Glo Some words faded out

[paulfiera]

I got a Kobo Glo last week and my overall impression is good.

There is though a slight annoying thing. Sometimes, some words at the middle of lines 2 and 3 from the top are faded out. Not completely unreadable but faded. It's always at the same spot.

If I go a page back and then forth again, the text displays correctly. I've set up refresh to 2 pages. It looks like sometimes it helps but not always.

I hope it's not a screen failure. Any guesses?

Many thanks!

[meeera]

Can you post a good quality photo?

Does setting refresh to every 1 page make a difference?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by paulfiera

There is though a slight annoying thing. Sometimes, some words at the middle of lines 2 and 3 from the top are faded out. Not completely unreadable but faded. It's always at the same spot.

When it happens, did the previous page have a chapter heading or similar in the position where the faded text is? If so then it is normal behaviour for e-ink screens, the only way to completely avoid it is to set the page refresh to for every screen, as meeera suggests. Edit: Or, tapping the centre of the screen twice will cause it to refresh.

[paulfiera]

Originally Posted by meeera

Can you post a good quality photo?

Does setting refresh to every 1 page make a difference?

Thanks, meeera.

I've tried taking a picture but it looks like it can't be really appreciated in the picture.

I've set refresh to every 1 page and it looks like it helps although it makes page transitions a bit more distracting.

[paulfiera]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

When it happens, did the previous page have a chapter heading or similar in the position where the faded text is? If so then it is normal behaviour for e-ink screens, the only way to completely avoid it is to set the page refresh to for every screen, as meeera suggests.

Aha! That is the culprit.

This book's chapter headings are a small block with bold white chapter numbers on black background.

Many thanks, guys. I was afraid it could be a hardware issue.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by paulfiera

This book's chapter headings are a small block with bold white chapter numbers on black background.

Some headings cause more ghosting than others. I find with most books I don't notice it unless I look for it, but some with especially large or bold headings, or ones where the heading is actually an image rather than text, cause more noticable ghosting.

[Ripplinger]

When I first got my Glo, I was really disappointed with the text quality too and ran into the same thing. Really examining the spot more closely though, I discovered tiny faded numbers in the location with the faded text and finally found the culprit in the settings. In Settings, on Page 2 of "Reading settings", I unchecked the box to show "Page numbers in margins."

Whoever thought displaying the page number in that way that was a good idea is an idiot. The location the page number was displayed intentionally faded out the normal text of the page along with the faded page number. That page number also doesn't match the page numbering at the bottom of the book, it's supposed to match a truer page numbering with ADE.

[paulfiera]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

...I unchecked the box to show "Page numbers in margins."

That is actually one of the first things I did when I begun fiddling with the Kobo settings.

I wished Kobo displayed "x Pages left in this chapter" as iBooks does. And the "PG." abbreviation for "Page" looks a bit strange. I'd rather have it displayed "x of xxx" with lower case "of".

[taming]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Whoever thought displaying the page number in that way that was a good idea is an idiot.

Blame Adobe for that. The idea was that by using and standardizing a formula for determining page numbers, people would have a universal point of reference for things like citations despite individual choices made for font sizes, margins, and line spacing.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Whoever thought displaying the page number in that way that was a good idea is an idiot. The location the page number was displayed intentionally faded out the normal text of the page along with the faded page number. That page number also doesn't match the page numbering at the bottom of the book, it's supposed to match a truer page numbering with ADE.

Quite a few ebooks have such wide margins, that the page number and text does not overlap. Unfortunately, since most ebook users want the maximim amount of text on the screen, we reduce the margins to as small as possible so the overlap occurs. My margin and line spacing sliders live at the far left and in the stylesheet, margins are set to 0.

The page number at the bottom does not update to the page number in the side margin until you are entirely on that page. So if the 6th line down shows 132, the bottom of the screen will show 131. The next screen of text should show 132 at the bottom. This is assuming that you don't have the font size set so small that you are getting multiple page numbers down the right edge of the screen.

Regards,
David

[Ripplinger]

My problem isn't with having that type of page number that can be a reference for everyone reading the same book on various readers. My problem is with Kobo's implementation of it. If you check to display those numbers, then Kobo should automatically add a right margin *just* big enough to show the page number which should be furthest to the right next to the bezel (and I mean very slight margin adjustment, not their usual overkill of using 1/2" of space to show a 1/8" line of text for the page number at the bottom). That would avoid the faded text when it doubles up the page number on top of the book text.