personally, I don't like it so I edit my epubs to use zero for both. Changes like this can be done manually by editing the epub in something like Sigil, or can be adjusted when doing a conversing in calibre. There has been plenty of discussion about how to do this in the conversion.

The long paragraph problem is a bug. If the paragraph extends more than a screen, it will start at the top of the next screen. And it gets more fun if it is more than a screen and a half.

Sorry for all the questions - my first Kobo having owned Sony and Nook in the past...

No problems at all, ask away.

[DNSB]

Just an oddity I noticed. In the Aura's .kobo directory, the slideshow directory has four subdirectories called dragon, kraken, pixie and trilogy. 3 of these directories are included in the 2.5.x update (kraken, pixie and trilogy) while the fourth with the images for the Aura's slideshow are not in the updated firmware. This suggests that the 2.4.1 firmware used in the Aura's factory load is not the same as the 2.4.0 firmware used for other Kobo models.

Regards,
David

[Katsunami]

In one of the threads, I saw the following:

- When using epub, the Time to Read and Chapter Graph don't work, but the top of the screen can be used for text.
- When converting to kepub, the Time to Read and Chapter graph do work, but the top of the screen displays the title of the book permanently.

Is this indeed the case, or can the title display be disbaled? Having the title there would be utterly useless. If it can't be disabled it'll waste some more space, in addition of the bottom part that always displays the pagenumber (at least somewhat useful). If need to use epubs to remedy this, which leaves Time To Read and the Chapter Graph unavailable, then I'm going to stop considering the Aura HD as a replacement for my Paperwhite.

Originally Posted by davidfor

The long paragraph problem is a bug. If the paragraph extends more than a screen, it will start at the top of the next screen. And it gets more fun if it is more than a screen and a half.

What's up with this problem? Does the Aura create a new page to begin the paragraph, and then when you flip to it, it discovers that the paragraph still doesn't fit, after which it will create another new page.... and so on? (I'm just guessing here of course.)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In one of the threads, I saw the following:

- When using epub, the Time to Read and Chapter Graph don't work, but the top of the screen can be used for text.
- When converting to kepub, the Time to Read and Chapter graph do work, but the top of the screen displays the title of the book permanently.

Is this indeed the case, or can the title display be disbaled? Having the title there would be utterly useless. If it can't be disabled it'll waste some more space, in addition of the bottom part that always displays the pagenumber (at least somewhat useful). If need to use epubs to remedy this, which leaves Time To Read and the Chapter Graph unavailable, then I'm going to stop considering the Aura HD as a replacement for my Paperwhite.

That is the case. What is happening is that two different reader applications are used for the two types of books. epubs are read based on Adobe Reader (or ADE or their toolkit or whatever). kepubs use something else. I think it is called ACCESS. These each have different bugs and different display properties. And, as you have found out, the kepub reader always displays the book title at the top of the screen. But it does have a better reading status display.

What's up with this problem? Does the Aura create a new page to begin the paragraph, and then when you flip to it, it discovers that the paragraph still doesn't fit, after which it will create another new page.... and so on? (I'm just guessing here of course.)

When reading an epub, if a paragraph goes longer than about a screen in the current font and other settings, it starts on a new screen. But, it gets it right from there on. It is a problem that has been in the firmware for a long time. I rarely see the problem as most books I have read don't have paragraphs that long. But, I have just finished one that had a lot. I think you see it a more if you read a lot of classics.

The kepub reader doesn't have this bug.

[Fourl29]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Perhaps you could explain your methodology for measuring 2cm of wasted space on the Kobo display? Near as I can tell, you are complaining about the menu bar at the bottom of the screen which seems to be 1cm not 2cm.

You are using metric in Europe?

Disdain,
David

Take her easy David, I was merely quoting another poster who said 2cm.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That is the case. What is happening is that two different reader applications are used for the two types of books. epubs are read based on Adobe Reader (or ADE or their toolkit or whatever). kepubs use something else. I think it is called ACCESS. These each have different bugs and different display properties. And, as you have found out, the kepub reader always displays the book title at the top of the screen. But it does have a better reading status display.

Sigh. OK. I'll think I'll pass this Kobo up too.

To be honest, it's #$%@$#% ridiculous that the Paperwhite is a better epub-reader than a real epub-reader, when converting the epubs using Calibre. At least for me it seems to be. (The only thing I'd like the Paperwhite to do extra is to actually display the book description that i put in <dc:description> (in my source epub), but maybe mobi/azw does not have a similar tag. The Kindle tries to connect to the internet to display the description.)

