Kobo Bug thread

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Loceka

(along with the UTF8 auto-detection, which worked in the Kobo Glo btw)

What f/w was the Gli using? Remember that all the Kobo eReaders (save the two original ones) use the same basic f/w, with just minor differences for kernel and drivers.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Loceka

Well thanks for all the answers!

As for the "View details" it requires 3 or 4 "clicks" to do it, which is a bit overkill just to see the full title.

A long press, a tap on the menu and another tap to dismiss it. How is a long press, tap a "Show full title" option and then another tap to dismiss it any quicker?

[Loceka]

Originally Posted by davidfor

A long press, a tap on the menu and another tap to dismiss it. How is a long press, tap a "Show full title" option and then another tap to dismiss it any quicker?

- Long press (or tap on "...")
- tap on "show details" (I don't have the "Show full title" entry)
- tap on "[+]" because the title displayed in the details is the same length as on a list
- tap on "OK" to close the title
- tap on "X" to exit the details

5 taps to show the title and be back to the list (and it doesn't work in the book manager, where it would be most useful).

Something similar to the dictionary use on a book would be nice (a long press on the book would display both the menu and a note at the bottom/top (dictionary-like) with the book details, with full title displayed.

[Loceka]

Originally Posted by PeterT

What f/w was the Glo using? Remember that all the Kobo eReaders (save the two original ones) use the same basic f/w, with just minor differences for kernel and drivers.

It stayed on firmware 2.4.0. I remembered the previous one (or one of the previous ones) had troubles reading text files, but this one was pretty bugless and I stuck to it (that and it was a bit painful to recompile the firmware with the multiple mods and dictionaries at every release)

[theducks]

B]Product[/B]: Aura2
Firmware: 4.23.15548
Plugins:
File types:KEPUB
Sideloaded or from Kobobooks:Sideloaded Calibre
On external SD:No
Steps to reproduce: Load book as KEPUB (EPUB does not have the issue) from Calibre

1. CSS contains letterspacing: <value>;

Current result: Heading words run together
Workaround: comment out CSS lines with letterspacing: <value>;
Took me a while to figure out why only some books had the issue

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by theducks

Steps to reproduce: Load book as KEPUB (EPUB does not have the issue) from Calibre

1. CSS contains letterspacing: <value>;

Current result: Heading words run together
Workaround: comment out CSS lines with letterspacing: <value>;
Took me a while to figure out why only some books had the issue

Is the letterspacing value positive or negative? If it's negative, the affected words should be kerned closer together, meaning it's not a bug.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Is the letterspacing value positive or negative? If it's negative, the affected words should be kerned closer together, meaning it's not a bug.

1) the number is Positive (and varies slightly across different books)
2) It looks good on other viewers (Calibre, Sigil) in EPUB
3) the KEPUB code (looking at the DEVICE books code) Looks the same as expected (The Kobo extended driver is NOT mangling).

This is what I see (KEPUB ONLY)

ChapterOne
ALeasonLearned

I tried using other spaces between words, no Joy
I don't care that it does not work (like older ADE or my Kindle), but that it works so wrong

LMBPN Publishing only seems to use these on Chapter Headings and Titles

[jackie_w]

@theducks,

Is the letter-spacing value set in pixels? If so, I wonder if this is a similar problem to the one where text-indents don't work well in kepubs when set in absolute units? Have you tried setting it to a very small em-value?

FWIW, I never use letter-spacing myself. I always assume it's a crude attempt to simulate small-caps, so better to use font-variant or a small-caps font-family than letter-spacing - if the actual text content is suitably mixed case.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@theducks,

Is the letter-spacing value set in pixels? If so, I wonder if this is a similar problem to the one where text-indents don't work well in kepubs when set in absolute units? Have you tried setting it to a very small em-value?

FWIW, I never use letter-spacing myself. I always assume it's a crude attempt to simulate small-caps, so better to use font-variant or a small-caps font-family than letter-spacing - if the actual text content is suitably mixed case.

I've seen it used in the last couple of months in chapter headings as @theducks is. I thought it worked, but, I think I removed it as it looked ugly.

