Burmese Font embed problem

[khin99]

Burmese scripts descend from Indian Brahmi scripts. The Burmese vowel e is used to modify the consonant and is placed in front of the consonant. In the Unicode charts, Myanmar (Burmese) fonts are shown from 1000 to 109F.

The problem is in the vowel e uni1031 and the dependent consonant sign 103C which is also typed after the consonant but appears in front of consonant.

All these appear correctly in Word but misplaced when converted to epub. I have checked this in Sigil as well as in ADE and calibre.

The attached two screenshots screenshot(2) and screenshot(3), screenshot(2) shows the correct fonts displayed in Word and the screenshot(3) displays the epub version in calibre. In the calibre version, the 6th word the vowel e is misplaced after the consonant not before (shown with red outline). What is frustrating is the first word and the third also incorporates the vowel e but are placed correctly before the consonant.

In the second line of screenshot3, the fifth and seventh word shows the consonant sign 103C(shown outlined in red) in the wrong position after the consonant.

I have tried many ways, different css and modified in Sigil but could not get the desired output.

Please help me with this problem.

[Jellby]

I don't think you can do anything, that should be a feature of the font/rendering system, not of the book. ADE will not even render right-to-left scripts correctly.

Maybe you can modify the font to add ligatures with the e-character, though.

[khin99]

Thanks Jelby. I thought so too. ADE is not rendering as unicode required. Could you show how to add ligatures.

[Doitsu]

AFAIK, ligature handling can be defined in the font and/or handled by the word processor. Your issue might be caused by the font that you embedded or more likely ADE deficiencies. AFAIK, ADE can for example handle Devanagari letters with the correct font, if the text is encoded as Unicode.

In order to further test this please:
- name the font that you embedded
- post a short Burmese test string using Unicode letters that illustrates this problem (or a short one page epub) and a screenshot of the desired display

[khin99]

@Doitsu, thank you. I have gone looking for ligatures and found that one Burmese computer fonts specialist has encountered similar problems with the Burmese fonts and tried to develope his own fonts with ligatures. He has identified 2200+ glyphs which works in CS3/4 and Indesign but they are not supported by Indesign CS5.5. I will have to explore more on this ligatures. Devanagiri also use some ligatures.

I think mainly it is the ADE which is not supporting the font to incorporate in epub.

For your info and testing I am enclosing a short epub as described in my previous screenshot(3). I will also include the Word version.

[Doitsu]

I did a quick test with SIL's free Padauk font and got the same results, which indicates that there's a problem with the Qt rendering engine. (Both Calibre and Sigil use the Qt rendering engine.)
Since Burmese is a relatively rare language, you may want to log a but report with the Qt developers. If they fix this issue, future Calibre and Sigil versions might eventually be able to display Burmese correctly.
Since it's very unlikely that any of the current Adobe Reader Mobile SDK based ePub2 readers will be able to display Burmese correctly, you'll have to create a PDF version of your book for these devices following the instructions in this PDF created by Sony.
BTW, the book seemed to display fine in Readium and Kindle Fire Previewer. I.e., you might be able to read your book on an iPad, a Kindle Fire or other Webkit based eBook readers.

[khin99]

Thank you Doitsu. I manged to get nearly correct epubs through a python script developed by a Burmese professional. The script substitutes the font family and font name from the command line into the css in the script.

I tried the Paduak as well as two other Unicode fonts and they work in ADE reader. I also passed the files to Nook color from the ADE reader and also worked.

When viewing in Sigil or Calibre they do not display correctly. May be this is due to the Qt rendering engine as mentioned in your post. I visited the Qt page and found that this bug was reported in 2010 and it looks like Qt developers are still working on it. I saw there the last post was in July 2012. Therefore the issue is still going on. As Burmese was not a very popular language I suppose the incentive to correct the bug is not so urgent.

Thank you Doitsu for your help.

[khin99]

@Doitsu, I just got a Kindle Fire and tried to read the above Burmese epub. I couldn't read it. I downloaded the Aldiko and installed in KF. Aldiko reads other Burmese fonts but the unicode one does not display correctly.

You said it displays alright in Kindle Fire Preview, please advise how to get the display correct in KF. Thank you.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by khin99

@Doitsu, I just got a Kindle Fire and tried to read the above Burmese epub. I couldn't read it.

Were you not able to read the ePub, because the Kindle didn't display Burmese characters at all or because of the transposed character issues?
My test file contained the SIL Padauk font. When I displayed it in the Kindle Previewer in regular Kindle mode, it showed all the problems that you described, but when I switched to Kindle Fire mode, the diacritics where shifted to where they belong. (At least in the words that you pointed out.)
Of course, I don't speak Burmese and I might have missed some other obvious layout issues. (BTW, the file still doesn't work with the latest Kindle for PC version.)

Originally Posted by khin99

You said it displays alright in Kindle Fire Preview, please advise how to get the display correct in KF. Thank you.

I'm afraid I cannot help you with that. The Kindle previewer is only 99.99% accurate. Occasionally, it shows bugs were there are none and vice versa.

You mentioned that you achieved a nearly correct epub with the help of an Python script.
The script most likely rearranged characters that caused display issues from logical layout to physical layout or modified the glyphs in the font to hard-code their position.
If that's the case, and you used this modified ePub/font also as a Kindle source file, problems are to be expected, because the Webkit rendering engine expects fully compliant Unicode character sequences and fonts.

Have a look at my Burmese Moib/KF8 combo test file. If it indeed displays correctly in Kindle Previewer but not on a Kindle Fire there's little you can do about it other than waiting for a firmware update or maybe fiddle with the Kindle Locale settings and/or add Padauk or other Burmese Unicode fonts.
If it also displays fine on your Kindle Fire, than you'll have to "massage" your source files and/or embed a different font.

Good luck!

(The source files are embedded in the .mobi file. Use 7Zip or Keka to extract them.)

[khin99]

Thank you very much Doitsu.That was quite good. I finally managed to read the file in Kindle previewer with Fire option. I did not get good result in the Kindle fire tablet. Therefore what I need may be one that is compatible with KF8 format.I have also imported to Calibre with incorrect display.

I have also unzipped with 7Zip and looked at the css and OEBF files. As you said I will have to "massage" the source file.

[Jpax]

Originally Posted by khin99

Thank you very much Doitsu.That was quite good. I finally managed to read the file in Kindle previewer with Fire option. I did not get good result in the Kindle fire tablet. Therefore what I need may be one that is compatible with KF8 format.I have also imported to Calibre with incorrect display.

I have also unzipped with 7Zip and looked at the css and OEBF files. As you said I will have to "massage" the source file.

Can you tell how you do it? Tried it still not working. Use font ww_burn1.ttf, this one works on epub but when converted to mobi, characters messed up.

[khin99]

Originally Posted by Jpax

Can you tell how you do it? Tried it still not working. Use font ww_burn1.ttf, this one works on epub but when converted to mobi, characters messed up.

You need to download kindle previewer from Amazon. After downloading install the application. AS the file is in zip format it has to be expanded first.

In the settings you can change the kindle device with which you wish to read. The latest update include kindle paper white.

I usually set it to kindle HD because I think it supports new fonts (maybe I am wrong).

You can then open an epub book. If the font is supported it will successfully be generated. When you press OK button the book will be opened for reading. I could not open quite a few Burmese books.

Hope this is helpful. You could also attach the Burmese epub file, we could take a look and provide any suitable action.