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KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

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Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#51

Post by lazyeye »

theshrike79 wrote: post #38
BeetleB wrote: post #35

For people on Kobo: Koreader handles standard epub way better than the native reader. If you've ever tried reading an epub using Kobo that you didn't buy from the Kobo store, you may have noticed that highlighting text is very laggy. Koreader has no such lag.

This can also be fixed by converting books to KEPUB with Calibre, it'll also (for some reason) make page turns faster.

I find it easier to do this using kepubify in a script

https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#52

Post by Ciantic »

I use KOReader with Koobo Clara BW (300 ppi screen), it's great.

I still have to remove a lot of CSS from most books before uploading, but after that, it is very good, as you can fine-tune every aspect and have every book look similar. Which, in my opinion, is necessary because e-ink readers still don't have enough resolution to use all the fancy fonts authors may have thought. Also, the ability to set margins to the same is very important to me.

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#53

Post by II2II »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #11

I wonder if load times have improved. I had this on my Kobo Libra 2, and it took it easily 5 minutes or more to open an admittedly large epub file. Changing the font size also incurred a huge penalty as it reflowed the entire document. Conversely, the built-in software never struggled with that file.

I ended up getting a faster Kobo! Thankfully, the slow load is a one time thing, per book. Depending upon when you tried it, KOReader has switched to a progressive model of updating it's caching (with most of it being handled in the background) when modifying a book's formatting.

That said, I think this may be mostly based upon a book's formatting. Messing around with upload options in Calibre may help. (For example, Calibre recently added an option to speed up load times with Kobo's reader software.)

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#54

Post by freeAgent »

lazyeye wrote: post #51
theshrike79 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can also be fixed by converting books to KEPUB with Calibre, it'll also (for some reason) make page turns faster.

I find it easier to do this using kepubify in a script https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/

I believe Calibre (very) recently added a feature to make conversion to kepub automatic when transferring to a Kobo, so things may have changed on the ease of use front.

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#55

Post by Mossy9 »

When I was figuring out what reader to put in my ancient android 5 tablet (dedicated for offline ebooks) I tried KO, but the UI was way too complex. I've since been happy with Librera, but seeing all this high praise, it seems that I need to revisit KO.

Nice to see there are multiple open source readers going strong!

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#56

Post by jwrallie »

OuterVale wrote: post #24

Absolutely love KOReader. I use it on my Kindle 3 and have moved my parents and brother over to using it on their Kindles as well. You can even install it on relatively new models thanks to the recent WinterBreak gaolbreak. There was some discussion about it on HN not long ago: All Kindles can now be jailbroken | 1377 points by lumerina | 2025/02/17 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073969 I found KOReader's A…

Same experience on a PaperWhite 2, been using it for a long time.

It is a good reason to look into rooting, PDF reflow and the function to remove margins make it possible (at least tolerable) to read PDFs when an .epub / .mobi is not available.

You can also run Alpine Linux on a rooted Kindle with graphical interface, I found it amazing but ultimately not that useful with the limited system memory.

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#59

Post by Agraillo »

boznz wrote: post #4

Pretty keen to try one day, a quick question for anyone who has installed it is what does it do to the battery life of the device its installed on? is it the same, better or worse and by how much?

With eInk screens it's an interesting story. Because when your page is shown, there is no need for CPU at all for keeping it, so in an ideal world for such devices every page flip is a micro-cycle of waking up from the deep sleep, doing a job and going back to sleep. With such a lifecycle it's even better to measure the battery life not in hours but in page flips. When KOReader supports going to the deep sleep between flips then the difference between it and the bundled software should be small. But if for some reason there's no going to DS between flips, the battery life will drop significantly and back to time units per charge.

Re: KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader

#60

Post by no_time »

Very impressive how the almost the entire application is written in lua(JIT). Particularly impressive how it is fast enough to do CPU blitting/blending[0]

I wonder why is lua so rarely utilized like this on its own. Such a neat language.

[0]: https://github.com/koreader/koreader-base/blob/master/ffi/bl...

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