Firmware3.17.0 Discussion

[murg]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

The spoiler idea is interesting, but how about a separate spoiler for each version, that way you could just make it show the one you wanted.

I've noticed that the post is getting a bit long, and have been intending to move a bunch of releases to the archive post (the 2nd post in the thread).

I still don't know the reason why the releases were put into a spoiler tag. It's generally considered polite to notify people if you make a significant change to one of their posts. Even an automated notice would be better than nothing.

I don't like the idea of the releases being in spoilers, as it is harder to maintain and means that each release would have part out and part in a spoiler. But I'll think about it.

[murg]

Originally Posted by arspr

Nope, it's just an automatic reboot when something takes too much time so this "failsafe" feature assumes the device is "hanged". The problem is that the time threshold is way too aggressive and common situations can bring it up:

• The award access GeoffR has posted.
• Thumbnail image generation (within Library) for heavy pdfs.
• Of course, opening some conflictive pdfs.
• Quite possibly, dictionary upgrading.
• An educated guess: highlighting in epubs whenever it is done at the slowest rate?

This is just typical Kobo: the 'solution' is much worse than the problem.

Something tells me that the rate of warranty returns are going to skyrocket. If my device started to reboot spontaneously, I would have no idea why it was doing so, and I'd take it back for another unit.

Since the Glo HD has come out, Kobo has had one dud release after another. I'm still running the factory release on my Glo HD, as all of the subsequent releases have had problems too annoying to want to deal.

[MGlitch]

I'd like to see how many people on the forums have issues with sickle. Without patching it to be more forgiving, or to disable it all together.

From what's been posted sickle has already been improved over its 3.16.10 version, and I would discount reports from those who installed 3.16.10 on devices it wasn't intended for in the first place. Yes, it seemed to be possible, but to then hold glitches against Kobo is illogical as you're not using the device as intended.

I'm not saying sickle is amazing, nor that it couldn't be improved upon. But it does seem like others are trying to paint it as a totally doomed feature which doesn't solve any problems.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murg

This is just typical Kobo: the 'solution' is much worse than the problem.

Something tells me that the rate of warranty returns are going to skyrocket. If my device started to reboot spontaneously, I would have no idea why it was doing so, and I'd take it back for another unit.

Since the Glo HD has come out, Kobo has had one dud release after another. I'm still running the factory release on my Glo HD, as all of the subsequent releases have had problems too annoying to want to deal.

I'm willing to risk 3.17.0 on my H2O since we have a patch to stop the rebooting. So far it's working and no reboots. But then, I've not used my H2O much after installing 3.17.0and patching it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

I'd like to see how many people on the forums have issues with sickle. Without patching it to be more forgiving, or to disable it all together.

From what's been posted sickle has already been improved over its 3.16.10 version, and I would discount reports from those who installed 3.16.10 on devices it wasn't intended for in the first place. Yes, it seemed to be possible, but to then hold glitches against Kobo is illogical as you're not using the device as intended.

I'm not saying sickle is amazing, nor that it couldn't be improved upon. But it does seem like others are trying to paint it as a totally doomed feature which doesn't solve any problems.

What sickle needs is to have a much longer timeout. It needs to have (IMHO) 2 minutes before it reboots. That should solve the reboot problems when things take longer.

[PeterT]

IMHO it needs user configurable values; either via the GUI or entries in the conf file.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

You can read 6 books a day?! that's fast. Reading must be a very expensive hobby for you.

I don't read 6 books during an average day. Generally, about 9-10 books per week though on an occasional weekend, I've gone through 6 books in a day while sitting at work -- I can only stay awake so long looking at the monitoring software. I was looking at the number of ebooks it would take to fill a 32GB card and how long it would take to read all of them at my average reading speed.

And yes, it can be fairly expensive. One reason that I really don't consider the price of the ereader as being that critical. Should I mention that my bookshelves in the basement have about 2300 hardcovers on them? I'm not going to try to count the boxes full of paperbacks going back to the old Ace doubles. 12 cents for two novels.

