Kobo Side Loaded Books Question

[witchkitten]

I am not a Kobo owner though I'm considering making the switch. I played around with a Kobo at a local bookstore and was impressed by many of the features, including the way it handled page numbers (the fact that they were dynamic and it displayed the number of pages in the chapter), however, I've heard that side loaded books are handled differently. Since I use Calibre to manage my ebooks, all of my books, even those purchased from Kobo, will be side loaded. So my question is how are page numbers displayed for side loaded epubs in terms of page number? Are they dynamic (as opposed to the useless static page numbers that Adobe forces me to use on my Nook)? Are the number of pages in the chapter still displayed even if they are static?

Thanks in advance.

[toddos]

Kobo readers are really two readers in one. They have their Kobo-specific rendering engine for "kepub" epubs, that's really nice and has all the features you mentioned and is epub3-compatible. Then they also have an ancient version of Adobe's rendering engine that just kinda all around sucks but allows you to load Adobe DRMed files from other stores if you want.

There is a plugin for calibre that will "kepub-ize" your epubs when you sideload them, allowing you to take advantage of most of the Kobo renderer's functionality (you don't get some stats, but you do still get dynamic page numbers, % read and time to completion estimates for the current chapter and the whole book, better rendering, etc). The caveat is that the plugin won't work with DRMed books, so you'll need to de-DRM your books before sideloading (I'm assuming you're already familiar with removing DRM). Like you, all of my books are sideloaded, having come to Kobo from a Nook and thus most of my library was purchased from Barnes & Noble. The plugin works great for me, and I've never even bothered to try the Adobe renderer.

[GeoffR]

If you sideload the book in epub format, then the page numbering will be the static scheme as used by other Adobe based readers.

If you download the book directly from Kobo to your reader you will get the book in kepub format, which will be displayed with the dynamic per-chapter numbering scheme.

But there are two issues you might also consider:

First it is possile to convert the epub to kepub and sideload the kepub (with some limitations) in which case you get the per-chapter numbering scheme. However sideloading kepubs is not officially supported by Kobo, so there is no guarantee you will always be able to do this in the future.

Second, for books bought from Kobo you can download a kepub version directly from Kobo (not sideload it) but still manage the book with Calibre. You do this by downloading the epub version into Calibre, and Calibre will match it with the kepub version on the device. This allows you to change the metadata, send new covers, etc. for the book on the device by editing the record of the epub copy in Calibre.

[witchkitten]

Thank you for the responses. So does Kobo still display the total number of static pages (and the current page) at the bottom of the screen for sideloaded epubs the way the Nook does? Also, I'm guessing it's too much to hope that Kobo puts the page numbers in the Table of Contents. That's how I currently tell how many pages are in a chapter.

I'll look into the kepub conversion. It's just a step I'd rather not have to go through.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by witchkitten

Thank you for the responses. So does Kobo still display the total number of static pages (and the current page) at the bottom of the screen for sideloaded epubs the way the Nook does? Also, I'm guessing it's too much to hope that Kobo puts the page numbers in the Table of Contents. That's how I currently tell how many pages are in a chapter.

I'll look into the kepub conversion. It's just a step I'd rather not have to go through.

The epub page number display is pretty much identical to the Nook. Both ereaders use the Adobe RMSDK which to render epubs. The .kepub.epubs are rendered by the ACCESS Netbook code which is a rather different item being epub3 compliant (more or less). As near as I can tell, Kobo is keeping the Adobe code to handle Adobe ADEPT DRMed epubs.

Regards,
David

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by witchkitten

I'll look into the kepub conversion. It's just a step I'd rather not have to go through.

Perhaps you have misunderstood. It's not actually an extra step. If you install the KoboExtended plugin (a one-off exercise), the kepub-ization happens on the fly during a calibre send-to-device of a standard epub. The epub in your calibre library is not changed at all and no kepub is stored in calibre.

However, there is also a separate, purely optional, facility which can do a calibre epub-to-kepub conversion within the calibre library if you really want/need it.

(Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer standard epubs myself.)

[witchkitten]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Perhaps you have misunderstood. It's not actually an extra step. If you install the KoboExtended plugin (a one-off exercise), the kepub-ization happens on the fly during a calibre send-to-device of a standard epub. The epub in your calibre library is not changed at all and no kepub is stored in calibre.

However, there is also a separate, purely optional, facility which can do a calibre epub-to-kepub conversion within the calibre library if you really want/need it.

(Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer standard epubs myself.)

Thanks for clarifying. I didn't want to have to store a kepub on my computer so that plugin sounds like what I'm looking for. I prefer epubs but I like knowing chapter lengths and I much prefer dynamic page numbers. I can put up with the static page numbers but not knowing the chapter length is a deal breaker for me (I run the old Nook software which still has the page numbers in the TOC even though the dictionary is crap because of this). Apps for iOS like Stanza, Marvin, and iBooks all use epub and display them how I like but I prefer the e-ink screen for reading. Kobo is looking better and better.

