Some Koreader tips and tricks

[WS64]

Koreader is a document reader that supports PDF, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML and much more, running on Kindle, Kobo and Android devices.

Installation: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki

Start Koreader with the last opened file: When in Koreader's File Manager click on the top. A menu will open. Check "Start with last opened file".

Make Defaults:
In some parts of the menu within a book in Koreader you can do a long tap on an entry.
This will not submit the corresponding event but will pop up a question like "Set [whatever you clicked] as a default for [whatever option group this belongs to]".
You can e.g. set the default font, font size, font-weight and so on for new books (books that are not in history right now).
Right now this will not work with menus that use "decrease/increase" instead of the actual values.

Other Screen gestures (some gestures are not recognized by all devices, and some settings are not available for all neither):
Two finger Swipe up/down: change the light settings
Two finger Swipe left: open bookmarks
Two finger swipe right: open TOC (table of content)
Long tap on history entry: delete entry from history. If you reopen this book it will be starte from beginning with default settings
Long tap on file manager entry: file operations (e.g. copy/delete...)
Long tap on mini bar: open "Go to" menu
Diagonal Swipe: take screenshot

Some important files inside the Koreader directory:
crash.log: In case Koreader crashed you can find some info here that might be important for the developers to fix this issue.

/history (folder): This folder contains all the settings for open books. You can also use this to check for highlights that you did within the book.

/screenshots (folder): This will contain all screenshots done by a diagonal swipe. TODO: Explain how to use these files since they are not in a usual format like GIF.

defaults.lua: All default settings.
You can do changes here, but if you install a new version of Koreader this file will get overwritten. Because of that you can copy this file to a new file called defaults.persistent.lua and do changes there. This file will not be overwritten, and all changes done there will be processed after the ones in defaults.lua.
These files are the right place to create tapzones.

A few personal favs for these default settings:
DCREREADER_TWO_PAGE_THRESHOLD = 0
This will make sure that you will get two pages in landscape mode (epubs).

DMINIBAR_ALL_AT_ONCE = true
This will show all available info in the mini bar.

DGESDETECT_DISABLE_DOUBLE_TAP = false
This way you will be able to double-click (per default in the upper left and right corner) to jump to the previous/next chapter (if the book has a TOC).

[ebrahimpak]

Now, what manipulation is necessary for adding some UTF-8 and some specific German and Greek fonts to installed stardict dictionaries in Koreader? Some of the dictionary definitions (especially the phonetic descriptions and etymology for Germanic words) couldn't be shown properly. I have tons of fonts installed on Nickel, but there are variegated font directories in the Koreader sub-directories, which I have problem in choosing for adding extra fonts for my Koreader Dictionaries on Kobo Aura HD.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by WS64

[...]

Make Defaults [...]

Thanks for providing these tips. There is always something new to discover.

I have been unable to take any screenshot with a Kobo Glo.

I am looking for how to write some persistent choices:
- language (most of my books have the same language)
- hyphenation (same reason)
- dictionary (id.)

[WS64]

Originally Posted by ebrahimpak

Now, what manipulation is necessary for adding some UTF-8 and some specific German and Greek fonts to installed stardict dictionaries in Koreader?

I have never seen any problems with German Umlauts in Koreader at all, and I use English to German dictionaries too...

Originally Posted by Roger64

I have been unable to take any screenshot with a Kobo Glo.

I am looking for how to write some persistent choices

Screenshots, the diagonal swipe does not work on the Glo? That sounds strange, it works fine on my Mini and Aura...

Persistent choices: Try to write them into settings.reader.lua. I know this works for hyphenation, and I guess it will work for other settings too. Might just be a little diffcult to find out the exact syntax...

[PeterT]

Screenshots are not working in current f/w levels.

[WS64]

What exactly does that mean, screenshots do not work?
Since at least the July Koreader versions screenshots do work.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Screenshots are not working in current f/w levels.

Do you mean Kobo's Firmware? 3.5?

