Kepub - Calibre - Reading Stats

[deleted2]

Hi,

I recently got an Aura DH.

I stumbled upon an info that you can convert an Epub to Kepub in Calibre (with the right extension) and get the Reading Stats button on the Kobo, like a Kepub bought on the Kobo Store.

But it doesn't seem to be possible anymore (firmware upgrade?)

Do any of you knows how to get that cool option back ?

Thanks.

[davidfor]

The stats for sideloaded kepubs went away several firmware versions ago. It was discussed heavily at the time and the author of the extended driver looked at how to get them back. It wasn't practical or safe.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The stats for sideloaded kepubs went away several firmware versions ago. It was discussed heavily at the time and the author of the extended driver looked at how to get them back. It wasn't practical or safe.

Thanks for your fast answer!

Too bad for the extension. I really like this option on Kobo Books. I had a Kindle before and all Mobi books were showing stats.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The stats for sideloaded kepubs went away several firmware versions ago. It was discussed heavily at the time and the author of the extended driver looked at how to get them back. It wasn't practical or safe.

Hi David--

I'm confused--what is meant by "stats"? All of the books on my HD are sideloaded kepubs, and my kobo is keeping track of books read and hours read just fine. Is there something else that is meant by "stats"?

Shari

[jgoguen]

There used to be in-book stats, including a bar graph of the relative sizes of each chapter, an estimate of how long it would take to finish the current chapter, and an estimate of how long to finish the next chapter.

[Thalinor]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

Hi,

I recently got an Aura DH.

I stumbled upon an info that you can convert an Epub to Kepub in Calibre (with the right extension) and get the Reading Stats button on the Kobo, like a Kepub bought on the Kobo Store.

But it doesn't seem to be possible anymore (firmware upgrade?)

Do any of you knows how to get that cool option back ?

Thanks.

The author of the plugin stated in a post they were worried about retaliation from Kobo if they continued to find a work around. I love how some people like to rewrite history instead of telling the truth. My post on the matter was removed by a moderator and I got a warning because I don't think sucking up to large corporations is the right thing to do. Kobo staff use this forum often and you can find some of their posts here which has caused an unhealthy relationship with staff of this site, developers, and the corporations.

The developer stated they did not want to turn this into an "us vs them" situation so he decided not to work on reading stats anymore for sideloaded epubs. This is why I have not upgraded my Glo in years, am still using the last Glo firmware build before 2.9, the last Extended driver that supported that build, and no longer buy Kobo books.

Basically the dev has decided to do Kobo's job fixing what should be part of these devices, supposedly for free out of the goodness of his heart, but also adheres to Kobo's demands. I won't speculate why but remind people what "Adblock Plus" did for Google's money.

Being Android developer myself and working with the Android community, I find it disgusting how the eReader community bows down to the mega corporations, while those of us over at XDA choose to support the people instead. The development community for ebooks is very different and every time I read their posts here they seems more and more like a corporate slave and less like a random guy trying to improve on what a corporation has messed up in their never ending drive for profits.

Kobo doesn't want sideloaded epubs to be convenient because they want you buying their books. Ironically, being able to sideload books is the only reason why Kobo became successful as their major competitors make it very difficult. It appears now that Kobo is successful they are trying to do the same thing as those other competitors and have somehow convinced the development community here not to interfere. The forum moderators enjoy having direct access to developers from mega corporations posting on their site, so they have no problem censoring anyone who is against the will of the corporation.

FYI: Kobo pretends they don't, but they have built in spyware analytics tracking every thing you do on your device, from how long it takes you to turn the pages, what books are sideloaded, when you read, etc. A while back it was discussed here how to remove the spyware by another poster, but the post was quickly removed by the mods for an unknown reason. You can still find out how on other development community websites that don't bow down to the corporations.

@jgoguen This is an "Us vs Them"; it always has been. If it isn't then why make the plugin in the first place, why not just suggest on the Kobo forums the fixes you have made and they will add them to the official software? If were all one big happy family, there should be no problems with that route; correct? Make the commitment or don't; there is no fine line somewhere in the middle; you're either in the fight or your not.

