Nice hack by some Chinese programmer!

[Lbooker]

Bigger pictures here:
http://www.cdnl.org.cn/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=372
Longer discussion there:
http://bbs.baizhan.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=69604
There too it seems:
http://bbs.baizhan.com.cn/viewthread...able&tid=69045

Could anyone help me understand how they did it? Could we format some books that way, for example to make some bilingual editions of Shakespeare, and read them in CoolReader?
Is it just a hack to add the Microsoft Chinese Yahei font:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_YaHei
That is what I gather from the Savethefile link in one of the discussions. And from the google translation page, I understood that they indeed added that Chinese font and hacked the fb2 reader to get that nice result.
I have to try the fb2 format to see if I can get english texts to print over two columns.

[Gudy]

Originally Posted by Lbooker

Could anyone help me understand how they did it? Could we format some books that way, for example to make some bilingual editions of Shakespeare, and read them in CoolReader?
Is it just a hack to add the Microsoft Chinese Yahei font:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_YaHei
That is what I gather from the Savethefile link in one of the discussions. And from the google translation page, I understood that they indeed added that Chinese font and hacked the fb2 reader to get that nice result.
I have to try the fb2 format to see if I can get english texts to print over two columns.

As far as I know, the V3 can already display Chinese characters, and the newest version of CoolReader has an option for a two-column display in horizontal display mode. So all they probably needed to do is to hack the firmware to use the newest CoolReader for displaying fb2 files.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong, though. :-)

[Lbooker]

Thank you for the explanation!
I am impatient to have that in the next firmware!

[keng2000]

You can do that with LBOOK firmware.
use option 8 setting -> 8 Lanascape pages = two -> 5 Page Orientation = 90 or 270

[Lbooker]

Thank you! I just tried with a .rtf Mark Twain novel from manybooks.net: it works! I had seen that option but never tried it.The version of CoolReader is 3.0.19 in this April Lbook firmware.
But it was more impressive in Chinese! It seems their hack consisted in putting a new very clear Chinese font in a Lbook firmware, nothing more.
I expected there was a way to make a whole book in two separate columns, for example the left one a Shakespeare play in English, the right one the translation in another language, or a simplified english version.
I will have to try that with a software to create an ebook. And not a pdf!