Text truncated on right side when converted to Kepubs by KoboTouchExtended

[HYPE]

Originally Posted by PeterT

If the option WAS supported then it would NOT require manual edit of the configuration file to get the option selectable in the menu.

We CAN keep going AROUND in CIRCLES all you want. It adds absolutely no value to the thread at all.

Point is, you said "FullScreen mode is NOT selectable through the menu", which is simply FALSE regardless of whether you need to edit a file or not.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by HYPE

We CAN keep going AROUND in CIRCLES all you want. It adds absolutely no value to the thread at all.

Point is, you said "FullScreen mode is NOT selectable through the menu", which is simply FALSE regardless of whether you need to edit a file or not.

PeterT's point was that Fullscreen mode is not a supported function of the firmware. Kobo added it sometime ago and have never finished it or officially released it. The only way we know about it is that people have pulled the firmware files apart. To be able to use it, you need to edit the config file and add a line. The fact that you can then enable it through the UI does not make it supported.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Ok, this explains LOTS of issues I've been having with gutenberg epubs.

So, an easy way to check if your epub is missing a titlepage file...
Send it to the kobo (with kobotouchextended enabled so it gets converted to a kepub).
Check the first page of text. If you don't have the fullscreen mode enabled but you still don't see a header/footer, then it thinks you are still on the title page.

That's a horrible way to do it. I'm pretty sure that the Quality Check plugin in calibre will do it for you. And even just looking at what calibre shows as the cover in the library will be better, or opening the book in the calibre viewer.

In this situation, style sheets are ignored and you can't adjust the margins from the kobo interface.

I don't think the style sheets are ignored. It might just be the margins. And the reader app is the one ignoring the margins set on the device/

You can most easily fix this with either the polish books plugin or the modify epub plugin, both of which have options to insert/replace the title page.

Yes, quick polish is the thing to do for all your books before sending them to the device.

It would be nice if the quality check plugin could check for this problem.

As I said, I think it will detect a missing cover. That isn't exactly the circumstance described here, but it probably is close enough.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That's a horrible way to do it.

A better way to do it is to edit the book in calibre and see if the first html file contains the title page or if it also contains book text. But that's slow, and if you already have the malformed book on your kobo...

I'm pretty sure that the Quality Check plugin in calibre will do it for you.

...

As I said, I think it will detect a missing cover. That isn't exactly the circumstance described here, but it probably is close enough.

Ahh, but see, it will detect a /missing/ cover, but not a /malformed/ cover. At least, I coudln't figure out how to make it do this. (Tell me how or add it and you're my hero. (As if you aren't already.))

All the gutenberg books have covers. It points directly to an otherwise unreferenced jpeg file, without an html. And the kobo then formats the entire first "chapter" as full screen with zero (or negative?) margins with the edge pixels of the letters right up against the edge of the screen. Very annoying. Oh, and the kobo won't remember any positions in that first chapter either.

The calibre editor book check even warns that the title page is malformed, but it is unable to automatically repair it.

And half of the gutenberg books are a handful of large files with 5-10 chapters per file...wish there was an easy way to autosplit by toc or something. But that's another can of worms.

[HYPE]

Originally Posted by davidfor

PeterT's point was that Fullscreen mode is not a supported function of the firmware. Kobo added it sometime ago and have never finished it or officially released it. The only way we know about it is that people have pulled the firmware files apart. To be able to use it, you need to edit the config file and add a line. The fact that you can then enable it through the UI does not make it supported.

Yes I understand. I never claimed it was supported.

[koboy]

it begs the question why did Kobo add it in the first place if they were going to take ages if ever to get around to implementing it in a future firmware release.

it seems to me it was a pointless exercise, of course i will take that back if and when they do support the Fullscreen mode function.

don't hold your breath folks.

best wishes koboy

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by koboy

it begs the question why did Kobo add it in the first place if they were going to take ages if ever to get around to implementing it in a future firmware release.

it seems to me it was a pointless exercise, of course i will take that back if and when they do support the Fullscreen mode function.

It is not pointless for those who read ePubs. Full-screen mode works perfectly with the ePub reader, it is only the KePub reader that has problems with it.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

It is not pointless for those who read ePubs. Full-screen mode works perfectly with the ePub reader, it is only the KePub reader that has problems with it.

my understanding is without modifying the config file the Fullscreen mode option isn't available in the supported officially Firmware releases?

please correct me if i'm wrong.

best wishes koboy

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by koboy

my understanding is without modifying the config file the Fullscreen mode option isn't available in the supported officially Firmware releases?

