Firmware 4.7.10413 -word finding bug?

[minsik]

Hi.

original Rakutan firmware 4.7.10413 on Kobo H20 (thinks first hardware).
No mods.

Reading an epub book. Use search in the reading current words like "dead". 5 pages of results. ok, select one of the word results where it shows a part sentence and the screen returns back to the original page i was on. bottom bar shows forward and back through word list but even though the indications change the actual page does not. No word selected returns to the selected word location in the epub. it only shows the previous being read page regardless.

Am I doing something wrong?
Is this working in an earlier firmware?Is it possibe to roll back to that version?

thanks Minsik.

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by minsik

Hi.

original Rakutan firmware 4.7.10413 on Kobo H20 (thinks first hardware).
No mods.

Reading an epub book. Use search in the reading current words like "dead". 5 pages of results. ok, select one of the word results where it shows a part sentence and the screen returns back to the original page i was on. bottom bar shows forward and back through word list but even though the indications change the actual page does not. No word selected returns to the selected word location in the epub. it only shows the previous being read page regardless.

Am I doing something wrong?
Is this working in an earlier firmware?Is it possibe to roll back to that version?

thanks Minsik.

I forget what version broke search, but it was at least 3 releases ago.

If you have a first gen H20, (no coloured light), you can roll back to firmware version 3.19.5761 as the most stable before a whole new round of bugs were introduced with V. 4.

However, I would recommend instead adding the Kobo Touch Extended Plugin to Calibre and using that to sideload your epub books as Kepub. (Kepub does not suffer from this bug.)

[koboy]

Originally Posted by minsik

Hi.

original Rakutan firmware 4.7.10413 on Kobo H20 (thinks first hardware).
No mods.

Reading an epub book. Use search in the reading current words like "dead". 5 pages of results. ok, select one of the word results where it shows a part sentence and the screen returns back to the original page i was on. bottom bar shows forward and back through word list but even though the indications change the actual page does not. No word selected returns to the selected word location in the epub. it only shows the previous being read page regardless.

Am I doing something wrong?
Is this working in an earlier firmware?Is it possibe to roll back to that version?

thanks Minsik.

you might want to take a look at post 171.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...269542&page=12


best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

@minsik: It isn't as simple as saying this is broken in the firmware. It is working correctly for the sideloaded epub and sideloaded kepubs I am reading at the moment. From memory, there is a detailed discussion of the problem here that found a possible reason. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what the answer was. If I get a chance, I'll look for the thread.

[minsik]

thanks, I will hope they fix in future then!
I also reset to factory, connected and it loaded latest firmware, copied all previous books across, imported into the system and then tried it again with no improvement.

edit. hmmm seems some books epub will and some wont. I was unlucky at first choosing the few that wont. appreciate the location of the discussion on how to FIX an epub so it can search and be page locate able. Feature does work on some books i now find, but there seems to be no difference however i have limited experience in epub formatting.

Calibre will work search forward or backwards through either book i have selected as working and not working in Kobo H2o word find.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by minsik

thanks, I will hope they fix in future then!
I also reset to factory, connected and it loaded latest firmware, copied all previous books across, imported into the system and then tried it again with no improvement.

Makes me mad that basic stuff inside their software is so badly tested before it is released as working. also that there is such a willing community who would test and report on differing releases. It comes back to making money with the lease amount of support.

But, as I said, I had no problems with searching. If I use that as the test case, then, there isn't a bug. I know you are seeing it and I know others have reported it. So, it is happening, but it is probably happening in a circumstance that isn't quite normal. My bet for these sort of things is usually some error in the book. And that tends to be hard for me to test as I tend to clean up the code in my books.

I have attached a simple test book in which the search works correctly here. Select a word, tap the search, wait for it to finish and tap any result and it is displayed and selected. Then the search bar works to go between the results. If that doesn't work for you, then there is something very strange going on.

And as I expect it to be a problem in the book, if you post a sample that doesn't work for you, or point to one somewhere online I can download freely (the library here is good for this), then I'll see if it happens here. And if I can see why.

[minsik]

thanks prompt davidfor as that sample works fine searching and highlighting the word, then the toolbar at the bottom will advance and reverse go through the words.
I used "purus" which repeats.

Next question is how to CLEAN up epub to be able to do this is the simpliest way?
I notice the two books i used that the one with chapters worked and the one with no chapters didnt work. is this a clue?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by minsik

thanks prompt davidfor as that sample works fine searching and highlighting the word, then the toolbar at the bottom will advance and reverse go through the words.
I used "purus" which repeats.

I won't deny I gave a sigh of relief when you said it worked

Next question is how to CLEAN up epub to be able to do this is the simpliest way?
I notice the two books i used that the one with chapters worked and the one with no chapters didnt work. is this a clue?

