Kobo future firmware feature request thread

[plaid]

Originally Posted by almagary

Newbie here. I don't find the Back or Home or Shop buttons very useful so how about making them Shift, Ctrl, and Alt, in paired commands with the D-pad? eg, Shift-V to get to the end of text, menu, library list, etc.

Maybe Back is OK if programmed like Esc, but Shop could just as well go onto the regular menu, and what is "Home" on the Kobo anyway?

Home goes to the "I'm Reading" list which contains any books you've opened or started reading but haven't yet finished. I have the original Kobo so I don't have the Shop button, it is Display. I agree that Kobo should add more functionality to the Back button.

[mootmaina]

This is what is really needed people.

1. PDF text only zoom. Just increase the text size without the images resizing. This is an awesome feature on the Sony. We should get this
2. Ability to change the dictionary to what we want.
3. An updated dictionary, so far iv had about 30% "Not found"
4. Better menu system, not sure how but its a little off.
5. The "goto" function everyone's talking about...

Apart from that I'm happy with this little device.

[Vanguard3000]

Definitely my two biggest "wants" for the Kobo would be:

-A Go-to-page function - this seems to be a pretty popular one.

-A "mark book as read/unread" option.

As it is, if I check an ebook to make sure it's formatted properly, I have to finish it before it'll leave my "now reading" section (and if I don't have a table of contents set up, that means "next-page-ing" though the whole thing) and then it's marked as read! For that matter, it's also be nice to sort book not just by what you're reading, but also view anything that's read or unread.

[keniya]

Definitely, the GOTO PAGE option is essentual. If there will be a field like 001 where Left and Right buttons should move between the 3 fields, Up and Down cycle (0<->9), the page 21 should require 3+1 steps (Left-Down-Down-(Center)) and the 555 page (the longest sequence) will need 16+1 button hits.

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by zoran

Hm. Go-to seems as obvious, but... Is it quite easy to perform with
the way sqlite stores data?
Pdf reflow is not something we will see if the file is made with fixed
end of line. Choice if it should power off or not is already part of 1.7,
as I know. Speed? Not with the same hardware. Margin size is really
part of css file and the way to format the content. If not at out taste,
put blame on editor.
Personally, I would like to see white background and black letters.
Good contrast. No glossy screen (as the present one is). No free books
one the reader and wifi firmware upgrade. I assume in a 2-3 years, as
a standard.

You must have a ko2 wifi

[panzer]

Does the next firmware is a myth or what? I mean, sometimes I come here to see what is going on like what people want to have and the next firmware is still not available (since many months). Is there any ETA?
Sorry for my bad English.

[taming]

Panzer--the Kobo WiFi is a relatively new device (released the end of September 2010) with a firmware update coming at some unannounced point with unannounced features. If you have been waiting "many months" I assume you have a Kobo-1--which had a firmware update in December.

[water4u99]

Hi,

My input (some already has been mentioned):
1. Goto page (for pdf as well)
2. PDF viewing (I magnify the display)
a) Custom magnification (e.g.: 28%) instead of pre-sets at 100% 125% etc.
b) Continuous page scroll down mode (now I have to do 2 clicks. 2nd click just scrolls to the bottom of current page - sometimes repeating 90% of 1st half of the page)
c) Continuous left-right scrolling, instead of page jump to the edge
3. Manual add for a non-broadcasting wireless access point. Many people turn-off the ssid broadcasting for security reasons.

I have many pdf documents that are "scans" of rare/historical books. Not sure if pdf full reflow function would help. However, if we can have the items in bullet 2) above, then it also solves some (if not most) of the pfd reflow viewing problem. Hopefully, items in bullet 2 would be easier to implement than a full reflow, and thus can be a "quick hit" for readers. Really hope to see them in the next firmware update (i have the wifi).

Thanks

[Taesoo Kwon]

Page turning speed!
Bookmarks (doesn't have to be named. numbered book marks are very doable without keyboard),
a full screen option for PDF files (no filename, page number, etc)

[amo]

Originally Posted by water4u99

2. PDF viewing (I magnify the display)
a) Custom magnification (e.g.: 28%) instead of pre-sets at 100% 125% etc.
b) Continuous page scroll down mode (now I have to do 2 clicks. 2nd click just scrolls to the bottom of current page - sometimes repeating 90% of 1st half of the page)
c) Continuous left-right scrolling, instead of page jump to the edge

Agree. Those would increase the functionality of pdf-viewing by about a factor of ten!

[panzer]

Originally Posted by taming

Panzer--the Kobo WiFi is a relatively new device (released the end of September 2010) with a firmware update coming at some unannounced point with unannounced features. If you have been waiting "many months" I assume you have a Kobo-1--which had a firmware update in December.

Oh! Yeah, I have kobo-1. Didn't know the last firmware was already out!
Where can I get it?
Thanks.

