Touch I've bought my Kobo, now some setup questions please

[MacEachaidh]

Hi all,
Thanks to helpful advice and info I've read on these threads, I bought my new Kobo Touch today. It's just finished charging, and is ready to be set up.

I have a few quick(ish) questions please, that I couldn't find answers to on this site, or in the online help on the device or the user guides I downloaded from Kobo. I'd be grateful for any help:

1) I've downloaded the Kobo Desktop setup file. I notice that it requires an active Kobo account. Am I correct in thinking that the desktop is really just to give wireless access to the Kobo bookstore and the Rewards system? I intend to use my PC to acquire books (and not just from Kobo), and sideload them onto the device. If I don't set up the desktop and initialise the Kobo with it, will my ereader still function? I realise I will probably get nags asking me to set up the device, but on the other hand hopefully I won't get "recommendations" cluttering up my library menu. Or am I missing something?

2) My device came with firmware 1.9.14 pre-installed. Is the desktop the only way I can upgrade the firmware? (I'm assuming 1.9.16 is a recommended upgrade? Some people seem to have issues with it.)

3) I don't use Calibre to manage my library, and I haven't explored ADE in terms of using it to sync files to a device. I was expecting just to use Windows Explorer. If I create a "books" folder on the device, will the Kobo find the files? Or do they really have to all sit in the root directory of the OS? I haven't seen file location mentioned anywhere.

Thanks for any advice.

[alexul]

3. I also put my boks in folders, based on authors' names so it should see them. I haven't tried nesting folders in folders though.

2. You can update through wi-fi too, but I think you need to register it. I also used the desktop program only one time, just to activate it and then unistalled it.

[d.culloch]

Just what Alex says you will need to register it to get updated.
Plus if you do buy books from kobo to manage the books correctly in your kobo account you need the desktop software.

I have no hassle from the software and in my opinion its better to have than not.
I am new to kobo moving from Sony readers, so have not used the kobo without the new upgrade so could not make a comparison but it works just fine and I have had no problems with reader and prefer the wider screen size than the Sony prs t1 which was my other choice.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by d.culloch

Plus if you do buy books from kobo to manage the books correctly in your kobo account you need the desktop software.

You can actually manage the books on the Kobo website; head to "My Library" and then, (and I kmnow it sounds crazy) delete the books!

They will stay in the trash bin and can be recovered from there.

If you don't do that, whenever the Touch connects wirelessly it will download the Kobo format of the books (kepub).

You DO need he desktop though to do the initial setup of the ujit. Yes... there are some people who have "hacked" the SQL database on the kobo to add in fake registration info.. not sure I would recomend that.

Also, if you want to extend the warranty on the reader, I *think* that has to be done via the desktop.

[GoingDown]

If you want to skip the registration, you can use process described in this post:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=262

You will manually need to put fake registration information to the Kobo internal user database (no big deal though, if you mess it up, you can always reset it to factory defaults)

And, btw latest firmware is now 1.9.16

[MacEachaidh]

Thanks for the replies.

I went ahead and installed the desktop and used it to initialise my Touch. I was cautious, not having seen the software, in case it made settings I didn't want (like tying my library to my Kobo account) that I then wouldn't know how (or be able) to reverse. I have a vibrant dislike of intransigent AIs, ever since Microsoft started trying to get them right, only to have them prove more of a hindrance than a help.

Anyway, it's up and running, with the firmware updated, and I've experimented a little, and discovered a couple of things.

Regarding folders: yes, it supports more than one level. I created a folder at the root level that I named books, and then within that I created various subfolders named for authors, and put the books within the relevant subflder. The KT found them all and listed them in my library, so that's pleasing. I haven't tried going to a third level, such as grouping novels in a series separately from the stand-alone titles.

Sorting books: A bit problematic, isn't it? Not the KT's fault, it's just that standards and practices seem to vary on how epubs are coded. (I realise this isn't anything new to anyone else here. I'm detailing it in case anyone can offer advice.) Some unexpected results have occurred in how books are sorted - for books in a series, some of them appear simply under the individual title, and some appear prefixed with the name and volume of the series, which means it's not easy to find the books in a series in correct sequence. This is taken, I presume, from the metadata in the epub itself? Which means, I guess, that the books haven't been coded consistently. (Sigh. Publishers. They can't publish a full series of books without changing the covers on you, so I guess it's not surprising they wouldn't be consistent in their coding.) Anyway. Not meaning to whinge about this, but to ask: is there any way to get around this, or will it need the books to be edited to make them consistent?