With all those bugs and using different readers, I have a feeling that Kobo is making things a lot more difficult for themselves than need be, with their extra kepb format.

And having things like title and pagenumbers displayed all the time without the possibility to turn that off and use the space for text is just dumb IMHO. The page number could be down in a corner, in the same size as the book itself. Maybe, just maybe, put a blank line in between. Or if the user sets enough margin, put it in there. There is no need whatsoever to continually see the title of the book.

The Kobo readers have a lot of great and very advanced features with regard to readability (such as many fonts, sizes, and even weight and sharpness adjustment), but they leave out some elementary stuff like setting the line spacing to 1.0 and removing unwanted stuff from the screen.

I find it a pity, because with regard to font options, layout options, screen size, resolution, and looks (especially the warm-white front light), I really like the Aura HD.

[jmilica]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sigh. OK. I'll think I'll pass this Kobo up too.

I think I'll pass it too, now that I read all this epub/kepub stuff
I usually buy epubs only from Kobo, convert to .azw3 and read on Kindle. Or I buy from Amazon. But now converting to kepub also so I can use Aura features?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by jmilica

I think I'll pass it too, now that I read all this epub/kepub stuff
I usually buy epubs only from Kobo, convert to .azw3 and read on Kindle. Or I buy from Amazon. But now converting to kepub also so I can use Aura features?

It looks like you can, when using a special plugin for Calibre, that does this conversion. However, Kobo seems to have decided that, when you are using kepub files, it's a good thing to always put the title of the book on the top of the page, and the pagenumber at the bottom, using a large amount of space for both (IMHO), without giving you the option to disable this.

It is of no use to me if the device can technically display much more lines of text than the Paperwhite at the same font size, but looses many lines by forcefully displaying information I don't want on the screen all the time. This defeats the purpose of a larger screen, which would be the main reason to consider this reader.

If, on top of that, it has bugs (and different ones for epub and kepub at that), which I do not experience when converting epub to mobi or AZW and then read on the Kindle, that makes the appeal even less. Pity.

[jmilica]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

It looks like you can, when using a special plugin for Calibre, that does this conversion. However, Kobo seems to have decided that, when you are using kepub files, it's a good thing to always put the title of the book on the top of the page, and the pagenumber at the bottom, using a large amount of space for both (IMHO), without giving you the option to disable this.

It is of no use to me if the device can technically display much more lines of text than the Paperwhite at the same font size, but looses many lines by forcefully displaying information I don't want on the screen all the time. This defeats the purpose of a larger screen, which would be the main reason to consider this reader.

If, on top of that, it has bugs (and different ones for epub and kepub at that), which I do not experience when converting epub to mobi or AZW and then read on the Kindle, that makes the appeal even less. Pity.

I just wanted an epub reader which is also front lit. Where I am Nook is not sold, so I thought Kobo is a good option and now that Aura looks good, I'll go for it.
Turns out it's rather complicated...I'll keep following discussions and see what transpires in the end.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by jmilica

I think I'll pass it too, now that I read all this epub/kepub stuff
I usually buy epubs only from Kobo, convert to .azw3 and read on Kindle. Or I buy from Amazon. But now converting to kepub also so I can use Aura features?

But... if you buy books from Kobo, they are automatically in kepub format. So no need for conversion.

Also if you don't need to know how many minutes/hours per chapter/book will be left, there's no need to convert either. Except if you want to have actual page turns per chapter instead of pages per book... but some people like that, others dislike it.

Personally I like the page number and book title - it's much like in a "real" book. And if I wouldn't like it, I could simply use epubs instead of kepubs. Though it would be nice if you could disable both... but there are so many things I'd like to see... this is really low on my personal priority list.

[taming]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The long paragraph problem is a bug. If the paragraph extends more than a screen, it will start at the top of the next screen. And it gets more fun if it is more than a screen and a half.

And it's a bug we've seen before! It appears to be font-specific. I'm not a Georgia fan, but it seems to be a font that is less likely to do this. I ran through a bunch of fonts on an affected page, and Georgia was the only one that worked as it should. I didn't check all of the fonts.

[jmilica]

Originally Posted by Jaden

But... if you buy books from Kobo, they are automatically in kepub format. So no need for conversion.

Does that mean that when I download book from Kobo on my ADE, liberate it in Calibre and then load it on Kobo it would be kepub?
Coz I am not planning to do any wifi contact with Kobo or anybody else

[Katsunami]

I do not know how to actually get kepubs from Kobo, but if you download a book using ADE by putting the ASCM-file in it, then you'll get an epub.