Kobo, Kindle, KOReader and hyphenation

[cadele]

OT:

Please don't all throw the rocks at once, but just to gently point out that the singular of criteria is criterion.

A criterium us a one-day bicycle race on a circuit road... Then again, that might be more apt...

[barryem]

Originally Posted by cadele

OT:

Please don't all throw the rocks at once, but just to gently point out that the singular of criteria is criterion.

A criterium us a one-day bicycle race on a circuit road... Then again, that might be more apt...

No rocks. Thanks for the correction. Now I finally know everything.

Barry

[roger64]

I will resume my participation on this brand new and so enjoyable thread with some aside (forgive my poor sense of humor..). After all, asides are a new feature of EPUB3 - and maybe of KFX?

So I just exercise my right of answer for this:

About advertisment and truth.

from message 23

Well, it is very simple. Extraordinarily simple.

The Kindle does exactly what it is advertised to do. It reads books in the AZW3 format.
There are jails and jails... Naturally I am rooting for anyone who wants to unlock the jail and gain full control over their device.
But I have little sympathy for anyone who complains that it is necessary, yet isn't willing to do what it takes (currently: serial port jailbreak). Specifically, when they bought the device anyway, get burned when they should've known better (practicality always beats idealism), and then proceeds to complain about it in unrelated discussions.

After that ponderous assessment, the fool (me) who already gets "no sympathy" (how surprising!) is supposed to shut up and go away with the head down. Gosh! What a hammering blow! How to disagree with that: "the Kindle does exactly what is advertised to do" in the front page (that 99.99% read) and even written in the small prints (that 99.99% don't read).

Yes. Indeed. I agree.

But if we look at the front pages advertisement, where you underline the two or three major selling features, can you expect any advertisement to be truthful? No more than for a cigarette pack, where they imply that it has a very nice taste, that smoking makes you look like a cow-boy or Humphrey Bogart, etc. It lies by omission: it "forgets" intently to tell you that it causes cancer. And so the law obliged the tobacco advertisers to write it on every pack after many millions of deaths.

Happily the Kindle will not give you cancer. Good for us because we own a Kindle. But Amazon does not put in the front pages that it's a jail (or a totally closed machine). It would take no place and be enough with one word.

So your above statement would be relevant if only the advertisement did no lie by omission as they systematically do. Please don't take advertisements at face value, don't "reference" any advertisement as the divine truth. To reverse your above remark, I would rather say that the dream of the advertisement always exceeds what the user gets practically.

About jailbreak

from message 23 of this thread:

"There are jails and jails",

This is a nice one! As you can see, it made my day. Do you know that the reverse is true? Thank you.

When all the previous versions of the Kindle software except the current one have been jailbroken, is it really "foolish" to expect to see it broken someday, specially when everybody knows the zeroday has already been found in September and announced? Be kind with me: I would say it's just optimistic. Next month, if the jailbreak is published, what will you say?

For the current state of 5.6.5., since I have the choice, I have rather read books on Kobo/Koreader than on Kindle. It has been my informed choice for the last three months and it does not make me cry.

OK, now I'll go back to hyphenation.

Thanks to dickoraine for a very informative and balanced post (number 42). It sums it up.

[barryem]

Okay, people jailbreak devices and if you can break out of jail you were, by definition, either in jail or using a metaphor. The fact is that there are no bars included with the Kindle, or wardens, and the only cells are in the battery. There is no literal jail.

So are you proposing that Amazon, in it's advertising, seek out every negative metaphor and warn people about it? Do you warn a potential boss during an interview that at times you're lazy and lackadaisical?

In any case, all the various views and metaphors and ideas, sensible and silly, are available on the internet for google to find for you. If you wanted to know you would know. You bought a device that works a certain way after doing as much research as you chose to do.

Barry

[roger64]

Hi

Originally Posted by barryem

.../...
So are you proposing that Amazon, in it's advertising, seek out every negative metaphor and warn people about it? Do you warn a potential boss during an interview that at times you're lazy and lackadaisical?
.../...
Barry

I have even worse defects than that.
I do not expect any company to make truthful (negative) advertising. It will never happen by their own will. That's why it's important, for us users, to speak about "omissions" because they never do it.