That's right. But once the full-screen feature is enabled, a menu item is added to the reading settings menu that allows it to be turned on and off from the UI, and the feature remains enabled after the firmware is updated.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

That's right. But once the full-screen feature is enabled, a menu item is added to the reading settings menu that allows it to be turned on and off from the UI, and the feature remains enabled after the firmware is updated.

thanks that's what i thought. the point i was making is if Kobo ever do in the futrure decide to sort out the kepub issue and support the feature, then it would be in the UI reading settings menu without needing to modify the config file.

best wishes koboy

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by koboy

thanks that's what i thought. the point i was making is if Kobo ever do in the futrure decide to sort out the kepub issue and support the feature, then it would be in the UI reading settings menu without needing to modify the config file.

Okay, but it is not a pointless exercise to implement full-screen mode as they have done and leave it as an unofficial, unsupported feature for those ePub readers who can benefit from it (and those KePub readers who are willing to patch firmware or edit the book's stylesheet to avoid the worst of the problems), until such time as they can figure out how to fix the problems in the KePub reader.

Similar to the ability to sideload KePub books: not officially supported, and there are a number of problems that need to be worked around by those who do it, but it is great that they don't just remove the ability altogether because there are some who prefer KePubs.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Okay, but it is not a pointless exercise to implement full-screen mode as they have done and leave it as an unofficial, unsupported feature for those ePub readers who can benefit from it (and those KePub readers who are willing to patch firmware or edit the book's stylesheet to avoid the worst of the problems), until such time as they can figure out how to fix the problems in the KePub reader.

Similar to the ability to sideload KePub books: not officially supported, and there are a number of problems that need to be worked around by those who do it, but it is great that they don't just remove the ability altogether because there are some who prefer KePubs.

that's why i put it seems to me it was a pointless exercise, obviously that's my own subjective opinion i agree others will differ.

i like to use the standard UI without any patches or other readers installed. it would be nice if Kobo could get the KePub Fullscreen mode problems to work in the officially supported releases.

after all let's be honest this as been available to modify in the config file for a long long time.


best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

that's why i put it seems to me it was a pointless exercise, obviously that's my own subjective opinion i agree others will differ.

i like to use the standard UI without any patches or other readers installed. it would be nice if Kobo could get the KePub Fullscreen mode problems to work in the officially supported releases.

after all let's be honest this as been available to modify in the config file for a long long time.

The most likely reason for the full screen mode not being completed is that Kobo have decided that their core users don't want it. It is likely they started it, got it to the point where it was usable and tested it on some users. If those users said they didn't want it, then Kobo would stop further development. If their findings where that having this as a feature wasn't going to sell more books, then there would be no justification to invest the money and time in completing the feature.

If this is what has happened, then the obvious question is why hasn't it been removed. That's simple, it doesn't harm to leave it in. And it does distract a few of their non-core users. I expect it will disappear when some other change stops it from working as well as it currently does.

Of course, I don't know that this is the way it happened. But, based on my experiences with other products and projects, it is likely scenario.

[GeoffR]

From what I can see there are four different problems that affect KePubs in full-screen mode:


1. If the book's stylesheet has non-zero body margin/padding, then the text is shifted to the right and can be cut off at the right margin.

2. Characters with large side bearing values (such as italic f, J) can be cut off if they appear at either end of a line.

3. Images which are supposed to be displayed inline (flowing with the text) are instead displayed centred in a seperate block.

4. The margin slider stops working after passing an internal html file boundary, closing and re-opening the book will get it working again.


1. and 3. are easily fixed. There is a firmware patch or modification to the book's stylesheet that solves these problems perfectly.

4. I don't know how to fix, but it didn't affect earlier firmware versions so it seems to be something Kobo have introduced, and they should be able to fix it.

2. might be more of a problem, it could be a bug or limitation in the rendering libraries used by the KePub reader, and there might be nothing Kobo can do about it apart from report it to the library developers and wait for them to fix it. There is a firmware patch or modification to the book's stylesheet that works around the problem in most cases, but it is not perfect.

Just speculation, but it could be that Kobo developed the full-screen feature and then during testing found that there was a bug in the third-party rendering libraries that prevented it working properly in KePubs, and are now waiting for the library developers to fix that bug before doing any more work on it. (And it doesn't affect the Adobe ePub reader because it uses different libraries.)

They probably don't want to enable the feature officially for ePubs only, since that would give people one more reason to sideload books instead of syncing them from the Kobo servers.

[koboy]

thank you to GeoffR and davidfor for both shedding light on why the Fullscreen mode feature may never happen.

best wishes koboy