[PeterT]

I'm not sure what leads you to your conclusions but I do not recall ANY such removal of posts. Take a look at this thread for instance on the analytics https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=162713 .

As far as reading stats go, the approach that was tried involved placing the modified ePubs in the .kobo directory tree. Unfortunately while this did allow stats to be gathered, it had the side effect that any syncing with Kobo, via either WiFi or Desktop would delete those books from the device.

[jgoguen]

Originally Posted by Thalinor

The author of the plugin stated in a post they were worried about retaliation from Kobo if they continued to find a work around.

I'm the author, and I neither had nor have (nor have I ever intended to even imply any similar thing) any concerns about retaliation from Kobo. In fact, I'm quite impressed with how easy it is to work with Kobo devices, especially how Kobo specifically does not deliberately make it difficult to interface with their device. Kobo has not said a single word against my efforts, other than to state that they cannot provide support to me in my work nor can they support people having trouble with a book created using my code. Which, in my not-so-humble opinion, is perfectly reasonable and a lot better than some companies would do.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

I love how some people like to rewrite history instead of telling the truth. My post on the matter was removed by a moderator and I got a warning because I don't think sucking up to large corporations is the right thing to do.

Care to point to any examples or any specific points in threads where your posts have been removed?

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Kobo staff use this forum often and you can find some of their posts here which has caused an unhealthy relationship with staff of this site, developers, and the corporations.

Proof please?

Originally Posted by Thalinor

The developer stated they did not want to turn this into an "us vs them" situation so he decided not to work on reading stats anymore for sideloaded epubs.

Not entirely accurate, and an unfortunate misunderstanding. I don't want to work on reading stats because I feel the overall end-user experience is very poor and the solution for reading stats prevents people from interfacing with Kobo systems in any way. That means only side-loading firmware updates, no more purchasing from Kobo and having those books sync... That situation I am concerned would lead to an "us vs. them" situation if I allowed it to progress, and I would prefer to work with Kobo rather than against them, but my primary reason for refusing to work on reading stats is because of the overall experience. Any considerations of creating conflicts with Kobo are truly secondary; if the end-user experience were a good one, I would have set reading stats as an option defaulting to "off".

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Basically the dev has decided to do Kobo's job fixing what should be part of these devices, supposedly for free out of the goodness of his heart, but also adheres to Kobo's demands. I won't speculate why but remind people what "Adblock Plus" did for Google's money.

Again, no person affiliated in any way with Kobo has made any demands, or even any requests, of me. Nor have they hinted at any such thing, or implied that they might wish to consider thinking about the possibility of some day perhaps maybe dreaming of making the implication of the hint of a subtle request.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Being Android developer myself and working with the Android community, I find it disgusting how the eReader community bows down to the mega corporations, while those of us over at XDA choose to support the people instead.

I hope you're not implying that I don't care first for the people using my code...

Originally Posted by Thalinor

The development community for ebooks is very different and every time I read their posts here they seems more and more like a corporate slave and less like a random guy trying to improve on what a corporation has messed up in their never ending drive for profits.

Proof please?

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Kobo doesn't want sideloaded epubs to be convenient because they want you buying their books.

Which is why they're still the manufacturers of the easiest device to add side-loaded books to?

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Ironically, being able to sideload books is the only reason why Kobo became successful as their major competitors make it very difficult. It appears now that Kobo is successful they are trying to do the same thing as those other competitors and have somehow convinced the development community here not to interfere.

Untrue. Kobo has made no change to side-loading ePub books and they still have the easiest side-loading process, and AFAIK they're also the most willing to have side-loaded books work.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

The forum moderators enjoy having direct access to developers from mega corporations posting on their site, so they have no problem censoring anyone who is against the will of the corporation.

Proof please?

