Firmware 4.8.10956

[anacreon]

I realized yesterday night that there is a dictionaries bug in this version: the de-fr and es-fr dictionaries (German - French and Spanish - French) which are still visible in Explorer, do not appear either in the list of dictionaries in parameters nor in the list of dictionaries available when you look up a definition. My other 15 dictionaries are fine. It seems like all single languages are supported, but only the translation dictionaries with an English pivot are. I am very annoyed, especially about the German - French: Kobo's German dictionary is very poor, and often I only find a word in the German - English or German - French (neither is outstanding).

Both the missing translation dictionaries worked fine in all F/W up to and including 4.7.10413. Since I side-loaded 4.8.10956, the dictionaries file in .kobo was untouched.

[oren64]

Check if the dictionary file appear in .kobo/dict folder.
Also try to remove the dictionaries and then download them and see if they appear.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by oren64

Check if the dictionary file appear in .kobo/dict folder.

I had checked, that's what I meant when I wrote I saw them in Explorer

Also try to remove the dictionaries and then download them and see if they appear.

I just tried: removed them, disconnected the reader, then reconnected and re-downloaded both dictionaries and they are still invisible to kobo, both in the parameters and when calling them from a book.

Incidentally, I just noticed that the dictionaries "weigh" much less in kobo than in my computer. For instance the -pt one (not Portuguese but the French Littré) is 36240 kb in the computer but just 10.9 Mb in the Aura one.

[taos]

Originally Posted by anacreon

the de-fr and es-fr dictionaries (German - French and Spanish - French) which are still visible in Explorer, do not appear either in the list of dictionaries in parameters nor in the list of dictionaries available when you look up a definition.

Are these dictionaries sideloaded or can you download them directly from kobo (Settings - Language and Dictionaries - Dictionary - Edit) if you have a specific affiliate (fnac, maybe)? Just asking, because with the kobo affiliate I only get translation dictionaries which include English as one of the languages. Others, I have to sideload (the ones which include new combinations of languages that are already in the firmware still work for me with the latest update, e.g. Dutch - German ("Nederlands - Deutsch") - even before I patched libnickel to use additional languages).
I just noticed that since the update the names of the languages in the database must now exactly match either the names of the languages in libnickel or in the ExtraLocales line in Kobo.conf (instead of "Dansk - English" as name I now have to either use "Extra:_Dansk - English" in the database with "Dansk" in Kobo.conf or "Extra:_da - English" with "da".

[taos]

Since no one else mentioned it, I'm not sure if the following is just specific to my Glo HD or not: When I open a pull-down menu with several pages (e.g. looking up a word and then changing the dictionary) and each of these pages has a different width, the borders (or at least a part of them) around the menu are not erased when I go from a wider menu page to a smaller menu page. It's not ghosting, these parts are just not "overwritten".

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by taos

Are these dictionaries sideloaded or can you download them directly from kobo (Settings - Language and Dictionaries - Dictionary - Edit) if you have a specific affiliate (fnac, maybe)? Just asking, because with the kobo affiliate I only get translation dictionaries which include English as one of the languages. Others, I have to sideload (the ones which include new combinations of languages that are already in the firmware still work for me with the latest update, e.g. Dutch - German ("Nederlands - Deutsch") - even before I patched libnickel to use additional languages).
I just noticed that since the update the names of the languages in the database must now exactly match either the names of the languages in libnickel or in the ExtraLocales line in Kobo.conf (instead of "Dansk - English" as name I now have to either use "Extra:_Dansk - English" in the database with "Dansk" in Kobo.conf or "Extra:_da - English" with "da".

Those dictionaries are sideloaded and always have been. I found them in the mobileread dictionaries thread.

Do you mean I should change something in Kobo.conf to be able to use my dictionaries? I don't have a kobo.conf file anyway, just a kobo ereader.conf one, and I see nothing about dictionaries there so wouldn't know in which category to put them (I just saw General, ApplicationPreferences, DialogSettings, FeatureSettings, but might have missed others in the magma), or how to write it.

[isaak]

KA1 led is now lit red while charging and green if charged!

[mathil]

Originally Posted by taos

Since no one else mentioned it, I'm not sure if the following is just specific to my Glo HD or not: When I open a pull-down menu with several pages (e.g. looking up a word and then changing the dictionary) and each of these pages has a different width, the borders (or at least a part of them) around the menu are not erased when I go from a wider menu page to a smaller menu page. It's not ghosting, these parts are just not "overwritten".

After seeing this I tried with my Glo HD and I have been experiencing the same behaviour. In my case it's with the font choice menu. It's not ghosting, it's like the border of the menu stays on the page.

[taos]

Originally Posted by anacreon

Do you mean I should change something in Kobo.conf to be able to use my dictionaries? I don't have a kobo.conf file anyway, just a kobo ereader.conf one, and I see nothing about dictionaries there so wouldn't know in which category to put them (I just saw General, ApplicationPreferences, DialogSettings, FeatureSettings, but might have missed others in the magma), or how to write it.

