PRS-T1 PRS-T1 & Asian Fonts/Unicode

[komugi]

Now that PRS-T1 has Android as OS, does it support asian fonts on text files/epub files without embedding?

If anyone has PRS-T1, could you possibly test? I've included a text file with some unicode japanese.

Thanks

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/749647/Test.txt

[jackie_w]

I just drag-dropped your TXT file to my PRST1. I'm afraid all I see is a mainly blank page, except for 3 lines which contain a few dots and one line with 2 long dashes.

[komugi]

Aw, I wonder if I can replace the font once I get it rooted. Since Android should support unicode.

[jackie_w]

English epubs with embedded fonts work OK on the T1, but I'm afraid I have no experience with Japanese fonts to try it.

[komugi]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

English epubs with embedded fonts work OK on the T1, but I'm afraid I have no experience with Japanese fonts to try it.

True, I wouldn't mind it if it was for myself, but this is for parents. So probably not a good idea to ask them to fiddle w/ PC/font embedding to read documents. I'll probably look into finding a Japanese version of the PRS-T1

[tomsem]

The solution is to embed fonts in the ePub. That will work on any Adobe RMSDK powered system and most others as well.

Another solution is to create PDFs that are laid out for T1's screen. You'd then be able to use tategaki (vertical) text layout, which is not supported by ePub2.

[sebasdoes]

It works fine in the browser of the T1. I am also very interested in this, but haven't had time to test it properly yet. Is this Aozora Bunko format? I hope that after rooting I can use a program to format them properly as well. I'll post again after trying some more, I don't know when I will have time though.

Edit: As reported, it doesn't work in the normal book reading application. Weird that it works in the browser though. SJIS displays garbage and UTF8 is empty.

[vietchovui]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

English epubs with embedded fonts work OK on the T1, but I'm afraid I have no experience with Japanese fonts to try it.

I received my new PRS T1 today. But unfortunately, it doesn't display correctly Vietnamese characters, both in epub files and web browser. I've tried to embedded gentium font in epub file using calibre as I used to do with my PRS 600, but it still doesn't work. Please help me!

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by vietchovui

I received my new PRS T1 today. But unfortunately, it doesn't display correctly Vietnamese characters, both in epub files and web browser. I've tried to embedded gentium font in epub file using calibre as I used to do with my PRS 600, but it still doesn't work. Please help me!

Are you sure you have fully embedded the actual fonts (.ttf or .otf files) inside the epub? The PRST1 needs the fonts to be fully embedded. The old method which worked on previous models, where you could store the fonts on the reader and use Calibre to add the necessary css @font-faces, doesn't work on the T1.

I have no experience with any Asian language fonts, but if you want to attach a sample epub with embedded fonts (no copyright material, please) which works on your PRS600 but not on your PRST1, I could have a closer look.

[vietchovui]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Are you sure you have fully embedded the actual fonts (.ttf or .otf files) inside the epub? The PRST1 needs the fonts to be fully embedded. The old method which worked on previous models, where you could store the fonts on the reader and use Calibre to add the necessary css @font-faces, doesn't work on the T1.

I have no experience with any Asian language fonts, but if you want to attach a sample epub with embedded fonts (no copyright material, please) which works on your PRS600 but not on your PRST1, I could have a closer look.

Attached is a sample file (zip format) that I can read easily on PRS 650 but not on PRS T1. Please have a look at it. I really appreciate your help.
Besides, I don't know exactly what you mean by "fully embedded". I'll do some google search to find it out. Thanks again.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by vietchovui

Besides, I don't know exactly what you mean by "fully embedded". I'll do some google search to find it out. Thanks again.

This post tries to explain 3 different methods of customising epub fonts.

Fully embedded fonts are described in Method 1 in the post. This is is only way (so far) which works on the PRST1. I have attached a fully embedded version of your test epub below. It reads fine on my PRST1.

What you have in your test epub is an example of Method 3 in the post. All 3 methods work in older Sony models PRS505, PRS300/600 and PRSx50.

Calibre does not currently have a simple way of automatically fully embedding epub fonts. You can use the Calibre Tweak Epub feature to do it manually. How easy you will find it depends on how comfortable you are manually tweaking epubs. The following is not the 'One True Way' but it works. These are the steps:

1. Use Tweak Epub to explode the epub.
2. Find the directory containing the .css file and create a new subdir called fonts copy the 4 GentiumBook .ttf font files into this new subdir.
3. Open the .css file in your favourite text editor and add 4 @font-face statements. These will be similar, but not the same, as the ones you used to put in Calibre's ExtraCSS box.
   Old:
   

   @font-face {
       font-family: "Gentium Book";
       font-weight: normal;
       font-style: normal;
       src: url(res:///Data/fonts/GenBkBasR.ttf)
       }