There are plenty of them, not only the jail thing, which is the only one really important for me.
For example: (omissions are between brackets)
- updates (forced on you like food on a "foie gras" duck)
- wonderful new file format (secret and undocumented)
- buying books (limitations of rights)
- fonts: look our nice new Bookerly font (but we forbid you to side-load yours)
- crisp typeface (but we do not provide any 'advanced" boldening of the font)
- hyphenation, now coming with kfx with brand new typesetting features (on topic )

Hyphenation on Kindle

Well, now I am back on track and I will ask a question to experienced Kindle users who enjoy hyphenation (I have been told there may be one, but maybe he is not reading this because he (she) uses a foreign language).

I know one way to implement it, but it's surely is not the majority use case: I convert one EPUB (DRM free and public domain) in AZW3, I add hyphenation with Calibre with the plugin "hyphenate this".

For people who buy directly to Amazon.
- if it's a book in KFX, I understand they may have automatic hyphenation? Is it true for all languages? Can they select the language for hyphenation (there are distinct rules)? Probably it applies specifically for each KFX book according to its language?
- if the book is in AZW3 or MOBI, furthermore with DRM. Is it possible to export it to Calibre to do the above changes? Is there a better way? Can they convert them to KFX?
- if there is no better solution, then I understand why the majority makes do without hyphenation (at least for English language books which are not so strongly impacted by the lack of hyphenation as other languages).

Quality of hyphenation

As far as the quality of hyphenation is concerned, Koreader does a reasonable work. There may probably be quality differences between languages. What I can say for French is that it's good enough to read without trouble.

There are different formats for hyphenation files. I use with LibreOffice a different kind of file (presumably better) than the one I find with Koreader. Prince PDF uses another (proprietary one?) which is even more strict - I mean which provides more hyphens. I do not know how to convert or edit these hyphenation files.

[dickloraine]

I don't use koreader, but kobos hyphenation engine has some flaws and seems to be an after thought. Namely it often counts characters quotes (definitely french quotes) as a character of tge word, leading to strange hyphenations. Only solution: set a higher threshold for length.

[alanHd]

I've been following this thread for the entertainment value, personally I don't care at all for hyphenation and all this talk of been in jail is doing my head in. If I buy a PlayStation do I moan that I can't play my Xbox games. Amazon like any company design a product and list what it can do, no company in the world starts listing what it can't do, that's up to you to check out.
Has people have said before, the jailbreak exists to add extra functions for users that they would like, that Amazon didn't supply. To moan that a product was purchased solely on the prospect of jail breaking it and then you couldn't just sucks of sour grapes.

[roger64]

@alanHD

Thanks for your views. Happy to entertain you. Half of the prize goes to another person... Instead of "moaning" you could write "vomiting" which would make your point even stronger.

Hyphenation

To come back on hyphenation, here is a screenshot of a six inch PDF in French made with Prince. You can see that the word gap seems smaller, and because of this the number of hyphens is bigger. Here I chose a page with a maxi number of seven, while on average it's probably between three and four. The mini-bar is not part of the PDF: it's added by Koreader. There are also some ligatures (ex: Mushafi, en-fin) done by the open-type font used (Linux Libertine otf).

I know there is an option in k2pdfopt (PDF engine used with Koreader) which auto set to small the word gap for CJK (Asian) languages. But the reflow of PDF uses a lot of memory and is probably not advisable for e-ink readers.

For EPUB with Koreader, I would say we have about three hyphens for such a kind of page in French, two or little less for English.

@dickloraine

I did not spot blatant hyphenation mistakes with Koreader (French) as the ones you told us about. The only anomalies I could see were coming from a bad language setting (I had left the English hyphenation setting for reading a French book or the contrary).

[alanHd]

I've no problem with anyone wanting to use hyphenation, like I say my preference is not to, when I'm reading it's about the story so my mind skips over minor punctuation errors and spelling mistakes. I just think it's unfair to say Amazon is a jail because it doesn't do exactly what you want. My older kindle works fine with the jailbreak.
I use Amazon products, Apple products and android. Each one has its benefits and disadvantages.

[darryl]

@roger64. I agree with alanHD. Your decision to purchase a Kindle in the expectation of using an unreleased jailbreak is a bad one, for which you alone are responsible. To blame Amazon's advertising is sheer rationalisation. It is hardly a secret that not only Amazon but all of the major vendors of e-ink readers like to put you in jail, as you put it. It is also no secret that Amazon does not support the jailbreak and in recent times have attempted to make it even more difficult. What happened is you relied upon the release of the jailbreak. As things turned out it was not released. You took a risk and it turned out to be a bad one.

