Arabic and zooming PDF's

[Hedaya]

I will however try all of those fonts. There's got to be an answer. I just need to find it....and I know so many other people looking for a solution. This would be huge (like seriously huge!)

[Billi]

As I've said before, I'm not an expert in Arabic. The attachment shows how it looks on my reader (Pocketbook 902, firmware 2.04 still) and I hope this is the way it should look.

[Hedaya]

Sorry, I appreciate the screen shot though b/c now I know I don't have to rush out to get a 902 (which the big screen is nice, but I'm in for portability). Yours is doing the same thing: the letters aren't joined. It's a quirk in Arabic. They have to be joined.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hedaya

Sorry, I appreciate the screen shot though b/c now I know I don't have to rush out to get a 902 (which the big screen is nice, but I'm in for portability). Yours is doing the same thing: the letters aren't joined. It's a quirk in Arabic. They have to be joined.

I don't have any specific information regarding Pocketbooks, but in your situation, I'd suggest rooting your Nook Simple Touch and installing an alternative reader from the Android Market.
Most likely one of the free Webkit-based ebook readers will work.
(Both Sigil and Calibre use Webkit-based rendering engines, however, many eBook readers use some ADE implementation, which either doesn't support Arabic at all or is limited to Unicode characters without diacritics.)

[Hedaya]

Yeah, I tried that route. And Doppelganger tried to give me good directions from it, but I couldn't understand the directions well enough to implement, and then risk bricking it. :S

I wonder if there is a way to install a webkit-based ebook reader without rooting it on pocketbook, b/c it has an FB reader, an adobe reader, a PDF reader, and other apps??

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hedaya

I wonder if there is a way to install a webkit-based ebook reader without rooting it on pocketbook, b/c it has an FB reader, an adobe reader, a PDF reader, and other apps??

Possibly, but there doesn't seem to be an active PB homebrew scene.

One more stupid idea: why don't you open your ePubs with Sigil and globally replace, all vowel signs, case markers, shadda and sukuun with nothing?

You might have to look up some ambiguous words every now and then, but at least you could read the book.

And while you're at it, click the green checkmark in Sigil to make sure that the ePubs are valid. (Most free ones that I've seen so far aren't, which might cause conversion problems later on.)

[Hedaya]

Yes, I'm not sure why, but maybe b/c there is a smaller pool of users to begin with?? I had never even heard of pocketbook until very recently.

Ok, not a bad question, and certainly one in my desperation I've toyed with, but well, some of these books are actually collections in the realm of 9000 or plus pages long. and besides, if I had the time to do all that (b/c you have to go letter by letter), I can just read the book on my pc and bag making it work altogether.

Sigil, is that another open source epub editor? I've been going off of whether or not it reads in calibre....

[paola]

Hedaya, I've tried but failed: yet I cannot understand what the problem is, since when the diacritical signs are missing the letters are joined up no problem (with FBreader - the other readers do not seem to work at all). So I wonder whether it could be a font problem. Do you know what fonts you are using on your laptop (I also can see the file with no issues in calibre)?

[Hedaya]

Every file I had. I tried them all. I even tried regular Times Roman. I agree, I still believe that it's a font issue somehow, but I have tried and failed to narrow it down. I have even tried contacting the maker of the epub to ask them what font they used. :S

[paola]

I'm sorry, I do not know what to suggest - I am also interested as I am a (very) beginner in arabic, so it would be nice to have epub working on the PB. But yes, at the moment it seems that the only option is to get rid of the signs in sigil. It could be a firmware issue, though, have you been in touch with the person who sold you the device?

[Hedaya]

I have however, a rather bizarre work around for most of the files, although calibre failed me for some, and I had to "double leap" for others. Converting the epubs to PDFs (with size 50 font so I don't have to worry about it being too small) worked for some. Some were too large, so I had to hop from epub to rtf to pdf (don't know why), and then that worked, some epubs have no vowel marks, but were I guess to large, causing the reader to freeze, so converting them to fb2 fixed that, and last but not least, my largest files are simply not going to work at the moment.

It's a real pain, but I'm mostly functional, and mostly I like this better than the nook I tried and the sony I tried, and I'm just not going to try to root my device when I'm not comfortable enough with the instructions. all I'll do is exhaust myself and overload the forum with frantic posts..... =)

[Hedaya]

Yes, I have contacted the person I bought it from (who responds more efficiently than the developer) and also the developer directly. I sent the file to the developer and they sent it off to their engineers. If I get my own "little" miracle :-), maybe they'll come out with a firmware update.

But so far, this is better than everything else. For my scans, I even like the way it zooms the pdfs better (although I know many prefer sony or even kindle - yuck - for that).

[PD321]

I see this

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hedaya

Sigil, is that another open source epub editor? I've been going off of whether or not it reads in calibre....

Sigil is a indeed a Open Source ePub editor unlike Calibre, which is primarily a management and conversion tool. Both use the Webkit rendering engine, which supports Arabic.

The neat thing about Sigil is that it supports regular expressions (placeholders).
For example, if you open your ePub with it, you could use the following search expression in the Find box:

[َ|ً|ِ|ٍ|ُ|ٌ|ّ|ْ|ٰ]

to find and replace all diacritics in the ePub. (It looks kind of weird because of the BBS software, but you can simply copy and paste it into Sigil.)

(Select Mode: Regex, Look: All HTML Files and then hit the Replace All button.) Depending on the file size and your hardware this might take a while.

@PD321
This display may look like Arabic, but it's not, because the letters are disjointed.

[paola]

Originally Posted by PD321

I see this

that is even worse, as not only letters are disjoint, but they go backwards (should go right to left)