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Old 07-23-2011, 03:31 AM   #1
levil
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Fonts question (special characters in stock and custom fonts)

Dear Kobo Touch Users

I am new here but hope to become a regular member as I am likely becoming a Kobo Touch user soon.

The day they became available in Borders stores I tried one and it had flaws that were deal breakers at the time. But I see there have been improvements to the firmware that dealt with some of the problems I had (margins and line spacing in ebooks) and might have dealt with others. Namely, two non-standard characters in the Hungarian language that were not showing up. I also see here that loading your own fonts is possible. Maybe that could solve my problem if the new firmware didn't.

Hungarian has two characters that are not in the standard ASCII keyset. These are o and u with two long forward leaning accents above them (like this: / / ). This was not an issue with epubs using some fonts (though not all)
on Nook Touch, Nook Color, Kindle 3 (after converting with Calibre). I was pretty shocked to see ?-s in the text on the Kobo Touch that actually advertise itself as a more international reader. I used this freely available book for testing all the listed devices:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/...65-images.epub

The 9th word in the body of the first chapter is idő (ido with the accents on the o). Came up as id? on the Kobo Touch (using the firmware that it used when the first ones arrived at Borders stores). A couple paragraphs later the word szegfűk (szegfuk with the accents being on the u) came up as szegf?k. This word is followed by szorosan in case you need to search for something near by without accents.

Would someone check and see if this issue is fixed? I know that on one of the competitors only some fonts worked, others didn't. So please check with all fonts if you check. Let me know how it goes. If it all fails, can someone savvy enough to add custom fonts see if they can fix the issue with the custom fonts?

I would greatly appreciate the help. The next paycheck is coming soon and I am almost ready to buy. This is the last issue I still have but I am fairly certain that, if nothing else, custom fonts can solve this.

I'd really appreciate the input.
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Old 07-23-2011, 10:34 AM   #2
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The default fonts won't do it, but Gentium Plus and Charis SIL from sil.org both worked fine for me.

See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...13&postcount=3 for details.
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Old 07-23-2011, 12:54 PM   #3
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Quote:
The 9th word in the body of the first chapter is idő (ido with the accents on the o). Came up as id? on the Kobo Touch (using the firmware that it used when the first ones arrived at Borders stores). A couple paragraphs later the word szegfűk (szegfuk with the accents being on the u) came up as szegf?k.
Two of the built-in fonts show these characters correctly - Georgia and Rockwell

ETA: For these two fonts, however, for unknown reasons there is a ? before the first word of the chapter. i.e ?Délután

Quote:
This word is followed by szorosan in case you need to search for something near by without accents.
You should be aware that the Touch does not yet have the ability to do a within book search.

Last edited by Joe563; 07-23-2011 at 01:40 PM.
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Old 09-02-2011, 11:08 AM   #4
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Hi Joe563,
Does your Kobo Original displays the two fonts properly? Because mine doesn't.
I found out the two fonts on the Kobo Original are Georgia and Avenir as posted here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99291.
What would be a working solution for Kobo Original?
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Old 09-02-2011, 11:58 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zummano View Post
Hi Joe563,
Does your Kobo Original displays the two fonts properly? Because mine doesn't.
I found out the two fonts on the Kobo Original are Georgia and Avenir as posted here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99291.
What would be a working solution for Kobo Original?
No, the Kobo Original does not display the Hungarian characters correctly. Unfortunately, there is no solution to this problem since fonts cannot be added to the Kobo Original.