Yes, I have a feeling that an inconsistency between the ToC and the file structure breaks the search. Or if the ToC is broken. The ToC is loaded into the database when the books are imported and used from there for navigation. The search results might be relative to the ToC and if it is broken or absent, that would break the search.

And I have a test the demonstrates at least one method to reproduce this. I was recently reading something that had multiple chapters but, they were all in one file. After reading it, I used the calibre editor to split the chapters into separate files, rebuilt the ToC and resent it to the device without deleting the book. That means the book wasn't reimported and the ToC in the database didn't match the structure of the book. Deleting it from the device and resending the book fixed the problem.

I haven't tested it, but I am pretty sure that if the ToC in the book doesn't match the contents, you will see this problem as well. When importing the book, the ToC is read from the NCX file (for epub2) and it doesn't check that this matches the rest of the book. In this case, you an read the book from start to finish, but navigation (ToC, navigation bar, search) probably won't work.

And I don't consider this to be a bug in the firmware. It is an error in the book. If a fix was to be made, it would be to reject the book, but I consider being a bit forgiving and allowing the book to be loaded and read is actually a better scenario.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by minsik

Next question is how to CLEAN up epub to be able to do this is the simpliest way?
I notice the two books i used that the one with chapters worked and the one with no chapters didnt work. is this a clue?

Of course, I didn't actually answer the question

The fix should be to rebuild the ToC. You can do that with the calibre editor or Sigil. Calibre also has ToC building tool, so that you don't have to open the editor. Or you can use either Polish books or a conversion to do it in bulk.

I'd probably recommend using one of the editors a few times to see the sort of problems you have. Then you can decide whether you need to do them individually or if Polish books is enough.

However you fix it, remember to delete the books before resending them. But, you can do that from calibre.

Edit: You might be able to use the Quality Check plugin to find the problem books. The plugin has three options for checking the ToC. I think the check for broken links option will do what you need. Of course, I don't have a book with an error when I ran this, so it's hard to check.

[minsik]

like alice i go down many rabbit holes and keep on getting deeper. sometimes learning stuff which is nice.
Yes looks like the book with problems is two xhtml sections and a toc.ncx but doesnt contain chapters as viewed in sigil. Not sure what to do next but in the beginning its always like that.

thanks for the suggestions and so very helpful responses.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by minsik

like alice i go down many rabbit holes and keep on getting deeper. sometimes learning stuff which is nice.
Yes looks like the book with problems is two xhtml sections and a toc.ncx but doesnt contain chapters as viewed in sigil. Not sure what to do next but in the beginning its always like that.

It's been a while since I used Sigil, but there should be a function to generate the ToC. It should have options to build from headings. But, even just replacing the current one with a single valid entry pointing to the start of the book is probably enough.

[rashkae]

It's not a case of broken links... The search bug manifests when the toc does not have an entry for the file that the search is trying to navigate to.

Rebuilding the toc by "Files" will 'fix' it. Rebuilding the toc by other means, (such as importing an inline toc or Amazon Mobi style toc,) might not, depending on how complete the imported toc is.

This is most certainly a bug in Kobo firmware. There is no requirement for epub tocs to include every internal file. But there are many places, in Kepub reader and now the Epub reader, where Kobo devs mistakenly use the TOC as a substitute for the 'spine'. By spine, I'm refering to the section on the epub contends.opf file that lists all internal files and they order they are supposed to go. To avoid the known kobo quirks, (search in epubs, whole book page numbering and progress in kepub,) the ncx toc has to list the same contents as the spine.

[JSWolf]

Both the Calibre Editor and sigil have an epubcheck plugin. Install that and use epubcheck to check for errors. The ToC davidfor is talking about aren't errors but there could be something else as well. If you have your eBooks in Calibre, then I suggest use the Calibre editor.

[minsik]

thanks for good help attempts.

In calibre edit and check book it shows this error.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This HTML file is larger than 260 KB. Too large HTML files can cause performance problems on some e-book readers. Consider splitting this file into smaller sections.
-------------------------------------------------------
now need to spit into new sections. Not getting very far yet.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by minsik

thanks for good help attempts.

In calibre edit and check book it shows this error.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This HTML file is larger than 260 KB. Too large HTML files can cause performance problems on some e-book readers. Consider splitting this file into smaller sections.
-------------------------------------------------------
now need to spit into new sections. Not getting very far yet.

Quite often, when you see a few very large files, the ToC will point into the middle of a file since the files are not split on chapter boundaries. This can and will cause some odd issues.

What I generally do is to merge all the files other than one which displays the cover into a single file, cleanup the metadata, errorcheck, split at logical boundaries (Toc, titlepage, dedication, copyright, chapters, etc.), rebuild the toc.ncx, any other cleanup I think is needed and then save the epub.