Please stop whinging about it and blaming others. There comes a time to abandon "tit for tat" posting. Even if you still believe you are correct it reaches a point where it achieves nothing. Those who you have convinced remain convinced. Those you have not are not going to be persuaded to your point of view by endless repetition.

As for hyphenations, it is a matter of individual preference. Personally, I can take it or leave it. Like AlanHD, I become absorbed in a good ebook with or without it.

Please let us agree to disagree and move on. If you feel you must post to defend your point of view yet again I am happy for you to have the last word, and suggest that others who don't agree with you do likewise, lest this continue ad infinitum.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by darryl

But it is misleading to signal out Amazon in this respect. All of the major players want to keep you in jail, as you put it. Amazon is not even the worst of them. That distinction must unfortunately be reserved for Apple. B&N's actions over the past year or so do not bear mentioning. And Kobo uses both Adobe ADE DRM and its own proprietary format. In fact, it has recently been playing with releases of its Kobo Desktop software to try to prevent Obok removing DRM. The fact is that we are offered a choice of Jails, and it is ludicrous to say don't buy a Kindle on this basis. In fact, if you must choose a Jail, to use an Americanism straight out of John Grisham, why not choose the Federal Country Club of Amazon?

This is only (partially) true if one ignores the possibility of jailbreak and rooting. Kobo is rooted out of the box, no restrictions included. Nooks are notoriously good for rooting. Kindles are extremely locked down, and all recent models have remained unrootable without hardware alteration for a couple of years. So no, the statement:

All of the major players want to keep you in jail, as you put it. Amazon is not even the worst of them.

is misleading.

Amazon is far and away the the most restrictive among the e-reader manufacturers. This can only get worse if Amazon block current loopholes to d/l books in formats other than KFX. By comparison, Kobo and Nook are far more lenient. Apple is not relevant as they don't produce a dedicated e-reader.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by darryl

Please let us agree to disagree and move on. If you feel you must post to defend your point of view yet again I am happy for you to have the last word, and suggest that others who don't agree with you do likewise, lest this continue ad infinitum.

I did that a long time ago, but people like you keep responding.

Originally Posted by Rizla

[...] This can only get worse if Amazon block current loopholes to d/l books in formats other than KFX. [...]

But I feel kind of obligated to deal with this.

Once again, Rizla, that isn't happening and you are the only person who thinks it will.
It is not a "loophole".
The sky is NOT falling.


We've been over this multiple times already, and snide insinuations do not count as logical evidence. (If you do have logical evidence that you have not -- yet -- shared with us despite your many opportunities, feel free to share it.)
I can only assume you are repeating it in the hopes that the more it is repeated, the more it will become general background knowledge that "everybody knows" and nobody questions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The Kindle does exactly what it is advertised to do. It reads books in the AZW3 format.

Amazon doesn't actually say they have a new eBook format (KFX). They don't say exactly say that Amazon needs to convert eBooks to KFX in order to enable typesetting. They make this very confusing. Most people would read this and think all Amazon eBooks have the new enhanced typesetting. Amazon is being very snarky when it comes to enhanced typesetting. Amazon should have made the typesetting work with KF8 downloaded from Amazon. Basically,Amazon is rather misleading with the new rendering engine.

New—All-new typesetting engine lays out words just as the author intended for beautiful rendering of pages. With improved character spacing and the addition of hyphenation, justification, kerning, ligatures, and drop cap support, our best-in-class typography helps you read faster with less eyestrain. Show me

Enjoy reading with larger font sizes without compromising your reading experience. Page layout and margins automatically adapt to work well at even the largest font sizes. The new typography and layout improvements are available on over half a million books, including many best sellers, with thousands more being added every week.

[eschwartz]

s/snarky/sneaky/g
I have already stated my opinion on the existence/need of new formats. I don't know why you are still asking me questions.
I have already stated my opinion on hyphenation. I don't know why you are still asking me questions.


> /dev/null

[darryl]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I did that a long time ago, but people like you keep responding.

Touche. You did indeed, and I commend you on your self-restraint. In my defence I refrained from posting for a long time, but finally did so because I thought it might be worth trying a specific appeal to all involved to stop it. Probably futile, but worth a try.

As for Rizla, I rarely bother responding these days as I find his posts are usually long on emotion and short on logic. To borrow from your last post, "> /dev/null".