Problem with Chinese news feeds on Kindle 3

[spaceniuzai]

Calibre is really fantastic. My gratitude to the developers for such a wonderful program.

I have some problem with news feeds in Chinese. I tried all the Chinese news receipts that comes with Calibre (version 0.7.23). The content of the news read fine but the lists of the news (the screen with the news titles and short summaries) are scrambled. The font is not displayed properly. I suspect this has something to do with the language coding and country settings. I tried several configurations but couldn’t get it work. I attached the news receipt from the built-in BBC Chinese. Any help will be highly appreciated.

BTW, I am using Kindle 3 (wifi) and I changed my locale to zh-CN as discussed in this thread (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99078).

Built-in BBC Chinese news receipt:

from calibre.web.feeds.news import BasicNewsRecipe
class AdvancedUserRecipe1277443634(BasicNewsRecipe):
title = u'BBC Chinese zh-CN'
oldest_article = 7
max_articles_per_feed = 100
feeds = [
(u'\u4e3b\u9875', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/index.xml'),
(u'\u56fd\u9645\u65b0\u95fb', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/world/index.xml'),
(u'\u4e24\u5cb8\u4e09\u5730', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/china/index.xml'),
(u'\u91d1\u878d\u8d22\u7ecf', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/business/index.xml'),
(u'\u7f51\u4e0a\u4e92\u52a8', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/interactive/index.xml'),
(u'\u97f3\u89c6\u56fe\u7247', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/multimedia/index.xml'),
(u'\u5206\u6790\u8bc4\u8bba', u'http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/indepth/index.xml')
]

extra_css = '''
@font-face {font-family: "DroidFont", serif, sans-serif; src: url(res:///system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf); }\n
body {margin-right: 8pt; font-family: 'DroidFont', serif;}\n
h1 {font-family: 'DroidFont', serif;}\n
.articledescription {font-family: 'DroidFont', serif;}
'''

__author__ = 'rty'
__version__ = '1.0'
language = 'zh-CN'
pubisher = 'British Broadcasting Corporation'
description = 'BBC news in Chinese'
category = 'News, Chinese'

remove_javascript = True
use_embedded_content = False
no_stylesheets = True
encoding = 'UTF-8'
conversion_options = {'linearize_tables':True}
masthead_url = 'http://wscdn.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/images/1024/brand.jpg'
keep_only_tags = [
dict(name='h1'),
dict(name='p', attrs={'class':['primary-topic','summary']}),
dict(name='div', attrs={'class':['bodytext','datestamp']}),
]

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by spaceniuzai

I have some problem with news feeds in Chinese. ...
BTW, I am using Kindle 3

Does the same problem appear when viewing the recipe in the Calibre viewer, or only on the K3?

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Does the same problem appear when viewing the recipe in the Calibre viewer, or only on the K3?

The problem only appears on the K3. The default mobi viewer on my computer (Windows Vista Home) is Amazon Kindle PC and they all look fine. I haven't checked it on Calibre viewer but I expect it should be fine too. Thanks.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by spaceniuzai

The problem only appears on the K3. The default mobi viewer on my computer (Windows Vista Home) is Amazon Kindle PC and they all look fine. I haven't checked it on Calibre viewer but I expect it should be fine too. Thanks.

This sounds like a Kindle problem, then.
Edit: I didn't mean for this to sound dismissive, but it appears that your Kindle is using different fonts for the content and the area where you are having problems. I'd start off by trying to find out if it's possible to display Chinese characters in the problem area. If not, there's no workaround and you'll have to get the fix from Amazon.

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by Starson17

This sounds like a Kindle problem, then.
Edit: I didn't mean for this to sound dismissive, but it appears that your Kindle is using different fonts for the content and the area where you are having problems. I'd start off by trying to find out if it's possible to display Chinese characters in the problem area. If not, there's no workaround and you'll have to get the fix from Amazon.

So, when Calibre fetches news feeds, it uses the same font/display/etc for both the summary page and the content page, right? If it is the case, then I agree with you the problem may be more likely to be on Kindle's side.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre encodes all content in MOBI files in the UTF-8 encoding, including the section lists. Apparently the kindle's section list font doesn't support east asian character sets. You should look into installing the unicode font hack for your Kindle.

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre encodes all content in MOBI files in the UTF-8 encoding, including the section lists. Apparently the kindle's section list font doesn't support east asian character sets. You should look into installing the unicode font hack for your Kindle.

Kovidgoyal: thank you for the wonderful program. Salute to you!

Thanks for the clarification. I did a quick google search for Kindle unicode font hack, but it seems there is no hack for K3 yet

Another minor question: when we need to set the encoding, is it correct to use "utf-8" or "uft8"? Or are they the same? Thanks.

[kovidgoyal]

they both work the same.

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

they both work the same.

Thanks. Appreciate the help.

[tylau0]

Update your Kindle firmware to 3.1 appears to fix most of those problems.

[sorin]

I updated my kindle using firmware 3.1 and i still have the problem with strange characters in Subscription Title.

For screenshoot with same newspaper on Kindle with firmware 3.0.3 see this thread .

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by tylau0

Update your Kindle firmware to 3.1 appears to fix most of those problems.

You are right! The new firmware does fix most of the display problems for newspaper in Chinese. Thanks for the heads-up!

[spaceniuzai]

Originally Posted by sorin

I updated my kindle using firmware 3.1 and i still have the problem with strange characters in Subscription Title.

For screenshoot with same newspaper on Kindle with firmware 3.0.3 see this thread .

Have you tried to change the locale of your kindle? I don't recognize the language you are using, but maybe you can give it a shot. Google";debugOn"

[sorin]

The title is wrong after is created with Calibre and it looks the same even in Mobipocket Reader so i don't think changing locale in Kindle will show the right characters.

[tylau0]

Just find that the same problem occurs if the periodical title is in Chinese. So I think it is the problem of the Kindle firmware. I would suggest you write to Amazon so they are aware of the issue.