09-07-2015, 03:18 PM | #61 | |
Sir Penguin of Edinburgh
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Actually, those guys ripped off my report (the one where I said that KFX support was added, but I can't see it). My report was obviously wrong, but it made sense at the time given the hit or miss KFX support on other devices and the erroneous reports here on MR. |
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09-07-2015, 03:24 PM | #62 | ||
Ex-Helpdesk Junkie
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I suspect goodereader stole the (false) scoop from Jon... This is really ironic. EDIT: Okay, maybe not. It was indirect or something. Darn it. Last edited by eschwartz; 09-07-2015 at 03:27 PM. |
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09-07-2015, 03:36 PM | #63 |
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Hi Guys,
I am new to the forum but a lurker... Anyway I was bored tonight so I had a look at the KFX file just for fun for a purchased book that is not supposed to be DRM free. It looks like we are looking at an encrypted file not just obfuscation, it is using AES with SHA2 256Kb hashes, exact spec is AES/CBC/PKCS5 according to the header file. Not 100% sure what this file is but there is a "voucher" referenced in the main KFX file, this separate file appears to be some kind of license file from what you can gleam from a hex dump as there are fields such as "client restrictions" mentioned in it and the word purchase. I can't gleam anything out of the file about what form of compression they are using I suspect the KFX file itself is an encrypted container so first step would be to get through the container and seeing what it contains. Obviously brute force is impossible as AES 256 is not exactly an easy one to crack, not without supercomputers, a time machine and a spare few trillion years on your hands to kill! Hopefully once the format is supported on the Kindle PC app there is the possibility to attach debug tools and starting trying to break through its security by looking for vunerabilities in the app to exploit. Probably not much help to you guys and there are far more experienced security people out there so its just me 2pence worth. |
09-07-2015, 04:02 PM | #64 |
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Deleted. (Bad joke)
Last edited by jhowell; 09-07-2015 at 05:33 PM. |
09-19-2015, 03:58 PM | #65 |
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Several people have reported that some books marked as "Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled" do not show the enhanced typesetting features on their devices. I decided to investigate this using two devices that support enhanced typesetting, a PW2 running firmware version 5.6.5 and the Kindle for iOS app version 4.10 on an iPad. On both devices I tested books from my Amazon account that show "Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled".
Only about 30% of the books in my Amazon account support enhanced typesetting according to their descriptions. Of these, only about half download as kfx to the kindle. Examples of books that do not are On Basilisk Station and Veiled. I have tried deleting and re-downloading multiple times and the results are consistent for each book. And only 75% of those that download as kfx to the kindle download as kfx to the iOS app. Examples of books that do not are Life on the Mississippi and The Last Praetorian. Looking that the files for these books on my kindle I found that all of these books contain the string "reflow-section-size" in their metadata.kfx file, while none of the books that download as kfx to the iOS app contain that string. All of the books that download as kfx to the iOS app also download as kfx to the kindle. Following is my speculation based on these observations. It appears that Amazon developed an entirely new rendering engine and book format to support enhanced typesetting. In another thread it was reported that the old rendering engine gave poor performance when kerning was enabled. Perhaps the Lab126 engineers decided it was better to start over than to try to improve the quality and performance of that rendering engine. Because this would be a huge undertaking they may have decided to implement it in phases. First, supporting the features most used by e-books and then later adding support for more exotic or difficult features. It could be that the iOS app has an earlier generation of the rendering software, supporting books needing only the smallest subset of kfx features. The PW2 may have a newer rendering engine supporting additional features. The books that do not download as kfx for either may reflect the next unreleased version of the rending engine. Perhaps, after a few more iterations, the new rendering engine may be able to support most Kindle books. ETA: As can be seen later in this thread some books I am unable to download in KFX format are specific to my account because I bought them previously. I will need to rethink my analysis of this. Last edited by jhowell; 09-22-2015 at 11:25 AM. Reason: Add new information |
09-19-2015, 09:04 PM | #67 |
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The iOS app supports AZK (instead of KF8/AZW3) and MOBI, but it also supports KFX as of version 4.9, released May 21, 2015. When a book is downloaded in KFX format the enhanced typesetting features can be clearly seen, such as hyphenation at smaller font sizes and ragged right margin at larger font sizes.
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09-20-2015, 09:05 AM | #68 |
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While I have seen a bunch of books that use the new typesetting there was never once a book that shows dropcaps for me. Granted most books I tried are older and released before the new typesetting. And I suspect they got automatically converted without the input of the publisher. For example Ghost Shadow and Soul of the Desert have enhanced typesetting (kerning, ligatures, hyphenation), but no dropcaps. On these books I am sure that Amazon decided on their own to enable the typesetting - Maria (self-pub) neither opted in or out. Asked her about it and all settings when uploading were the defaults - not all her books enhanced either.
I think the automatic conversion is only temporary until a kfxgen is released for everybody's use. |
09-20-2015, 12:45 PM | #69 | |
just an egg
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Do we know with any certainty that kfxgen will be released for general use? Wondering if Amazon will keep KFX entirely in-house |
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09-20-2015, 05:06 PM | #70 |
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My guess is that given the time, effort and cost that appears to have gone into developing and deploying KFX, Amazon plans for it to be something major, rather than just an optional format used on some devices. I suspect that once they complete development of it to the point where it supports all of the features using in existing books they will phase out MOBI and KF8 and eventually support only a single e-book format. At that point kfxgen may replace kindlegen as the means of preparing books for sale by Amazon. Time will tell.
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09-20-2015, 08:30 PM | #71 | |
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Last edited by JSWolf; 09-20-2015 at 08:57 PM. |
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09-20-2015, 09:41 PM | #72 |
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Well, I fully expect that within the decade they will finally phase out mobi7.
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09-20-2015, 09:52 PM | #73 |
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09-21-2015, 02:17 PM | #74 | |
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Shari |
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09-21-2015, 03:24 PM | #75 | |
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There must be something different between my situation and yours. Would you mind comparing notes to see what may be different, if anything? The book I am testing is On Basilisk Station by David Weber at amazon.com with ASIN B00ARPJBS0 purchased on March 9, 2013. I am using a Kindle PW2 with 5.6.5 firmware and an iPad Air 2 running Kindle for iOS 4.10. ETA: I did another test: Delete the book from all of my devices, delete it from my Amazon account, sync all devices, verify that the book is no longer found on any device or in Manage Your Content and Devices, re-purchase the book (it is free). It again downloaded as AZW3 to my PW2. Last edited by jhowell; 09-21-2015 at 04:46 PM. Reason: Add info |
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