non-ASCII characters show up as question marks on my Reader (from FAQ)

Candoumi · 04-07-2011, 12:59 AM

Hello, I saw this question in the FAQ:

> Why do some of my non-ASCII characters appear correctly in Sigil, but show up as question marks on my Reader or in Adobe Digital Editions?

At least for Chinese, a simple xml:lang="zh-CN" (for simplified Chinese) or xml:lang="zh-TW" (for traditional Chinese) declaration in the <html> element makes characters show properly in my e-ink reader (a newly bought iRiver Cover Story).

i.e.: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xml:lang="zh-TW">

Without the lang declaration, I only get question marks (for example with epub from Gutenberg.org).

I assume it may work for other languages too.

I have yet to find the trick for mixing languages in the same document (<span xml:lang="xx-XX"></span> in the text does not work for me).

theducks · 04-07-2011, 10:26 AM

Do the alternate fonts exist on your i-river?
Not all devices have a full complement of fonts built in.
The font support for the language you noted had to be added as a Firmware supplement for my device.

Or you could try and embed the fonts into the book.

I suggest asking character set support questions in the i-river group

Candoumi · 04-07-2011, 08:44 PM

Thanks.

Maybe I was not clear enough: CJK works on the iRiver (out of the box and without any issue for any utf-8 encoded *.txt files), but it works on epub only with a proper "xml:lang" declaration.

I was merely giving a simple solution to people who have -- as I did have -- problems with epub that work fine in Sigil, Calibre, FBreader, etc. but show only question marks in their e-ink reader (a problem from Adobe, if I understand well).

04-07-2011, 12:59 AM	#1
Candoumi Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: iRiver Cover Story	non-ASCII characters show up as question marks on my Reader (from FAQ) Hello, I saw this question in the FAQ: > Why do some of my non-ASCII characters appear correctly in Sigil, but show up as question marks on my Reader or in Adobe Digital Editions? At least for Chinese, a simple xml:lang="zh-CN" (for simplified Chinese) or xml:lang="zh-TW" (for traditional Chinese) declaration in the <html> element makes characters show properly in my e-ink reader (a newly bought iRiver Cover Story). i.e.: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xml:lang="zh-TW"> Without the lang declaration, I only get question marks (for example with epub from Gutenberg.org). I assume it may work for other languages too. I have yet to find the trick for mixing languages in the same document (<span xml:lang="xx-XX"></span> in the text does not work for me).

04-07-2011, 08:44 PM	#3
Candoumi Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: iRiver Cover Story	Thanks. Maybe I was not clear enough: CJK works on the iRiver (out of the box and without any issue for any utf-8 encoded .txt files), but it works on epub only with a proper "xml:lang" declaration. I was merely giving a simple solution to people who have -- as I did have -- problems with epub that work fine in Sigil, Calibre, FBreader, etc. but show only question marks in their e-ink reader (a problem from Adobe, if I understand well). Last edited by Candoumi; 04-07-2011 at 08:46 PM.*

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04-07-2011, 10:26 AM	#2
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,754 Karma: 54401244 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Do the alternate fonts exist on your i-river? Not all devices have a full complement of fonts built in. The font support for the language you noted had to be added as a Firmware supplement for my device. Or you could try and embed the fonts into the book. I suggest asking character set support questions in the i-river group