Aura Kobo Aura - Hackable? Dict + Annotations?

[miztiik]

Is the kobo Aura jailbreakable? How easy or difficult is it?

What is the best dictionary that can be side loaded for kobo Aura for advanced english?

Have anyone tested any of these? http://abloz.com/huzheng/stardict-dic/dict.org/

Are the annotations or making notes, takes you away from the page you are reading?

Also had there been a fix for "GoTo Page" request?

Is it possible to have a custom slideshow screensaver? (I used to have this on a old Sony)

Finally, i have read some posts refer to "Koreader" what is that?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by miztiik

Is the kobo Aura jailbreakable? How easy or difficult is it?

The Aura (and other Kobo e-ink readers) are not locked, so jailbreaking is not applicable.

Edit: Unlike other models, the Aura and early Touch models don't have their firmware on a replaceable internal SD card, so there are fewer options for recovering from a hack that goes wrong than there are with other models.

(I don't know anything about sideloading dictionaries sorry, other than it is possible.)

Are the annotations or making notes, takes you away from the page you are reading?

Making notes is done without leaving the page you are reading, but the keyboard and notepad occupy the whole screen while you are typing in the note.

Also had there been a fix for "GoTo Page" request?

There is no option to type in the page number to jump to within a book (there is for navigating the library lists).

Edit: There are now a lot of different page numbering options: page number, percentage read, time remaining; each per chapter or whole book; or no page numbers at all in full-screen mode. The slider still works to navigate to a particular page whichever option is chosen.

Is it possible to have a custom slideshow screensaver? (I used to have this on a old Sony)

Sort of. There is a shop demo mode which shows a slideshow while the device is in sleep mode, and you can change the stock images to whatever you want. But it is probably not very useful, at least I haven't heard of anyone actually using it.

Edit: Now I remember, it is not useful because the touchscreen remains active during the slideshow, so it is not really a sleep mode, it would drain the battery faster than normal reading.

Finally, i have read some posts refer to "Koreader" what is that?

It is one of a number of third-party readers and that can be installed (on Kobo and other devices.)

[miztiik]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

It is one of a number of third-party readers and that can be installed (on Kobo and other devices.)

Is Koreader necessary to read PDFs in kobo, why would one go for a koreader anything particularly driving people towards it?

Thanks for the other replies

[filmo]

Yes you can read PDFs on any Kobo reader and PDF reading on a Kobo has improved a little over the years but there are better ways to read PDFs. Koreader is one of the better reading programs that can be installed on your Kobo for reading PDFs. Text reflow is the biggest Koreader improvment for reading PDFs. It is best to have bigger screen that can display full PDF page large enough to easily read. Color display is required for some PDFs to fully convey displayed data, pictures, scematics.....

[miztiik]

Originally Posted by filmo

Yes you can read PDFs on any Kobo reader and PDF reading on a Kobo has improved a little over the years but there are better ways to read PDFs. .....

Is it possible to do a dictionary lookup of a word in the pdf by long pressing/touching the word?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by miztiik

Is it possible to do a dictionary lookup of a word in the pdf by long pressing/touching the word?

No, you cannot.

[dr. ego]

Originally Posted by miztiik

Is it possible to do a dictionary lookup of a word in the pdf by long pressing/touching the word?

It is possible in koreader, even with scanned pdf's!

[miztiik]

In one of the reviews, it was mentioned that the title of the book and page numbers at the bottom are displayed at all times and cannot be ridden off? Is that so?

Does Koreader work in Aura, and given that Aura doesnt have a removable memory card how do you backup and restore when trying to install Koreader?

Does Koreader,
- have options to remove the header / footer?
- Ability to lookup words in wikipedia?

Originally Posted by miztiik

In one of the reviews, it was mentioned that the title of the book and page numbers at the bottom are displayed at all times and cannot be ridden off? Is that so?

In my experience with Kobo's software, no. Granted, that may have changed in recent updates. KOReader does allow you to remove the header and footer. (Indeed, the header is disabled by default.)

Does Koreader work in Aura, and given that Aura doesnt have a removable memory card how do you backup and restore when trying to install Koreader?

One option is to use the manual factory reset. Kobo's eInk based readers have a separate backup partition which contains a backup of the firmware. It performs a recovery by reformatting the system and user partitions, then decompressing the factory firmware and database files onto the system and user partitions respectively. This is effective since KOReader nor Kobo Start Menu do not touch the backup partitions. I'll let other people speak to the Aura's compatibility with this software since I have only used it on the Aura HD and Aura H2O.

Does Koreader,
- have options to remove the header / footer?
- Ability to lookup words in wikipedia?

(1) Yes. By default KOReader shows a tiny footer that shows the progress. You tap on the footer to cycle through the various display options, one of which disables it. It is actually so small that you may prefer to leave the footer in place since it does not alter the amount of text displayed, and would only amount to about one line of text at the smallest font size if it did free up that space. (You can also choose to add an optional header, which is also considerably smaller than Kobo's counterpart.)

(2) Yes. The most reliable option appears to be using locally installed stardict dictionaries. You can have several dictionaries installed, and switch between them. You can also do searches of Wikipedia with an active wifi connection, but it is very limited (which is why I started with the stardict suggestion). It only displays part of the article, and does not support links for disambiguations.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by miztiik

In one of the reviews, it was mentioned that the title of the book and page numbers at the bottom are displayed at all times and cannot be ridden off? Is that so?

There are two main reader apps in the Kobo firmware. One is used to read kepubs (Kobo's tweaked epubs). This has both header and footer. The other is used for epubs. This only has a footer.

Recent firmware has a hidden option that will remove both the header and footer. It has a problem with some kepubs where the text runs off the right side of the screen. But, it works perfectly for epubs.

[miztiik]

Thanks for that,

Probably nitpicking here, But i would like to know what i am getting into before committing to a reader.

One option is to use the manual factory reset. Kobo's eInk based readers have a separate backup partition which contains a backup of the firmware. It performs a recovery by reformatting the system and user partitions, then decompressing the factory firmware and database files onto the system and user partitions respectively....

Does this "recovery from backup" reset to factory settings and end user will have to setup the reader from scratch (loading books, collections, stats, etc)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by miztiik

Does this "recovery from backup" reset to factory settings and end user will have to setup the reader from scratch (loading books, collections, stats, etc)

Yes, a "factory reset" does exactly that. It resets the device to the out of the factory status requiring exactly the same setup steps needed when you open the box.

Of course, it isn't as simple as that. The device can sync some things to the Kobo server. These will be downloaded during the setup. These are only purchased kepubs and related items.