There are times when I think my packrat tendencies have gone over the line into a specialized variant of hoarding.

[Desdinova]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What sickle needs is to have a much longer timeout. It needs to have (IMHO) 2 minutes before it reboots. That should solve the reboot problems when things take longer.

Thats a bit long. Most people, when faced with a machine hung for a minute will reboot.

For consumer use, I bet very few people are ever going to find sickle a problem.

[Desdinova]

I think making it a user-configurable parameter (sickle timeout) is probably a vote winner, as the vast majority of people reading pubs/kepubs on their Kobo will never have to worry about it and will probably leave it at a default, and those whose usage are a bit out of the ordinary (large PDF's for example) will have the wiggle room as needed.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Desdinova

Thats a bit long. Most people, when faced with a machine hung for a minute will reboot.

For consumer use, I bet very few people are ever going to find sickle a problem.

If 2 minutes is too long, maybe 1.5 minutes. The problem is I really don't know how long it takes to do things that do take time. We don't want sickle rebooting before the task is done.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murg

I've noticed that the post is getting a bit long, and have been intending to move a bunch of releases to the archive post (the 2nd post in the thread).

I still don't know the reason why the releases were put into a spoiler tag. It's generally considered polite to notify people if you make a significant change to one of their posts. Even an automated notice would be better than nothing.

I don't like the idea of the releases being in spoilers, as it is harder to maintain and means that each release would have part out and part in a spoiler. But I'll think about it.

I read your warning about 3.17.0 in the direct download thread. I suggest you edit it. Your warning might not be appropriate as is because there are now two patches to handle the rebooting issue with sickle.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by koboy

good common sense thought for the day, the sickle function could be implemented into the settings of the firmware so that the user could enable or disable it depending on their own personal preference, perhaps this might be considered for future firmware releases.

I would have like an entry like the sleep/power off menu. 10 seconds, 20, seconds...60 seconds, never. I'm trying GeoffR's patch with the delay increase since while I like the basic idea of automated reboot on hang, the timeout in 3.16.10 was just too short when it timed out while waiting for the highlight popup.

[Ripplinger]

I updated a Glo and Glo HD a little while ago to 3.17.0, and the page-turning delay on the Glo HD is still there for epubs. If you keep repeatedly turning pages, then they page turns speed up like they should be, but that first page turn after about 5 seconds is still slow for some reason. Highlighting seems a bit faster now though.

The slow page turns aren't an issue for the regular Glo, or even for the Glo HD with kepubs. It's not unbearably slow, but I was hoping it would have been fixed with this firmware.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by arspr

Yes a pretty damn stupid idea. But more over a HORRIBLY tweaked and tested feature. As I said, I really don't know what Q&A section in Kobo does.

Complain about all those users there using their devices in new and unusual ways?

You just cannot launch a feature which chokes within the common, normal usage of the device.

Can you point me to the definition of "normal usage"? Reading the type of PDF that causes sickel to kick in when generating the cover image is probably a fairly unusual action. It is for me. I have them on my device but only because someone here complained about something and I loaded some large and complicated files to see what happened.

f you do you are plainly stupid and you deserve bankruptcy ASAP. Period. No excuses. You should revert this feature in one day at most with a fast hotfix FW release and publicly apologize about it in half one.

For the time being, we can live because of the de-sickel patch...



Another example I think I've found (I'm 95% sure but not 100%). Go to Language and tick the new dictionaries you get. Press Save and wait till the device download them. Voilà, after it finishes downloading, you get a sickel reboot. And after it, my Japanese dictionary is 89.6 Mb big!!! Is it normal? (I've tried syncing and nothing changes). (I really don't care as I don't read in Japanese, but I don't like it anyway).

Yes,as of 3.16.10, Kobo is using different Japanese dictionaries. They are much bigger. Hopefully, that means a lot more words with better definitions for those who need them. But, for the rest of us, we just don't bother downloading them as that would be a silly waste of space.

[oren64]

Did kobo fix the ghosting problem (dictionary-box, menus), in kobo glo?