Special characters: does this work for you?

[tsyrak]

Hi,

I hope this post is going to help other book creators in the future.

I'm in the process of publishing a Kindle book for my girlfriend. The book is about foreign languages and uses two types of special characters:
- The Russian Cyrillic alphabet
- The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

I could not find specific information on how those alphabets are supported on the many different Kindle devices available. So, I created my own basic test file in HTML format and converted it to MOBI using Calibre. I then tested it using Kindle Previewer or a real Kindle device whenever possible.

What I figured out is that the IPA is poorly supported in the default font. HOWEVER, if I set the font to Courier New, which is an alternative default font on most Kindle devices, then the IPA characters are rendered just fine.

So far, I know that my test file renders:

OK on Kindle Fire (kindle previewer)
OK on Kindle Paperwhite (real device)
OK on iPhone (real device)
OK on Kindle for PC
WRONG on "Kindle DX" (kindle previewer)

"Kindle DX", however, does not mean much as there's been FOUR generations of Kindle before the Kindle Paperwhite.

I'm a bit alone on this one and cannot go and buy each model of Kindle out there.

My question is this: can some of you help me test the file? Just open it on your Kindle, see if it works and then tell us all here which model of Kindle you are using (model + version.)

Please click here and download the test file:
MOBIformat

Click here to see what it should look like: HTML version.

Thank you.