Kobo Bug thread

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by maximus83

EPUB version:
<p class="note"><a class="line_link" id="Ants757-1a" href="part0028_split_003.html#Ants757-1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1</a> <span class="text">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam</span> name evocative of the biblical first man</p>

Moving the id to the p tag. If you look at the link I posted, the destination has to be at least 9 characters. That is probably 5. Putting the id on the paragraph would solve that. And is the correct destination.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by maximus83

Here's how each reader device handles this specific end note:

Kindle Oasis: popup window
Kindle (web): navigates to the notes page
Kindle (android): navigates to the notes page
Google books (android): popup window
Google books (web): navigates to notes page
FB Reader: popup window
Moon+: popup window
KOReader: popup window
Calibre: popup window
Kobo Forma: navigates to notes page

*Note: as mentioned earlier, only with the Kobo: if you go to a later note in the Act/Scene of this play, which would be near the end of the end notes HTML page, then the Kobo will display it as a popup. For example, I click note "109" in the same Act, and it displays as a popup along with the contents of notes 110, 111, 112, and 113.

I suspect you are running into a character count issue. If you look at the link given by davidfor to the Kobolabs page, item 3 under footnotes is:

3. The node being linked to is less than or equal to 5000 characters.

In my limited testing, it seemed to count from the referenced footnote to the end of the file for the character count which is why I ended up splitting each footnote into it's own file and all of those files were at the end of the file list. If you use the epub:xxxx tags, this is not an issue.

As for the return tag, I would disagree with davidfor and suggest that it does not have a character size limitation.

If you want some real fun, try implementing a many to one reference (one footnote referenced in many spots) and returning to the correct spot. Trivial when it is a popup but a PITA when navigating to the reference.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Moving the id to the p tag. If you look at the link I posted, the destination has to be at least 9 characters.

I did see that. Next question is why the 9 character minimum. They didn't offer an inline explanation for this requirement. It seems unusual that you'd have to to change or programmatically massage the actual substance of the content (versus the markup) in order to hit the 9 character minimum, and trigger the desired behavior.

Originally Posted by DNSB

I suspect you are running into a character count issue. If you look at the link given by davidfor to the Kobolabs page, item 3 under footnotes is:

3. The node being linked to is less than or equal to 5000 characters.

This is it, voila! That makes perfect sense and is consistent with the behavior I noted earlier, that if you're early in a chapter with a ton of end notes, it navigates. But the last few notes of the chapter, it pops up. I've been assuming this had something to do with how much content can reasonably be displayed at one time, in a popup footnote. So that does explain it to my satisfaction.

Now the next thing: why are they even doing it this way? To me, if I click link 117, I want to see the note for 117--not 116, not 118, and certainly not a bunch of them together. Displaying them together when the reader didn't ask for them seems like an oversight to me, or an artifact of paper print days. But with an ebook, we should be able to link precisely and display precisely the target content of the link. Good support for this is how the other readers are handling it. And if they went ahead and changed this to display one note at a time, it would nearly eliminate this problem altogether (except in the niche case where you have one mondo footnote that has > 5000 chars in it--which does happen in some of my books).

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for the return tag, I would disagree with davidfor and suggest that it does not have a character size limitation.

The behavior I see tends to confirm that--the Kobo properly pops up the end notes toward the end of the chapter, even where the target has < 9 chars. I think the above item, the total char count of the note, seems to be the issue.

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you want some real fun, try implementing a many to one reference (one footnote referenced in many spots) and returning to the correct spot. Trivial when it is a popup but a PITA when navigating to the reference.

Yep. I suppose for Kobo, that gets even more tricky if the one destination note is a mondo note with > 5000 chars--then there'd still have to be some kind of solution for return navigation.

Of course, I can think of a better way to implement the case where there's too much footnote info to display in one popup screen, and *some* of my reader software does this: just provide a scrollable popup screen.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by maximus83

Now the next thing: why are they even doing it this way? To me, if I click link 117, I want to see the note for 117--not 116, not 118, and certainly not a bunch of them together. Displaying them together when the reader didn't ask for them seems like an oversight to me, or an artifact of paper print days. But with an ebook, we should be able to link precisely and display precisely the target content of the link. Good support for this is how the other readers are handling it. And if they went ahead and changed this to display one note at a time, it would nearly eliminate this problem altogether (except in the niche case where you have one mondo footnote that has > 5000 chars in it--which does happen in some of my books).

To quote the Kobolabs page (again...):

Warning: Hyperlinked content not using the epub:type attribute footnote or endnote will display as a pop-up on Kobo's iOS and eInk platforms in cases where all the following criteria are met.

If you are going to read kepubs, adding the epub:type semantics and using aside will prevent your issue from happening. Otherwise, the renderer is guessing as to where the footnote actually ends since epub2 has no way of indicating this information. Heuristics can only take you so far. Using my pathological case epub (it's designed to fail), I've only found one reader app that did not fail on it and that one opened the entire footnote file as a popup. Perhaps including various href items inside footnotes was not a good idea but they do make it nasty for the renderer (the original came from noticing that a sub-footnote caused issues).

If the epub2 renderer gracefully fails when parsing an unknown item, the epub3 semantics should have no effect when reading as an epub2.

