Kobo Glo HD or Kindle Paperwhite 3 for russian books

midac · 02-16-2016, 04:43 PM

Hi everbody,
I want to buy an ebook-reader for my wife and trying to find out which offers "best" support for cyrillic alphabet. If I understand correct Kobo offers a slightly sharper display with better typographic support, whereas Kindle has a faster page-turn response.
Howover, I found out that Kobo Glo (no HD) has very limited support for russian, only one font (Georgia) supports cyrillic alphabet. But the larger set of fonts was the advantage of Kobo, wasn't it?
I could not find much about russian support for the new Kindle and would appreciate advice. My russian is unfortunately too bad for online search.

Cheers

jackie_w · 02-16-2016, 05:53 PM

Hi midac,

First let me confess that I do not read Russian books, but Kobos do allow you to easily copy your own fonts onto the device and use them to display book contents so you shouldn't have a problem reading Cyrillic alphabet books. Even if you don't want to do that, the built-in serif fonts, Amasis, Caecilia, Georgia and Malabar, all appear to contain Cyrillic characters.

In addition I think the book lists in the user interface all use Georgia to display Author and Title so you should be OK with those, too. The Series name display uses one of the built-in sans-serif fonts rather than Georgia so I'm not sure whether Series would display Cyrillic characters.

However, when you configure your device for the language you want to see in the user interface, Russian is not one of the languages offered. Neither are there built-in
- Russian-Russian dictionary,
- Russian-English translation dictionaries,
- Russian hyphenation dictionary

I'm not sure what the implications of all these would be for your situation. I suspect some of these limitations can be improved by hacking but you may prefer not to do that. Although I don't use it myself, I know there is definitely a hack you can apply so that the built-in 'soft' keyboard displays Cyrillic characters.

I hope a Russian Kobo user will drop by soon who can give you a much more complete picture for how suitable Kobos are for Cyrillic.

PeterT · 02-16-2016, 08:02 PM

It's worth noting that many of the patches for Kobo fw originated within the Russian community, though nowadays I think that most of it occurs here at MobileRead.

02-16-2016, 04:43 PM	#1
midac Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2016 Device: none	Kobo Glo HD or Kindle Paperwhite 3 for russian books Hi everbody, I want to buy an ebook-reader for my wife and trying to find out which offers "best" support for cyrillic alphabet. If I understand correct Kobo offers a slightly sharper display with better typographic support, whereas Kindle has a faster page-turn response. Howover, I found out that Kobo Glo (no HD) has very limited support for russian, only one font (Georgia) supports cyrillic alphabet. But the larger set of fonts was the advantage of Kobo, wasn't it? I could not find much about russian support for the new Kindle and would appreciate advice. My russian is unfortunately too bad for online search. Cheers

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02-16-2016, 05:53 PM	#2
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,251 Karma: 16539642 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	Hi midac, First let me confess that I do not read Russian books, but Kobos do allow you to easily copy your own fonts onto the device and use them to display book contents so you shouldn't have a problem reading Cyrillic alphabet books. Even if you don't want to do that, the built-in serif fonts, Amasis, Caecilia, Georgia and Malabar, all appear to contain Cyrillic characters. In addition I think the book lists in the user interface all use Georgia to display Author and Title so you should be OK with those, too. The Series name display uses one of the built-in sans-serif fonts rather than Georgia so I'm not sure whether Series would display Cyrillic characters. However, when you configure your device for the language you want to see in the user interface, Russian is not one of the languages offered. Neither are there built-in - Russian-Russian dictionary, - Russian-English translation dictionaries, - Russian hyphenation dictionary I'm not sure what the implications of all these would be for your situation. I suspect some of these limitations can be improved by hacking but you may prefer not to do that. Although I don't use it myself, I know there is definitely a hack you can apply so that the built-in 'soft' keyboard displays Cyrillic characters. I hope a Russian Kobo user will drop by soon who can give you a much more complete picture for how suitable Kobos are for Cyrillic.

02-16-2016, 08:02 PM	#3
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 13,514 Karma: 78910202 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour	It's worth noting that many of the patches for Kobo fw originated within the Russian community, though nowadays I think that most of it occurs here at MobileRead.

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