The Ultimate Kobo Tips & Tricks Thread

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Hate to say but you can't just copy the books from Kobo Desktop to Calibre; the downloaded books are DRM protected by Kobo's own DRM scheme.

You'll need to search for Apprentice Alf and look for the obok tool to add them to Calibre.

Alternatively on the Kobo website, when you look at your purchased books (I forget the exact name) you'll see the option to download an epub version. Selecting that will download an ACSM file that when opened via ADE will download an epub.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

I guess I assumed they knew that since they are already using Calibre.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Install the Kobo app on your computer and download your books. Then find the book files on your computer and copy them into Calibre.

The Kobo device probably has to be awake and functioning for the pc to mount it and show the files.

Don't install Kobo Desktop. Use ADE to download. That way you have ePub eBooks. But you will have to download one at a time. And if you have the DeDRM plugin installed, you can remove the DRM on import to Calibre. I know there's Obok, but I don't know if the current version works with the current Kobo Desktop.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Advantages of Kepub:

• Much faster response to page turns.
  
  Not much faster and part of that is because of less text on the page.
  
• Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
  
  Not since Kobo switched to 32bpp. The images displayed with RMDSK are much better dithered than with 16bpp.
  

Thanks have changed and these are changes that make those two statements no longer true.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

• Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
  
  Not since Kobo switched to 32bpp. The images displayed with RMDSK are much better dithered than with 16bpp.
  

The pedant in me has to state that the timing you have isn't correct. There might have been some improvement with the change to 32bpp, but the real improvement was separate and one or two firmware versions later.

[ianmacdo]

How about undocumented touch short cuts? On the aura 1, after some random pressing I saw that that the progress indicator at the bottom was changing from percentage to x of y pages. Without going through the menu. I dont know how to replicate this though.

The only other shortcuts I know are, dragging up and down on the left changes the brightness and tapping the upper right sets a book mark.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ianmacdo

How about undocumented touch short cuts? On the aura 1, after some random pressing I saw that that the progress indicator at the bottom was changing from percentage to x of y pages. Without going through the menu. I dont know how to replicate this though.

The only other shortcuts I know are, dragging up and down on the left changes the brightness and tapping the upper right sets a book mark.

I'm not sure if long-pressing the page number to change the page progress display is officially documented. It might have been in a pop-up when the feature was added. But, it has been discussed here a number of times. The other two things are documented in the user guide. Or in the pop-ups displayed the first time you do something.

And the firmware follows some basic UI standards. I wrote that a while ago, but the only change I can think of is that long-press on some of the italics in the interface can also do something.

[John F]

A summary of Tips and Tricks:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=295612

[Brain]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

• Much faster response to page turns.
  
  Not much faster and part of that is because of less text on the page.
  
• Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
  
  Not since Kobo switched to 32bpp. The images displayed with RMDSK are much better dithered than with 16bpp.
  

Thanks have changed and these are changes that make those two statements no longer true.

I am currently converting all my books (besides pdf and manga, of course) to kebub. Main reason is to be able to zoom in on photos and more responsive highlight function. My device is Kobo Aura One. Are you saying that it's not necessary anymore and there's a better way? If so what it is?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Brain

I am currently converting all my books (besides pdf and manga, of course) to kebub. Main reason is to be able to zoom in on photos and more responsive highlight function. My device is Kobo Aura One. Are you saying that it's not necessary anymore and there's a better way? If so what it is?

No, Jon was commenting on two of the reasons that kepubs have been suggested as better. Page turning speed has always been better for kepubs, but recent firmware has closed the gap. And my opinion was that it was never bad enough for epubs to be a real consideration.

For the image quality, a firmware release early last year should have fixed this in epubs.

If you are reading books with a lot of images, the kepubs are probably better. Unless the images are perfectly sized for the screen, the zooming will be useful. And if there are a lot of images, it won't surprise me if there are footnotes. Kepubs have the advantage for this.

