Forma Display Chinese and Vietnamese in epub file

[vinhattieu]

Hi everyone,

I am having a problem with an epub which includes both Chinese and Vietnamese.

I can sideload fonts to display either Chinese or Vietnamese correctly, but I only find one font (Arial MS Unicode) that supports both Chinese and Vietnamese, and I hate reading in Arial because it's a sans serif.

Is there any way to use two separate fonts for two languages in the same epub file?

I guess that should be done in the epub file itself, i.e. adding some tag to each block of text to specify the font that should be used?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Barty]

You have to tell the reader which font you want to be used for which. I don't know how you'd do that except by editing the markup

One possibility is you can embed a font that supports only Chinese and set that as default font for the book (this requires editing the book, obviously), and let the reader use the font you select in the reader UI as fall back font for Vietnamese. Or vice versa

[vinhattieu]

Originally Posted by Barty

You have to tell the reader which font you want to be used for which. I don't know how you'd do that except by editing the markup

One possibility is you can embed a font that supports only Chinese and set that as default font for the book (this requires editing the book, obviously), and let the reader use the font you select in the reader UI as fall back font for Vietnamese. Or vice versa

Thanks. That do sound complicated. For the Kindles I have been using, there is absolutely no problem with the same epub file. The Vietnamese is displayed properly with Bookerly, and the Chinese characters are also displayed using Kindle's default Chinese font.

[DNSB]

One possible solution is to send the epub as a Kobo epub (either use the KoboTouchExtended driver to send kepub or use geek1011's kepubify to convert to epub before sending to your Kobo. This should allow your Kobo to search for missing glyphs though the font may have the same issue you are seeing with Arial MS Unicode.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by vinhattieu

Thanks. That do sound complicated. For the Kindles I have been using, there is absolutely no problem with the same epub file. The Vietnamese is displayed properly with Bookerly, and the Chinese characters are also displayed using Kindle's default Chinese font.

The Kobo doesn't do that? Use a font that supports Vietnamese (side load bookerly if you like) and let it use a fall back for Chinese

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Barty

The Kobo doesn't do that? Use a font that supports Vietnamese (side load bookerly if you like) and let it use a fall back for Chinese

As mentioned, the webkit based renderer used to display kepubs will do that. The Adobe RMSDK renderer used to display epubs does not.

[agugu]

Even try to use FrontCreator to combine two Fonts.
This is what i usually do，make your own font

[lensmann]

Originally Posted by vinhattieu

Thanks. That do sound complicated. For the Kindles I have been using, there is absolutely no problem with the same epub file. The Vietnamese is displayed properly with Bookerly, and the Chinese characters are also displayed using Kindle's default Chinese font.

As DNSB points out, if the file is DRM-free then the easiest thing to do is to convert it to a kobo epub. You can do this using Patrick Gaskin's 'kepubify' web app:

https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/

Alternatively, there are a small number of serif fonts that support Vietnamese and Chinese. Here's one example (CyberCJK):

http://ftp.vim.org/netscape/communic...fonts/windows/

[vinhattieu]

Originally Posted by Barty

The Kobo doesn't do that? Use a font that supports Vietnamese (side load bookerly if you like) and let it use a fall back for Chinese

I have used Bookerly but it only displayed Vietnamese and did not display Chinese characters at all.

Thanks to all of you for your advices. I'll try the kepub solution.

[momijizukamori]

Originally Posted by Barty

You have to tell the reader which font you want to be used for which. I don't know how you'd do that except by editing the markup

One possibility is you can embed a font that supports only Chinese and set that as default font for the book (this requires editing the book, obviously), and let the reader use the font you select in the reader UI as fall back font for Vietnamese. Or vice versa

I've done this before with Chinese in English texts (as part of footnotes in books translated from Chinese to English, primarily), and if you go this route, you should absolutely subset the embedded font to only contain the characters you need - because of the large number of glyphs in Chinese fonts, the file sizes are waaaay bigger (for example, basic Noto Serif is ~200kb for each weight. Noto CJK is around 5mb for each weight).