Clara Do you prefer EPUB or KEPUB?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

When using fullscreen, the information at the bottom of the screen can be brought up with two taps: options, then <->. Using ePub, that info isn't available at all, is it?

Again, if you are using the chapter display, if it's not visible on the screen, it's not that useful IMNSHO. Having to do multiple taps on the screen distracts from reading.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I'm wondering if instead of creating a new format and renderer, they could have used that manpower to add those features to their ePub renderer in the first place.

Kobo did not create either renderer. AFAIK, the main reason for using the ACCESS Netfront renderer was expansion into the Japanese market required a renderer that was epub3 compliant enough to allow displaying Japanese text in all it's varied glory. Even now, Adobe's RMSDK is not up to the task though it has improved over the years.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I'm not a coding expert, but I do know that on the Nook you can see how many pages remain in a chapter using ePub, something the Kobo still can't do (as far as I know), so changes can be made without creating a new format.

I will admit to not really caring about how many pages remain in a chapter. Nor am I impressed by looking at the risible time to read numbers. One recent purchase from Kobo stated it was 350 pages, 95K words and would take about 7-8 hours to read which seems to assume ~200 WPM as the reading speed. 75 minutes later, I was down to 5 chapters out of 48 but the reading time was still in the hours to go.

I am more than happy to trade chapter page display for being able to read an epub3 fixed layout ebook such as the British Museum's Harry Potter: A History of Magic?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

Why do people not care about the gigantic footer at the bottom? The white space at the bottom is at least a full quarter of the screen. It looks awful.

Those who care have probably applied the various Kobo patches to reduce the header and footer heights.

Originally Posted by haydnfan

Why can't I adjust line spacing on epub? A solid block of text is not aesthetically pleasing.

It must be the internal CSS in your epubs because I've never had any problems adjusting line spacing in either epub or kepub.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

My limited experience with epub on Kobo is that it is terrible.

Why do people not care about the gigantic footer at the bottom? The white space at the bottom is at least a full quarter of the screen. It looks awful.

Why can't I adjust line spacing on epub? A solid block of text is not aesthetically pleasing.

The only thing I don't like about kepub is the silly header.

I have never seen the footer even close to a full quarter of the screen. A quick measure on my Aura One's screen shows the unpatched footer as being 16mm while the screen height is 159mm. Note however that the blank space size can increase when widows and orphans greater than 1 are specified.

If you can't adjust line spacing talk to the people who created the epub. If the internal style of the epub specifies a line height, you can't override it. A design decision I prefer.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

My limited experience with epub on Kobo is that it is terrible.

Why do people not care about the gigantic footer at the bottom? The white space at the bottom is at least a full quarter of the screen. It looks awful.

Why can't I adjust line spacing on epub? A solid block of text is not aesthetically pleasing.

The only thing I don't like about kepub is the silly header.

I have a very small footer when I read epubs, and only the page numbers shown in smaller text. I can adjust my line spacing as small as I want, and margins as well. Those are all features thanks to the patch probably though.

I just loaded a kepub of the current book I'm reading, and the very top of the first line of text, and the bottom of the last line of text, are cut off. That's completely unacceptable to me for reading. Maybe changing the font or the size or maybe even something in the patch would fix it, but I'm perfectly happy with epubs.

[Ksquared]

I prefer Kepub - I like knowing how long it till take to read the current and next chapter.

I patch to reduce the header size and footer margin.

- Ken

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

My limited experience with epub on Kobo is that it is terrible.

Why do people not care about the gigantic footer at the bottom? The white space at the bottom is at least a full quarter of the screen. It looks awful.

Huh? The footer in epubs is exactly the same as for a kepub. There are two extra icons in the kepup, but the height is exactly the same. And if you are talking about space between the top of the footer and the text, I don't see more than about text line worth of space.

Why can't I adjust line spacing on epub? A solid block of text is not aesthetically pleasing.

Because you are reading books created by people who don't know how to create them. Whoever has created you epubs has set the line height in a way that the firmware cannot override it. Editing the book and removing the fixed line spacing, or changing it to a relative spacing value will fix this.

