Fonts with foreign language charachters

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

I'm sitting here and taking notes. You see because ... that's my mother language and I before wouldn't buy a 650 because it would not read my letters. So it means if I have a Sony I can copy paste this css sheet (with kind permission of jackie) somewhere in the reader (a bit unclear where) and do I need to upload special font? I'm definitely saving this thread. It is a song of the future for me to have a 650 but I want to be prepared.

Most of that css sheet will not be useful to you because it is specific to elizilla's individual epub. However the @font-face statements at the top of the file may be useful once you have edited them to contain your chosen font (which may be different to "Times"). They can be put at the top of the css file contained inside any epub.

The extra line

body {font-family: serif}

can also be added to the set of generic "useful css".
If you prefer reading your books with a sans-serif font then the following may be more appropriate

body{ font-family: sans-serif}

I don't believe a European language exists which cannot be read on a Sony reader once you have identified a set of suitable font files and copied them to your reader. You can buy with confidence - the sooner the better in my opinion Of course finding a store which has any PRS650s to sell may be more of a challenge. All of the above would work equally well on a PRS350 or any other Sony model from PRS505 onward.

[Chi Cygni]

Thank you so much jackie. It's a pity I didn't know it 6 months ago when Sony was all around. Back then I bought an Opus - but Sony was my preferred choice.

What interests me is would I be able to use that font-face part of css inside a Sony once and for all and then not worry anymore if it would read special characters (provided I upload specific font and that it is in agreement with the code definition)? I would like to be able to read DRMed books with all fonts properly displayed. I'd rather not fiddle with each epub separately (and DRM won't allow it anyway I guess) Or does it have to be special (if possible) code written for that purpose and then nested in Sony in a particular place?

I found some instructions online but it was too complicated to understand. Once again, thank you for your time!

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

What interests me is would I be able to use that font-face part of css inside a Sony once and for all and then not worry anymore if it would read special characters (provided I upload specific font and that it is in agreement with the code definition)? I would like to be able to read DRMed books with all fonts properly displayed. I'd rather not fiddle with each epub separately (and DRM won't allow it anyway I guess) Or does it have to be special (if possible) code written for that purpose and then nested in Sony in a particular place?

Yes, it is possible to store the @font-face css on the Sony rather than in each individual epub, but you would need to take the plunge and install one of the custom firmwares, like PRSPlus or Boroda. Not everyone wants to do that with a new shiny toy in case it invalidates their Warranty.

However, it is currently the only way to see DRM'd epubs with a non-Sony font unless the publishers have already embedded a suitable font inside the epub before it was DRM'd. In which case they will also have embedded the appropriate @font-faces inside the epub css.

Most of the commercial epubs I've seen which have an embedded font use Charis SIL, which is free. You might like to check out whether it contains the special characters you need. Alternatively, as Charis is my own preferred font, if you attach a text file here containing a paragraph with all the special characters you'll need I can convert it to epub and do a screencap of what it looks like with Charis SIL on a Sony reader.

I'm going to finish with a caveat because there are no 100% guarantees in life. With a DRM'd epub it is possible that the publishers have not embedded a font and that the css has been written sufficiently badly that the epub will not use the css you have stored with PRSPlus/Boroda. In a case like this your only option would be to remove the DRM (which we're not allowed to discuss on this Forum) and then you can edit the css inside the epub until you've beaten it into submission (which you can discuss on this Forum).

[elizilla]

Chi Cygni,

By default the reader has only certain fonts in it. The default fonts, at least in my US device, don't include all the characters that you need for foreign language words.

Additional fonts can be copied from your PC. You copy and paste them into the reader, just one time.

The hard part is linking the books to something besides the default font. Every book has its own CSS file, which tells it what fonts to use. So if you do it the way I've been doing it, you'd have to put the link to the extra font, into the CSS for every book. And some books won't let you do this, because they have DRM (Digital Rights Managerment - this is supposed to keep you from pirating it) and the DRM blocks you from changing it.

The PRS-650 doesn't have a way for you to change the default font. So you can't just change it globally. This is where the aftermarket firmware comes in - it lets you do that. I chose not to install this, since if I mess up I don't know how to get back to where I started. Most of my books are in USA English and don't need those other characters.

[Chi Cygni]

Thank you jackie and elizilla for this thorough explanation. I will need to digest it. I don't have a Sony for the moment and I wonder if I should buy it (if I can find it in the first place) because of all that jazz. It's more my (big!) fancy than necessity as I have an Opus which works perfectly font-wise. I found today on internet that apparently my country editors build in the required font before publishing an ebook. This is yet to be seen live. Anyway my head is a bit spinning now from investigating the subject.

Many thanks!