Luck;
Ken

The .pam files that screenshot makes can be converted to .jpg using Image Magick Display. Or to many other formats. You would right click one of your .pam screenshots and select "Properties" then set the "Opens with:" to the IMDisplay .exe. After that all you need to do is double click on the .pam file and it will open in the program. Then you use the "File" tab "Save As" option and give it a name with the extension for the format you want the image in, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .svg, .gif, ect...

Luck;
Ken

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Do you mean Kobo's Firmware? 3.5?

Luck;
Ken

Sorry I had assumed that the reader used Kobo's screen print functionality as opposed to its own. And yes, for several versions the native screen print has not worked.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The .pam files that screenshot makes can be converted to .jpg using Image Magick Display. Or to many other formats.

Luck;
Ken

After installing as advised the latest koreader nightly (20140720) on my Kobo Glo, a diagonal swipe created a 2.3 Mb screenshot PAM file.

Now looking for a Linux way to convert it (imagemagick convert should do the trick but I did not find yet which command to use).

Meanwhile this free converter online works quite well
http://image.online-convert.com/fr/convertir-en-jpg

I am looking also for the setting which allows to bolden the font. It does not seem to be in defaults.lua

[Ken Maltby]

For Linux types thishttp://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php might help.

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by roger64

I am looking also for the setting which allows to bolden the font. It does not seem to be in defaults.lua

OK, if you poke the top of the screen, while in a book, you should see both top and bottom menus appear. On the bottom, there is a B that is the second tab from the right. Selecting that will give you the "Font Weight" and "Contrast" settings. If you long press the "bold" selection of "Font Weight", You should be offered the option of setting that as default.

Luck;
Ken

[roger64]

@Ken

About boldening

Sorry for this. I have been very unclear so I try again: when using the last nightly, I remarked on resuming reading that my usual font (with the "bold" reading option selected) was much bolder than previously, as if an inside default setting had been changed, to go from slightly bold to strong bold.

I would like to come back to the previous setting: when selecting bold on the lower part of the menu, it just slightly darkened the font and this previous setting was much better for me. Of course, it's a matter of taste.

To make me understood, it's as if, when selecting a frontlight level, the light level had been increased from 5/100 to 40/100 and I would like to come back to 5.

[NiLuJe]

@roger64: Is that on CRe-handled documents, and did you remove your cre3.ini config recently?

[roger64]

@NiLuJe

I do not find this file now (cr3.ini) so maybe I removed it.

Before installing the last nightly,
- I took out from the koreader folder one font (regular and italic only), one SD dictionary plus the history folder.
- I suppressed the current koreader folder, put the one from the nightly in its place
- I finally put back the font, dictionary and history folder.

Maybe something went wrong this way and this file disappeared in this process?

Edit1: I downloaded the last nightly (20140724) and did not see any cr3.ini file.

Edit2: I installed again the full KoboRoot.tgz and now I find the cr3.ini file in /data. The emboldening looks still too strong.

[NiLuJe]

@roger64: Yeah, cr3.ini is NOT shipped with KOReader, it's built at runtime the first time a CRe-handled document is opened.

But your detailed recap of what you did was perfect, and answered my question [you indeed got a 'new' cr3.ini, whith the changes I linked to in the KOReader thread] .

So, without further ado: it's probably because you're used to the previous font rendering settings, which discarded font hinting completely. I tweaked those (because they were fairly insane), and we now default to using FreeType's autohinter, which tends to be very generous when bolding fonts (much like Apple's rendering, which roughly does the same thing: discard the font hinting, and do it heuristically instead).

So, you have two choices if this bothers you this much:

• Go back to the previous settings: set font.hinting.mode to 0 in data/cr3.ini
• Enable bytecode hinting (à la Windows, which is what the Kindle (and possibly Kobo) stock readers do: set font.hinting.mode to 1 in data/cr3.ini

(FYI: KOReader's UI probably defaults to using bytecode hinting, too, IIRC, but every other document-handler doesn't handle hinting (which is fairly stupid, if you ask me... It's much less annoying because those devices are relatively high DPI, but, still...)