Kobo Hebrew Support

[carmelra]

Hi,

I received an answer from Kobo's support that they can read Hebrew ePub properly.
However, I have no evidence for it.

Can any of you, lucky Kobo reader owners, check if it displays properly?

Attached is an Hebrew ePub. A screen capture of the first page of the first chapter and the TOC will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carmel
Hebrew eBooks at Mendele HeBooks
http://www.mendele.co.il

[Beorn]

Hi Carmel,

I just tried viewing this book that you attached in my Kobo, and unfortunately it doesn't read properly...
As you can see, the alignment is correct, and it even shows the letters, but the letter order is incorrect, and the TOC only shows squares... Also, the Nikkud is always on the letter next to the one on which it's supposed to be.
I would also love it to have Hebrew support in ePub (in PDF it works properly, but in order to have a PDF which will be comfortable to read on the Kobo, you have to make it yourself so that it will be in the size of the Kobo's screen)

However, besides the several books available on Mendele and some thigns from Ben Yehuda Project, I don't know of any Hebrew eBooks anyways, so it's not so urgent...

Eran

P.S. sorry for the quality of the pictures, I only now noticed that my phone's camera was on the lowest quality... you can still understand however, so I won't take new ones...

[carmelra]

Originally Posted by Beorn

Hi Carmel,

I just tried viewing this book that you attached in my Kobo, and unfortunately it doesn't read properly...
As you can see, the alignment is correct, and it even shows the letters, but the letter order is incorrect, and the TOC only shows squares... Also, the Nikkud is always on the letter next to the one on which it's supposed to be.
I would also love it to have Hebrew support in ePub (in PDF it works properly, but in order to have a PDF which will be comfortable to read on the Kobo, you have to make it yourself so that it will be in the size of the Kobo's screen)

However, besides the several books available on Mendele and some thigns from Ben Yehuda Project, I don't know of any Hebrew eBooks anyways, so it's not so urgent...

Eran

P.S. sorry for the quality of the pictures, I only now noticed that my phone's camera was on the lowest quality... you can still understand however, so I won't take new ones...

Thanks for this feedback. The pictures are just fine, no better quality required to see it doesn't work properly.
It's disappointing, however, I'll check with Kobo's support again. Maybe it's a matter of a firmware update.

[mimico]

Hi,

I just tried the posted file on the Kobo eReader Touch. It works flawlessly! It is even right justified. I was impressed.

Thanks for posting this file :-)

Cheers.

[carmelra]

Originally Posted by mimico

Hi,

I just tried the posted file on the Kobo eReader Touch. It works flawlessly! It is even right justified. I was impressed.

Thanks for posting this file :-)

Cheers.

Sounds great! Can you upload a screen capture or a photo to demonstrate it?
Thanks!

[carmelra]

Following mimico's post, Would any of you, Kobo eReader Touch owners, check if the Hebrew ePub file attached on the first post of this thread displays properly for you too?

A screen capture of the first page of the first chapter and the TOC will be appreciated.

Thanks,

[mimico]

Here are a few screenshots. I do not actually read Hebrew, but I don't see a TOC. I took the shots with different font sizes. There are 6 different fonts on the Kobo, but it seems that the default font (which is used in the screenshots) works fine.

[carmelra]

Originally Posted by mimico

Here are a few screenshots. I do not actually read Hebrew, but I don't see a TOC. I took the shots with different font sizes. There are 6 different fonts on the Kobo, but it seems that the default font (which is used in the screenshots) works fine.

Thanks for the effort mimico.

The characters are Hebrew, the text is right aligned but...
The characters are displayed left to right so there is not even single readable word

I hope the Kobo developers will solve this issue. Currently the device is useless for me.

[fxp33]

Hi,

Has anyone found a solution yet ? rtl ? BDO ?

I only had one success with a font without vocalization.

François

[davidfor]

My understanding is that with the current firmware, the reader application for kepubs handles RTL languages properly. To use this with an epub, you need to rename it to have the extension ".kepub.epub". And you might need to add a font. It has been discussed in the last few months.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by carmelra

Thanks for the effort mimico.

The characters are Hebrew, the text is right aligned but...
The characters are displayed left to right so there is not even single readable word

I hope the Kobo developers will solve this issue. Currently the device is useless for me.

I took at look at the ebook you attached and it makes much use of directives which are not used by Adobe's mobile reader software. So for the fun of it, I did some modification to the ebook to remove the fonts from the ebook, remove the fixed font sizes and to add the cover property directive. After this, I renamed the book to end in .kepub.epub instead of .epub. I renamed the font files to put a space between DejaVu and Sans as required to for Kobo's font file naming conventions and copied them to the fonts directory on the Kobo. This would trigger the Kobo into using Kobo's EPUB3 renderer instead of the Adobe Mobile Reader EPUB2 renderer.

After this, it looked better to me, the TOC and headers used a Hebrew font instead of showing boxes and the lines of text ran in the opposite direction to what I saw on my computer using Adobe Digital Editions.

I've attached a couple of images of the screen -- could you let me know if the ebook is displaying properly. My apologies for the quality of the images.

[fxp33]

Thank you David and DNSB,

I simply renamed the file as kepub.epub and my interlinear hebrew / english genesis with freeSans or kobo nickel even Georgia font displayed just fine. Vocalization seems ok too.

My css still uses:
.hebrew {direction:rtl; unicode-bidi:embed;}
for corresponding span. Didn't try without yet.

Thanks a lot

François

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by fxp33

Thank you David and DNSB,

I simply renamed the file as kepub.epub and my interlinear hebrew / english genesis with freeSans or kobo nickel even Georgia font displayed just fine. Vocalization seems ok too.

My css still uses:
.hebrew {direction:rtl; unicode-bidi:embed;}
for corresponding span. Didn't try without yet.

Thanks a lot

François

With a .kepub.epub extension, the book will attempt to locate an appropriate font for characters that are not in the font set for the book. This was brought out in a discussion a while back about using a Sanskrit font. On another hand, if you specify a font that has a glyph at the right position but is not the right glyph, the results look rather interesting. Not very readable but interesting.

There have been several discussion about using kepub in this forum you might want to check into to see what potential issues you may run into.

Regards,
David

[fxp33]

Here is a very short file (first chapter) to let you check the display.

At a time I had a problem displaying the carriage return which was justified to the left instead of the right for Hebrew span.

It seems OK now.

I can't really read Hebrew, my need is only to look up specific words / concepts. Therefore I might have missed some mistakes in the document.

Hope this helps.

François
PS: I hope this applies also to Arabic, but I couldn't check by myself, not knowing enough the alphabet.

[carmelra]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I took at look at the ebook you attached and it makes much use of directives which are not used by Adobe's mobile reader software. So for the fun of it, I did some modification to the ebook to remove the fonts from the ebook, remove the fixed font sizes and to add the cover property directive. After this, I renamed the book to end in .kepub.epub instead of .epub. I renamed the font files to put a space between DejaVu and Sans as required to for Kobo's font file naming conventions and copied them to the fonts directory on the Kobo. This would trigger the Kobo into using Kobo's EPUB3 renderer instead of the Adobe Mobile Reader EPUB2 renderer.

After this, it looked better to me, the TOC and headers used a Hebrew font instead of showing boxes and the lines of text ran in the opposite direction to what I saw on my computer using Adobe Digital Editions.

I've attached a couple of images of the screen -- could you let me know if the ebook is displaying properly. My apologies for the quality of the images.

Thanks DNSB. I must admit I didn't really followed all you have done with the original file but the results look just great!
I wonder if there is a way to trigger the Kobo's EPUB3 renderer on the original file.