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Old 04-16-2018, 05:29 PM   #1
sadkingbilly
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Kobo Aura One driving me crazy

Hey all,

I recently started using my Aura One again and it asked for an update. Before it was annoying to work with the buggy and poor software but now it's gruesome. No longer the "history" I was used to but a new screen with "discover your next great book", "popular" and "read the manual of your kobo"... Which I can not in any way delete. (sw version 4.7.10413, 12-12-17)

Apart from that - Kobo keeps bragging that their software was developed in cooperation with ebook users but I find it really hard to imagine that ANY ebook user would want this sucky, slow and complicated software instead of a simple explorer menu like in windows. That way a folder can be put on the Kobo and simply accessed trough the menu, selecting the wanted book.

Noooo... They thought making ONE BIG list of ALL my books would be somehow convenient - especially for users with many ebooks on their reader. Yes, I know about the search function but since the kobo seems to be using some weird parts of the metadata (and we all know calibre sucks big time, is it a conspiracy?) so sometimes even though I changed author the kobo still displays the old entry making books disappear from the list when I search for author.

Shortly after I purchased the Aura One I put Koreader on it but that resulted in a bricked ebook and I had a hard time getting it working again - and not all functions worked correctly back then (march 2017) like backlight.


So.. What I would like is software that uses a very simple explorer menu, remembers the last X books I opened/read and which enables me to open a book from a folder instead of making collections..

/end of rant, sorry about it..
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Old 04-16-2018, 06:34 PM   #2
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Given how much information is available here on MobileRead about how to get the best out of the Kobo/calibre combination I'm amazed you haven't been able to get it working better in the last 12 months. Can I suggest reading some of it?

If your book metadata is wrong the problem lies with neither Kobo nor calibre.

/end of stating the obvious, sorry about it (but not much)
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Old 04-16-2018, 07:27 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sadkingbilly View Post
Hey all,

I recently started using my Aura One again and it asked for an update. Before it was annoying to work with the buggy and poor software but now it's gruesome. No longer the "history" I was used to but a new screen with "discover your next great book", "popular" and "read the manual of your kobo"... Which I can not in any way delete. (sw version 4.7.10413, 12-12-17)

Apart from that - Kobo keeps bragging that their software was developed in cooperation with ebook users but I find it really hard to imagine that ANY ebook user would want this sucky, slow and complicated software instead of a simple explorer menu like in windows. That way a folder can be put on the Kobo and simply accessed trough the menu, selecting the wanted book.

Noooo... They thought making ONE BIG list of ALL my books would be somehow convenient - especially for users with many ebooks on their reader. Yes, I know about the search function but since the kobo seems to be using some weird parts of the metadata (and we all know calibre sucks big time, is it a conspiracy?) so sometimes even though I changed author the kobo still displays the old entry making books disappear from the list when I search for author.

Shortly after I purchased the Aura One I put Koreader on it but that resulted in a bricked ebook and I had a hard time getting it working again - and not all functions worked correctly back then (march 2017) like backlight.


So.. What I would like is software that uses a very simple explorer menu, remembers the last X books I opened/read and which enables me to open a book from a folder instead of making collections..

/end of rant, sorry about it..
Hope you are feeling better now.

Now for a turn at the tilt.

Interesting to read your whinging. So being able to search your ereader for the book you want by title, author or series is somehow less convenient than scrolling through a long list of subdirectories containing 3000+ books (in my KA1's case). Being able to sort by series, author or collections is not convenient. Hmmm... I wanted to re-read one of Gerald Durrell's Corfu books. Type in "cor" in the search box (a massive 4 taps on the screen) and on the live search results screen up popped Corfu Trilogy. One tap on that and I was viewing My Family and other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods. Using the simple Windows explorer interface and browsing for it, I ended up going through 610 directories named after author's to find the right one. Since there is no alphabetic listing I could tap to go directly to authors whose last name started with 'D', this took a few taps. Made me feel happy that I didn't use Geoffrey Zakarian's My Perfect Pantry as the sample author and book.

And yes, I have compared search to the "simple explorer menu like in windows". Sadly, the simple explorer menu sucked compared to search. By the time I used KoReader to dig down into the directories to find the book I was looking for, using search had me reading the third chapter. You did notice that KoReader added a search function using the calibre metadata files? Of course, the creators of KoReader spend their time adding features that no one in possession of a moiety of their senses could possibly want.

As for the new home page? I don't pay much attention to the 4 tiles for the latest 4 books (compared to what? 7 or 8 on the old home screen which could include tiles such as Sync, Related To, Statistics, Take A Quick Tour, etc.) so I don't spend much time there and have no real opinion pro or con. One tap on the My Book tiles or the search icon on the home page and it's off to finding my next book. I suspect to you that filtering the books list by Reading, Unread, Finished, Purchased, Previews, Overdrive, Imported and Downloaded or being able to sort by Recent, Date Added, Title, Author, Series, etc. are useless fripperies. Being able to locate all books by an author whether they are the sole author or a co-author without having to generate a massive directory structure to allow covering all possible combinations or to be able to find a book in the series with a mix of authors are useless fripperies.

