Touch Can Kobo Touch handle 'aside' tags as popups?

[Buzko]

Hi all,

I quite enjoy my Kobo Touch, but get frustrated when reading books with footnotes (particularly Discworld). The retail epubs I have contain footnotes as links to the end of the file, which the Kobo can usually follow OK, but getting back to the original text is unreliable. Tapping the links (which are usually just asterisks) with my fat fingers is also difficult.

My desired result for the footnote text to appear in a popup, which can be dismissed once I've read it (like the dictionary lookup) without the Kobo needing to move away from the original text. I understand some ereaders make popups for footnotes automatically, but mine doesn't.

Some brief googling suggests <aside> tags would be suitable for forcing footnotes to appear as popups. However, my google skills have failed to find answers for the following:

1. Will <aside> tags do what I want them to?
2. Does the Kobo Touch render <aside> tags as popups?
3. Are <aside> tags available in the epub 2 format?

I limited use of Calibre to manage my collection, and I'm keen not to break compatibility between the notional edited epubs and it by converting them to epub 3. I'd like to know the answers to the questions above before I spend time working out how to edit the files.

Let me know if I need to clarify anything. Thanks in advance!

[davidfor]

I don't know anything about aside tags. But, if you put the books onto your Kobo device as a kepub, the footnotes will generally be displayed as popups. As you have calibre, you can either use the KoboTouchExtended driver to do this on the fly while sending the book to the device, or convert them to kepubs before sending.

[Buzko]

Thanks for the quick response, and for pointing me at the KoboTouchExtended driver! It does create the popups I was after.

Nevertheless, if anyone else can answer the questions, I'd be grateful.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Buzko

1. Will <aside> tags do what I want them to?
2. Does the Kobo Touch render <aside> tags as popups?
3. Are <aside> tags available in the epub 2 format?

AFAIK, aside tags are a HTML5 element which RMSDK (the epub2 renderer) does not understand. The ACCESS renderer used for epub3 already uses pop-ups for footnotes.