kobopatch request thread

[Duke5127]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Please don't double post. Someone already answered your question in the NickelMenu thread.

Sure. I wasnt sure if it was something NickelMenu could do, or something KoboPatch would do. Thanks for the reminder.

[mistle]

I made a topic about this but it was suggested I ask here.

You can read the long explanation of my request here, but the short of it is that many fonts render much better with hinting disabled. However, even if the font has no hinting instructions, Kobo forces autohinting. I'd love if there was a patch to disable autohinting

Here’s an example:

Originally Posted by mistle

Notice how the "u" raises up above the top of the neighboring "o" and "s". The cross on the "t" and "f" do the same.

Along the bottom, the "f" and "h" appear to stick out lower. This is actually an optical illusion caused by the bad autohinting, where any of the letters with rounded bottoms are pixel-perfectly aligned to the bottom line. Whereas with no hints, they stick out ever so slightly below, which is the correct way to align rounded characters. To the human eye it appears correct. This is how printed text in a book behaves.

You can also see it messed up the serifs a little, have a look at how it flattens out the serif on the left stem of the "u", and the bottoms of "h" and "f".

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by mistle

I made a topic about this but it was suggested I ask here.

You can read the long explanation of my request here, but the short of it is that many fonts render much better with hinting disabled. However, even if the font has no hinting instructions, Kobo forces autohinting. I'd love if there was a patch to disable autohinting

The code that @GeoffR mentioned back in 2015,

body { -kobo-font-hintstyle: 1;}

does still exist in one of the patchable files, namely libnickel.so.1.0.0. Whether it's actually still used I don't know.

To confuse matters a bit the same code exists in 3 different places. One of the locations looks as if it may be part of the default CSS which is applied to all kepubs. This is probably what Geoff was referring to. I don't know what the other 2 occurrences are targetted at.

I don't know much about font hinting so can't predict what results you might see. I should be able to create a patch that will let you test your theory that setting it to

body { -kobo-font-hintstyle: 0;}

may be helpful.

I'll try to post a beta patch here tomorrow for you to play with.

[mistle]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'll try to post a beta patch here tomorrow for you to play with.

Incredible. Thanks so much for your efforts

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by mistle

Incredible. Thanks so much for your efforts

Here are 3 beta patches, one for each of the 3 locations where -kobo-font-hintstyle: 1; is currently present.

Add them to libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml or wherever you normally keep custom patches for the libnickel.so.1.0.0 file. [ETA: they were created for fw 4.38.21908]

They're all disabled as-is and appear to be independent of each other and any other patch so you should be able to enable/disable them in any combination you want.

Please report back with any useful findings. Good luck

ETA2: beta patches removed as they did not appear to be effective.

[driuba]

Hello,

I have a personal request / suggestion / patch. I myself needed tweaks for my Kobo keyboard. I did some digging and made some alterations to keyboard layout such that it adjusts letter pop-ups.

Lithuanian Keyboard (Libra 2):
  # Updated by driuba for 4.38.21908
  - Enabled: no
  - PatchGroup: Keyboard alternatives
  - Description: |
      Replaces some of the keys on the Extended Latin keypad with Lithuanian alternatives. This is mainly intended to edit the popup tooltips.
      Note that after the device boots, the keypad might just show blank squares
      until after the first book has been opened.
      Also note that long-pressing keys on the base keypad will no longer show
      the appropriate list of Extended Latin keys.
  # Change keyboard layout
  - FindBaseAddressString: "¡\0\0¿\0\0«\0\0»\0\0"
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0x4c, Find: "â\0", Replace: "ą\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0x64, Find: "ê\0", Replace: "ę\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0x68, Find: "ë\0", Replace: "ė\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0x90, Find: "ï\0", Replace: "į\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0xa0, Find: "ü\0", Replace: "ū\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0xa8, Find: "ç\0", Replace: "č\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0xb8, Find: "ą\0", Replace: "â\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0xc4, Find: "ę\0", Replace: "ê\0"}
  - ReplaceString: {Offset: 0xcc, Find: "ů\0", Replace: "ų\0"}

I'm not sure what kind of patches get included to the main repo, but I sure be thankful if this was. I could make a pull request if needed.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by driuba

I'm not sure what kind of patches get included to the main repo, but I sure be thankful if this was. I could make a pull request if needed.

I notice your patch name includes "(Libra2)". Usually an "official" patch would be expected to work for everyone who enables it, i.e. all existing Kobo models from Kobo Touch and Kobo Mini onwards. You would also be expected to maintain it by making sure it still works after each new firmware release. Otherwise it should probably stay as a personal patch which, of course, you are free to share as and when you like.

