Kobo future firmware feature request thread

[paola]

Originally Posted by cinetici

It really gets on my nerves to be in the middle of a book and have no clue if im at the beginning, middle or in the end because the low bar displays useless chapter info like page 2 of 13 when im probably on actual page 300. And how do you navigate in a book where you can only select a certain page of a certain chapter to go, how do I go to page 240? I just can't.

I do as samhy suggests, though I'd agree that it would be nice just to have a progress bar or a percentage indicator.

There use to be a hack (in Kobo tweaks) in the developer's forum which did put a progress bar at the bottom, but it no longer works with the firmware versions after March. I have no programming skills whatsoever, but would be very grateful if this could be resurrected.

Having said that, the fact that so many people are annoyed and nobody has put the progress bar back makes me think this is actually no longer possible...

[cinetici]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Some of this is different between kepubs and epubs. epubs display the page numbering for the full book, kepubs relative to the current chapter. The title is a bit different. kepubs have always had it, and it was added for epubs in the latest firmware. Hopefully they will sort this out in the next firmware.


The list is kept. In the past, it has been displayed when you look up a word using the entry screen. But, I just tried that and they weren't shown. I'll have to do a little digging.

Originally Posted by samhy

But there is a graphic showing where you are in the book and the length of all the chapters, along with the estimated time left until the end of the current chapter and the estimated time left until the end of the book. Press the read percentage and you'll see this screen

Remember that no one has to read a kepub file. When buying from Kobo, you always got the epub and the kepub formats

Yes you have the stats, but time estimation is not a real deal for me, but maybe its personal. Besides that, if you are in a 500 page book which is segregated in 400 chapters, sometimes each 5-6 pages becomes a new chapter and you wanna skip the beginning all the way to page 300, how do you do that on the kepub? That's gonna be really frustrating if all you can do is skip hundreds of chapters, chapter by chapter, until you hope to find page 300. You may try the table of contents but that wont work either because it doesnt show the page numbers, only chapter names.

unless im missing something obvious there is a big deal of limitation here

By the way, you say I have the option of using the epub, but thats an option quite limited since I dont have reading statistics and then i dont feel im getting the full immersive reading experience that made me buy a kobo glo , im losing something either way.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by cinetici

Yes you have the stats, but time estimation is not a real deal for me, but maybe its personal. Besides that, if you are in a 500 page book which is segregated in 400 chapters, sometimes each 5-6 pages becomes a new chapter and you wanna skip the beginning all the way to page 300, how do you do that on the kepub? That's gonna be really frustrating if all you can do is skip hundreds of chapters, chapter by chapter, until you hope to find page 300. You may try the table of contents but that wont work either because it doesnt show the page numbers, only chapter names.

unless im missing something obvious there is a big deal of limitation here

By the way, you say I have the option of using the epub, but thats an option quite limited since I dont have reading statistics and then i dont feel im getting the full immersive reading experience that made me buy a kobo glo , im losing something either way.

I agree with you that's not always the best thing And if I had to find page 240 I would be at a loss. On the other hand, if I have to find something half-way chapter 8, the kepub behaviour would be easier.
Since the estimated time isn't important, an epub has also some statistics in Reading life, like the time read (per session or total, not sure) and the number of page turns

Right now, the way the page numbers are displayed is how I decide between a kepub and an epub for each book (different books, different needs).

[theonna]

File manager, file manager, file manager.
Seriously.

[cinetici]

Originally Posted by samhy

I agree with you that's not always the best thing And if I had to find page 240 I would be at a loss. On the other hand, if I have to find something half-way chapter 8, the kepub behavior would be easier.
Since the estimated time isn't important, an epub has also some statistics in Reading life, like the time read (per session or total, not sure) and the number of page turns

Right now, the way the page numbers are displayed is how I decide between a kepub and an epub for each book (different books, different needs).

Yes indeed, its a good perspective. I have to compare each book on both formats to see which one turns out better.

I guess that if i'm reading a novel, maybe I won't mind the navigation within chapter only and not knowing which actual page i'm at. But if i'm reading an academic book like ancient history book on which I will have to go back and forth to study different chapters all at the same time, well, then I would stick to epub. Imagine this scenario, it could happen to me in the classroom, how could I hold a kepub book in front of my students and say:
-"Class, please open your books on page 8 of chapter 15, it should start with "Afrodite despised Psique...", it's probably in the middle halfway through the book because my kobo displays 54% read, okay guys"?
Haha that would be an awkward situation

I don't see how this would be a big deal for Kobo to enhance the reading experience by providing either Reading Statistics on epubs or proper page orientation on kepubs

[tshering]

Originally Posted by cinetici

Imagine this scenario, it could happen to me in the classroom, how could I hold a kepub book in front of my students and say:
-"Class, please open your books on page 8 of chapter 15, it should start with "Afrodite despised Psique...", it's probably in the middle halfway through the book because my kobo displays 54% read, okay guys"?
Haha that would be an awkward situation

If people in your class read on electronic devices, they can easily search for "Afrodite despised Psique." That might be easier than to navigate to a certain page number of an epub anyway. If they use paper books, your Adobe page numbers might not be much help for them. Of course, they could somehow calculate the approximate position in their books, but this would work with the kepub data too.