As for your issues with changing authors on a book? One wonders how you went about this? Opened the directory of your KA1 in your beloved Windows explorer and renamed it? Simple, easy and oh so very wrong. Renamed it in calibre, updated the metadata, deleted the copy on your KA1 with calibre and used one of the KoboTouch drivers to send it to your KA1? Two guesses as to which one of these would trigger the database update?

I will admit that I have never had the issues with calibre you evidently seem to have suffered. Your comment "(and we all know calibre sucks big time, is it a conspiracy?)" seems to not match the experience of most calibre users. Perchance were you one of the few who keep whinging that Kovid Goyal will not change the directory structure used by calibre to match their personal wants? One of those who have trouble understanding that copying one calibre library over another using Windows explorer is NOT A GOOD IDEA. That have trouble understanding that putting your calibre library on Dropbox and accessing it from multiple machines simultaneously is also in the ungood idea realm.

/end tilting at windmills mode
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Old 04-17-2018, 12:27 AM   #4
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No Reader supports folders. Not a single one. Some do support directories/subdirectories.

So why do you hate collections and searching?
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Old 04-17-2018, 12:53 AM   #5
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Am I the only one to think that a reader is not for storing a 10 000 books collection but more to store "favorites and to be read" ; letting the collection be managed by calibre ?
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Old 04-17-2018, 01:05 AM   #6
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Am I the only one to think that a reader is not for storing a 10 000 books collection but more to store "favorites and to be read" ; letting the collection be managed by calibre ?
Going by other discussions, you are not alone. OTOH, I'm one of those who want to have as many ebooks as I can on my ereader. I haven't noticed any weight increase by doing so.
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Old 04-17-2018, 01:31 AM   #7
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Going by other discussions, you are not alone. OTOH, I'm one of those who want to have as many ebooks as I can on my ereader. I haven't noticed any weight increase by doing so.

hahah funny enough but I did read somewhere that a microsd without data is lighter than a microsd with data (but obviously not something one could notice by hand ...)

For using nickel + calibre + kobo plugins or Koreader + dropbox + calibre I never had a problem to search, synch or whatever in fact. Even so, when I leave for holidays I put 500 books on my reader for choice's sake but scrolling them is quite part of the pleasure
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Old 04-17-2018, 03:21 AM   #8
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... (and we all know calibre sucks big time, is it a conspiracy?) ...
I'm wondering who "we all" is? I have a lot of "classic" eReaders. Calibre is what makes them all useful.
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Old 04-17-2018, 03:57 AM   #9
sadkingbilly
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Thank you all for your replies. I actually DO feel better

Guess I'm so used to the map structure in Windows I have difficulties using the (by me) dreaded search in the Kobo. What doesn't help in that is, I read a lot of "light novels", the japanese manga-related short books. Problem with these is, it's often hard to remember the author (for example, Tsuyoshi Fujitaka - My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World series) so browsing would make things easier for me.

As mentioned above, it's true that it would be easiest to put just the book(s) on you are reading right now and keep the rest on the computer. However, I like reading several books at the same time without plugging the Kobo into my computer to add books too often as well as just having a "library at hand".

Personally I would absolutely prefer browsing folders named by author - series but I guess I'm out of luck

I'll start reading up on how to hack/tweak the software, perhaps there's a setting somewhere that enables me to remove the things I don't need (like store, new books etc) to make room for a bigger "reading" category..

ps: yes, I changed the metadata using Calibre, deleted the old copies from the Kobo and exported the new ones but the author is still showing wrong. And only on one of six books in the series.. Even though in the filename AND the metadata in Calibre it's all the same
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Old 04-17-2018, 04:03 AM   #10
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Personally I would absolutely prefer browsing folders named by author - series but I guess I'm out of luck
I don't know how you managed to nearly brick when installing ksm + koreader ; but if it's what you want you could have that using koreader and calibre to export all your book with directories named after the authors.
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Old 04-17-2018, 05:00 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by sadkingbilly View Post
...

ps: yes, I changed the metadata using Calibre, deleted the old copies from the Kobo and exported the new ones but the author is still showing wrong. And only on one of six books in the series.. Even though in the filename AND the metadata in Calibre it's all the same
How did you "delete" the books? I believe you need to use either the Kobo UI or Calibre or you may run into problems (although maybe not for metadata)?
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Old 04-17-2018, 09:21 AM   #12
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How did you "delete" the books? I believe you need to use either the Kobo UI or Calibre or you may run into problems (although maybe not for metadata)?
I loaded the files in calibre, then deleted the originals and the copies on the ereader. Saved them from calibre back to the original folder on pc, then from there transferred them back to the Kobo. (also using explorer, so not exporting trough calibre)

It worked for all files I edited in calibre (I only use calibre to edit the metadata for the ebook, then delete them from calibre again and if needed simply copy to ereader trough explorer) except for that one. I just now found out that the "wrong author name" is the name of the man creating the cover for the books so not even a co-writer?! Changing the cover didn't help either. Oh well..

For now I put a shorthand (LOTR for example) in front of the title plus a number. This at least puts them in the correct order.
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