PRS-T1 Non English glyphs (AKA characters)

[Ghitulescu]

Like with subtitles, it appears that diacritics (characters not in ASCII set) are vastly disregarded in the community.

SInce I bought the T3 I noticed a big difference between them in what non-English glyphs are concerned.

I got the T1 fonts and confirmed that these glyphs are there, and T1 can display correctly the title of the books that have these diacritics, yet the content is still wrongly displayed (ie with ? instead of the actual character). The T3 has no issue at all, the books converted with calibre are displayed (almost - I am a perfectionist) perfectly.

The only simple solution I was using so long was to add a custon font definition to CSS in calibre, to point to an existing font, like amasis. An ebook so converted looks ok on all ereaders I tested (those that do not have the required font, eg amasis, simply ignored that style). Unlike external fonts (on SD or internal flash memory) the existing fonts have preserved their path across PRS generations - at least this is what I found.

The question (yes, there is a question, too) would be if someone managed to use the internal fonts for non-English characters with no hacking at all (some settings on calibre, some settings in HTML, whatever). And yes, I have read severeal hundreds of threads and internet pages, but I might have overlooked some.

Thanks for attention and big thanks for any good answer

[Ghitulescu]

Cropped image from the T1's library.

Image size violates posting guidelines - MODERATOR]

and a portion of diacritics found in Dutch801 Rm BT (tt0011_.ttf), which is the default font for content.

Image size violates posting guidelines - MODERATOR]



My cellphone cannot do better than this sorry.

[Ghitulescu]

Well, 400 visitors and still no answers.

I believe that either nobody cares about diacritics or no solution exists.

It means that I'll keep my trusted font substitution solution.

[jackie_w]

If your main reading language is Eastern European then you should not be using the PRST1's default font, Dutch801 Rm BT (tt0011_.ttf), for reading content. You are absolutely correct - it is, and always was, completely useless as a default font. Have you tried picking one of the others, e.g. Amasis, from the on-device Select-a-font menu?

I don't have my PRST1 anymore but I think it was selected via Options (right-most) button - Font when inside a book.

[JSWolf]

Best solution is to embed a font that has the characters you need. Then you know it will display correctly.

[AlexBell]

Welcome to the forums, Ghitelescu.

Could I suggest that this is not a Sony specific problem? I think you would get more responses if you posted it in the ebook format>workshop forum.

As Jon has stated you will probably need to embed a font family which contains the diacritics you want to see displayed. I know nothing about fonts, and wonder how one would know which font family to use.

[Ghitulescu]

It is a Sony T1 issue, sorry to diverge.

As you could see, the title is correctly using the diacritics, while the content isn't.
And T3 can do. I don't have a T2, but I assume it works as T1.
Other (non Sony) eReaders I tried have not this issue.

But the point is not to embed fonts, neither to switch manually the fonts in the Options menu - both methods that were used with all non-English characters. I uses so far another method, the on-board fonts, which has both the advantage of size and portability.

The point is how to use the diacritics that exist in the default font?

Since the fonts of T1 have a reduced size compared to those of 505 (for instance) I assume several groups have been removed from their definitions. However, T1 to T3 have additional fonts added, including the SYNMinIWA-Th which is the default font (collection) used in the dictionaries, which also appears to contain the required diacritics.

[jackie_w]

As far as I know, the reason why the PRST3 doesn't have a problem with its default, i.e. 'Original', font is because Sony finally ditched the useless Dutch801 Rm BT (tt0011_.ttf) and made Amasis the default font. Whether this change started with the T2 or T3, I'm not sure. Dutch 801 was the default from the days of the PRS505 in 2009 (maybe before that) and was still in use on the PRST1.

I believe Dutch 801 only supported Western European chars - 377 glyphs - which is pretty low for an international device. Not only that but this basic font was used to 'fake' italics/bold rather than using proper italic/bold font files. Why Sony stuck with it for so long is anyone's guess, but it's why these MR Forums have always been full of ways to customise fonts on a Sony.

[Ghitulescu]

I've just checked, and it appears that indeed Amasis is the default font for T3 ...

But this doesn't solve the issue why T1 can display diacritics in titles (which are printed with Swis) but not in the content (which is printed with Dutch) if left without any font definitions - and I was able to see those diacritics in the fonts, as anyone can see in the figures.

This bugs me up - although the workaround/s is/are simple (or about ).

[jackie_w]

Swis721 BT (tt0003m_.ttf) was the old (equally useless, 377 glyphs) sans-serif default. Perhaps the T1 was only using that for content not the system user interface (Home, book lists etc). Maybe one of the better on-board sans-serif fonts (Universe, Frutiger, Verdana) was being used for system stuff. I also seem to remember that there were an awful lot of DroidSans fonts (e.g. Hebrew, Thai, FallBack) stored internally. These weren't present on the user Font Menu for content, so I suppose they must have been used for user interface.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I also seem to remember that there were an awful lot of DroidSans fonts (e.g. Hebrew, Thai, FallBack) stored internally. These weren't present on the user Font Menu for content, so I suppose they must have been used for user interface.

It appears to be an explanation. Thanks.

If this proves to be correct, then there is no hope that one could force the T1 to read diacritics, other than replacing the fonts (physically) or changing its internal code (hacking).

[ptea]

You can root your PRS T1 and use other reader software. See Link.