[3d0g]

Originally Posted by panzer

Oh! Yeah, I have kobo-1. Didn't know the last firmware was already out!
Where can I get it?
Thanks.

Lordy panzer. Don't mean to be harsh but did you not see the very next sticky thread below this one you're posting in? It has a quite clear subject and everything you need.

[almagary]

--More control over PDF display. I haven't found a PDF that I can read as the text is either too small as displayed within the margins or, if sized up, falls off the left or right, making scrolling and page maddening or fuhgeddaboudit.

--Magnification of epub images. The first book I read on my Kobo was Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, and the map of the vast Pacific was unusably miniature. Maybe that might not enlarge adequately, but a map of the Panama Canal in my current book could be.

--Folders or something to enable categorization of Books and I'm Reading--eg, thrillers, history, scifi, reference, new books, read next...

--Option to make Books and I'm Reading lists display compressed for faster browsing of library shelves.

--Multiple bookmarks to allow some faster go-to within books--eg, to specific maps, endnotes, list of characters, bibliography--as tables of contents are usually inadequate in this respect.

--Fine integration with Calibre.

--Time display at the bottom of the page.

--Wikipedia. That would be easily accommodated on a SDHC card. On the little WikiReader I have, Wikipedia is 4.32GB, Wiktionary 388MB, and WikiQuotes 54.8MB. And, by the way, 33,000 Project Gutenberg titles in a mere 3.24GB. (I recommend WikiReader even with its display limitations. $71 at Amazon now but you'll need a Micro SD card.)

Despite this wishlist, I'm happy with my Kobo, but am convinced that it's best for straight narrative text.

[ringerc]

For all those requesting PDF reflow: It's a nightmare; nearly impossible for many PDFs. It's only practical for PDFs that contain "article" metadata that maps text flows, which is almost none of them. Most PDFs don't retain information about the logical flow of text, making conversion of PDF to text difficult and painful, especially in PDFs with columns, breakouts, headers and footers, etc. Reflow would be even worse.

PDF is designed for documents where layout and formatting are fixed and exact. It's a terrible format for books that're to be read on different devices with different screens of different sizes. It does its original job wonderfully, but that job is to ensure exact, consistent formatting irrespective of the display device, which is exactly the opposite of what you want when reading a book.

If you want to reflow a PDF, convert it to plain text or HTML (if you can) then use Calibre to produce an ePub version.

(BTW, I work for a newspaper and have contributed to PDF-producing software like Scribus and PDF-editing software like PoDoFo; I'm consequently only mostly ignorant about PDF).

[ringerc]

In rough order of descending personal preference:

• Goto page
• Ability to remove a book from "currently reading"
• Speed page turning by pre-rendering the next page when a page turn is done, so it's cached in RAM and ready to display when the next page turn is requested.
• Option to group books by series
• Ship Calibre with the device or recommend it in the manual
• Disable loading quotes, or get fresh ones occasionally. They get repetitive and annoying.
• Option to override ebook formatting to enable/disable full justification - with hyphenation support, otherwise it'd look absolutely awful. This means the Kobo needs to carry hyphenation suffix databases for supported languages, but these are freely availible from the Apache FOP project, TeX, etc. Hyphenation without justification is horrible, please don't implement it. The best H&J algorithm is Knuth's as used in TeX and is extremely well documented.

More pie-in-the sky are:

• A QtWebKit based browser based on QtDemoBrowser / Arora for the Kobo Wifi. Seriously. Yes, URL text entry would suck, but it'd be REALLY HANDY for reading long articles etc on the wifi. D-PAD for navigation, as is done on non-touch-screen phones. I'd love to have a bash at implementing this myself if the Qt embedded based kobo user interface app were open source or had a plugin interface. e-Ink is gorgeous for reading articles and stories, it's a shame not to have a browser to allow access to them w/o needing Calibre.
• Ability to browse and search Wikipedia from locally cached copy using the above browser.

There are also a couple of things that'd really improve the user interface:

• UI BUG: When the Kobo Wifi connects to a network and it detects that an update is available, there may already be another button press in the queue when the prompt asking you to update pops up. As this defaults to "ask me later" you can accidentally skip an update. There's no way to force a re-prompt within the Kobo Wifi UI, which is a pain especially if you're not easily able to use Kobo Desktop (corporate PC, unsupported platform, etc). To solve this, input should be flushed before reading the user's response to the update prompt. (filed as http://kobo.zendesk.com/requests/156556)
• Queue user input and skip intermediate redraws when there's another action queued, allowing the user to move around a UI they know well without having to wait for the screen to catch up at every step. Detailed description filed as http://kobo.zendesk.com/requests/156564 .

Oh, and finally: document the use of the Linux kernel, busybox, and u-boot in the manual along with the licensing info for all the userspace components. Include a reference to where to get the source code in the manual to satisfy the conditions of the GPL/LGPL licensed components, including the kernel.