[GeoffR]

I read some synced KePubs as well as sideloaded ePubs, but I much prefer ePub.

The ePub reader does the basic typography better -- line-spacing, justification, hyphenation, ligatures, a whole lot of other little things. This is far more important to me than the in-book stats, image zoom, etc. that the KePub reader has.

(I read in full-screen mode with full justification, fairly narrow line-spacing, and edit the books to correct the worst of the publishing mistakes before sideloading.)

[haydnfan]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I have a very small footer when I read epubs, and only the page numbers shown in smaller text. I can adjust my line spacing as small as I want, and margins as well. Those are all features thanks to the patch probably though.

If you could provide me with a link to a free epub that allows one to change line spacing and has a small footer, I would very much like to see what a well formatted epub looks like on the Kobo.

[haydnfan]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Huh? The footer in epubs is exactly the same as for a kepub.

No it's not.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

If you could provide me with a link to a free epub that allows one to change line spacing and has a small footer, I would very much like to see what a well formatted epub looks like on the Kobo.

Here's "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" from Project Gutenberg. I downloaded the epub without images. This particular book has forced formatting that doesn't allow me to set margins as narrow as I prefer, but it's not bad, and it allows the line spacing changes. And I could change that easily in Calibre before sending the book to the reader. The screenshot is line spacing set at the narrowest.

Here's 3 screenshots from the current book I'm reading (not public domain), showing the narrowest, the midway point on the slider, and the widest line spacing settings. This is also how I prefer my margins narrower as well, but I prefer the narrowest line spacing as set in the first image.

On this particular page the page number is slightly wider than usual, but that's only because of the font size selected. Another line at that size won't fit on the page. Depending on the font and size selected, the text can go down to just above the page numbers, making the line for the page numbers very low. Someone already mentioned about orphans and widows... depending on what you set yours at, it could be forcing more blank space above the page number than what my reader is showing.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

No it's not.

See Widows and Orphans. The footer size does not change but you will get blank lines above the footer when the "orphans" are moved to the next page. The ACCESS renderer seems to treat widows and orphans as having no effect.

One of GeoffR's patches which originally corrected a bug that caused long paragraphs to display with seemingly random page breaks is still there since it's side effect is disablling widows and orphans which many of us think is desirable. Check the librmsdk patches for more information.

Also note that if the CSS style sets widows and orphans to 1, you get the same effect without mucking with the firmware.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

No it's not.

You want to tell me how they are different?

Ok, there is some different information, but they are exactly the same height. They take exactly the same amount of space. I suppose that the fact the kepub footer shows the chapter title makes it look different. And the footer menu bar has two extra icons. But, there is no difference in height.

Or is the problem you perception cause by the widows and orphans that DNSB has mentioned. And if you look at Ripplinger's screenshots, they show the page as full as any kepub would display.

[haydnfan]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Here's "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" from Project Gutenberg. I downloaded the epub without images.

Okay thanks I tried it but it doesn't look the same. See attached pic.

No header and large footer. Highly asymmetric. Yuck!

So it is all about these orphans and widows and not the footer. Well I just don't see it on kepub and since it is easier to buy and sync ebooks in that format, and what I said about epubs looking awful on my devices still stands.

Thanks for showing me not to waste anymore time with epub, even if that wasn't your intent. I don't want to put alot of work in monkeying around with patching and editing css style files just to make it look as beautiful as kepub already does.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

So it is all about these orphans and widows and not the footer. Well I just don't see it on kepub and since it is easier to buy and sync ebooks in that format, and what I said about epubs looking awful on my devices still stands.

I don't know much about formatting ePubs (just make a few simple changes in Calibre to the font and page margins and use the full page hack on the Touch). But they look pretty good to me. Here's an ePub from a public domain Feedbooks (Tom Sawyer) on my Kobo WiFi and Touch. (I've added a picture of the same book on my Kobo Mini.)

[rcentros]

I guess there's at least one good reason to use KePub with the Kobo WiFi, apparently the dictionary doesn't work on downloaded ePubs?