Aura H2O EPUB footnotes are nearly impossible to click

[lkstrummer]

-Also affects the Aura HD, and I'm assuming all other units

I read a good deal of EPUBs that contain hyperlinked footnotes. Unfortunately, I have to convert the EPUB to a KEPUB to keep the functionality of the footnote intact. EPUB footnotes are virtually impossible to click - you essentially have to click right on one or two pixels. When after multiple tries you do manage to click the footnote, it jumps you to the section of the EPUB in which the footnotes are aggregated. At that point, it's another ordeal to click back to your original page if the footnote spans a page or two and you can't conveniently use the back button.

KEPUBs, on the other hand, are incredibly friendly to footnotes. It's incredibly easy to click on the actual link, as the clickable area is pretty generous. Furthermore, the footnote is generated in an extremely useful popup window. Unfortunately, the give and take of this is that I have to deal with another set of problems in converting my EPUBs to KEPUBs and maintaining everything 1:1.

Is there a patch that I'm missing? Is there anything we can do to pressure Kobo to fix this issue? Does anyone have any solutions that have worked for them?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lkstrummer

-Also affects the Aura HD, and I'm assuming all other units

I read a good deal of EPUBs that contain hyperlinked footnotes. Unfortunately, I have to convert the EPUB to a KEPUB to keep the functionality of the footnote intact. EPUB footnotes are virtually impossible to click - you essentially have to click right on one or two pixels. When after multiple tries you do manage to click the footnote, it jumps you to the section of the EPUB in which the footnotes are aggregated. At that point, it's another ordeal to click back to your original page if the footnote spans a page or two and you can't conveniently use the back button.

....

Is there a patch that I'm missing? Is there anything we can do to pressure Kobo to fix this issue? Does anyone have any solutions that have worked for them?

No real solution other than to use kepub format if footnotes are important to you. You can attempt to pressure Kobo. However since I think much of the footnote handling is part of the Adobe RMSDK and ACCESS renderer functionality, we may have to wait until RMSDK finally gets close to full epub3 support before seeing any changes.

[John F]

Originally Posted by DNSB

No real solution other than to use kepub format if footnotes are important to you. You can attempt to pressure Kobo. However since I think much of the footnote handling is part of the Adobe RMSDK and ACCESS renderer functionality, we may have to wait until RMSDK finally gets close to full epub3 support before seeing any changes.

If it was a RMDSK problem, wouldn't we be hearing more complaints from Nook, Sony, ...

[lkstrummer]

I also owned a Sony Daily Edition before jumping over to Kobo. Never had any issues with clicking footnotes on that device. I feel that Kobo must be crippling something in its EPUB implementation

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by lkstrummer

Does anyone have any solutions that have worked for them?

I've used the surgical approach, i.e. open your epub in an epub editor (calibre or Sigil) and
- edit the css to display the footnote clickable item with a larger font-size
- edit the html to increase the target area of the part you click. I add square brackets round the number, e.g. [1]

However, if that's too much trouble, if you like kepubs but don't want to go to the trouble of manually converting epub-to-kepub can't you just use the Kobo Extended driver to do it all for you during the send-to-device from calibre. That way you only need to keep a single master epub in calibre but the driver will automagically deliver a kepub version to the Kobo. No thinking required.

[lkstrummer]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've used the surgical approach, i.e. open your epub in an epub editor (calibre or Sigil) and
- edit the css to display the footnote clickable item with a larger font-size
- edit the html to increase the target area of the part you click. I add square brackets round the number, e.g. [1]

However, if that's too much trouble, if you like kepubs but don't want to go to the trouble of manually converting epub-to-kepub can't you just use the Kobo Extended driver to do it all for you during the send-to-device from calibre. That way you only need to keep a single master epub in calibre but the driver will automagically deliver a kepub version to the Kobo. No thinking required.

Wow. Do you made those EPUB edits recursively? What you're describing would otherwise be a huge time constraint. While I appreciate your input, your solution wouldn't suit me. Altering selective fonts and text would deviate from the look of the book in its "natural" state that I want to preserve. I guess that I'm bemused by Kobo breaking a feature that's implemented properly in other devices.

KEPUBs introduce their own trade-offs, namely wasted header space. Also, conversions also fail to reproduce the original look in a 1:1 manner.

[Ken Maltby]

Koreader lets you follow links or disable them, you can set "Swipe to go back". It makes it pretty easy for most books such as "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell". It can still be a little tricky to poke the little link #. (You might want to try a larger font, to see if that makes it easier.)

Luck;
Ken

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

If it was a RMDSK problem, wouldn't we be hearing more complaints from Nook, Sony, ...

I only played with one Sony touch screen (600?) and it had the same issue I've noted on Kobo's ereaders where you have to hit the small spot for the footnote pretty much spot on. Is there something inherently evil in using an entire word as the hot spot rather than a single character? Hitting vermine1 is easier than hitting 1 (visualize the 1's as superscripted half-size characters) -- the vermine comes from Terry Pratchett's Sourcery. On Kobo's when you use the ACCESS renderer, it seems to allow a larger margin of error and uses popup footnotes makes returning to your place in a book much easier.

Not sure about the Nook but I seem to remember quite a few complaints about selecting footnotes and returning from them along with complaints where reading an epub using the Nook application allowed accessing the footnotes but on a Nook eInk device, they didn't work or worked erratically.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've used the surgical approach, i.e. open your epub in an epub editor (calibre or Sigil) and
- edit the css to display the footnote clickable item with a larger font-size
- edit the html to increase the target area of the part you click. I add square brackets round the number, e.g. [1]

Since most footnotes indicators are next to a word, I wrap the <a></a> tags around the entire word setting the color/style to match the rest of the sentence giving me that bigger target to hit. I also edit the footnotes to make sure the touch to return area is easier to hit as well, generally by wrapping the <a></a> tags around the first word of the footnote as well. Doesn't take all that much effort and makes hitting a footnote much easier.

vermine,<a class="urllink" href="../Text/Section0058.xhtml#fn7" id="ifn7"><span class="supscrpt">7</span></a>

<a class="normal" href="../Text/Section0058.xhtml#fn7" id="ifn7">vermine,<span class="supscrpt amiblue">7</span></a>

[Jellby]

I miss my old Cybook, with hardware buttons you could click to cycle through the links in the page. Touchscreens are cool, but sometimes you need real buttons (for page turning too).