KOReader Won't Keep Settings

[imminent.clause]

OK, I'm new to KOReader. It seems like many people love this for reading ebooks. But I'm baffled. I must not understand how this software works. I have two problems, which are related: Portrait Mode, and Settings.

I'm running this on two devices, a Pixel C and an Xperia Tablet Z. Both give me the same issues:

When I open the app, no matter what I've got the device screen set to (usually locked to portrait), it opens landscape. I go to the top menu, select screen then rotation. And I get the 180, 90, 0, 90 choices. These seem to be relative to the current rotation rather than absolute. But I will be in landscape, and select a 90 rotation, and it turns upside-down instead. So I play whack-a-mole for a while, until I finally get it into Portrait mode. Sometimes, it's upside-down portrait, but I found if I try to change that, whack-a-mole starts over. So I just turn the device instead.

But, eventually, I get it into Portrait, and can open a book. I'll page through it a bit, work out that I need to fiddle with page dimensions (set to "height", and "page" and some third setting I'm forgetting right now) or the page turns will slowly move the text out of the viewing area. But I manage to get what I want.

So after all that, I have the software running exactly the way I want. Only when I close it and open it again, none of those preferences are retained. So my questions:

1) How do I get it into Portrait mode?

2) How do I set Portrait mode as the default?

3) Similarly, how do I set the page viewport preferences as the default?

It would be nice if these were stored per-book, since not all books have the same aspect ratio.

I did search the KOReader forum for "portrait", and found nothing that seemed to answer this. And I've searched the KOReader Git repo for any open or closed issues where this might have been explained. I found nothing that was relevant.

This may be just my fault for not understanding how this is supposed to work. The user's manual doesn't really address any of this. And if that's just not what the KOReader is used for, I'm OK with that. There are plenty of choices out there; I just saw so many glowing comments about this software -- especially for PDF books -- I want to get it running and see if it's the right tool for me.

Thanks for any guidance you can give me.

[pazos]

KOReader starts in the native orientation for that device. That usually matches the logo when the device is booting, but that isn't required.

From that hw rota you have: CW (clockwise), Original, CCW (counter clockwise), 180º inverted.

If you don't get these values when you press the relevant buttons in the UI then I'm afraid your device(s) doesn't follow the specs (maybe the screen was mounted upside down?).

All of this can be fixed but you'll need to specify the rotations you'll get when you press the buttons and the hw device id, to let the program know your device uses an alternate way of rotating the screen.

More context and a way to start the app in fullsensor mode is in https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=350.

Keep in mind we need to fix the specific rotations to match what the UI expects before you can enable the "follow-the-sensor" mode.


About settings/preferences. They're indeed for each book. A long press on a setting would prompt you to apply that setting by default. It does that for new books but already opened books will keep their own settings.

[imminent.clause]

Well, that's helped a lot. The patch.lua solution does not appear to change the behavior at startup, though. The logic of the rotations still baffles me. I opened an epub, which defaulted to landscape mode. Tapping the "portrait" icon from the bottom menu appeared to have no effect. But tapping one of the "landscape" icons changed it to portrait mode. I then long-pressed to set that as default, which works.

I see that the android-luajit-launcher code appears to require Android 9. My Pixel C is "Android 8.1", but the "API Level" says "llama (9)". I'm not sure which I should believe, but perhaps my version of Android is not supported by the android-luajit-launcher?

When using the top menu, I see that rotation has a check mark for 180. And when KOReader starts, it opens in the default for the device (landscape), then immediately flips over. So I believe it's following that setting. When I look at the rotation menu, I have a star next to the 90 (CW) option, but I can't seem to make the checkmark move to that option.

Well, I'm at least to the point where the settings are just an annoyance rather than a problem. So I can start using KOReader and see if I should keep it.

But if anyone can help me remove those annoyances (and maybe explain how to set defaults for all books?), I'd really start to enjoy KOReader.

[pazos]

Originally Posted by imminent.clause

The logic of the rotations still baffles me. I opened an epub, which defaulted to landscape mode. Tapping the "portrait" icon from the bottom menu appeared to have no effect. But tapping one of the "landscape" icons changed it to portrait mode. I then long-pressed to set that as default, which works.

That logic is wrong. See attachment. Current rota is highlighted.

Originally Posted by imminent.clause

I see that the android-luajit-launcher code appears to require Android 9. My Pixel C is "Android 8.1", but the "API Level" says "llama (9)". I'm not sure which I should believe, but perhaps my version of Android is not supported by the android-luajit-launcher?

Android 9 is 2.3 (Gingerbread). It's the first version that supports the NativeActivity framework. Currently the minimum android version where the app runs is Android 14 - 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwitch)

Originally Posted by imminent.clause

Well, I'm at least to the point where the settings are just an annoyance rather than a problem. So I can start using KOReader and see if I should keep it.

But if anyone can help me remove those annoyances (and maybe explain how to set defaults for all books?), I'd really start to enjoy KOReader.

Setting defaults is covered in the guide, IIRC.

[imminent.clause]

OK, thanks. I think I finally understand the rotation icons. They look like "portrait" and "landscape" (and the inversion of each), but they are actually rotations from the natural orientation of the device.

And the top menu Screen | Rotation menu are not arrows showing which way the screen will turn, but again are rotations from the natural orientation of the device.

I now have successfully set this up so it opens in portrait mode, and my docs will also open in portrait mode.

Thanks! (I knew I just wasn't understanding this.)

I have one PDF with very wide margins, and I was able to get KOReader to re-scale the view so that I have just the parts of the page I want in view. I haven't seen any other ebook or PDF reader that will do that.

Now I guess I need to work out how to run it on my Kobo Elipsa.

Thanks again.

[Frenzie]

It probably makes more sense on a traditional screenreader without any gyrometers.

That being said I've never experienced a problem on my phone. I (almost) always keep it locked in portrait, so KOReader's behavior wrt rotating is indistinguishable from my H2O. It's probably a little weirder if you allow it to rotate freely.

I have one PDF with very wide margins, and I was able to get KOReader to re-scale the view so that I have just the parts of the page I want in view. I haven't seen any other ebook or PDF reader that will do that.

Librera has some interesting features as well btw. But yes, this is why I believe that in most cases cases KOReader is simply the most convenient program, because I don't have to bug around zooming and dragging stuff.

[imminent.clause]

Originally Posted by Frenzie

Librera has some interesting features as well btw. But yes, this is why I believe that in most cases cases KOReader is simply the most convenient program, because I don't have to bug around zooming and dragging stuff.

Yes, I use LibreraPro on my tablets (along with other readers). I find that each reader has features that make it perfect for some books. For example, I have a book on the history of the computer, and it was laid out so that some sections start with a two-page photo. With my tablet in landscape, and LibreraPro set to two-up (with cover), those photos show up beautifully. I haven't seen another reader that would be right for that book.

Now that I have KOReader working correctly -- or, more truthfully, now that my errors have been explained to me -- I will start using it and see which books it is perfect for. I've already found that one with the ultra-wide margins.

I've only had my Kobo Elipsa for a few days, and I'm ready to ditch all the tablets. It's almost exactly what I want in an ereader. Next, I need to install the KOReader on it, and work out how to launch that.


I plan to continue engaging with the KOReader folks on GitHub, and see if there's any contribution I can make. Most of what I got wrong was actually in the manual, but the rotation logic could probably be explained better. So maybe that's something I can contribute -- describing the rotation logic so that new users never have to play whack-a-mole like I did.