Kobo Aura 2 vs. Tolino Shine 2HD: 212ppi vs 300ppi

[mobama]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Anyway, all this discussion about installing a better app, I don't know if it makes a lot of sense. If I'm reading it right, Tolino is not an open Android ereader, but you have to root it for installing any app (similar to installing koreader in Kobo). so, I think "you can install your app" doesn't apply from the beginning.

Part of the charm of this forum is that you can find the resources to install pretty much anything on anything. I already linked to them when I chimed in, so I won't repeat myself.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by mobama

If I had to buy it, I would root the Kindle and slap my preferred app on it the first thing. Same as with Kobo. A fresh Kindle does not do epubs in the first place, as far as I know. This has been a decisive factor for me to avoid Kindles altogether...

I don't understand the hang-up about formats. With Calbre it's easy enough to convert formats on the fly. You can have a disk full of ePubs and have Calibre convert them to mobi, KF8 or whatever Kindle format on the fly. I make kepubs of my books, because I like how Kobo handles that format better.

Who cares if a Kindle read an 'epub' so long as you can read your epubs on it?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mobama

At least there is a specific Koreader build for Kindle available here.

But most Kindles you buy will come with a firmware you cannot jailbreak. Could even be no new Kindles will be able to be jailbroken.

[mobama]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I don't understand the hang-up about formats. With Calbre it's easy enough to convert formats on the fly. You can have a disk full of ePubs and have Calibre convert them to mobi, KF8 or whatever Kindle format on the fly. I make kepubs of my books, because I like how Kobo handles that format better.

Who cares if a Kindle read an 'epub' so long as you can read your epubs on it?

Makes sense if all you have is your Kindle for reading your ebooks. I have

- mobile phone
- computer
- two ereaders in constant parallel use because they have different screen sizes that I use for different purposes.

I need to keep my ebooks in sync on all of them on the fly. I don't read for myself only, but I need to display to others, and when I add something on any random device, all other devices must be able to display it instantly. Given my situation, it is categorically out of the question to convert a part of my ebooks for one single device. Either the device can read it all or I simply won't buy it.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But most Kindles you buy will come with a firmware you cannot jailbreak. Could even be no new Kindles will be able to be jailbroken.

Let's suppose so. So what? (Let's ignore for now that any time Americans launch an electronic device, the Chinese and Russians have already reverse engineered it a week earlier.)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by mobama

Makes sense if all you have is your Kindle for reading your ebooks. I have

- mobile phone
- computer
- two ereaders in constant parallel use because they have different screen sizes that I use for different purposes.

I need to keep my ebooks in sync on all of them on the fly. I don't read for myself only, but I need to display to others, and when I add something on any random device, all other devices must be able to display it instantly. Given my situation, it is categorically out of the question to convert a part of my ebooks for one single device. Either the device can read it all or I simply won't buy it.

I can't imagine a situation where I'm reading a book on my Kobo, I put the Kobo aside and must be able to pick up my phone and have the book instantly and seamlessly synced. Then my battery dies and I have to whip open my laptop and find the exact paragraph, stat! Come on people! Millions of lives are at stake!

How tense a situation can you be in for that to be so? Your life is way more interesting than mine I guess.

[mobama]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

With Kobo, you can increase the weight of the fonts system fonts and that increases contrast.

Contrast is more properly difference of tone in two adjacent areas. Increasing the font weight or bolding does nothing to alter the contrast in the proper sense. You could just as well increase the font size. Changing the contrast is more appropriately changing the gamma of the font.

[ZodWallop]

Not sure any of this helps in comparing a Kobo Aura and a Tolino Shine 2 HD.

[Pulpwood]

Feeling great sympathy for the OP @swapjim for having this thread abused.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mobama

Contrast is more properly difference of tone in two adjacent areas. Increasing the font weight or bolding does nothing to alter the contrast in the proper sense. You could just as well increase the font size. Changing the contrast is more appropriately changing the gamma of the font.

Does it really matter? Increasing the weight of the font can make it easier to read in low light and just easier to read in general.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes, that video shows very wide margins on the Kobo. But, that's because the reviewer set them that way. If you watch it, they show the reading settings for the Kobo at 1:46. That shows the margins settings nearly at the middle of the slider.