Highlighting has been easier/faster in kepubs as well, but 4.11073 has some improvements, and it might not be as noticeable now. Again, it's one of the things that never really worried me, but it does seem better now.

[Brain]

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, Jon was commenting on two of the reasons that kepubs have been suggested as better. Page turning speed has always been better for kepubs, but recent firmware has closed the gap. And my opinion was that it was never bad enough for epubs to be a real consideration.

For the image quality, a firmware release early last year should have fixed this in epubs.

If you are reading books with a lot of images, the kepubs are probably better. Unless the images are perfectly sized for the screen, the zooming will be useful. And if there are a lot of images, it won't surprise me if there are footnotes. Kepubs have the advantage for this.

Highlighting has been easier/faster in kepubs as well, but 4.11073 has some improvements, and it might not be as noticeable now. Again, it's one of the things that never really worried me, but it does seem better now.

Thank you for explaining. Does the image quality fix apply to kepubs as well? Few times I've noticed, that even zoomed out images of .kepub format bugs, were hardly readable. I've never bothered to check the book, by opening it on pc, but could it possibly been that the reader's (KA1) firmware was at fault?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Brain

Thank you for explaining. Does the image quality fix apply to kepubs as well? Few times I've noticed, that even zoomed out images of .kepub format bugs, were hardly readable. I've never bothered to check the book, by opening it on pc, but could it possibly been that the reader's (KA1) firmware was at fault?

Yes and no. There was a change in the underlying image libraries and some drivers or something. These should have been used by both the epub and kepub renderers. But, there was a bigger change for epubs in how images were handled in the first place. This should have brought images in epubs up to the same level as in kepubs.

But, most of the times I see images in books, their resolution is low enough that zooming in isn't really worth it.

[Brain]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes and no. There was a change in the underlying image libraries and some drivers or something. These should have been used by both the epub and kepub renderers. But, there was a bigger change for epubs in how images were handled in the first place. This should have brought images in epubs up to the same level as in kepubs.

But, most of the times I see images in books, their resolution is low enough that zooming in isn't really worth it.

Thank you again.

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes and no. There was a change in the underlying image libraries and some drivers or something. These should have been used by both the epub and kepub renderers. But, there was a bigger change for epubs in how images were handled in the first place. This should have brought images in epubs up to the same level as in kepubs.

Umm, no, images have not been brought up to the same level as kepub. It it was noticeable improvement, certainly, but on the non-A1 devices, (all generations of H20 models, for example, epub still has very visible patterned dithering, whereas kepub uses what looks like a more random scatter, so you can't see the pattern with naked eye.)

This distinction is not the same on the Aura One, but that's actually because images on the A1 in Kepub are displayed with degraded quality compared to the lower resolution devices, (completely counter intuitive, I know, but there you have it.)


In terms of speed, if you have a book with a full page high resolution image in an epub, (especially if the image has been optimized... the epub renderer has a very difficult time with *interlaced* jpg images,), turning the page on the Aura 1 can take between 6 and 8 seconds on the Aura One. The same book as a kepub, the page can be turned in less than 2 seconds.

[mathil]

I've tried the Full Screen Reading mod, but all of my kepubs have a huge bottom margin, almost as if the footer were still there. Any suggestions as to how I could fix this? Is this a CSS thing?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by mathil

I've tried the Full Screen Reading mod, but all of my kepubs have a huge bottom margin, almost as if the footer were still there. Any suggestions as to how I could fix this? Is this a CSS thing?

Yes and no.

Firstly, are you talking about using "FullScreenReading=true" in the config file, or are you using a 4.11.x firmware that has the options to hide the title and footer? The difference is that the latter has a larger margin at the bottom than the older way. That mean there will be a bigger gap than might be desired.

But, just as important is the font size and other layout settings. The renderer will not put a line on the screen if it doesn't fit. This means that if there is not quite the space for a line including the line spacing, then the new page will be started. And with a larger font, plus any built in margin, there can be a lot of seemingly wasted space.