But, playing with it in one of the test books I have, I added the following:

  <h4><b>Letter Spacing</b></h4>
  
  <p>abcdefhijg - normal spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing1pt">abcdefhijg - 1pt spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing5pt">abcdefhijg - 5pt spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing1px">abcdefhijg - 1px spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing5px">abcdefhijg - 5px spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing1em">abcdefhijg - 1em spacing.</p>
  <p class="letterspacing5em">abcdefhijg - 5em spacing.</p>

And in the stylesheet:

.letterspacing1pt {
  letter-spacing: 1pt;
}
.letterspacing5pt {
  letter-spacing: 5pt;
}
.letterspacing1px {
  letter-spacing: 1px;
}
.letterspacing5px {
  letter-spacing: 5px;
}
.letterspacing1em {
  letter-spacing: 1em;
}
.letterspacing5em {
  letter-spacing: 5em;
}

The in-word spacing seems to be OK, but, the space between the words appears to be the normal width of a space. Which makes it very hard to see where the word break is.

This was with the publisher font, and the size was just to make sure it all fit on one screen. And no patches.

And, yes, I do know that 5em is ridiculous, but, that was sort of the point.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@theducks,

Is the letter-spacing value set in pixels? If so, I wonder if this is a similar problem to the one where text-indents don't work well in kepubs when set in absolute units? Have you tried setting it to a very small em-value?

FWIW, I never use letter-spacing myself. I always assume it's a crude attempt to simulate small-caps, so better to use font-variant or a small-caps font-family than letter-spacing - if the actual text content is suitably mixed case.

here is the code I commented out. They are all em, just different amounts.

  /* letter-spacing: 0.15em; */

jackie
I had converted purchased books to KEPUB and had noticed this effect before. The books render fine in ADE (on Kobo)/Calibre/Sigil
IMHO the space should NOT get touched. Instead it seems to null out completely.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The in-word spacing seems to be OK, but, the space between the words appears to be the normal width of a space. Which makes it very hard to see where the word break is.

Hmm, curious. Your screenshot suggests it's all working as it should, with all px, pt, em, doesn't it - at least with <p> tags?

Just to confuse matters - unless things have changed very recently - there seems to be a line in the kepub-book.css kepub override CSS in the fw.

body,p,div {letter-spacing: normal !important; }

I wonder what effect that's meant to have on a kepub using letter-spacing? It looks like it ought to forcibly ignore letter-spacing in <body>, <div>, <p> tags, but your tests suggest that's not the case.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Hmm, curious. Your screenshot suggests it's all working as it should, with all px, pt, em, doesn't it - at least with <p> tags?

Just to confuse matters - unless things have changed very recently - there seems to be a line in the kepub-book.css kepub override CSS in the fw.

body,p,div {letter-spacing: normal !important; }

I wonder what effect that's meant to have on a kepub using letter-spacing? It looks like it ought to forcibly ignore letter-spacing in <body>, <div>, <p> tags, but your tests suggest that's not the case.

I would think a patch could be created to fix that by removing !important.

[JSWolf]

I have found a bug with KePub. The page numbers for the full book are not correct and when changing the page, the page numbers are not updating correctly. The total number of pages is not correct and thus, the page number that shows what page you are on does not update correctly. So if anyone is using the total number of pages to judge how long the eBook is, that won't be correct.

The % read in the footer seems to be working and the page numbers for the chapter in the header are working correctly.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Hmm, curious. Your screenshot suggests it's all working as it should, with all px, pt, em, doesn't it - at least with <p> tags?

Yes, my testing of kepubs suggest it is working. Except around spaces. And that makes it hard to see the separation between word.

Just to confuse matters - unless things have changed very recently - there seems to be a line in the kepub-book.css kepub override CSS in the fw.

body,p,div {letter-spacing: normal !important; }

I wonder what effect that's meant to have on a kepub using letter-spacing? It looks like it ought to forcibly ignore letter-spacing in <body>, <div>, <p> tags, but your tests suggest that's not the case.

I can see that line in the current libnickel.so. Or at least in the extract I created by running strings.exe against it. There is one thing different about it compared to the other styles. There appears to be a leading space on the line. I wouldn't expect that to have an affect, but, it is different.

[Marina Peli]

Hi! I have Kobo Libra h20 and recently it has started to change pages in a weird way – when I turn the page it flashes all the rows instead of doing it fluently and fast as it did before, almost like it's refreshing rows before putting new letters. I thought it was somehow a Calibre problem but I tried doing a manual reset and opened a Kobo store book – it still does it almost every time it goes out of sleeping mode. After some time it goes away, then starts again. Does this happen to anyone else? I’m desperate at this point as it’s REALLY annoying to the eyes.