Character display error in epub with the German version of Pocketbook 301

[Galina]

I oredered a new Pocketbook 301+ officially sold on the German market, and found out that these ones have the Adobe epub reading software implemented. It's official firmware 14.2.
The result is that when opening an epub book there is no way to change fonts, coding, justification, a.s.o.
It opens very fast but foreign language text is missing the diacritic characters, making such books unreadable.

What the hell is happening? How can one read foreign language books, such as Polish, Romanian and other languages.

galina

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Galina

What the hell is happening?

Well, most probably you have not read the documentation and you do not pay attention to what is written on the screen.

Go to the main menu.
Go to the library.
Move to cursor to the desired book and HOLD OK button (just like it is written at the bottom of the screen in small letters.
Select Open With from the menu
Select FBReader.
This only works if the epub file is not protected by DRM. If it is protected then you are stuck with Adobe application or you can attempt to remove DRM

Now you can select font.

Please read the text on the screen of the device.
Please read the manual.
All this info plus much, much more in in our PocketBook forum.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=206
and here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=212

PocketBook was programmed by Ukrainians. So it DOES support foreign languages.

[wallcraft]

The capability to switch to FBReader is unique to PocketBook, but it has made them lazy about improving their implementation of Adobe Digital Editions. The best implementation of mobile ADE for ePubs is on the Bookeen devices, which do allow control of fonts and other styles via menus. Note that, even if they don't want to add bells and whistles to Adobe ePub support, there is nothing stopping PocketBook from using a better font than the one provided by Adobe as its default ePub font. In addition many other implementations of mobile ADE allow other fonts on the device to be used without embedding them in the ePub. In most cases this requires updating the CSS in each individual ePub (not possible with DRMed ePubs), but there is a hack for the Sony Readers that allows for a generic user-provided CSS override that works for all ePubs.

I suggested PocketBook improve their ePub capability a couple of months ago, but I don't think they even understood what I was talking about, see Newcomer. They obviously don't have to take my suggestions, and overall they have good firmware, but Bookeen is already way ahead on Adobe ePub support and Onyx looks like a serious competitor for the "best with FBReader" crown.

[Galina]

Originally Posted by kacir

Well, most probably you have not read the documentation and you do not pay attention to what is written on the screen.

Go to the main menu.
Go to the library.
Move to cursor to the desired book and HOLD OK button (just like it is written at the bottom of the screen in small letters.
Select Open With from the menu
Select FBReader.
This only works if the epub file is not protected by DRM. If it is protected then you are stuck with Adobe application or you can attempt to remove DRM

Now you can select font.

Please read the text on the screen of the device.
Please read the manual.
All this info plus much, much more in in our PocketBook forum.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=206
and here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=212

PocketBook was programmed by Ukrainians. So it DOES support foreign languages.

Thank you for the information.
Since I already own a Pocketbook 301 imported some time ago from Ukraina, there was no need for me to read any instructions at all, and the bottom line text is awfully small to read with glasses.
However, it works, indeed, and I also found a trick to setup fbreader as default, particularly useful when restarting the reader in the middle of a book.

By the way: Do you happen to know how to adjust dictionaries to display characters correctly (several special characters are replaced by a square, as you may know).
galina

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Galina

However, it works, indeed, and I also found a trick to setup fbreader as default, particularly useful when restarting the reader in the middle of a book.

When you open the the book in a program, the PocketBook remembers that information, so the next time it opens the same file in the program you have selected automatically.

Originally Posted by Galina

By the way: Do you happen to know how to adjust dictionaries to display characters correctly (several special characters are replaced by a square, as you may know).

Somebody has asked the same question before and if I remember correctly it was submitted as a bug. PocketBook 302 already has a new firmware with numerous improvements (like support for CSS in epub in FBReader (or was it Adobe Reader?)) and we were promised version of that firmware also for 301 and 360

What dictionary does not display correctly?
I would try to download Gentium font or Droid fonts that support extremely wide selection of languages and set the interface font tor PocketBook to use those fonts to see if those fonts are used in dictionary as well.
If that does not help, there is always the possibility to replace default fonts that are in the device memory. You could use the Linuc terminal - a third party program to see where system fonts are installed.

[Galina]

Originally Posted by kacir

When you open the the book in a program, the PocketBook remembers that information, so the next time it opens the same file in the program you have selected automatically.

Somebody has asked the same question before and if I remember correctly it was submitted as a bug. PocketBook 302 already has a new firmware with numerous improvements (like support for CSS in epub in FBReader (or was it Adobe Reader?)) and we were promised version of that firmware also for 301 and 360

What dictionary does not display correctly?
I would try to download Gentium font or Droid fonts that support extremely wide selection of languages and set the interface font tor PocketBook to use those fonts to see if those fonts are used in dictionary as well.
If that does not help, there is always the possibility to replace default fonts that are in the device memory. You could use the Linuc terminal - a third party program to see where system fonts are installed.

Thank you very much for your detailed answer.
As regards dictionaries, I guess it is a system font and not one used for reading books. All dictionaries I converted with converter.exe have this problem: Longman, Webster Unabridged. You may take a look for yourself in the download section of www.pocketbook.de where some of the dictionaries are offered for free download. It seems like the problem is known to pocketbook, and maybe there is a chance to have a new converter soon to avoid this misconversion and also another bug preventing from converting larger documents (such as "gcide").