Developing Ebooks For Kindle In Bangla

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Nabodita: I can't help you on the Fire front, I never had one of those, and have approximately zero idea of what mess they're using as the renderer on the different models, sorry .

The only thing that comes to mind is checking how Kindle For PC/Kindle for Mac & the Kindle Previewer handle this?

Thanks, I know you would if you could!

Kindle Previewer is making a complete mess. I have also tested on the Kindle for iPad and it rendered correctly. I can't remember if I had the font embedded but I do know that iPad natively supports Bengali.

Will report back with test results. Do you think I should discuss rendering issues on the Kindle Fire forum? I will continue the discussion on E-Ink here, of course.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

@knc1: Oh pooh! I know there's no insult intended... I'm laughing at myself. I never thought of myself as particularly patriotic!
- - - -
I know this is way off topic but I'm having too much fun!

Yes, it is way off-topic, but a touch of flavoring added to a technical forum.

People live where people live.
Political and social boundaries sweep across them over time.

In countries with a long history, it can have been a real mess to describe.
Leave it to me to get one of my "facts" backwards.

In the part of the USA I live in (now the state of Texas) there have been six national flags.
That in a relatively short (compared to world history) amount of time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_flags_over_Texas

Note that the article mentions **the current** national flag.
Meaning (at least to Texans) that the changes may not be over with yet.

Some groups contend that we should give it all back to Mexico (but Mexico doesn't want it).
Others contend that we should succeed (again).

But now I really digress.

My guess was 1 in 10 might have a use for e-book readers and e-books.
Your guess was that 1 in 10 of those might actually want e-books.

So I guess we are thinking along the same lines.

Not enough for Amazon to localize the Kindle interface but more than enough to interest e-book authors and publishers.

You may also want to look into Pop's dictionary project here.

There aren't that many readers of Klingon on this planet, but he has the dictionary ready if they ever start buying Kindles.

[nasser]

Ok.. Nabodita.. Here goes..
I tried this on my Paperwhite.. YMMV..
1. Copy pasted the following poem from: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/adhom-o-uttom/ into Gedit.. I work on Ubuntu Linux..
2. Saved above file as a text file..
3. Opened the text file in Calibre.. (you know about Calibre.. right..?)
4. Used Calibre's conversion function to generate .mobi and .azw3 files
5. Copied the .mobi file into my PW
6. Opened the .mobi file in PW.. It works.. So i'm sure the .azw3 should too..

I've attached all the files and a screenshot for good measure..

Hope you can take it further from here..

Enjoyyy..

[nasser]

Hmm..
Read your original post in more detail..
I don't know much about fonts embedding.. On my PW, I've put a fair amount of the hacks from MR.. but not font related..
So.. If I could view that poem in bangla on my PW, it means it supports bangla OOTB.. right..?

[Nabodita]

@nasser

Officially, no. No version of Kindle supports Bangla. But according to Doitsu, the Bengali Unicode range is covered by the system fallback font. And your test seems to confirm it. What I need to do is create a test file and request for people to test and provide screenshots. In fact, I think I'll start the thread and then get back here.

I sincerely appreciate the effort you put in on my behalf. Thanks!

[Nabodita]

@NiLuJe

Kindle for PC: Used the mobi with the font embedded. Rendered correctly though the font looks pretty bad (something wrong with the font weight) and the justified spacing is looking terrible.

Kindle for Mac: Used the same file. Rendered beautifully.

Some observations:

Both the PC and the Mac natively support Bangla. Oh wait, I'll do a test file without the font embedded just for curiosity and post back.

(OT) I know justification is not recommended while formatting a document but it only looks this bad on the Kindle for PC. It looks fairly neat on the other devices I've tested (I mean other epub readers)

It would appear from Doitsu and nasser's tests that the E-Ink variants are rendering correctly even without font embedded.

Should get my 6" Kindle today. Will start testing and get back with results. I don't want to get too hopeful, but it does look like I don't have to worry about rendering issues post K3... and you're right NiLuJe, I'll probably have to forget about earlier models.

I've started a thread requesting folks to test my file and post screenshots of their Kindle Fire. Might need to do something similar for E-Inks... just to be absolutely sure.

I do hope that someday this (and the other threads I've started about Bangla ebooks) will save someone trying to work with other non-latin scripts some amount of frustration.

[nasser]

Fine..
Can help you with testing..
I read Aurobindo's works.. in english.. don't know if he wrote in bengali too..

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by knc1

In the part of the USA I live in (now the state of Texas) there have been six national flags.
That in a relatively short (compared to world history) amount of time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_flags_over_Texas

Note that the article mentions **the current** national flag.
Meaning (at least to Texans) that the changes may not be over with yet.

Some groups contend that we should give it all back to Mexico (but Mexico doesn't want it).
Others contend that we should succeed (again).

Wow. And again: Wow.

Originally Posted by knc1

There aren't that many readers of Klingon on this planet, but he has the dictionary ready if they ever start buying Kindles.

I'd want that!