Sorry, "Kobo eReader.conf" is what I meant. The entry would be under ApplicationPreferences and start with "ExtraLocales=". But you only need it if you're using languages that are not mentioned in the firmware (languages other than English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish). However, it seems that the latest firmware expects the name of the dictionary in the database to be exactly the same as what is used for the languages in libnickel.so, i.e. "Nederlands - English" should work but "Dutch - English" probably not.

Another thing, that just came to my mind: I can't get the firmware to match "Русский" in the database to "\x0420\x0443\x0441\x0441\x043a\x0438\x0439" (Русский) in the Kobo eReader.conf file. Maybe, there's a more general problem with non-ASCII characters such as c cedille in Français.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by taos

Sorry, "Kobo eReader.conf" is what I meant. The entry would be under ApplicationPreferences and start with "ExtraLocales=". But you only need it if you're using languages that are not mentioned in the firmware (languages other than English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish). However, it seems that the latest firmware expects the name of the dictionary in the database to be exactly the same as what is used for the languages in libnickel.so, i.e. "Nederlands - English" should work but "Dutch - English" probably not.

Another thing, that just came to my mind: I can't get the firmware to match "Русский" in the database to "\x0420\x0443\x0441\x0441\x043a\x0438\x0439" (Русский) in the Kobo eReader.conf file. Maybe, there's a more general problem with non-ASCII characters such as c cedille in Français.

I only use the languages the F/W knows, and my dictionary names are all built like dicthtml-de-en.zip and I don't see why suddenly with the 4.8 F/W the "de-fr" and "es-fr" would suddenly become invisible to my kobos, while the 15 other dictionaries I use are fine.

It seems strange that the only dictionaries concerned are the only translation ones with one language French and the other a language different from English. Or not so strange perhaps, the readers have always had a very strong bias towards English, which is ridiculous, because that didn't help them gain a foothold in the States, and particularly for Kobo which originated in Canada and has a strong presence in Europe.

[Sepelion]

Originally Posted by doggo

New in version 4.8:
Enhanced page-turn speed:

• While reading a Kobo book, hold the bottom corner of your screen to quickly flip through pages in either direction.

This broke core functionality...

There needs to be a way to disable this. Now in my KA1 reading kepubs, if I want to select a word to get the dictionary pop-up and the word is at any corner, it's not possible; it just starts page turning.

Yeah, I could probably add some margin or something, but I don't care about this feature and would rather have my full screen kepubs as they were.

Idiotic that they don't update their menus to disable these things. What amateur hour coding shop is this where they add features and don't add menu options to disable them? Do they have one coder who also has to fetch the donuts at kobo and is thus time constrained?

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by Sepelion

This broke core functionality...

There needs to be a way to disable this. Now in my KA1 reading kepubs, if I want to select a word to get the dictionary pop-up and the word is at any corner, it's not possible; it just starts page turning.

Yeah, I could probably add some margin or something, but I don't care about this feature and would rather have my full screen kepubs as they were.

Idiotic that they don't update their menus to disable these things. What amateur hour coding shop is this where they add features and don't add menu options to disable them?

I don't use full screen kepub, just as it comes, and it doesn't break dictionary lookup for corner words. It must be only broken if patched.

Not disagreeing about the idea of having an on/off for every feature tho. I'm totally with you there.

[Sepelion]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

I don't use full screen kepub, just as it comes, and it doesn't break dictionary lookup for corner words. It must be only broken if patched.

Not disagreeing about the idea of having an on/off for every feature tho. I'm totally with you there.

It's fine if I turn off full screen with kepubs and have the book title and time remaining margins. It's still unacceptable to have kepubs in full screen broken for selecting words with no fix other than adding dead space / margins.

It's even worse that you can't optionally download firmware updates. They're forced of wifi is on, and oh, hooray, enjoy your new broken stuff.

Software companies with any credibility prompt users about an update with an install option for these very reasons, and better yet offer a disable updates and/or rollback option if functionality is broken by updates.

It's not terribly convenient to be out somewhere and poof goes an update, then my kepub patch for full screen (to avoid cut off edges) has to be repatched at a pc.

I dealt with that, but now I am forced to disable full screen until kobo sees maybe three other people who full screen kepubs complain.

Guess I can always say screw nickel and go back to koreader, which, like kobo's competitor, has actually managed to implement inverted black/white, while nickel still hasn't.

Meh.

[koboy]

get ready for the rebuttal.

best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Sepelion

It's fine if I turn off full screen with kepubs and have the book title and time remaining margins. It's still unacceptable to have kepubs in full screen broken for selecting words with no fix other than adding dead space / margins.

Sorry, but the full screen mode is not officially supported. It was added to the firmware a while ago and never finished or officially announced. I don't know why this has happened, but Kobo obviously haven't found a good reason to finish it. And implementing a feature like this demonstrates one of the difficulties with full screen modes. What this means is that as full screen reading is not a supported mode, breakages to it are not something that will prevent them implementing other features and fixing it won't be high in their priorities.

As always with this sort of thing, I suggest you report the problem to Kobo. Full screen mode isn't supported, but polite requests can help to change their opinion. And if the report is taken, it will be in their bug list and someone will look at it. Of course, the action might be "not going to fix", but it will be exposed to them.

And koboy, I'm glad to see you posts are as useful as ever.