Glo Cyrillic letters

elvenic · 10-17-2012, 05:01 PM

I can see cyrillic letters (russian book) only using Georgia, Gothic MB101 and Ryumin font. And only Georgia font shows cyrillic text normally, Gothic and Ruymin show cyrillic text as if there is a long space between letter even within a word, it is impossible to read comfortably. All other fonts show a small rectangles, sometimes with question marks in them, instead of cyrillic letters. (The book itself is a side-loaded epub)

Does it mean that Kobo Glo does not support cyrillic texts fully? I also have Kindle Touch, which uses Caesilia font (as far as I understand), there Cyrillic texts are shown normally. But on Glo, when I select the same Caesilia font, I only see rectangles with question marks instead of cyrillic letters.

PeterT · 10-17-2012, 05:53 PM

Kobo do not include all characters in all fonts

DNSB · 10-18-2012, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elvenic

I can see cyrillic letters (russian book) only using Georgia, Gothic MB101 and Ryumin font. And only Georgia font shows cyrillic text normally, Gothic and Ruymin show cyrillic text as if there is a long space between letter even within a word, it is impossible to read comfortably. All other fonts show a small rectangles, sometimes with question marks in them, instead of cyrillic letters. (The book itself is a side-loaded epub)

Does it mean that Kobo Glo does not support cyrillic texts fully? I also have Kindle Touch, which uses Caesilia font (as far as I understand), there Cyrillic texts are shown normally. But on Glo, when I select the same Caesilia font, I only see rectangles with question marks instead of cyrillic letters.

You might want to try adding another font to your Kobo that supports the Cyrillic character set. AFAIK, the Charis SIL set does and JSWolf's modified version looks good the Kobo's screen. The Charis web page shows Cyrillic U+0400..U+045F, U+0462..U+0463, U+0472..U+0475, U+048A..U+04FF and
Cyrillic Supplementary U+0500..U+0525 as supported character sets.

I've attached a .zip file of JSWolf's font files to this message. Create a directory called fonts in the root of the Kobo's internal drive and unzip the file into it. You should then be able to select the font on the drop down.
Note that the directory name is case sensitive.

P.S. Please let me know how this works for you since I don't have any books with a Cyrillic character set to test.

Regards,
David

Glasofruix · 10-18-2012, 04:30 AM

Try the default font if everything elese fails

elvenic · 10-18-2012, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

P.S. Please let me know how this works for you since I don't have any books with a Cyrillic character set to test.

Regards,
David

David,

Yes, Charis SIL that you attached works perfectly for cyrillic letters. It's looks similar to Georgia, but with letters more black and less space between the lines (I think these characteristics can be tuned for Georgia as it has 'Advanced' control that allows to alter weight, etc.)

Thank you for the font, but I'm still little bit disappointed that most of the standard fonts present in the device do not support cyrillic letters. Maybe Kobo people who read this forum can influence adding better support for non-latin scripts in future firmware updates?

DNSB · 10-23-2012, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elvenic

David,

Yes, Charis SIL that you attached works perfectly for cyrillic letters. It's looks similar to Georgia, but with letters more black and less space between the lines (I think these characteristics can be tuned for Georgia as it has 'Advanced' control that allows to alter weight, etc.)

Thank you for the font, but I'm still little bit disappointed that most of the standard fonts present in the device do not support cyrillic letters. Maybe Kobo people who read this forum can influence adding better support for non-latin scripts in future firmware updates?

Good to hear that it worked for you. One issue with font support is the size of the fonts when you start supporting large character sets -- the Charis SIL font takes about 6.8MB compared to 280KB for the average built-in Kobo font. The other is simply that Kobo does not, as yet, support Cyrillic and likely won't until they start selling in areas where the Cyrillic alphabet is in common use much as they added the Ryumin font to support Japan.

Regards,
David

abcjoubin · 12-03-2012, 02:35 AM

Hi everyone,

* I just purchased a Kobo Glo which doesn't seem to display Cyrillic letters properly.
Kobo Help Team confirmed to me they don't officially support Russian alphabet (they will confirm to me in a later email).

-> do you have any idea if Kobo plan to add it to their current languages for the device?

* My Kobo Glo is shipped with 2.12 (auto-update to 2.15) firmware.
I read on some Kobo Touch forums that any version below/before 2.00 did support Cyrillic letters.

-> any idea whether I can somehow downgrade the Glo to 1.9x firmware?

* Finally, elvenic, how did you manage to display the Cyrillic alphabet on your device?
Changing fonts from Calibre software, the original RTF document or from the Glo device does not seem to make a difference?...

Many thanks for your help!

Br

HarryT · 12-03-2012, 03:04 AM

Have you added the "Charis SIL" font to your Kobo, as suggested in the earlier posts in this thread?

jackie_w · 12-03-2012, 10:41 AM

As far as I can tell the built-in Georgia font also supports Cyrillic. However, it's also possible that some of your epubs have font-family explicitly set internally to something else which will prevent the Kobo change-font option from working correctly.

abcjoubin · 12-03-2012, 04:55 PM

Many thanks for your quick responses! Always great to feel supported^^

Yes, I tried to copy the content of the zip into a fonts folder following those instructions, but no, it didn't seem to be working any better with an RTF file, for instance (same with the default Georgia font).

I ended up converting my original Word doc into a PDF with a font size big enough to fit the Kobo Glo reader (no need to zoom).

