Replace Avenir font with another for better display of Vietnamese in Header/Footer

[nkluan]

Hi everyone,

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.

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'... ?

Thank you in advance

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by nkluan

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.

Originally Posted by nkluan

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.

[nkluan]

Hi jackie_w,




In my experiment with Georgia, I notice that it is a very common font and available in Window. I simply open "font" folder in Window, check the information of "Georgia" in that folder, modify any font I want so that it has exactly the same information with "Georgia" in Window.

Attached are two picture of my Forma's homescreen and pocket screen, in which I "trick" the system into replacing default Georgia with EB Garamond Medium.

[nkluan]

Thanks jackie_w for your support, I succeeded in "fooling" Kobo to recognize EB Garamond as Avenir.

I notice a pattern: System fonts used by Kobo are most likely popular ones created years ago, available in widely-used product and then are further modified by many designers. For example, Georgia is available in Window, Avenir Next is used in macOS. I figure out that both Georgia and Avernir Next are tweaked by designers to support Vietnamese glyphs.

The version used by Kobo seems to always be the original. This means that you can make a quick Google search to easily obtain that original font, figure out its information and then modify your chosen font in accordance with that information.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by nkluan

Thanks jackie_w for your support, I succeeded in "fooling" Kobo to recognize EB Garamond as Avenir.

Just so I'm 100% clear, are you saying you performed the "Avenir Next trick" purely by using a font editor to do an internal font rename of EB Garamond then copying it to the sideloaded /fonts directory? Or did you do that plus something else?

This is new info to me. Thank you for sharing. I need to think about it some more and do some of my own testing when I get a bit more free time.

[nkluan]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Just so I'm 100% clear, are you saying you performed the "Avenir Next trick" purely by using a font editor to do an internal font rename of EB Garamond then copying it to the sideloaded /fonts directory?

That's exactly what I did, no more, no less.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by nkluan

That's exactly what I did, no more, no less.

Well done, you That opens up some new possibilities.

[JSWolf]

With the font trick, once you have your font sorted, where do you put it?

[dmapr]

@JSWolf, you put your "tricked out" fonts in the same place: /fonts folder on Kobo. Any font in there that "masks" the built-in font will take precedence. I've been doing that for years with Amasis and Malabar using the Nook versions that had more glyphs than the Kobo versions. Incidentally while playing around with jackie_w's system GUI font replacement patch yesterday I discovered that it's not needed with newer versions of the firmware as Kobo has updated their bundled fonts to include those missing glyphs.