[Device Plugin] Kobo Touch Extended Driver

[RobbieW]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There is a change in 2.5.x firmware where the cover for kepub.epubs can show as just a dot. The driver attempts to identify the cover, but it can't always do this. What does the library list show for the cover?

Is there a fix/workaround for this?

Using Calibre 0.9.29 with a Touch on 2.5.1. My current book, a KEPUB/EPUB, shows as a dot on the home screen & the cover shown in Library > Books is blank.

Thanks

btw, my experience is that the Extended driver does a much better job of formatting sideloaded EPUBs than the default driver - thank you

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by RobbieW

Is there a fix/workaround for this?

Using Calibre 0.9.29 with a Touch on 2.5.1. My current book, a KEPUB/EPUB, shows as a dot on the home screen & the cover shown in Library > Books is blank.

Thanks

btw, my experience is that the Extended driver does a much better job of formatting sideloaded EPUBs than the default driver - thank you

Um. The default driver does NO formatting of the ePubs; it sends it AS IS. I think you mean the rendering engine on the Kobo used by kEpubs does, in your view, a better job than the ePub engine.

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by RobbieW

btw, my experience is that the Extended driver does a much better job of formatting sideloaded EPUBs than the default driver - thank you

I don't do any formatting at all, but thanks

You'd be more correct to thank the Kobo developers for making what is, in your opinion, a better renderer than the Adobe RMSDK. And I'm sure they'd love to hear the compliment

EDIT: Actually, you'd be better to thank Kobo for using the ACCESS renderer and thank the ACCESS folks for making the better renderer.

[riedje]

Actually, what I noticed is that the only thing you need to do (provided calibre is configured for automatic metadata management) is:

1. Send books in question to the device.
1. Eject device
2. Disconnect USB cable
3. Wait for Kobo to process new books
4. Reconnect Kobo and allow calibre to sync metadata.
5. Eject device and enjoy.

This will both fix the small square book cover and simultaneously sync the correct series information, in the library views you'll see the name of the series and the index in a format like this:

<Book title>
<Series> - <Index>
<Author>

It seems that with the copying of books along with their metadata to the kobo reader the series information is ignored and/or erased after the initial processing and sometimes the cover isn't shown correctly. 2nd metadata-only sync should fix this...

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by riedje

It seems that with the copying of books along with their metadata to the kobo reader the series information is ignored and/or erased after the initial processing

Erased. I used to update the database with series info in the early days of this driver, but there's so much fiddly bits with the database that are too fragile and highly dependent on Kobo never changing the database format or the meaning of various fields that I dropped it entirely.

[Mingyar]

Hi jgoguen,

I updated my KoboTouchExtended.zip with the last version of the two files container.py and driver.py founded at https://github.com/jgoguen/calibre-kobo-driver.

And now, I can't send any book to my Kobo with Calibre 0.9.29 :

calibre, version 0.9.29
ERREUR : Erreur: Erreur pendant la communication avec le lecteur électronique

Failed to parse 'La trahison de l'ange' by 'Eve de Castro' with error: 'this element does not have children or attributes' (file: calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.container, line: 511)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 85, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 551, in _upload_books
File "calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.driver", line 259, in upload_books
InvalidEPub: Failed to parse 'La trahison de l'ange' by 'Eve de Castro' with error: 'this element does not have children or attributes' (file: calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.container, line: 511)

If it can help you ...

EDIT : I've got the zip from the first post of this thread, and it works ... Don't know where is the mistake. At last, it works

EDIT2 : The zip in the first post have the previous versions of the container.py and driver.py, not versions posted 19 hours ago on github.

So, is it a mistake to build our zip from github files ?

[djbe]

Originally Posted by RobbieW

Is there a fix/workaround for this?

Using Calibre 0.9.29 with a Touch on 2.5.1. My current book, a KEPUB/EPUB, shows as a dot on the home screen & the cover shown in Library > Books is blank.

Thanks

btw, my experience is that the Extended driver does a much better job of formatting sideloaded EPUBs than the default driver - thank you

I had the exact same issue for a few books (14 out of 136), solved it by enabling "upload covers for books" option.

Somehow the cover images are not being created in the .kobo/images folder. Curiously enough, the database entries for the books does contain a correct ImageID field value, it just points to a non-existing file. Checking the previously mentioned configuration option fixes this problem.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by djbe

I had the exact same issue for a few books (14 out of 136), solved it by enabling "upload covers for books" option.

Somehow the cover images are not being created in the .kobo/images folder. Curiously enough, the database entries for the books does contain a correct ImageID field value, it just points to a non-existing file. Checking the previously mentioned configuration option fixes this problem.

Covers for epubs and kepub.epubs are generated by the device in different ways. For an epub, it is the first page of the book. For a kepub.epub, the OPF has to define the cover image file correctly. Then the extended driver adds a property to that definition. If the cover image is not defined in the OPF, this can't be done.

The send cover options bypass this by creating the covers when the book is sent.

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by Mingyar

So, is it a mistake to build our zip from github files ?

Maybe. It depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to just use the driver, you should install the plugin through calibre's standard method. See the Installation Method section of the first post of this thread. Taking the code from GitHub and creating a plugin package was the way to do it before I released it here (which makes it available through calibre directly) and is now just for people who want to test pre-release code.

[Vuilen]

Originally Posted by Mingyar

Hi jgoguen,

I updated my KoboTouchExtended.zip with the last version of the two files container.py and driver.py founded at https://github.com/jgoguen/calibre-kobo-driver.

And now, I can't send any book to my Kobo with Calibre 0.9.29 :


If it can help you ...

EDIT : I've got the zip from the first post of this thread, and it works ... Don't know where is the mistake. At last, it works

EDIT2 : The zip in the first post have the previous versions of the container.py and driver.py, not versions posted 19 hours ago on github.

So, is it a mistake to build our zip from github files ?

I had a similar problem ... This is certainly not the best method but here is my "solution":

Convert from epub to mobi. Delete ePub through meta and send the ebook to your kobo. Calibre ask you to convert it... accept and it's work .

Hope this can help you.

[jgoguen]

If you're going to do that, you're covering up the underlying problem. Given that the issue is with code that wasn't ready for release, it's possible there was no issue, but if that happens again I'd appreciate it if whoever sees it would post their calibre debug log and PM me a link to where I can download your copy of the book (if it's one you can send of course).

[Haelu]

when i install this plugin, it says Error connecting to device.

calibre, version 0.9.31
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

Failed to parse 'The Book of Ultimate Truths (Cornelius Murphy Trilogy)' by 'Rankin, Robert' with error: 'character mapping must return integer, None or unicode' (file: calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.container, line: 74)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 85, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 557, in _upload_books
File "calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.driver", line 286, in upload_books
InvalidEPub: Failed to parse 'The Book of Ultimate Truths (Cornelius Murphy Trilogy)' by 'Rankin, Robert' with error: 'character mapping must return integer, None or unicode' (file: calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.container, line: 74)

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by jgoguen

I took your advice on crowdfunding. I finally got my PayPal account created and verified, and I found GoGetFunding as a ChipIn alternative. A fundraiser has been created (http://gogetfunding.com/project/kobo...er-development) and PayPal has also been added to the plugins list in calibre as a donation option.

...and now I've contributed. It's very cool to see that three other folks beat me to it!

Xenophon

[PeterT]

Not meaning to be a grouch, but I wonder if people realize that a lot of the work done by jgoguen in this driver requires all the work done by davidfor in the Kobo Touch driver, and before him, by Timothy Legge....

[jgoguen]

And the work done by Kovid.

Standing on the shoulders of giants