Kobo Hebrew Support

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by carmelra

Thanks DNSB. I must admit I didn't really followed all you have done with the original file but the results look just great!
I wonder if there is a way to trigger the Kobo's EPUB3 renderer on the original file.

You can try renaming it to .kepub.epub rather than .epub. This triggers using the Kobo renderer which supports quite a few ePub3 features including the text direction and hebrew directives. There are some issues with doing this such as cover image settings. Most of them are covered in various threads in this forum.

The other change I made were removing the fonts and placing them in the fonts directory on my Kobo so they would be available without needing to place them in every ebook. This also made them available for the TOC, book title display, etc.

Regards,
David

[baggins]

The real question is where do you find Hebrew epub books.
There's only one online store that I know of that sells Hebrew epubs, and they have a meagre selection.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by baggins

The real question is where do you find Hebrew epub books.
There's only one online store that I know of that sells Hebrew epubs, and they have a meagre selection.

Going by the advertisement at the bottom of his message:

Hebrew eBooks at Mendele HeBooks
http://www.mendele.co.il

I can't for some strange reason read most of the contents of the site but it does look as if they are selling Hebrew ebooks -- the little shopping cart is a pretty good hint.

Regards,
David

[baggins]

Indeed, that's the one online store with the meagre selection I was talking about.

[Haelu]

Hi, I am trying to get arabic text on my Kobo Touch. After reading this thread, I tried inserting -
direction:rtl;unicode-bidi:embed; into the stylesheet for p. I also changed the filename to .kepub.epub, but it isn't working. the letters still appear left-right. I am new to sigil, but really want this to work. Can anyone help?

[Haelu]

Originally Posted by Haelu

Hi, I am trying to get arabic text on my Kobo Touch. After reading this thread, I tried inserting -
direction:rtl;unicode-bidi:embed; into the stylesheet for p. I also changed the filename to .kepub.epub, but it isn't working. the letters still appear left-right. I am new to sigil, but really want this to work. Can anyone help?

Also I tried the hebrew file and that has the same problem for me. ltr text. Is this possible on the Kobo Touch, or are you guys viewing on something else?

[DomesticExtremis]

You will definitely need to use .kepub.epub - simple epubs do not respect the direction.

The direction: rtl; css property seems to work for me, but I also set the xml:lang="ar" attribute for the
page. you also need to have a decent arabic supporting font on your reader (e.g. one of the PakType ones).

Try downloading my Epub feature peeker - that has some arabic pages in it.
A lot depends on what your e-reader settings are with respect to fonts.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Haelu

Hi, I am trying to get arabic text on my Kobo Touch. After reading this thread, I tried inserting -
direction:rtl;unicode-bidi:embed; into the stylesheet for p. I also changed the filename to .kepub.epub, but it isn't working. the letters still appear left-right. I am new to sigil, but really want this to work. Can anyone help?

I've attached an ePub3 test file from Azardi which has a couple of right to left languages in it. I added the Arial Unicode MS font from my Windows computer to the Kobo's fonts directory to be able to display a couple of the languages -- locate the font file in the Windows fonts directory, copy it to a fonts directory in the root of the Kobo's internal drive and rename it to Arial Unicode MS.ttf, power cycle your Kobo and then select it as the document font). Don't forget to power cycle your Kobo after adding the font file.

You can take a look at the styles in this file to see how they made it work.

Regards,
David

[Haelu]

scrap that last comment! It does indeed work. Calibre was converting the file back to normal epub lol, so i had to change it directly

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Haelu

scrap that last comment! It does indeed work. Calibre was converting the file back to normal epub lol, so i had to change it directly

Ahh... done in by the computer overlords!

[Haelu]

Oh, I hit another problem. It only seems to work if the text is without vowel markers. As I am a beginner in arabic, I need these markers to read it. Unfortunately when they are added, they appear on the Kobo offset to the left by one character

[Haelu]

ok this seems to be a font issue. each arabic font seems to have a different issue displaying full arabic properly

[fxp33]

Originally Posted by Haelu

Oh, I hit another problem. It only seems to work if the text is without vowel markers. As I am a beginner in arabic, I need these markers to read it. Unfortunately when they are added, they appear on the Kobo offset to the left by one character

Great that you found a solution.

Still, can you send us a sample of your file and the name of the different font you tried ? It will be interesting to build a tester ebook.


François

[Irina U.]

Hi

So I uploaded some arabic epubs and arabic fonts to my Kobo Glo, but they weren't used by the device - the text was displayed in squares. So then I added to the epub's file name the kepub extension and now the document only shows me the cover - nothing more, as if the document has only one page. Any ideas on how to solve this? My firmware is 3.1.0

[Irina U.]

I re-opened the files and everything is working fine! I just need to find now a good Ar-En dictionary. Any help would be much appreciated