Chinese or Japanese on the Cybook.

[slawdan]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

The main problem with Chinese and Japanese texts is that several encodings for each language were in use before the era of Unicode.
The Cybook uses Unicode UTF-8 encoding. So the trick is to convert the ebook files to UTF-8.

For doing this you need to use 3 softwares. 1. Firefox, 2. a text editor (word pad etc) and 3. Kompozer (a multi-platform HTML editor with versions for Windows, Mac and Linux). Link here: http://kompozer.net/download.php

Open the txt or html file of the book in Firefox.

If the text is gibberish, go to File/Character Encoding and tick one by one the Asian encodings until you get the correct one on screen. Click on /More Encodings if the first list is not enough.

Once the text appears correctly on screen, do a "select all" and copy to the clipboard. The text you are saving now is automatically in HTML format.

Next, open Kompozer and "paste" the copied text into the new blank screen. Now you can edit the text as you like. Before you do anything you should save the text by clicking on File/Save And Change Character Encoding.

Type in the filename and select UTF-8 in the box below. You can enlarge the size of the title or chapter by high-lighting the word(s) and clicking on the big letter A in the toolbar above the text. You can change high-lighted text to bold, italics etc by clicking on the corresponding icon in the toolbar. Don't forget to save often.

If you want a list of chapters for a long text where you can jump to the chapter by simply clicking on the chapter in the list, this is what you do.

Make a list of chapters at the beginning of the text.
Chapter 1. How to do this
Chapter 2. How to do that
etc.

Go down into the text. Find chapter 1 or whatever you want as a chapter and highlight the word(s). Click on the anchor icon to create the "anchor" and type in a name such as "c01" "c02" for example in the box which opens.

After you have done this to all the chapters, go back to the chapter list at the top of the text. Find Chapter 1 and highlight it. Click on the chain icon to create the "link". In the box which opens, click on the down arrow on the right of the box in "Link location" and select the text which you have typed for chapter 1 eg. "c01". Click OK. The word(s) will now appear in blue, which means the link has been successfully created.
Create the links to all the other chapters and you have an active chapter list.
Don't forget to save often

The HTML file you have now created can be used in "MobiPocket Creator" directly to create a .prc file usable on all MobiPocket readers.

It takes a lot of time to do the chapter links so I usually leave it out on novels that I know I will read only once. However if there is a text which you consult often and need to scroll around a lot, putting in chapter links would make sense.

Next you need to install the relevant fonts on the Cybook itself.
For Chinese I find SimHei the most legible.
For Japanese MS Gothic is the one I use.
Connect the Cybook to your computer and copy these True Type Fonts to the Fonts folder in the root directory of the Cybook. Next you have to delete the "font_cache" file in the Systems folder (don't worry, Cybook will create another one with the new fonts when you turn it on again).
After you have done all the above and turned on the Cybook, it will take many minutes of waiting (while it writes a new font cache) before the library screen appears again. Just be patient.

See other threads on MobileRead for advice on fonts and their installation.

I am aware that this might not be the easiest or quickest way, but at the moment it is what I use.

I tried by following your last steps , but unfortunately failed on read pdfs with chinese charactors . And I'm using 64M gen3 with fw 2.0, is there anything i do wrongly?

Anyway, thanks your posting.

[Polyglot27]

Hi Slawdan, the instructions were meant for converting Chinese and Japanese text or html files to correctly encoded html files suitable for creating prc files with MobiPocket creator. I almost never use the Cybook for reading PDF files as the screen is way too small. Any pdf file I want to use on the Cybook in an European language I convert to a prc file with MobiPocket Creator first. I am afraid I can't help you with Asian pdfs.

[Polyglot27]

Update on fonts for the Cybook Gen3.
I have used SimHei for Chinese until recently. It was a good clear font but would not correctly show single western style quotation marks. It showed them as zeros. I thought it was a problem with the file but after replacing SimHei with the MicroHei font, everything displayed correctly, even Japanese files and Western European languages. I am now using this and the ZhongSong for Chinese and Japanese.

[Polyglot27]

One problem I have encountered when I download mobi format Chinese books from Shucang is that the characters come out as squares on the library page even though the correct fonts have been installed for reading them. I have e-mailed Bookeen about this and they admit that at the moment, it is not possible to read Chinese titles on the library page and that they have asked the technical department to look into it. If enough people ask for it, maybe something can be done. In the meantime, I have discovered that it is possible to change the metadata with Calibre. I click on the Edit Metadata button and change the characters to pinyin. At least that gives me an idea of what book I am looking at.

[pmwt]

Polyglot27, thanks for the instructions. They work like a charm.

[Polyglot27]

Hi pmwt, I am glad the instructions were useful for you. Just out of curiosity, do you use it for Chinese or Japanese books? Also, apart from Shucang for Chinese books and Aozora Bunko for Japanese books, do you have other sites to recommend?

[pmwt]

Hi Polygot27,

I did this as a proof of concept to show a co-worker that the ereader has that capability. I used a Chinese ebook downloaded from www.manybooks.net. Unfortunately I myself do not read Chinese nor Japanese. Thanks again for the help.

[Godzil]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

Hi pmwt, I am glad the instructions were useful for you. Just out of curiosity, do you use it for Chinese or Japanese books? Also, apart from Shucang for Chinese books and Aozora Bunko for Japanese books, do you have other sites to recommend?

They are capable of, but you need to found a compatible font