I'm not sure whether you know this but you can split off your libnickel personal patches into a separate custom .yaml file (e.g. libnickel_driuba.yaml) and edit the kobopatch.yaml file to include this extra yaml. In this way you can carry over the pre-customised personal patches (often unchanged) from firmware to firmware. If this appeals to you I could help you set it up for yourself. It takes longer to explain it than to do it. Here's a link to an old post where I attempted to explain it to another user.

[driuba]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I notice your patch name includes "(Libra2)". Usually an "official" patch would be expected to work for everyone who enables it, i.e. all existing Kobo models from Kobo Touch and Kobo Mini onwards. You would also be expected to maintain it by making sure it still works after each new firmware release. Otherwise it should probably stay as a personal patch which, of course, you are free to share as and when you like.

I wouldn't mind maintaining it and shall look into testing the patch with regards to other devices. Thanks.

[mistle]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Here are 3 beta patches, one for each of the 3 locations where -kobo-font-hintstyle: 1; is currently present.

So I finally had time to try this out, I just enabled them all for starters.

Unfortunately, it had no effect. Tried both epub/kepubs.

[dina_]

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I haven't had an e-reader until now, I'm thinking about buying a new Libre color. Is there a possibility of putting some other program for taking notes, I am most interested in inserting or Copy/paste pictures im notes? Tnx

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by mistle

So I finally had time to try this out, I just enabled them all for starters.

Unfortunately, it had no effect. Tried both epub/kepubs.

Oh, well! It was worth a try. I'm going to remove the 3 beta patches from the earlier post as there's no point anyone else wasting their time.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by dina_

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I haven't had an e-reader until now, I'm thinking about buying a new Libre color. Is there a possibility of putting some other program for taking notes, I am most interested in inserting or Copy/paste pictures im notes? Tnx

This sounds over-ambitious for a patch which usually involves a minor tweak to existing code, rather than a significant re-write.

This doesn't mean that some enterprising Kobo developer(s) won't create something more substantial in the future. Much like some of the more ambitious community projects, e.g. KOReader, NickelMenu etc.

[dina_]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

This sounds over-ambitious for a patch which usually involves a minor tweak to existing code, rather than a significant re-write.

This doesn't mean that some enterprising Kobo developer(s) won't create something more substantial in the future. Much like some of the more ambitious community projects, e.g. KOReader, NickelMenu etc.

thanks for the quick reply ��

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by dina_

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I haven't had an e-reader until now, I'm thinking about buying a new Libre color. Is there a possibility of putting some other program for taking notes, I am most interested in inserting or Copy/paste pictures im notes? Tnx

That would not be a patch.

Also the Nebo bought in note taking for Basic and Advanced Notebooks is one of the top ones, but exposes the limitations of eink. It's very cut back. It doesn't even reliably copy/paste text on Kobo eink. It has a lot more features on the paid iOS version, the Android (digitiser needed) and Windows version (Surface 3 or later, or screen digitised not a separate Wacom tablet).

So even Kobo, who have good software, have not done more than a sketchpad with save / view in SVG and no edit after save and no copy/paste.

None of their annotation (text based or pen, epub or PDF) even supports copy/paste.

You need iOS, Andriod, Mac OS, Windows or Linux and eink with Android is too poor for that sort of interaction. Also even the colour eink is very poor for photographic images (they'll look a bit better on mono eink due to x2 resolution and your eyes are too sensitive to hue/saturation distortion of the colour eink.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

This sounds over-ambitious for a patch which usually involves a minor tweak to existing code, rather than a significant re-write.

This doesn't mean that some enterprising Kobo developer(s) won't create something more substantial in the future. Much like some of the more ambitious community projects, e.g. KOReader, NickelMenu etc.

It would be amazing if they did. Interactive drawing/editing on eink seems to be very challenging. The Sketch pad is poor. The drawing/sketching on the reMarkable is the best on eink and can't copy/paste images (or didn't last I looked) and is rubbish compared to a decent LCD tablet. I've an Android eink, and while it's likely slower than the Libra Colour or Sage (I have), it's abysmal to unusable for notes or image editing. Even a text editor with external real keyboard is poor. On the Kobo I highlight a big chunk of epub and type a miniimum of annotation.

The eink is nearly 5000x slower than fastest OLED/LCD for pixel response/change and frame rate (without much gray scale) about 20x slower than many tablets.

Like LCD, the Kaleido color used on the Libra Colour is a coloured dye filter on a monochrome panel, so the mono Libra 300 dpi is reduced to 150 dpi. LCD makers haven't quoted native mono pixel resolution under the colour filter for maybe 30 years.