Originally Posted by Thalinor

FYI: Kobo pretends they don't, but they have built in spyware analytics tracking every thing you do on your device, from how long it takes you to turn the pages, what books are sideloaded, when you read, etc. A while back it was discussed here how to remove the spyware by another poster, but the post was quickly removed by the mods for an unknown reason. You can still find out how on other development community websites that don't bow down to the corporations.

You mean like MobileReads, and the Kobo Utilities plugin which has code (that I contributed) to disable this tracking? You know, the plugin that hasn't been removed or censored in any way by anyone at Kobo or MobileReads? And as much as I don't like having no configuration option to disable tracking, Google Analytics isn't spyware and no one from Kobo or MobileReads has objected to me contributing code nor to davidfor keeping the code accessible in his plugin.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

@jgoguen This is an "Us vs Them"; it always has been.

I'm honestly sorry that you feel this way.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

If it isn't then why make the plugin in the first place, why not just suggest on the Kobo forums the fixes you have made and they will add them to the official software?

Because Kobo has decided that they don't want any non-Kobo books going through their software? They've made a design decision on their software. I happen to disagree with that decision, but it's their decision to make. I (and others) choose not to use the Kobo desktop software as a result, others choose to use the Kobo desktop for Kobo-purchased books and something else for other books, and others choose to only purchase Kobo books. All three (and other decisions I've missed) are all perfectly good decisions based on each person's individual preferences.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

If were all one big happy family, there should be no problems with that route; correct?

Kobo makes the decision to accept suggestions or not, we have no insight to their product development process. They have never objected to me making suggestions, bug reports, or queries.

Originally Posted by Thalinor

Make the commitment or don't; there is no fine line somewhere in the middle; you're either in the fight or your not.

Again, I'm honestly sorry you feel that way.

To be perfectly clear (and if there's confusion please let me know and I'll edit this post): Kobo has never attempted to stop my efforts to create KePub files, they've never tried to suppress anything I've done or the work of other people that my code is based on, and they've never done anything that makes my work needlessly difficult. Kobo has been more supportive than I would have expected of any vendor whose major competitive advantage is exactly what my plugin is targeting.

The only thing they've done that would be interpreted as making my work needlessly harder is removing reading stats for side-loaded KePub files, which they had a reasonable justification for doing. I happen to disagree with their assessment, but that doesn't mean it wasn't reasonable, and I attempted to restore what they'd removed because I disagreed with Kobo. Kobo did not, at any point, try to discourage me from doing so. I was successful, but I felt the experience for the end-user was so bad, and the risk of data corruption or data loss so great, that I removed the code and refused to work further on it. If it turns out that the issues I saw are no longer relevant in the future, I will revisit that decision.

[davidfor]

Thalinor: As the developer of the KoboTouch driver in calibre and the Kobo Utilities plugin, I'll back everything that jgoguen said. Kobo definitely know who I am and what I do. They have never asked me to stop doing it. They also don't actively support it. But, I have reported bugs to them that I found because of what I do with the driver, plugin and discussions here and seen them fixed. And they do occasionally answer my questions. Having said that, I have stated here that if Kobo asked me to stop doing something, I would think about it. Whether I would, would depend on what they were asking. And how they asked. Happily, they haven't felt the need to.

As to the driver and plugin, they are aimed at improving the user experience with the Kobo firmware. That means I do stick within what the firmware is capable of. If you want something else, then look at the other reader apps or installing Android. All of which are heavily discussed here and Kobo have made no efforts to block.

There are things I don't do. For example I rely on the firmware to process the books and add them to the internal database. I could do that and I have looked at it and written some of the code. But, I can't guarantee I would get it right and the details have changed with firmware releases. My decision was that it didn't offer enough benefits to make it worthwhile. You might interpret that as being lazy, and you are at least partly true. And to be honest, the Kobo Utilities plugin exists purely because I was lazy and wanted an easy way to do some experiments. And most of the rest of the function was added for the same reason.

As to Kobo staff here, as far as I can tell, there is only one actively involved here. There used to be more. I don't know why they don't post, but I am pretty sure they monitor the forum. Again, I have had no requests from them or MobileRead to stop doing anything I am doing.