If you own a smartphone or tablet you could experiment with ebook apps to see whether any of them display Hungarian characters. I sometimes use Aldiko for Android and have found that it displays the characters in the sample book correctly. For a desktop solution, Calibre displays the Hungarian characters correctly.
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Old 09-02-2011, 12:02 PM   #6
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Thanks for the answer. At least I'm not wasting my time.
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Old 09-02-2011, 12:25 PM   #7
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You could embed a font that has the needed characters.
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Old 09-10-2011, 12:38 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
You could embed a font that has the needed characters.
I've found an epub file that displays perfectly the two Hungarian characters on Kobo Original. I've attached it to this reply. The font embedded in it is a Gentium TTF located in the OPS folder but the structure of the epub looks much simplier to me that those created with Calibre. Any idea how this was built or what software was used?
Thanks
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File Type: epub Annak a világnak pusztulnia kell_Távoli magány.epub (626.9 KB, 428 views)
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Old 09-10-2011, 01:03 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zummano View Post
I've found an epub file that displays perfectly the two Hungarian characters on Kobo Original. I've attached it to this reply. The font embedded in it is a Gentium TTF located in the OPS folder but the structure of the epub looks much simplier to me that those created with Calibre. Any idea how this was built or what software was used?
Thanks
Since there was a discussion on embedded fonts recently, I decided to give it a shot a sideload this ebook to my KT. I can report that the special characters (i.e. o with double accents on it) are displayed correctly.
I suppose this only shows that the KT can handle some embedded fonts properly...
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Old 09-10-2011, 01:38 PM   #10
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What's your opinion on the structure of the file?
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Old 09-10-2011, 02:53 PM   #11
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I've taken the ePub attached previously to this thread and had a look at it. It did not have the font-family in the body style.

What I have done is I've moved the font-size and the font-family into the body style. So can somebody please test this version? I think the embedded font won't display and if that is the case, then it is 100% a Kobo bug that needs fixing.
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File Type: epub Annak a világnak pusztulnia kell_Távoli magány.epub (626.9 KB, 421 views)
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Old 09-10-2011, 04:04 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
I've taken the ePub attached previously to this thread and had a look at it. It did not have the font-family in the body style.

What I have done is I've moved the font-size and the font-family into the body style. So can somebody please test this version? I think the embedded font won't display and if that is the case, then it is 100% a Kobo bug that needs fixing.
I can confirm that this file does not display as good as the other one unless I manually apply the Charis SIL font (which I installed on my KT) to it, so you appear to be correct.

I'm not very well versed in HTML, so can you explain in more detail what you have done, and where? I have casually looked at both files and so the font-family directives and what seemed to be the same place, so I was actually surprised that it did not work (I thought you'd linked to the original file by mistake until I did a diff on the two files).
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Old 09-10-2011, 06:18 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
I've taken the ePub attached previously to this thread and had a look at it. It did not have the font-family in the body style.

What I have done is I've moved the font-size and the font-family into the body style. So can somebody please test this version? I think the embedded font won't display and if that is the case, then it is 100% a Kobo bug that needs fixing.
Tested the file on the Kobo Original and is not displaying correctly.
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Old 09-10-2011, 10:33 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by frankieGom View Post
I can confirm that this file does not display as good as the other one unless I manually apply the Charis SIL font (which I installed on my KT) to it, so you appear to be correct.

I'm not very well versed in HTML, so can you explain in more detail what you have done, and where? I have casually looked at both files and so the font-family directives and what seemed to be the same place, so I was actually surprised that it did not work (I thought you'd linked to the original file by mistake until I did a diff on the two files).
In the original, the font-family and font-size were in some other CSS style then body. I moved them to body for others to test. My conclusions are 100% correct. Kobo has a bug. They should recognize it and say they are working to fix it.

If you put font-family in body in the CSS, it won't display as you and Zummano have seen. This is a common way to turn on the embedded font used for the body. But it doesn't work because Kobo botched it. Kobo readers feel like they are still using alpha software. This issue was brought up before the Touch came out and yet Kobo still refuses to even acknowledge it.
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Old 09-11-2011, 08:53 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
In the original, the font-family and font-size were in some other CSS style then body. I moved them to body for others to test. My conclusions are 100% correct. Kobo has a bug. They should recognize it and say they are working to fix it.

If you put font-family in body in the CSS, it won't display as you and Zummano have seen. This is a common way to turn on the embedded font used for the body. But it doesn't work because Kobo botched it. Kobo readers feel like they are still using alpha software. This issue was brought up before the Touch came out and yet Kobo still refuses to even acknowledge it.
Has a proper bug report been filed? If yes, then there should be a way to check the bug's status.
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