Kobo firmware still sucks

[Lucas Malor]

Well, there are years that I do not update the Kobo firmware. I was a little hopeful and I update to the latest version. But nothing. Annotations still sucks.

I mean, if you start with the right start word, and end with the right end word, it's all ok. But if you wrong a little, you're screwed.

Drag the stupid start and end buttons is more difficult that pulling a train with a rope and teeths.

Furthermore the highlight does not include the last point. Never. This is something that make me mad...

Sorry, maybe I'm too rude, maybe because I didn't found so much progress also in another aspects... but, I have to say, it's much simple to do a decent annotation system:

1. there's a new button to the bottom menu of the book, "Start to select". Press it.
2. press the text to select the start of the selection. If you fail, you can press again and again until you spot on. A simple line is displayed where you clicked.
3. the button now changed to "End selection". Press it.
4. Guess what? You can do the same as you did to get the start of selection.
5. the button changed to "Confirm". Press it.
5. now the usual "Highlight" or "Add a note" buttons are displayed. You can press one of them, and voila'

I think you must not be a genius to understand this is quite more simple and quick, since you have not to wait the page refresh every time you add a word to selection.

Well, polemic mode deactivated. Goodbye.

[Barbara1955]

I don't do Highlights mine are turned OFF! My ereaders I only use for Reading!

BTW Settings in Reading Settings has this Nice Refresh option XX page turns to Chapter to Whole book!

IF you really Don't like the Kobo Buy some thing else... duh

[Lucas Malor]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

I don't do Highlights mine are turned OFF!

So you are off topic, my lady.

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

BTW Settings in Reading Settings has this Nice Refresh option XX page turns to Chapter to Whole book!

The Copernican revolution...

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

IF you really Don't like the Kobo Buy some thing else... duh

First of all I did like Kobo, I don't like the firmware. Secondly, if you don't like this thread, you can write to some other one.

[Quoth]

If you try to select from part of one line to closer to left edge on the next line, the Touch interface freezes. Sleeping for 20s re-enables touch. A new bug a maybe the firmware before last.

I just read a huge amount. I also use the Kobo for work, proof annotations of novels not yet published. I have to be careful how I select.
Also if you get the selection wrong, it's easier to start again.

One solution is to make font, margins and line spacing larger when annotating.

I persevere as the ereader has now saved over $500 in paper printing drafts and the annotations easily saved on laptop. I find the Kobo far better than the Kindle for that, though Kindle selection/highlighting is far faster and more reliable. My Nook and Sony are no use at all for annotation.

The fact is that ALL ereaders are poor beyond actually just reading. Android apps are pretty but woeful on book/library management as are all ereaders.

They all have poor firmware compared to Library & Document management SW 30 years ago. The actual readers are basically paginating HTML viewers. The ability for fonts, languages etc has been glacial and only now reaching the point where desktop OSes were over 15 years ago.

Also despite epub3, kF8 etc vs original mobi prc files and original ereaders with epub, the standards development has been poor tinkering. Stupidity like kepub and KFX doesn't help.

DRM is a separate issue and made us subject to the duopoly of Amazon and Adobe. Not good. Copyright is good, DRM is evil.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

The fact is that ALL ereaders are poor beyond actually just reading. Android apps are pretty but woeful on book/library management as are all ereaders.

But that's what their purpose is. Reading. All else is gravy. Not to you, perhaps, but to 99.9% of the audience. They are also not meant to organize hundreds or thousands of books. That's what Calibre is for.

Up to a point this is of course my opinion, but it does seem to match that of the Amazons en Kobos of this world.

[Quoth]

If you've more than 50 books, then book management is important. Old ereaders with no SD card can store maybe 3,000 books and modern ereaders 6,000 to 30,000.

Unless you are reading very casually, only once and only latest mass market best sellers, a reader only reader is poor.

Also there has been more than 10 years to develop decent GUI and book management. The actual production cost and distribution cost of a barely adequate reader compared with a decent one with annotation, management, dictionaries etc is ZERO.

Also the big advantage of ebooks over paper is management and annotation. The problem is that much software development goes into DRM features and what the Marketing department wants, not what readers want. Justifying the poor state of EVERYONE'S ereader systems on the basis that people only want basic reading is madness.

Yes, and paper books should only have a paper cover, all be in a single font, just inline chapter headings, no blurb, contents, list of other titles in series, publishing info, header, footer or page numbers, because readers just want to read.

Of course the purpose of the existence of a book is to be read!

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

The fact is that ALL ereaders are poor beyond actually just reading. Android apps are pretty but woeful on book/library management as are all ereaders.

I disagree with both statements. Firstly, some ereaders are not poor beyond just reading. Try an Onyx. It has huge and some excellent functionality beyond just reading. Secondly, Android ereading apps don't need to to organize books. System folders can be used to organize books and the Android apps can then access them.

To the OP, maybe Koreader is better at text annotation. Not sure. Edit. Just tested it. The selection of text seems to be okay. Not sure about saving and exporting. I tested it on a Kindle, so the screen sensitivity will differ.

You could also try Coolreader which also runs on a Kobo. From what I recall, Colreader was very good at annotations.

