Probably a Kobo bug.

[eXistenZ]

Hi there, I'm a really happy kobo Glo user, and an ebook creator for work.
I think I found a little bug in how the kobo software manage the text in epubs and hope some one can confirm (hope also that some kobo developer can read this).

The problem appears when in the ebook there is a very large paragraph, if at the used font size and line spacing the paragraph is so big to need more than one and half screen, pagination go crazy leaving half blank pages as software cannot break the paragraph on more than two parts, as obvious this apppens less reducing the font size. This appened in 2.1.5 firmware and also in the new 2.3.1.

First of all I thought of a bad code in epub, mostly because the error is rare, but I checked and understood that is rare because so long paragraphs are.

In the attached epub the code is really reduced to exential to exclude errors in the file, and the breaks appear also in a so simple file, I tried also different ebook reader and the Glo is the only one breaking the page.
I attach also a couple of photos of the glo, obviously it is the reader breaking the text in the epub there is no page break.



Can anyone confirm this?
Wrote also to help@kobobooks.com hoping it can be fixed.

[IxiaAurea]

Sorry off-topic :S but what case is that? It looks good!

[eXistenZ]

Sorry! it's hand made by me, but to be honest there's no much to see from those photos

[JD Gumby]

Yeah, Kobo devices handle widows/orphans (the splitting that happens to prevent having only a line or two of a paragraph be at the end of a page) very badly. It's been this way for over a year and a half (which is how long I've had my Touch - May '11) and only happens in books bought from Kobo (doesn't seem to bother trying to split on sideloads).

Until Kobo decides to fix it (fat chance of that ever happening), the only thing you can do is reduce the font's size so that you have to hold the device up to your face in order to read. :/ Or strip off the DRM, find the variable controlling the feature, and then set it to 0...

[eXistenZ]

In fact my first test was to set in css widows anc orphans to 0, but seems that kobo ignores it, it is so in the TEST epub.

p
{
margin:0pt;
text-indent:2em;
text-align: justify;
font-size: 1.00em;
widows: 0;
orphans: 0;
}

What exactly do you change in the epub file? using a micro font is not an option, I'm half blind yet.

By the way to me appens also on sideloaded ebooks.

[Corkobo]

I can confirm that it does appear on sideloaded epubs.

It is a bit annoying but I got used to it and does not bother me all that much.

[eXistenZ]

I agree, it's not annoying in the majority of cases, it's a 2-3 line jump, but sometimes, when the paragraph is just a bit longer happens as in my screenhots, just the first line of the phrase, then more than half screen empty and the rest in the next screen.

Also consider that it should happen more often in "longer" languages like Italian, german, dutch, than in english.

[treadlightly]

I find it really annoying. I re-convert all books from ePub to ePub in Calibre with both widows and orphans set to 0 and I don't have the problem anymore.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Yeah, Kobo devices handle widows/orphans (the splitting that happens to prevent having only a line or two of a paragraph be at the end of a page) very badly. It's been this way for over a year and a half (which is how long I've had my Touch - May '11) and only happens in books bought from Kobo (doesn't seem to bother trying to split on sideloads).

Until Kobo decides to fix it (fat chance of that ever happening), the only thing you can do is reduce the font's size so that you have to hold the device up to your face in order to read. :/ Or strip off the DRM, find the variable controlling the feature, and then set it to 0...

I have to disagree with this. The Kobo devices handle widows and orphans exactly as specified. If the values are set in the book, they are used. If they aren't set, a default of 3 is used. The default they use might be the only issue. The CSS standards seem to say 2 is the default.

Edit: I'll leave this here, but read my post further down.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by eXistenZ

In fact my first test was to set in css widows anc orphans to 0, but seems that kobo ignores it, it is so in the TEST epub.


What exactly do you change in the epub file? using a micro font is not an option, I'm half blind yet.

By the way to me appens also on sideloaded ebooks.

It would be more usual to set the widows/orphans attributes in the body class in the css file, rather than the p class.

If you're creating your epubs in calibre, a simple

body {widows: 0; orphans: 0}

in the box Convert - Look&Feel - ExtraCSS should do the trick.

[ewphoenix123]

Thx, that's another little annoyance solved.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by eXistenZ

In fact my first test was to set in css widows anc orphans to 0, but seems that kobo ignores it, it is so in the TEST epub.


What exactly do you change in the epub file? using a micro font is not an option, I'm half blind yet.

By the way to me appens also on sideloaded ebooks.

When I fiirst loaded your test book, I didn't see the problem you are seeing. The first page looked exactly what I expected. But, while looking at another book, I had fiddled with the margin and line spacing settings and then reopened your book. With both of these about the middle of the sliders, it the first page is wrong. With both at the lowest setting, the first page is correct. This is on my Touch. The Glo is similar, but the two settings need to be a bit bigger to cause this. I didn't fiddle with the font size while doing this.

I also edited the file to remove the widows. That had basically the same behaviour.

There is a problem as paragraph 7. For all settings, this starts on a new page. About the only thing I can see is that this is the only paragraph that is more than a screen long with the font size I am using and the minimum margin and line spacing. When I used the minimum font size, there were no problems. Making the font very big, caused a lot more problems.

Trying jackie_w's suggestion about the putting the widows in the body rather than the paragraph helped, but doesn't completely fix it.

I think that if a paragraph will fit on one screen with the font/margin/line spacing settings, the widow and orphan settings work correctly. When the paragraph is longer than this, things go wrong.

[AlPe]

I also second the observation of eXistenZ (I wrote to Kobo staff some time ago about the same problem).

Reproducing the issue is tricky, because it is due to a combination of EPUB file and reading settings (font face, font size, margins, line spacing).

Also, after upgrading to 2.3.1, I started having "nearly-empty" screens, that is, more than half of the screen is empty, even tough there is more than enough text left to fill the screen. This strange behaviour occurs when the next <p> is so long that it does not fit entirely into the current screen (so, it should be "split" between the current screen and the next one). The current behavior of my Kobo Glo is to leave several blank space (up to 15 lines) in the current screen, and make the next <p> start at the next screen.

I will try to post a screenshot later today.

[greens]

In the italian forum were I usually write there is a guy who is going to sell his Kobo Glo because he really do not like this bug. This is not a good advertising for people at all, but it's true, the source (in italian): http://forum.simplicissimus.it/kobo/...-dedicata/870/
post #881
I really hope Kobo team will fix this bug very soon if this is the result! :P

he says that he also wrote to the kobo team and they answer was this (I try to translate, sorry my english is not very good.... eheheh):

<<They replied that "We're sorry that you have problems with the fonts (but who the hell has spoken of fonts) you can reset it and if it does not go, contact us."

However, since it does not seems easy to solve this problem and the way it is now I'm not using it, I think I'll sell it.>>

[tartanpion]

Originally Posted by AlPe

I also second the observation of eXistenZ (I wrote to Kobo staff some time ago about the same problem).

Reproducing the issue is tricky, because it is due to a combination of EPUB file and reading settings (font face, font size, margins, line spacing).

A good exemple of "free" CC-BY french epub with many long paragraphs : http://www.freres-humains.eu/#/telecharger-le-roman

The issue appears sometimes every 2/3 pages ! It's unreadable.

It's probably an issue with adobe RMSDK because the bug is also in aldiko 2.2.3 (old ADE ?) but not in mantano reader.