As mentioned by davidfor, there have been multiple discussions in the Workshop and epub forums about footnotes/endnotes. You may want to do a search there for more information.

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you are going to read kepubs, adding the epub:type semantics and using aside will prevent your issue from happening.

Say that I decided to add these, hack a couple in by hand, and it works.

What's the most efficient way in Calibre to transform all those HTML links in an entire book? Are we talking the Search/Replace conversion tool, and some kind of regex?

[inspirit]

I have a Kobo Clara HD, software version 4.12.12111 (13a6961059 12/11/18).

I have around 67 books on it, almost all of them using Calibre and maybe a couple downloaded through Overdrive integration from my library.

I cannot highlight text across pages by holding down on the text until the highlight appears and then dragging the finger to bottom right corner. The page doesn't turn automatically and nothing happens until I release the finger. The highlight menu appears when I release the finger.

I have tried restarting my device, removing and downloading the book again, tried in other books but it doesn't work.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by inspirit

I have a Kobo Clara HD, software version 4.12.12111 (13a6961059 12/11/18).

I have around 67 books on it, almost all of them using Calibre and maybe a couple downloaded through Overdrive integration from my library.

I cannot highlight text across pages by holding down on the text until the highlight appears and then dragging the finger to bottom left corner. The page doesn't turn automatically and nothing happens until I release the finger. The highlight menu appears when I release the finger.

I have tried restarting my device, removing and downloading the book again, tried in other books but it doesn't work.

As far as I know, there is no way to highlight across pages. My workaround has been to reduce the font size so the text I want to highlight fits on one page, highlight and then restore the original (i.e. readable to my eyes) font size.

And perhaps a question about highlighting doesn't fit into the topic of this thread which is firmware bugs.

[John F]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As far as I know, there is no way to highlight across pages. My workaround has been to reduce the font size so the text I want to highlight fits on one page, highlight and then restore the original (i.e. readable to my eyes) font size.

And perhaps a question about highlighting doesn't fit into the topic of this thread which is firmware bugs.

There must be some way...

Today, I put it in my back pocket after putting it to sleep. I take it out, and it is advancing through pages, with all the pages being highlighted. I had to put it to sleep and wake it up several times to get it to stop.

[John F]

And FWIW, I was just able to highlight across pages going forward, but not backward.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by inspirit

... I cannot highlight text across pages by holding down on the text until the highlight appears and then dragging the finger to bottom left corner. The page doesn't turn automatically and nothing happens until I release the finger. The highlight menu appears when I release the finger.

I don't really use highlighting myself but I just tried it. It works for me in kepubs but I have to drag to bottom right not bottom left. It doesn't seem to work in standard epubs, though.

Originally Posted by John F

And FWIW, I was just able to highlight across pages going forward, but not backward.

In kepubs both backward and forward across pages works for me.

One thing I should add is that I've disabled the new page QuickTurn feature on my devices. I don't know whether that explains why it works for me. It's not convenient for me to test that possibility at the moment.

[inspirit]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I don't really use highlighting myself but I just tried it. It works for me in kepubs but I have to drag to bottom right not bottom left. It doesn't seem to work in standard epubs, though.

Ah, my bad! I meant to say bottom-right but typed bottom-left instead, in a hurry. Corrected it now.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

One thing I should add is that I've disabled the new page QuickTurn feature on my devices. I don't know whether that explains why it works for me. It's not convenient for me to test that possibility at the moment.

I don't know about this feature. Is it a part of a firmware update/software version that I posted?

Originally Posted by DNSB

As far as I know, there is no way to highlight across pages. My workaround has been to reduce the font size so the text I want to highlight fits on one page, highlight and then restore the original (i.e. readable to my eyes) font size.

When I first bought the device, this is what I used to do as well! Until I found out highlighting across pages actually does work. It didn't last though! (I still needed to do this when the text I wanted to highlight was closer to the bottom of the screen because then instead of highlighting, the pages would get flipped quickly!)

Originally Posted by John F

There must be some way...

Today, I put it in my back pocket after putting it to sleep. I take it out, and it is advancing through pages, with all the pages being highlighted. I had to put it to sleep and wake it up several times to get it to stop.

Originally Posted by John F

And FWIW, I was just able to highlight across pages going forward, but not backward.

I swear, it used to work. I highlighted a lot of text across pages recently when I was reading Why We Sleep. Doesn't work anymore and, unfortunately, I don't have that specific book right now to go back and test again.

It could be a file format issue as someone suggested. Now I need to figure out how to check the file format.

[John F]

Originally Posted by inspirit

...

It could be a file format issue as someone suggested. Now I need to figure out how to check the file format.

In the most recent firmware, while reading bring up the bottom menu, then ..., Then View Details, then Details, and the file format is shown.

Or, go to My Books, long press on the book, pick View Details, ...

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by John F

Or, go to My Books, long press on the book, pick View Details, ...

No need to complicate it Go to My Books and read the format in the right-hand column - EPUB or KOBO EPUB

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by inspirit

It could be a file format issue as someone suggested. Now I need to figure out how to check the file format.

Look at the book in a library view. On the right side, a kepub will show a line such as KOBO EPUB - 9.6MB while a standard epub will show EPUB - 10.2MB