The bottom line is, in my experience, e-readers are capable way beyond the often horriblly limited and poorly executed software packaged by the producers. One must go beyond it to get the most out of the e-ink device. Fortunately Kobo e-readers come pre-rooted, so you have options. If the options made available by the community developers is not adequate, then I suggest you try and Android e-reader. I've found Onyx to be the most reliable, but they all have their faults.

[jackie_w]

As a calibre user, Calibre Companion offers me all the book organisation I'd ever want or need on Android. All the Android epub/pdf reading apps need to be good at is the reading bit.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

As a calibre user, Calibre Companion offers me all the book organisation I'd ever want or need on Android. All the Android epub/pdf reading apps need to be good at is the reading bit.

same here; also text select/highlight in android moon+ reader just works - end line, start of line, wrap-arounds, multi-lines, no issues.

frustrated reader's problem seems to be that he want all the bells n whistles features but is unwilling to part with ~the cost of a latte to an app developer in exchange for a fully featured app.

[NiLuJe]

To get back to the OP, while text selection has never been great on Kobo, the issue is often exacerbated by poor hardware, be it crappy IR grids (at least for precision work, and that's not limited to Kobo, the original Kindle Touch was painful to use that way, too), or the infamously terrible capacitive grid of the Aura One.

With my admittedly limited panel of devices, the Forma is much less frustrating to use for that purpose than my H2O.

Speaking of Android and third-party apps, I'll remind everyone that KOReader runs pretty neatly on Android now, it's in F-droid, and it might even work on your e-ink Android device, too. And if it doesn't, someone will probably try to help you make it run there, if you're willing to put in some work .

[Quoth]

By ereaders I generally mean actual eink ereaders. Many people use a phone or tablet out of convenience, for actual reading 4 to 12 hrs at a go the eink wins.

I used to buy software. Sometimes I still do. However if I spend twice the price of my phone and three times the price of my tablet on a NEW dedicated eink reader, I expect all the software needed to be built in.

The OP was I assumed writing about dedicated Kobo ereader hardware, not the iPhone or Android phone/tablet ecosystem. I'd pay even $10 for a decent Android ereader that had decent book & annotation management. I've donated to Calibre and use it nearly daily. I've no interest in putting Calibre Companion on my Android phone or tablet.
So no need for snide remarks about lattes.
I worked as a paid programmer for many years. I know what decent software costs to design and implement.

[Lucas Malor]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

One solution is to make font, margins and line spacing larger when annotating.

At risk to be repetitive, one solution is the one I already proposed in the first post:

1. there's a new button to the bottom menu of the book, "Start to select". Press it.
2. press the text to select the start of the selection. If you fail, you can press again and again until you spot on. A simple line is displayed where you clicked.
3. the button now changed to "End selection". Press it.
4. Guess what? You can do the same as you did to get the start of selection.
5. the button changed to "Confirm". Press it.
5. now the usual "Highlight" or "Add a note" buttons are displayed. You can press one of them, and voila'

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

You could also try Coolreader which also runs on a Kobo. From what I recall, Colreader was very good at annotations.

Thank you, I'll try. I had installed it one time on my Glo, but I broken it

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

while text selection has never been great on Kobo, the issue is often exacerbated by poor hardware

I don't think so. I'm not an expert, but the Kobo hardwares seems superior to the Kindle ones. The problem is I noticed that when you select the text, the page is refreshed every time you add or remove a selection. This is an overkill for an e-ink device. My solution should speed up things a lot.

The problem is that Kobo devs want to emulate the selection of normal touch devices like android, so long press, select, drag and release, and then the possibility to adjust with start and end markers. This just not work with e-ink device. My solution is IMHO much simpler and efficient for this kind of devices.

Originally Posted by mbovenka

But that's what their purpose is. Reading.

A physical book can be read and highlighted, you can write notes on it, add bookmarks and use it as a wedge for you chair, launch it to a fastidious person, use to kill flies, use it as a fan and you can smash it on the table to get attention

[NiLuJe]

@Lucas Malor: In that context, I meant that as poor HID hardware (i.e., a crappy touch tech).

Not here to start a holy war with a more generic comment . Plus, it'd be more complex than that in practice, and there's a bit of a David vs. Goliath situation when you put Amazon into the mix.

[Lucas Malor]

Well, I'm curious, you can start another thread and link it here, or PM me if you want

[NiLuJe]

It's been touched upon in the various "CPU" threads, but, basically, Kobo Mk.7 devices have hardware that's very, very, very, very close to a PW4. And somewhat close to a KOA2, if you forget the CPU swap, which wouldn't have the same impact on the Kobo software that it has on Kindle.

(TL;DR: Kobo used to be half a generation to a generation behind Kindle, but they've started to catch up, so I definitely do NOT mean "poor hardware" in general when talking about current gen Kobo devices).

The big difference is how that hardware is tied together, as that's done entirely in-house with Amazon via lab126, while the board designs are from NTX on Kobo's side.

And then, of course, the software stack .

You just have to remember that Amazon has the resources to throw rivers of $$ at the issue, something no other current actor can rival.