Thread: Replace Avenir font with another for better display of Vietnamese in Header/Footer
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Old 09-30-2019, 08:42 AM   #2
jackie_w
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Posts: 6,252
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: UK
Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3
Quote:
Originally Posted by nkluan View Post
I find out that Vietnamese titles are not displayed properly in header/footer of my Forma, which was updated to latest firmware. The reason is Avenir font, which is used in header/footer, does not support Vietnamese. I'm thinking of 02 solutions to the problem:

1. Looking for a patch that enable custom font to be used in header/footer. Seems like such patch does not exist at the moment.
A new patch will be available in the next release of kobopatch which allows you to change new header/footer font-family and font-size to anything you want.

There will also be a second new patch which can customise various parts of the new navigation "scrubber". The font-family used for the TOC/chapter name button in the bottom left corner is one of the things you can customise.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nkluan View Post
2. Find an open-source font that support Vietnamese. Using a font-editing software to rename such font into "Avenir" and copy it to my Forma. After a reboot, the system will use this sideloaded "Avenir" font instead of the default, true Avenir font. I was successful in using this method to replace Georgia with Arial.

This time, the problem is I don't know precisely information of true Avenir font used by the system. Can anybody help me on where I can obtain those information, such as 'Font family name', 'full name', 'postscript', 'style group'... ?
I was interested to read that you have been able to "fool" the Kobo into using Arial as one of your system fonts. I didn't know that was even possible because the Kobo system fonts are encrypted/obfuscated in some way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doubting your word.

I set up a new thread yesterday aimed at users like yourself who's native language is not well-handled by Kobo's current system fonts, Georgia/Avenir. I would welcome your presence there because I think it may be possible to use kobopatch to change the firmware to use sideloaded fonts in the GUI. It's early days but Vietnamese may be a language we can make progress with since you've already found Arial can support Vietnamese well.

Just to be clear, I'm not interested in hacking the physical font files, as in your point 2, only the firmware.
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