kobopatch users & non-Kobo-supported languages

[NiLuJe]

@JSWolf: I rarely use Windows, so someone will have to double-check, I just remember that part of the recent work was done on non-Linux platforms support (okay, probably mainly macOS, but, still ).

It's *probably* not a "native looking" filechooser, though (as it already isn't on Linux).

[dmapr]

@semwize, tried the updated built-in Russian keyboard and have to say I much prefer the patch version. Why Kobo felt the backspace was not needed is beyond me (and not like there wasn't space for it).

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by dmapr

Why Kobo felt the backspace was not needed is beyond me

Here I agree Place for it is, but Kobo not finished.

But in comparison with what was previously, the progress is significant, so you can do without the patch-a matter of taste and habit.

[dmapr]

Originally Posted by Semwize

Here I agree Place for it is, but Kobo not finished.

But in comparison with what was previously, the progress is significant, so you can do without the patch-a matter of taste and habit.

True, especially if you get the proper Avenir font loaded before using it

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by dmapr

Kobo has updated Amasis & Malabar

And when did they update? Initially supported, as I recall.

Compared 2 firmware (4.18.13737 and 3.19.5761): Amasis/Malabar has the same weight. Kobo forget about fonts...

[jackie_w]

@Vetchy,

I think you now have everything you need, yes?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Semwize

Jackie, cannot find where changes font the right side of the footer and the header Apparently it's not mine.

I spent some more time looking, without success I'm not quite ready to give up completely yet but I think you would be better off solving it by:

• Find the better 'Avenir Next' files which support Cyrillic, or use a font editor to do the rename trick to 'Avenir Next' on a copy of one of your good Cyrillic sideloaded fonts. If FontForge is too much, try TTFEdit as suggested by dmapr in post #74. I tried it myself last night and it worked fine for simple internal renaming.
• Disable any patch you created based on any patch posted in this thread.
• If you have new patch "Custom new header/footer font" enabled, don't use Part1 to customise Avenir to something else. Leave it at Avenir or comment out the line.

I tried all this myself and it seems to work fine (once you've done the stuff in post #2 following any full re-boot).

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I spent some more time looking, without success I'm not quite ready to give up completely yet but I think you would be better off solving it by:

• Find the better 'Avenir Next' files which support Cyrillic, or use a font editor to do the rename trick to 'Avenir Next' on a copy of one of your good Cyrillic sideloaded fonts. If FontForge is too much, try TTFEdit as suggested by dmapr in post #74. I tried it myself last night and it worked fine for simple internal renaming.

I did this a long time ago, because I could not find where to change the right side of the footer.

Jackie, maybe it’s worth adding a footer adjustment to the patch so that the long title of the chapter or book fits in (without reduction)?

Spoiler:

        - Find:    "ReadingFooter[qApp_deviceIsDragon=true] {\n  qproperty-footerMargin: 170;\n}"
          Replace: "ReadingFooter[qApp_deviceIsDragon=true] {\n  qproperty-footerMargin: 90;\n}"

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Semwize

Jackie, maybe it’s worth adding a footer adjustment to the patch so that the long title of the chapter or book fits in (without reduction)?

Spoiler:

        - Find:    "ReadingFooter[qApp_deviceIsDragon=true] {\n  qproperty-footerMargin: 170;\n}"
          Replace: "ReadingFooter[qApp_deviceIsDragon=true] {\n  qproperty-footerMargin: 90;\n}"

For years I've never known what that code was supposed to do. Changing it never seemed to have any effect in many firmwares prior to 4.16.x.

What do you think your suggestion would do, wrap the text to 2 lines? Did you try it and did it work? What happens if someone has also used "Reduce new header/footer height" to reduce height by a lot?

I really don't want to do anymore research at the moment. I just want to leave the patches alone for a while. I need to do some leisure reading of my own.

If another user posts a request in one of the kobopatch threads, feel free to discuss your experiments with them. I'll definitely read it and if some success comes out of it then, of course, I'll look at enhancing the patch for future release.

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Did you try it and did it work? What happens if someone has also used "Reduce new header/footer height" to reduce height by a lot?

Yes, no longer trimming the long title of the chapter and book in footer and header (Clara HD). Used "Reduce new header/footer height".

[dmapr]

Originally Posted by Semwize

And when did they update? Initially supported, as I recall.

Compared 2 firmware (4.18.13737 and 3.19.5761): Amasis/Malabar has the same weight. Kobo forget about fonts...