   New:
   

   @font-face {
       font-family: serif;
       font-weight: normal;
       font-style: normal;
       src: url(fonts/GenBkBasR.ttf)
       }

   Do the same for the other 3 @font-face statements.
   Anywhere in the .css file where you have
   

   font-family: "Gentium Book", serif;

   can either be replaced with
   

   font-family: serif;

   or removed altogether if you prefer, because serif is the default font used by your reader.
4. Edit the .opf file in the exploded epub and manually add the 4 font files to the <manifest> section. In theory, this step is necessary if you want to make sure you have a compliant epub. In practice, I think not doing it makes no difference to whether the epub will read correctly on your PRST1. Make your own mind up This is an example of the 4 lines I added in your test epub:
   

   <manifest>
       ... lots of file paths ...
       <item href="fonts/GenBkBasR.ttf" id="serifr" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>
       <item href="fonts/GenBkBasI.ttf" id="serifi" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>
       <item href="fonts/GenBkBasB.ttf" id="serifb" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>
       <item href="fonts/GenBkBasBI.ttf" id="serifbi" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>
   </manifest>

   If you do add them, the href attribute needs to be the path of the .ttf file relative to the .opf file inside the epub. If this sounds like technical gobbledegook... well I'm not sure how else to explain it
5. Save and close all edited files and Rebuild the epub using the Rebuild button.

Caveats:

• It is not a good idea to do a Calibre conversion on an epub after you have fully embedded fonts. Sometimes the fonts no longer work afterwards.
• If you try to fully embed fonts in an epub where you have previously added @font-face statements during a Calibre conversion using the ExtraCSS box then the fonts may not work on the reader. The conversion process will have placed all the @font-faces in each and every (x)html file inside the epub rather than in the .css file. These may well override the ones you just manually added to the .css file. If you have this problem, manually removing the @font-faces from the html files should correct the problem.
• I don't use it myself, but it's possible that Sigil makes it easier to do all of the above.

[vietchovui]

thank you very much jackie_w. I can now read Vietnamese with my T1. Maybe I'm exigent, but the way to fully embedded fonts as you mentioned a bove is quite complicated, and I hope that I could simply embed fonts using calibre on a single click!

[dmiller]

Thanks for the instructions jackie_w.

Unfortunately, I can't them to work in my slightly different scenario: I am trying to embed fonts in the sblgnt-v1.2.epub online here (http://katadrew.com/files/sblgnt/) so as to get polytonic Greek displaying on my Sony PRS-T1. Instead of GenBK I used GenR102 and GenI102, but followed the other directions as closely as possible. The Greek text displays in Calibre, but not as Gentium. It is still gibberish on the PRS-T1.

Thanks for any assistance!

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by dmiller

Thanks for the instructions jackie_w.

Unfortunately, I can't them to work in my slightly different scenario: I am trying to embed fonts in the sblgnt-v1.2.epub online here (http://katadrew.com/files/sblgnt/) so as to get polytonic Greek displaying on my Sony PRS-T1. Instead of GenBK I used GenR102 and GenI102, but followed the other directions as closely as possible. The Greek text displays in Calibre, but not as Gentium. It is still gibberish on the PRS-T1.

If by 'gibberish' you mean that many characters are replaced by '?' on the PRST1 then perhaps the font you are using does not contain all the necessary characters. Did you try GentiumPlus 1.508 downloadable from this page?

I tried it and it looked reasonable to me (however as I don't read Greek I'm not the best judge ). There are only 2 font files (Regular and Italic, no Bold or BoldItalic) so you'll need to adjust the css @font-face statements accordingly by pointing Bold to the Regular .ttf and BoldItalic to the Italic .ttf:

@font-face {
    font-family: serif;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
    src: url(fonts/GentiumPlus-R.ttf)
    }
@font-face {
    font-family: serif;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: italic;
    src: url(fonts/GentiumPlus-I.ttf)
    }
@font-face {
    font-family: serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: normal;
    src: url(fonts/GentiumPlus-R.ttf)
    }
@font-face {
    font-family: serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic;
    src: url(fonts/GentiumPlus-I.ttf)
    }

I copied the font files to directory Styles/fonts and added these 2 lines to the manifest section of content.opf

<item href="Styles/fonts/GentiumPlus-R.ttf" id="serifr" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>
<item href="Styles/fonts/GentiumPlus-I.ttf" id="serifi" media-type="application/x-truetype-font"/>

If you want Bold and BoldItalic to display correctly you will need to find a font family with all 4 variants and with all the necessary characters included.

[dmiller]

That worked. (I suspect the problem may have been that I didn't include all 4 font face statements.) Anyway, thanks very much Jackie!

Next task: Creating a decent table of contents.