Aura H2O Font size doesn't change on ePub format books

[LEVI18]

Hi,

I've just received a Kobo Aura H20 for Christmas. Having transferred several ePub books onto the reader, I've found the font slider to have no effect whatsoever. I've tried googling solutions but with no result. Has anyone else experienced this problem and have any tips for resolving it?

Many thanks,

[robko]

Likely the epub itself has set font size and Kobo doesn't override it. Not common, but not unusual. The normal solution is to remove the font size settings with calibre. You should find the directions to do so with search on here (haven't done it myself so I can't help).

[GeoffR]

That is really strange, I didn't think it was possible with recent firmware for the publisher to prevent the font size being changed. I haven't seen any book that can prevent it, and I can't find any way to prevent it myself.

Perhaps you could try loading a known-good* ePub, just to make sure it is not something wrong with your device. You could try this one from Baen's Free Library for example.

If it is a problem with the books, are any of them free? If so could you post a link to one? I'd be interested to know how the publisher has managed to do it.

Edit: For things other than font size, such as line spacing, justification, etc. the publisher generally does have the power to override the device settings if they choose to. If they have done that, then there are some ways to fix it either by patching the firmware or by re-converting the book in Calibre to strip styles completely (but Calibre can also be the cause of some of the problems, so don't do this unless you really need to), but both of these methods are blunt instruments and have side effects that can spoil other parts of the book's layout. The only way to fix the problems without causing side effects is to manually edit the book and selectively remove just the specific styles that are causing the problems and leaving the others in place.

* Edit: Known-good as far as being able to change the font size that is, it might well have other problems.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by LEVI18

Hi,

I've just received a Kobo Aura H20 for Christmas. Having transferred several ePub books onto the reader, I've found the font slider to have no effect whatsoever. I've tried googling solutions but with no result. Has anyone else experienced this problem and have any tips for resolving it?

I've had that happen three times now after adding new books. I have Show Adobe epub page numbers enabled and that text changes size with the font size slider but the text on the page did not change size. The first couple of times, I deleted the ebook and resent it from Calibre and that seems to have fixed the issue. The last time, delete/resend did not work and I ended up doing a factory reset with the external uSD card where I store my epubs removed, applied the 3.19 update but not GeoffR's patches and the font slider worked again. I then reapplied GeoffR's patches and the problem has not reoccurred but I'm not optimistic that I've seen the last of the problem.

I've also noted that on several occasions, I've transferred an ebook to my H2O and gotten a popup that DRM is preventing the book from opening -- which is strange considering the ebooks were from Baen and not DRMed. One other symptom is that the ebooks shows in the library list with the title and author on one line as if my H2O did not properly process the ebook metadata. Deleting the ebook using the H2O's GUI and resending it from Calibre has corrected the issue so far.

[JSWolf]

I've never had a problem changing the font size or the line spacing.But then, I remove all the font size CSS where it should be left to the default and any line spacing that's not actually needed gets removed as well. I also remove any left justify.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've never had a problem changing the font size or the line spacing.But then, I remove all the font size CSS where it should be left to the default and any line spacing that's not actually needed gets removed as well. I also remove any left justify.

Jon, I read two of the three ebooks with earlier firmware versions and had no issues. I've edited one of the old ebooks and the new ebook I was seeing problems with so the stylesheet was my standard stylesheet with all font sizes using relative sizing. Line spacing is defaulted to my preference and justification is not specified leaving the page in to default to ragged right.

As I mentioned, it's easy to see the ebooks that are going to have issues since the library view shows, as an example "Castaway Planet by Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor" on a single line with no series/author. Deleting the ebook and resending it gives the correct book title/series/author display and the font size or DRM errors go away.

I'm still not certain is this is due to having >3500 epubs on my ereader or if it is due to an issue with the 3.19.5613 firmware release. The other possibility that I considered of a bug in epubcheck when run from Sigil was eliminated by the older two ebooks which did not have the multiple mimetype files present.

[JSWolf]

if you do find a book that causes the font size not to change, could you use ScrambleBook to post it unless it is PD or CC. Then I can load it and give it a go. I do have some patches applied to my H2O.