No idea. I have started side-loading Amasis & Malabar in the days of 2.x and have never looked at them again until now

tar ztvf kobo-update-2.5.0/KoboRoot.tgz | grep Amasis
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    72688 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    77888 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    76016 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    75616 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-BoldItalic.ttf

tar ztvf kobo-update-2.5.0/KoboRoot.tgz | grep Malabar
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    53648 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    53296 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    64512 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root    62400 Apr 13  2013 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-Bold.ttf

tar ztvf kobo-update-4.17.13694/KoboRoot.tgz | grep Amasis
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   308800 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   314144 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   256224 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   249440 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Amasis.ttf

tar ztvf kobo-update-4.17.13694/KoboRoot.tgz | grep Malabar
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   144048 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   160160 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   167312 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar.ttf
-rw-r--r--  0 root   root   154800 Sep 19 08:29 ./usr/local/Trolltech/QtEmbedded-4.6.2-arm/lib/fonts/Malabar-Italic.ttf

[Semwize]

In firmware 2.10.0 (2013 yr). Someone managed to get Kobo support to do it.

Actually, you are right, updating Avenir would be the best option, it is necessary to write to support. Put it into the fonts directory-not the best option, as the font is not recognized immediately.

Let's write, and somebody else must be added to increase the number of asking for it.

[dmapr]

@Semwize, thanks for tracking it down. Off to look for the right support link

ETA: feedback submitted on https://www.kobo.com/feedback

[rtiangha]

Wow, looking through the Nook fonts, it looks like Gill Sans from firmware 1.2 (Simple Touch) and Georgia from firmware 1.3 (Glowlight) might be superior to the Kobo versions as well. Just look at the file sizes (since the Kobo fonts are encrypted, it's hard to get a glyph count).

Kobo fonts:

$ ls -l
total 948
-rwxr-xr-x 1  55696 Sep 30 08:36 Avenir.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  56544 Sep 30 08:36 Avenir-Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  50560 Sep 30 08:36 Avenir-BoldItalic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  50688 Sep 30 08:36 Avenir-Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 135744 Sep 30 08:36 georgia.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 137744 Sep 30 08:36 georgiab.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 124368 Sep 30 08:36 georgiai.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 123504 Sep 30 08:36 georgiaz.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  56032 Sep 30 08:36 GillSans.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  54288 Sep 30 08:36 GillSans-Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  48336 Sep 30 08:36 GillSans-BoldItalic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1  49856 Sep 30 08:36 GillSans-Italic.ttf

Nook fonts:

$ ls -l
total 2264
-rwxr-xr-x 1 225696 Oct 13  2010 AvenirNext.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 208248 Oct 13  2010 AvenirNext-Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 163572 Oct 13  2010 AvenirNext-BoldItalic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 162388 Oct 13  2010 AvenirNext-Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 289400 Oct 13  2010 Georgia.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 297976 Oct 13  2010 Georgia-Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 231876 Oct 13  2010 Georgia-BoldItalic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 230100 Oct 13  2010 Georgia-Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 128332 Oct 13  2010 GillSans.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 125708 Oct 13  2010 GillSans-Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 117036 Oct 13  2010 GillSans-BoldItalic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 116248 Oct 13  2010 GillSans-Italic.ttf

I wonder if shadow-loading the Nook's version of Georgia (or even the Windows 10 version; the Win 10 version is newer than the Nook's by about 4 years, but the Nook version has slightly more glyphs and data for one more ligature than Win 10's) would help display missing glyphs in the main GUI once you open a book as well (Don't bother trying to flash them to the system partition; they don't render in the GUI at all unless you have a version on your onboard memory and only after you load a book; so it implies that Kobo's encrypted version is the only one allowed on the system partition)?

And if we're talking shadow loading fonts, you could probably do the same for OpenDyslexic too; the newer versions have way more glyphs than what's preloaded on the Kobo as well.

[jackie_w]

The fonts included in the Nook firmware do appear to be "better" than those in the Kobo firmware, but they don't look big enough to be a stellar improvement.

If a user is going to put the effort into loading "shadow versions" of Georgia and 'Avenir Next' then I think they would get better results by choosing the best 2 fonts (serif and sans-serif) they can find (legally) for their particular language and using one of the font editors mentioned in this thread to do the internal renaming to Georgia and 'Avenir Next' before sideloading to the /fonts directory. After a full power-off there's still the problem of needing to force the Kobo to reload all its sideloaded fonts but that seems like a minor inconvenience compared to the benefits gained.