[cinetici]

Originally Posted by tshering

If people in your class read on electronic devices, they can easily search for "Afrodite despised Psique." That might be easier than to navigate to a certain page number of an epub anyway. If they use paper books, your Adobe page numbers might not be much help for them. Of course, they could somehow calculate the approximate position in their books, but this would work with the kepub data too.

I know, I appreciate your perspective. Can you actually visualize that trying explaining that to 20, maybe 50 or even 100 students at the same time trying to follow you each one of them on a different page. Can you picture how messed up that will turn out to be? And this was just a one page scenario, imagine having them following you through 50 different pages.

Of course It is just an example, maybe an exaggerated one, but I'm just pointing out how even the best workaround logical alternatives you can come up with will not be real solutions. And the solution is so simple, if only the header or low bar displayed the real number of pages x/y.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by cinetici

Of course It is just an example, maybe an exaggerated one, but I'm just pointing out how even the best workaround logical alternatives you can come up with will not be real solutions. And the solution is so simple, if only the header or low bar displayed the real number of pages x/y.

I actually like the pages per chapter. Easier to see if I am going to be able to finish the chapter before falling asleep or not.

Ebooks are far from being really useable for academic purposes. There are no "real" numbers of pages, only estimations. And sometimes page 145 means two page turns into page 145 - but only at a certain font size.

If you need to quote something or have other people follow back and forth in chapters, printed books are still best. Or PDF, maybe, but those are currently not very useable on E-Ink readers.

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I actually like the pages per chapter. Easier to see if I am going to be able to finish the chapter before falling asleep or not.

I agree, I prefer "pages in chapter" over "pages in book".

But as usual the answer to this, and many other complaints about Kobo's, is "options"! Allow the user to decide for themselves what they want to see by making it an option in the Settings. Then everyone is happy!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by moffattm

I agree, I prefer "pages in chapter" over "pages in book".

But as usual the answer to this, and many other complaints about Kobo's, is "options"! Allow the user to decide for themselves what they want to see by making it an option in the Settings. Then everyone is happy!

That is the only reason I can bear the idea of pages in chapter. When reading pbooks, I frequently flip through to find a good stopping place. With ebooks it isn't as easy. To find how far the next chapter, I use the navigation bar. Press the right-double arrow, look at the page number and then return to my current spot.

I think a large part of the reason Kobo doesn't calculate the full book page number for kepubs is so they don't have to render the complete book.

For epubs, the total page is calculated from the size of the compressed files inside the epub. The file size is divided by 1024 and that is the number of pages in the chapter. The renderer then simply divides the displayed text into that number of pages. That can give wildly different page lengths depending on how well the text compressed and also how much code there is in the file. This also ignores the font and other settings used.

For kepubs, the page numbers are calculated for the chapter at the current font and reader settings. Change those and the pages have to be rendered again and the page numbers recalculate. If this was done for a long book, it could take a lot of time. Plus you run into memory and other issues. And storing this won't help as it is dependent on the font, the size, the margins and line spacing.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I actually like the pages per chapter. Easier to see if I am going to be able to finish the chapter before falling asleep or not.

Same thing, for the same reason

Originally Posted by Jaden

Ebooks are far from being really useable for academic purposes. There are no "real" numbers of pages, only estimations. And sometimes page 145 means two page turns into page 145 - but only at a certain font size.

Well, Kobo seems to offer this option with the real page number displayed on the top right of the page. Maybe I misunderstood that. And if I'm not wrong, depending on the paper book edition, the page number can change a lot.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Ebooks are far from being really useable for academic purposes. There are no "real" numbers of pages, only estimations. And sometimes page 145 means two page turns into page 145 - but only at a certain font size.

I put my hope in the pagebreak property of Epub 3.0. For the time being the kepub renderer seems not yet to support it. I don't know whether the epub renderer supports page-map. I have never seen a book that uses it.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by samhy

Well, Kobo seems to offer this option with the real page number displayed on the top right of the page. Maybe I misunderstood that. And if I'm not wrong, depending on the paper book edition, the page number can change a lot.

Yes, there's the page numbers on the side, but I think that is not very useable either.

And of course page numbers can change with editions, but if you (e.g.) need to quote something, you can always name the edition of the book you were using.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Yes, there's the page numbers on the side, but I think that is not very useable either.

And of course page numbers can change with editions, but if you (e.g.) need to quote something, you can always name the edition of the book you were using.

The page number in the margin is only for epubs, and is the same as the page number at the bottom of the screen. It is calculated using the same rules and indicates where the page starts. The page number at the bottom of the screen is for the page the first character on the screen is on. Depending on the font size, you can have multiple pages on one screen, or take several screens for one page.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The page number in the margin is only for epubs, and is the same as the page number at the bottom of the screen. It is calculated using the same rules and indicates where the page starts. The page number at the bottom of the screen is for the page the first character on the screen is on. Depending on the font size, you can have multiple pages on one screen, or take several screens for one page.

All right, I was misled by the description. I get it now. Thank you for the explanation