Chinese KF8 trouble

bobafruit · 11-17-2013, 11:54 AM

Hi

I have a bit of a funny problem with Calibre and my paperwhite 2.

So I am converting Chinese books to azw3 format so I can embed a custom font. With the azw3 file converted by calibre I cannot select the individual characters, the kindle will just select a block of characters between punctuation or whitespace as though all of those characters were one word.

I have a .mobi copy of "Romance of the three kingdoms" and in it the Kindle lets me select individual characters, or arbitrarily long sets of characters (It also works in books from the Chinese Kindle store) so the issue is in the conversion process.

Since I am learning Chinese I want to use my custom font and the dictionary at the same time.

bobafruit · 11-21-2013, 10:08 AM

Anyone point me to some help in this?
Is calibre doing something to mark things as words?

I tried uploading an example, but my Internet connection is real lousy. If it would help I'll try and find a smaller file to do the conversion on.

kovidgoyal · 11-21-2013, 10:09 AM

Make sure you have set the language correctly before converting.And the books that you are converting need to have the correct lang attribute in their source as well.

bobafruit · 11-21-2013, 09:53 PM

alright, I'm not sure exactly how to set language attributes... is there anywhere other than the metadata to set the language? maybe I'm missing that.

So I did a little test, took an article about wolves and put it in a UTF-8 text file loaded it into Calibre and changed the metadata to be in chinese then had Calibre make an AZW3 file with the desired font.

the result is interesting, for both the txt and azw3 file the kindle treats a group of characters as one long word...

perhaps it's a bad example... but I do have other .mobi files that the dictionary works for the mobi, but breaks when converted.

kovidgoyal · 11-21-2013, 10:03 PM

Only amazon can tell you why the kindle behaves as it does. Apart from specifying the metadata in the language you may also need to specify the language code in the actual html markup, use the Tweak Book feature in calibre to do that like this

<html lang="zh">

bobafruit · 11-21-2013, 10:28 PM

Thanks for the help, I'll see if this fixes the problem (I have heaps of old files that had the same problem on Kindle 3...)

But in the meantime looks like Paperwhite 2 is jailbroken so I can probably take care of my custom fonts on that end

bobafruit · 12-11-2013, 12:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Only amazon can tell you why the kindle behaves as it does. Apart from specifying the metadata in the language you may also need to specify the language code in the actual html markup, use the Tweak Book feature in calibre to do that like this

<html lang="zh">

Sorry for being obtuse

, but after I go into Tweak Book, which file do I need to change the HTML markup in? The CSS or each individual HTML file?

Thanks again.

kovidgoyal · 12-11-2013, 01:03 AM

every html file

bobafruit · 12-11-2013, 11:34 PM

Ok, so I've been messing with the html files, and it seems that adding <html lang="zh"> doesn't work...

So... I took a less elegant approach. I've taken the contents of a book that works perfectly and piece by piece replaced the contents of a book that doesn't work.

and yet somehow it doesn't work...

so... then I took two books that worked, and hit Tweak Book, then exploded and rebuilt them... and then they didn't work

kovidgoyal · 12-12-2013, 12:02 AM

Then you are out of luck. I dont have the time to try to reverse engineer why the Kindle behaves as it does.

bobafruit · 12-12-2013, 12:39 AM

Alright, thanks for your help... at least I know now that using Calibre for this is barking up the wrong tree.

I'll go find other ways to get what I want done

11-17-2013, 11:54 AM	#1
bobafruit Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: paperwhite 2	Chinese KF8 trouble Hi I have a bit of a funny problem with Calibre and my paperwhite 2. So I am converting Chinese books to azw3 format so I can embed a custom font. With the azw3 file converted by calibre I cannot select the individual characters, the kindle will just select a block of characters between punctuation or whitespace as though all of those characters were one word. I have a .mobi copy of "Romance of the three kingdoms" and in it the Kindle lets me select individual characters, or arbitrarily long sets of characters (It also works in books from the Chinese Kindle store) so the issue is in the conversion process. Since I am learning Chinese I want to use my custom font and the dictionary at the same time.

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11-21-2013, 10:08 AM	#2
bobafruit Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: paperwhite 2	Anyone point me to some help in this? Is calibre doing something to mark things as words? I tried uploading an example, but my Internet connection is real lousy. If it would help I'll try and find a smaller file to do the conversion on.

11-21-2013, 10:09 AM	#3
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Make sure you have set the language correctly before converting.And the books that you are converting need to have the correct lang attribute in their source as well.

11-21-2013, 10:03 PM	#5
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Only amazon can tell you why the kindle behaves as it does. Apart from specifying the metadata in the language you may also need to specify the language code in the actual html markup, use the Tweak Book feature in calibre to do that like this <html lang="zh">

11-21-2013, 10:28 PM	#6
bobafruit Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: paperwhite 2	Thanks for the help, I'll see if this fixes the problem (I have heaps of old files that had the same problem on Kindle 3...) But in the meantime looks like Paperwhite 2 is jailbroken so I can probably take care of my custom fonts on that end

12-11-2013, 01:03 AM	#8
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	every html file

12-11-2013, 11:34 PM	#9
bobafruit Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: paperwhite 2	Ok, so I've been messing with the html files, and it seems that adding <html lang="zh"> doesn't work... So... I took a less elegant approach. I've taken the contents of a book that works perfectly and piece by piece replaced the contents of a book that doesn't work. and yet somehow it doesn't work... so... then I took two books that worked, and hit Tweak Book, then exploded and rebuilt them... and then they didn't work

12-12-2013, 12:02 AM	#10
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Then you are out of luck. I dont have the time to try to reverse engineer why the Kindle behaves as it does.

12-12-2013, 12:39 AM	#11
bobafruit Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: paperwhite 2	Alright, thanks for your help... at least I know now that using Calibre for this is barking up the wrong tree. I'll go find other ways to get what I want done