Chinese epubs on Kobo wireless

[Kobododo]

Hi all,
I just received the Kobo Wireless today, mainly for reading Chinese ebooks. The Chinese pdf ebooks work ok-ish, but since I can't change the font size, it's pretty awkward, and not worth an ebook

So I guess I have two questions:
1) Is it possible to convert the Chinese pdf ebooks, using Calibre, to a format that would allow me to change the font size (rather than just zooming in as with pdfs).
2) If so, how?

I've been reading the similar threads about converting to Chinese epubs, but they're too technical for me. I have Calibre, but have no clue about CSS and don't know what 'embedding fonts' means - and from what I can tell, only one of the threads is about the Kobo Wireless

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! (alternatively, if you know of an ereader that can handle Chinese ebooks where I can change the font size, would welcome suggestions!)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Kobododo

Hi all,
I just received the Kobo Wireless today, mainly for reading Chinese ebooks. The Chinese pdf ebooks work ok-ish, but since I can't change the font size, it's pretty awkward, and not worth an ebook

So I guess I have two questions:
1) Is it possible to convert the Chinese pdf ebooks, using Calibre, to a format that would allow me to change the font size (rather than just zooming in as with pdfs).
2) If so, how?

I've been reading the similar threads about converting to Chinese epubs, but they're too technical for me. I have Calibre, but have no clue about CSS and don't know what 'embedding fonts' means - and from what I can tell, only one of the threads is about the Kobo Wireless

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! (alternatively, if you know of an ereader that can handle Chinese ebooks where I can change the font size, would welcome suggestions!)

I can't speak for the Kobo WiFi but the original Kobo could not display Chinese language epubs as it did not support a font with those glyphs. On the Glo, I've had fair success using a font that supported Chinese language characters and renaming the files to .kepub.epub to force the use of Kobo's rendering engine to allow use of the direction directives. This also allowed font sizing to work.

Regards,
David

[PeterT]

But remember he is working with PDFs not ePubs...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PeterT

But remember he is working with PDFs not ePubs...

As I read it, he wants to convert the PDFs to ePubs to allow resizing fonts. I tried with embedding a font for the original Kobo and it was not a happy camper though at that time, I did not try the .kepub.epub trick.

Regards,
David

[Kobododo]

Thanks for the reply, i'll certainly try the .kepub.epub trick.
Quick question - how do I change the fonts? When the kobo is plugged in, I can't see any folder or anything saying 'font', so I don't know what and where I should replace (I'm using a Mac)

[tshering]

Welcome Kobododo,

generally speaking, Calibre can convert Chinese Pdfs to epub. Depending on the nature of a specific pdf file, however, the results may vary.
Since I usually do not use Calibre and do not read Chinese texts, I had no previous experience with this things and tried it myself before writing this post.
I took this pdf: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/west...es/chinese.pdf
I took this font: http://de.cooltext.com/Download-Font-黑体+Sim+Hei
There is no special consideration behind this choice, I just took one of the first hits by google and took a pdf with simple layout (horizontal, left to right writing).

• I launched Calibre
• added the chinese.pdf via "Add books"
• selected the book in the list (the title is "Microsoft Word - Template.doc", the author "Clews")
• pressed the button "Convert books"
• chose the "Imput format" PDF
• chose the "Output format" EPUB
• clicked on "Look & Feel"
• pressed the buttom next to "Embed font family" and selected SimHei
• pressed the button "Ok"
• waited some seconds until the job was finished
• clicked on "Path: click to open"
• copied the file "Microsoft Word - Template.doc - Clews.epub" to my Kobo Touch.

The file is displayed rather nicely. The list bullets, however, seem not to be supported by the SimHei font, they are represented by empty boxes. There are also some superflous line breaks. But the result is much better then I expected

I also tried the option "Subset all embedded fonts (Experimental)". The result was not pleasant.
Note: I do not have the most recent version of Calibre (I have 0.9.10).


If you can install custom fonts on the Wireless, you do not have to embed the Chinese font in the epub. If the Wireless does even not support Chinese embedded fonts, it might by best to replace it by Touch/Glow/Mini.

[david8866]

This Chinese site is helpful. Just ask PDF to epub conversion. Epub is epub, no matter which ereader, right?
http://www.hi-pda.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=59

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by david8866

This Chinese site is helpful. Just ask PDF to epub conversion. Epub is epub, no matter which ereader, right?
http://www.hi-pda.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=59

Well, yes and no. Some ePubs are more equal than others (with apologies to George Orwell). I've spent hours editing ePubs that were not even within spitting distance of the ePub standard. And yes, you will find epubs that work happily on the Kobo that do not work on a Nook or Sony or iDevice and vice versa.

Then we get into the proprietary extensions to the ePub standard -- try running the stylesheet through the W3C validator (Sigil offers this from the Tools menu or check on the web http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator. It will warn you about vendor extensions and remove stylesheet items that are invalid before displaying your stylesheet. I had one book I purchased which had about 60% of the stylesheet items removed as being invalid. Oddly enough after cleaning up the stylesheet and correcting it's errors, the ebook displayed without issues on my Kobo, iPad and Nexus 7.

Regards,
David

[oxen]

The layout of txt converted form PDF is very poor, not to mention the layout of epub converted form PDF.

In addition, Calibre's Chinese support is not good. I developed a CssSTAR software to solve Chinese garbled problems, and you can try it. But because of the calibre's font calling mechanisms defect, it is estimated that won't solve the problem.

It is recommended that:
1. Convert PDF to txt/doc with Calibre or Adobe Reader.
2 .Finishing txt or doc file, delete the non-paragraph line breaks and other problems.
3. Convert txt/doc to EPUB with EpubSTAR.