[PeterT]

If you want an easy means of managing books and series, don't load things manually, but make use of calbre. Create a plugboard that massages the title of books to include the series name (or a short version there of) and the index number of the book.

For instance, I have the following plugboard:

format: ePub
Device: Kobo
Template: {series:re(([^\s])[^\s]+(\s|$),\1)}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}
Destination field: title

Calibre ensures that books end up in a folder based on the author's name, and the, if the book has any series info present, adds (in my example) an abbreviated version of the series name, followed by the book number in the series, and finally the title.

For instance:

THGttG - 01 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
THGttG - 02 - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

and for a normal book

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.

[MacEachaidh]

Thanks for the info, Peter. No criticism of it implied, but I don't personally like the way Calibre restructures and manages your file storage. I understand why it does it - well, a basic understanding, anyway - but I still don't care for it.

Meantime, I've discovered the metadata editor in Sigil, and have confirmed that the metadata is what the KT is reading in the files to construct the Library menu, so it's easy enough to fix - though of course it means DRM has to go out the window. (I don't have any qualms about that; I don't distribute files, so I figure I'm still abiding by at least the principle of DRM.)

I've discovered a peculiarity in the KT's database, though. I tried amending the metadata in a few errant files and replacing the copies already on the KT with the updated ones, but even though the KT recognised the files had changed and went through the "updating content" process when I disconnected it, the subsequent menu still used the cached info of the previous copies of the files. I'm sure there's a database file I could have deleted that would force the KT to rebuild it with new data, but I wasn't sure which one that would be. (I suspect it would be the KoboReader.sqlite file in the kobo directory, but I hesitated at simply removing any of the OS files.)

The only way I found to force the menu to update was to remove the book files, then the USB connection, let the system rebuild the menu without those books, then reconnect it, copy the new files on and let it rebuild the menu again.

A bit of a shortcoming in the menuing system, I think. And yes, I'm using the latest firmware (.16).

Anyway, now I know I need to check metadata on book files before I copy them onto the KT.

[PeterT]

Mac; remember that nothing prevents you from keeping copies of books outside of the Calibre library in addition to within Calibre. Remember all the data within the Calibre library is in effect a black-box; it's a database implemented using a file system; if it was a massive database storing the eBooks as BLOBs you would probably be far more open to it. Just because it has been designed to currently store eBooks as recognizable files in a directory structure should not discourage you from using

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Meantime, I've discovered the metadata editor in Sigil, and have confirmed that the metadata is what the KT is reading in the files to construct the Library menu, so it's easy enough to fix - though of course it means DRM has to go out the window. (I don't have any qualms about that; I don't distribute files, so I figure I'm still abiding by at least the principle of DRM.)
I've discovered a peculiarity in the KT's database, though. I tried amending the metadata in a few errant files and replacing the copies already on the KT with the updated ones, but even though the KT recognised the files had changed and went through the "updating content" process when I disconnected it, the subsequent menu still used the cached info of the previous copies of the files. I'm sure there's a database file I could have deleted that would force the KT to rebuild it with new data, but I wasn't sure which one that would be. (I suspect it would be the KoboReader.sqlite file in the kobo directory, but I hesitated at simply removing any of the OS files.)

The only way I found to force the menu to update was to remove the book files, then the USB connection, let the system rebuild the menu without those books, then reconnect it, copy the new files on and let it rebuild the menu again.

A bit of a shortcoming in the menuing system, I think. And yes, I'm using the latest firmware (.16).

I found this problem recently as well. The way I found it was when I replaced a book that was still being written. The new version had extra chapters. When I opened the book on the KT, and it opened correctly at the last place I had viewed. And I could read the new chapters. But, when I opened the contents for the book, it only had the chapters up to the previous update. Looking at the database on the KT (KoboReader.sqlite), I could look at the contents table and see an entry for each book, plus an entry for each chapter in the book.

What I believe is happening, is that when a new book is added to the KT, it reads the metadata and adds it the databases. It also adds an entry for each chapter. But, replacing the book does not trigger this. As an experiment, I inserted rows into the database to add the new chapters. This worked fine. The chapters appeared in the contents and I could navigate to them. I'm not sure how safe this is, but it worked. Maybe someone will write a plugin for Calibre to automate it. I might try it but I'm not sure when I will have time.

[PeterT]

Why not just delete the book; let the Touch process it and then re-add? Seems far safer to me!

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Why not just delete the book; let the Touch process it and then re-add? Seems far safer to me!

Ermmm ... Peter, that's what I did.