MobileRead Forums
Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book Readers > Sony Reader
Reload this Page Support for non-western languages?

Notices

View Poll Results: Do you want more support for non-western/international text ebooks?
Yes, I would like support for non-western text ebooks. 19 95.00%
No, I would not like this. 1 5.00%
I don't care. I'm indifferent. 0 0%
Voters: 20. You may not vote on this poll

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 09-14-2009, 09:23 AM   #1
quillaja
Connoisseur
quillaja began at the beginning.
 
quillaja's Avatar
 
Posts: 79
Karma: 42
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: sony reader touch (prs-600)
Support for non-western languages?
Honestly, i'm quite disappointed that a company would release a product that doesn't support--at least displaying--any language. Why can't the sony readers display asian, arabic, or other non-western text? I think kindle has the same limitation. Frankly, it blows my mind. Not only does it limit us readers to western ebooks only, but limits the possible distribution of that company's product.

well, anyway, my question is: how many people would want support for any language? for example, supporting UTF-16 (which is allowed in the epub standard).
quillaja is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 09:50 AM   #2
igorsk
Wizard
igorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfolded
 
Posts: 3,443
Karma: 52235
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Belgium
Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear
Unicode is supported, it's the installed fonts that are missing necessary glyphs. If you make EPUB files with embedded fonts (or refer external fonts from CSS), they display nicely.
__________________
Yet another reverse engineering blog
Like to chat? Join #mobileread
igorsk is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Enthusiast
Old 09-14-2009, 10:03 AM   #3
quillaja
Connoisseur
quillaja began at the beginning.
 
quillaja's Avatar
 
Posts: 79
Karma: 42
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: sony reader touch (prs-600)
Quote:
Originally Posted by igorsk View Post
Unicode is supported, it's the installed fonts that are missing necessary glyphs. If you make EPUB files with embedded fonts (or refer external fonts from CSS), they display nicely.
i see. perhaps the reader should have a unicode font built in, though. i made a japanese book using feedbooks.com, and the epub version won't display. of course, i can't embed a font on a book i publish there. (i could insert it myself later... but that's not the point.) international stuff should just work.
quillaja is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:10 AM   #4
wallcraft
reader
wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.wallcraft ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
wallcraft's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,979
Karma: 5183568
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Mississippi, USA
Device: Kindle 3 and Fire
The thread What's the default ADE font? discusses the font provided by Adobe. It is possible for the device vendor to change the default font, or extend it to other languages. Hanlin has just done so for the V3, the EZ Reader firmware page includes "Adobe language package for Chinese, Japanese & Korean" although I have not tried it.
wallcraft is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:15 AM   #5
mumoo
Member
mumoo began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 12
Karma: 19
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: prs600
I can't understand the Sony's strategy, even the Japanese is not supported by the portable reader !!?? PDF file is the only way to solve this problem now.
mumoo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:23 AM   #6
AprilHare
Wizard
AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.AprilHare ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
AprilHare's Avatar
 
Posts: 2,778
Karma: 11230745
Join Date: Apr 2008
Device: Sony Reader PRS-T2
Just to refresh my memory - did LRFs have this problem on the PRS line? I assume the libre didn't..
__________________
I'd much rather be discussing battering ram powered fusion power reactors than this! http://www.generalfusion.com/
The EPUB related update path is now available for the PRS-500.
dead link
The hyperlink that followed was censored by MobileRead admin.
AprilHare is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:26 AM   #7
igorsk
Wizard
igorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfoldedigorsk reads XML... blindfolded
 
Posts: 3,443
Karma: 52235
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Belgium
Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumoo View Post
I can't understand the Sony's strategy, even the Japanese is not supported by the portable reader !!?? PDF file is the only way to solve this problem now.
So far they only released on Western-language markets, so they didn't have to worry about other languages. Maybe they don't want to pay for the font license, or don't want it to be too big (for space or speed reasons), or something else.
__________________
Yet another reverse engineering blog
Like to chat? Join #mobileread
igorsk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:41 AM   #8
quillaja
Connoisseur
quillaja began at the beginning.
 
quillaja's Avatar
 
Posts: 79
Karma: 42
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: sony reader touch (prs-600)
Quote:
Originally Posted by igorsk View Post
So far they only released on Western-language markets, so they didn't have to worry about other languages.
that's probably true. even so, i'd wish they'd have the foresight to imagine (1) readers in western countries sometimes want to read non-western texts, (2) if they just make it international from the start, isn't it that much easier to enter other markets in the future? plus there's the whole ebay and buying-on-the-internets thing.
quillaja is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-14-2009, 10:49 AM   #9
HarryT
eBook Enthusiast
HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.HarryT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
HarryT's Avatar
 
Posts: 54,661
Karma: 26165759
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Device: Kindle Touch, PW, Fire HD, iPad 3, iPhone 4, Samsung Tab 2 7 + More
Quote:
Originally Posted by quillaja View Post
i see. perhaps the reader should have a unicode font built in, though.
It does have a Unicode font - it just lacks the characters for non-Western languages. "Unicode" refers to the way that the font is encoded, not to how many glyphs it contains.

Both ePub and PDF allow you to use Japanese, etc, and both file formats allow you to include whatever fonts are necessary to display the text.
__________________
Harry

Currently proofreading The Poison Belt, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
HarryT is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
language, limited

« Previous Thread | Next Thread »
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
What languages will Kindle 3 support besides Russian, Greek and CJK? kacir Amazon Kindle 7 02-17-2011 01:45 PM
Support for other languages? Matth3w Calibre 8 04-15-2009 02:25 AM
Calibre support for Right-to-Left languages kiklop74 Calibre 7 04-11-2009 02:02 PM
PRS-500 Can you support other languages? PeterO Sony Reader Dev Corner 1 10-23-2007 06:35 AM
Foreign languages support? ToxicAngel Sony Reader 15 11-21-2006 10:20 AM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 08:08 AM.

Contact Us - FAQ - Guidelines - Privacy - Archive - Top

MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.