This was simple enough to display the Russian alphabet.
Not too much hassle for the conversion (no need of any external software such as Calibre, as Word 2010 can now save docs into PDF).

Have a nice end of day & thanks again.

elvenic · 12-07-2012, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abcjoubin

Hi everyone,

* Finally, elvenic, how did you manage to display the Cyrillic alphabet on your device?
Changing fonts from Calibre software, the original RTF document or from the Glo device does not seem to make a difference?

The Georgia font that is present in Kobo, supports Cyrillic letters - so I could read russian books even before I add Charis SIL font. Other fonts that are on Kobo by default either do not have Cyrillic letters at all, or show the text with cyrillic letters with huge spaces surrounding every letter making the text hard to read.

But, as jackie_w already pointed, some ebooks (and I personally have seen this with Kindle books purchased from Amazon) could have font-family hardcoded which could prevent font switching. And as I see you are trying to read a MS Word .doc file, MS Word really does hardcode into the document font-family in a very nasty way, by adding a style with hardcoded font name to every paragraph of the text, overriding your font selection (see a thread that I started in KIndle forum, about hardcoded fonts in Kindle books - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=196475)

So yes, you can convert a book to PDF with embedded font to your liking, but that would probably disable flexibility you have with epub books - such as prevent changing font size while reading. You can try to convert your doc file with Calibre into epub, instructing Calibre to remove any hardcoded font information from the book - see my thread I linked above for instructions how to do this - then you should be able to select Georgia font and see cyrillic letters.

Also, as far as I know, recent versions of Calibre have an option to embed a font into generated epub file during conversion - not just a font-family name as MS Word does, but a font itself - all font data that specifies how to render letters on a screen. If you want to embed fonts into your ebooks, you can try that too, and have a epub files with all flexibility you do not have with pdf.

abcjoubin · 12-08-2012, 10:31 AM

Many many thanks for the clarification, elvenic! Your useful advice goes to the bottom of the issue, compared to Kobo's Official Support team who only answered "we don't support this language on this device" (in other words, ofc).

I won't have time to test your Calibre advice today, but will give it a try later on.
Have a great day.

10-17-2012, 05:01 PM	#1
elvenic Enthusiast Posts: 31 Karma: 16610 Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: San Jose, CA, USA Device: Kindle PW, Kobo Glo	Cyrillic letters I can see cyrillic letters (russian book) only using Georgia, Gothic MB101 and Ryumin font. And only Georgia font shows cyrillic text normally, Gothic and Ruymin show cyrillic text as if there is a long space between letter even within a word, it is impossible to read comfortably. All other fonts show a small rectangles, sometimes with question marks in them, instead of cyrillic letters. (The book itself is a side-loaded epub) Does it mean that Kobo Glo does not support cyrillic texts fully? I also have Kindle Touch, which uses Caesilia font (as far as I understand), there Cyrillic texts are shown normally. But on Glo, when I select the same Caesilia font, I only see rectangles with question marks instead of cyrillic letters.

12-03-2012, 02:35 AM	#7
abcjoubin Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kobo Glo	Kobo Glo doesn't seem to display Cyrillic letters Hi everyone, * I just purchased a Kobo Glo which doesn't seem to display Cyrillic letters properly. Kobo Help Team confirmed to me they don't officially support Russian alphabet (they will confirm to me in a later email). -> do you have any idea if Kobo plan to add it to their current languages for the device? * My Kobo Glo is shipped with 2.12 (auto-update to 2.15) firmware. I read on some Kobo Touch forums that any version below/before 2.00 did support Cyrillic letters. -> any idea whether I can somehow downgrade the Glo to 1.9x firmware? * Finally, elvenic, how did you manage to display the Cyrillic alphabet on your device? Changing fonts from Calibre software, the original RTF document or from the Glo device does not seem to make a difference?... Many thanks for your help! Br

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10-17-2012, 05:53 PM	#2
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,167 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	Kobo do not include all characters in all fonts

10-18-2012, 04:30 AM	#4
Glasofruix Enthusiast Posts: 25 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	Try the default font if everything elese fails

12-03-2012, 03:04 AM	#8
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Have you added the "Charis SIL" font to your Kobo, as suggested in the earlier posts in this thread?

12-03-2012, 10:41 AM	#9
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,212 Karma: 16534894 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: Kobo: KA1, ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E. PocketBook: TouchHD3	As far as I can tell the built-in Georgia font also supports Cyrillic. However, it's also possible that some of your epubs have font-family explicitly set internally to something else which will prevent the Kobo change-font option from working correctly.

12-03-2012, 04:55 PM	#10
abcjoubin Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kobo Glo	Many thanks for your quick responses! Always great to feel supported^^ Yes, I tried to copy the content of the zip into a fonts folder following those instructions, but no, it didn't seem to be working any better with an RTF file, for instance (same with the default Georgia font). I ended up converting my original Word doc into a PDF with a font size big enough to fit the Kobo Glo reader (no need to zoom). This was simple enough to display the Russian alphabet. Not too much hassle for the conversion (no need of any external software such as Calibre, as Word 2010 can now save docs into PDF). Have a nice end of day & thanks again.

12-08-2012, 10:31 AM	#12
abcjoubin Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kobo Glo	Many many thanks for the clarification, elvenic! Your useful advice goes to the bottom of the issue, compared to Kobo's Official Support team who only answered "we don't support this language on this device" (in other words, ofc). I won't have time to test your Calibre advice today, but will give it a try later on. Have a great day.

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