Any idea when new Kobo software will come?

[poczynek]

With the new Kobo and new UI, any idea of when this will come to the Forma and the other Kobos?

[davidfor]

Sometime after the new device is released. Kobo will do a release at that time. Sometimes it will be restricted to the new device and the other devices get them a month or so later. Sometimes all the devices get them at the same time.

[geek1011]

And BTW, here is the FCC stuff (but the interesting bits are still under NDA): https://fccid.io/NOIKBN873

[ZodWallop]

I like what I've seen of the new OS. But in general, I really wish they would make the header and footer significantly smaller. Both Kindle and Nook manage to squeeze info in to a small line at the bottom. Kobo's seem to take up twice as much space.

[Barbara1955]

For those that have Vision problems I think the Header & Footer are just Right! Amazon is too Tiny! My Pocketbook app I use on my phone & Fire 10 are Way too small.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

For those that have Vision problems I think the Header & Footer are just Right! Amazon is too Tiny! My Pocketbook app I use on my phone & Fire 10 are Way too small.

Honestly, on the Kobo (current software, haven't seen 4.16 yet) they could just reduce the padding and leave the text the same size. Thea header and footer could both take up about half their height, I think.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Honestly, on the Kobo (current software, haven't seen 4.16 yet) they could just reduce the padding and leave the text the same size. Thea header and footer could both take up about half their height, I think.

That would work. I also think having different sizes of header/footer as an option with the smaller the size, the smaller the space around would be good.Personally, I like having n header and a smaller footer at the bottom and very little space above.

I'm waiting for the next firmware and patches before I update and have a go at the new patch system. I'll probably have questions on what I am doing as I've not used it yet.

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Honestly, on the Kobo (current software, haven't seen 4.16 yet) they could just reduce the padding and leave the text the same size. Thea header and footer could both take up about half their height, I think.

That works for me! I just turned mine off WOW did not realize the Space it took up for such tiny words/numbers!

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

That works for me! I just turned mine off WOW did not realize the Space it took up for such tiny words/numbers!

Yeah, last night I turned on the header and footer to check and a 14 page chapter became a 16 page chapter.

With my current font settings, I get 29 lines of text without header and footer and 25 with. So each takes up two text lines of space in addition to the blank space already at the top and bottom.

If I could get two additional lines, I'd keep the header and footer on.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That would work. I also think having different sizes of header/footer as an option with the smaller the size, the smaller the space around would be good.Personally, I like having n header and a smaller footer at the bottom and very little space above.

I'm waiting for the next firmware and patches before I update and have a go at the new patch system. I'll probably have questions on what I am doing as I've not used it yet.

I wish you much luck, my friend. The people that make the patches do all Kobo users a favor.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Honestly, on the Kobo (current software, haven't seen 4.16 yet) they could just reduce the padding and leave the text the same size. Thea header and footer could both take up about half their height, I think.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I wish you much luck, my friend. The people that make the patches do all Kobo users a favor.

I'm a little confused. As you know about the patch system and you want to reduce the vertical height of the in-book header/footer then surely you can enable and customise the relevant patches to do exactly that.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm a little confused. As you know about the patch system and you want to reduce the vertical height of the in-book header/footer then surely you can enable and customise the relevant patches to do exactly that.

Maybe I did it wrong. I tried halving the height of the header and footer, but it didn't seem to change the layout.

Can you paste the code I need to do it? I don't mind trying again.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm a little confused. As you know about the patch system and you want to reduce the vertical height of the in-book header/footer then surely you can enable and customise the relevant patches to do exactly that.

Okay, I repatched my Kobo and enabled the patches to reduce header and footer to 66% and the footer IS reduced, but there's still a big gap between the last line of text and the footer. I suspect that changing the footer back to full height wouldn't change the amount of text being displayed.

Still, with header and footer, I got to 26 lines with both on.

Do you know the values to reduce the footer to 50%? Do you know if doing that would screw anything up?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Maybe I did it wrong. I tried halving the height of the header and footer, but it didn't seem to change the layout.

Can you paste the code I need to do it? I don't mind trying again.

For the top menubar:

Enabling the nickel standard patch 'Custom menubar - reduce height by 50%' should be OK as-is.

For the original Aura6" it will reduce it from 91px to 45px and the Clara from 121px to 60px.

My Aura6" is no longer active but on a Clara this is about 4.5mm height. Just to give you an idea what a patched Clara kepub should look like...

If you have Reading Settings > Show title

• CHECKED - the top menubar is 4.5mm and the 1st line of text is immediately below it.
• UNCHECKED - the top menubar is still 4.5mm but it will overlap the 1st line of text which is now about 3.5mm from the top of the screen.

You can decrease these numbers as you wish (until the pips squeak) although, to be honest, if you have large fingers 4.5mm is already a bit small for hitting the icons in the top menu. For this reason some users prefer the patch 'Custom menubar - reduce height by 33%' which results in a top menubar of about 6mm on a Clara.

I'll need to come back to the footer. It's the nickel patch 'Custom reading footer style'. It has quite a lot of moving parts and it's such a long time since I chose my customised settings that I need to remind myself what I did.

If neither of these suit you there is also the newer nickel patch called 'Reduce top/bottom page spacer'. I don't use this one myself but I seem to remember it was created for those who used to like the old 'fullscreen option' before Kobo removed it in favour of the new Show title & Show footer options.

ETA: Oops, I see we cross-posted

[jackie_w]

... follow up ... to reduce the footer customise nickel patch 'Custom reading footer style'

For my Clara I have changed the following lines:

    # Replacement footer height values: AuraHD/H2O/GloHD/ClaraHD
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 116, Find: "min-height:80px", Replace: "min-height:52px", MustMatchLength: yes}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 132, Find: "max-height:80px", Replace: "max-height:52px", MustMatchLength: yes}

I have used 40px instead of the 2 red values of 52px in the original patch.

It won't reduce the height of the bottom menubar but it will get the bottom line of your book text closer to the bottom of the screen (or the Page x of y if Show footer is checked)