Yep. I've attached 2 images of my Kobo Aura H2O, with the slider for margins set to as narrow as possible and to as wide as possible. You normally just slide the slider to wherever in between you prefer (barring books with weird CSS layouts, of course).

[swapjim]

Does anyone know if the Tolino can change line height?

I don't care about PDF. How is HTML, TXT, and RTF support in the two devices?

Originally Posted by church mouse

The Kobo reading software offers slightly more fine tuning of the page presentation

Can you elaborate?

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I have an original Kobo Aura (212 PPI) and a Nook Glowlight 3 (300 PPI) that the better half uses.

If you compare the two side by side, the Glowlight's screen is clearly better. But it's not so superior that it has made me want to abandon my Aura. For day to day use, I don't think the jump in PPI is nearly as important on an e-ink device as it is on a tablet.

At this point, if my Kobo were to curl up and die, I'd replace it with whatever device offered the features I consider important. The screen PPI wouldn't be as important to me.

You know what, I didn't consider Nook Glowlight 3 as a candidate. It's on the same price range as the Tolino and Kobo and has 300ppi screen.

How does Glowlight 3 fare against the original Aura? How is support for HTML (unstyled and style-override), RTF, and TXT in both devices?

[church mouse]

Originally Posted by swapjim

Can you elaborate?

The Tolino simply offers these fine tune options:

1 Publisher's formatting, on or off
2 Font choice
3 Font size
4 Line spacing - 3 choices
5 Alignment - 3 choices
6 Margin width - 3 choices.

The hyphenation is poor, in my opinion, but one can access the hyphenation dictionary via a computer and change it (JSWolf has published a much better one elsewhere on this site).

I regard my Tolino as a solid, basic reader for epubs. The screen is excellent.

The Tolino is my backup reader now - I use a Pocketbook HD as my main reader.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by church mouse

The Tolino simply offers these fine tune options:

Taking the church mouse's list and adding details for Kobo and tolino

1 Publisher's formatting, on or off
- On the tolino, if this is on, the only thing you can adjust is the font size.
2 Font choice
- Kobo: 10, tolino: 6.
- Both have a publisher font option and you can sideload your own font on both.
3 Font size
- Kobo: At least 24, tolino: 11
4 Line spacing - 3 choices
- Kobo: 15
5 Alignment - 3 choices
- Kobo: 3 but they are different. Kobo's is "Off" meaning whatever is in the book or the default on the device, ragged right and justified. Tolino's is justified, ragged right and centred.
6 Margin width - 3 choices.
- Kobo: 9
- The tolino's choice are probably the about the same as the second, third and fourth narrowest of Kobo's.

The above is comparing a tolino epos with a Kobo Aura H2O. The other Kobo devices are the same, and from what I can see, the tolino's are all the same as well.

The hyphenation is poor, in my opinion, but one can access the hyphenation dictionary via a computer and change it (JSWolf has published a much better one elsewhere on this site).

I found that by changing the numbers at the top of the hyphenation file on the tolino, it improved it a lot. I can't remember if I increased them by 1 or 2. I can't remember if JSWolf just changed these numbers or used a completely different hyphenation dictionary.

I regard my Tolino as a solid, basic reader for epubs. The screen is excellent.

I'd agree with that sentiment. But, the Kobo is better especially with the library side of things.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I found that by changing the numbers at the top of the hyphenation file on the tolino, it improved it a lot. I can't remember if I increased them by 1 or 2. I can't remember if JSWolf just changed these numbers or used a completely different hyphenation dictionary.

I think he may have changed the numbers at the top but it's also a completely different hyphenation dictionary (from LibreOffice???). It's much bigger than the Kobo default one - 328KB vs 186KB.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I found that by changing the numbers at the top of the hyphenation file on the tolino, it improved it a lot. I can't remember if I increased them by 1 or 2. I can't remember if JSWolf just changed these numbers or used a completely different hyphenation dictionary.

I used a different hyphenation dictionary. I believe it's on that's use with Open Office. Also, I have the numbers set 2 for both left and right. This works much better than the Adobe hyphenation dictionary with settings of 5 for left and right. I had a look the other day at the ADE 2.0.1's hyphenation dictionary and it's set to 2 for left and 3 for right and even that's better.

Kobo can easily fix this issue by changing the numbers. I would suggest 2/3 as ADE 2.0.1 uses.