Epub in Sanskrit?

[Lilyeuhh]

I am studying ancient yoga scriptures but the Sanskrit words and their transliterations don't show correctly on my Kobo Aura (old version). I use Calibre as my ebook management application on OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan).

1. Yoga Sutras: I have an epub version. When I use Calibre ebook viewer, the sanskrit alphabet is showing perfectly, but when I transfer it on my Kobo Aura, they don't show, even when I choose "Document font". I tried converting it into epub and ticking the box "Embed all fonts" but it doesn't work.
2. Bhagavad Gita: This is a pdf that i would like to convert into epub without losing any letter in Sanskrit.

Could you help me?

Many thanks

[kovidgoyal]

With pdfs you are out of luck, as for embedding fonts in the epub, you need to make sure that the epub actually specifies a font and that the font is available on your system, before embedding all fonts will work.

[cedhax]

As far as I can tell, the Yoga Sutras epub contains Sanskrit scripts as images rather than (Unicode) characters. For example, every Sanskrit letter displayed in the chapter "Guide to Sanskrit Pronunciation" is an image. Therefore, I don't think the problem is a font problem per se. It seems to be a Kobo Aura problem.

I don't have a Kobo Aura, but I doubt it should fail to display embedded image files in EPUB files by default. Perhaps it was hacked incorrectly? Would restoring it to factory settings help?

Perhaps posting this problem to the Kobo Reader may help, as you posted in the past.

Originally Posted by Lilyeuhh

...

1. Yoga Sutras: I have an epub version. When I use Calibre ebook viewer, the sanskrit alphabet is showing perfectly, but when I transfer it on my Kobo Aura, they don't show, even when I choose "Document font". I tried converting it into epub and ticking the box "Embed all fonts" but it doesn't work.
2. ...

...

[Lilyeuhh]

Thank you for your help. I think it's more diacritical marks than sanskrit alphabet that do not show on my Kobo Aura, even it is fine on my computer.
It is a shame for the pdf, as it is a commentary very difficult to find in English and in ebook format.
As for the Sutras, could you help me step by step for the conversion?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Lilyeuhh

Thank you for your help. I think it's more diacritical marks than sanskrit alphabet that do not show on my Kobo Aura, even it is fine on my computer.
It is a shame for the pdf, as it is a commentary very difficult to find in English and in ebook format.
As for the Sutras, could you help me step by step for the conversion?

On the Kobo devices, it might be better to sideload as a kepub. You can test by simply changing the extension to ".kepub.epub" on the device. If this works, then you can use either the KoboTouchExtended driver to send the books, or the kepub output plugin for a conversion before sending.

There has been discussion on this in the Kobo forum. I can't remember if there are any particular tricks to getting it to work, but the device can be picky about the actual font file names used.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Lilyeuhh

Thank you for your help. I think it's more diacritical marks than sanskrit alphabet that do not show on my Kobo Aura, even it is fine on my computer.

I use the following fonts to display Sanskrit diacritical marks on the H2O, and they work very well:

Gentium
Bookerly
Literata

For what it is worth, they are all in TTF format, and have been koboified. The fonts are installed on the reader, not embedded in the ebook.

I think Times New Roman displays diacritics well too, but I removed it since the way it displayed on my reader did not appeal to me. I have not had success getting any of the other well-known fonts to display all the Sanskrit diacritical marks.