[jackie_w]

@witchkitten,

Yes I came to Kobo from Sony, which did show page numbers in the TOC.

On a Kobo reading a standard epub (not kepub) the nearest you can get to seeing how much is left in current chapter is
- tap screen to show in-book menu
- tap navigation icon (<->)
- tap next chapter icon (>>) and note page no.
- tap back icon (curly arrow) and note current page no.
- mentally subtract one from the other to get no. of pages* to next chapter
- tap screen to hide menu again

Easily do-able but not exactly 'slick'

* where one-page means the normal Adobe-style page, not one-screenful.

[witchkitten]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@witchkitten,

Yes I came to Kobo from Sony, which did show page numbers in the TOC.

On a Kobo reading a standard epub (not kepub) the nearest you can get to seeing how much is left in current chapter is
- tap screen to show in-book menu
- tap navigation icon (<->)
- tap next chapter icon (>>) and note page no.
- tap back icon (curly arrow) and note current page no.
- mentally subtract one from the other to get no. of pages* to next chapter
- tap screen to hide menu again

Easily do-able but not exactly 'slick'

* where one-page means the normal Adobe-style page, not one-screenful.

When the Nook got rid of the page numbers in the TOC I had to do something like that. It was annoying so I found a way of reverting back to the old software and now refuse to upgrade. I think the kepub plugin will work nicely for what I need, especially since it uses dynamic page numbers not Adobe's static ones.

[arspr]

Hi, I've recently changed from Sony PRS-650 to Kobo Aura HD.

Reading what has been posted here I would like to clarify some things:

• First of all, get used to the name ACCESS which refers to the renderer of kepubs and to the name RMSDK (or ADE) which refers to the common epub renderer which is pretty much the same in all the devices (even the Kobos) as it comes from Adobe and it is needed in order to support the most common DRM scheme used worldwide (but in Kindles): the ADEPT.
• In general ACCESS is FAR better than your already known RMSDK viewer.
• But the dynamic page numbering in ACCESS, which seems to please you, is a trade off against a GoTo Page Funcion. There's no function like that in Kobo, only a small navigation bar as already explained.
• On the other hand I DO really like the zooming function over images Kobo has implemented in ACCESS renderer (not in ADE). If you double tap over an embedded image you call an image browser were you can zoom freely around it.
• ACCESS also offers statistics (reading time, remaining reading time, whatever) on kepubs. BUT this feature is broken/removed in the latest FWs (2.10 and 3.0) for sideloaded kepubs. Currently it only works in "official" kepubs downloaded through your Kobo account from the Kobo bookstore. Although there are some posts where some people say Kobo is planning its return in future FW releases.
• And yes, although it is always a somehow buggy FW, Kobo updates the device software periodically .
• Kobo comes with a lot of included dictionaries (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and even Japanese, and translations between them and English) But they are poorer than Sony Oxford dictionaries.
• But other things are not so great in the Kobo ereader firmware. Probably the most stupid disadvantage in my opinion is that nested ToCs are fully flattened... (in kepubs, epubs or pdfs). In this way, complex ToCs are nearly useless as they are converted into pages and pages of meaningless entries.
• It's just a matter of preferences but I also prefer the interface of Sony devices in general (maybe I'm just more used to it). Nevertheless some procedures in Kobo are quite a PITA, no matter how you look at them. As example, you cannot select several items (books, annotations inside books, whatever) in order to delete them (or to perform any other operation). You must delete them one each time. And I do miss an alphabetic scroll bar in book lists so I could easily jump to books/authors starting by "L".
• Another nasty bug also present in latest revisions of FW is about reading pdfs in landscape mode, because the navigation areas are not rotated from the default portrait mode and each new page is not loaded to the upper left corner but to the lower left one IIRC. I suppose Kobo will eventually fix it but the bug has been present in the last 2 or 3 revisions of the firmware.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by arspr

ACCESS also offers statistics (reading time, remaining reading time, whatever) on kepubs. BUT this feature is broken/removed in the latest FWs (2.10 and 3.0) for sideloaded kepubs. Currently it only works in "official" kepubs downloaded through your Kobo account from the Kobo bookstore. Although there are some posts where some people say Kobo is planning its return in future FW releases.

As I came to Kobo with the Aura 6" and thus have only ever known firmware 2.9 and 2.10, I do get reading time/remaining time and percentage on kepubized sideloads. I assumed there were other tracked reading statistics that people were referring to here? I have no content purchased from Kobo yet, so I don't have a method of comparison. But what I do have is sufficient for me (35% read, 19 minutes remaining in chapter, 16 hours remaining in book).

[speakingtohe]

I think you still get them, just not from inside the book. I don't bother so I am not 100% sure.

Helen

[ShellShock]

Another difference between kepubs and epubs: kepub pages are displayed with a title bar as well as a footer bar, epubs are displayed with only a footer bar. For this reason I prefer epubs, because the kepub title bar takes up too much space, in my opnion.