Arabic/Persian text on Kindle 3

[Doitsu]

Unfortunately, Kindle Previewer is not very reliable, when it comes to the preview of RTL text. It also seems to use installed system fonts, because when I openend your file, all three lines were displayed in the same font, because neither Nazli nor Lateef are installed on my system.

On my K3, the actual display was even worse: all of the Arabic characters with vowel signs on them were displayed disjointed.

AFAIK, the only thing that you can do is install a font hack. IIRC, an Arab Kindle user managed to install the Arabic Droid Naskh fonts on a PW using the USE_ALT_FONTS font hack, but that hack seems to work only with certain firmware versions without a jailbreak.

@curious non-Arabic speaking Kindle users:
The Arabic phrase shown in the screenshots is the first verse of a Qur'an Sura (9:111).
(Unlike most other Arabic texts, the Qur'an is traditionally written with vowel signs.)

[sevenkul]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Unfortunately, Kindle Previewer is not very reliable, when it comes to the preview of RTL text. It also seems to use installed system fonts, because when I openend your file, all three lines were displayed in the same font, because neither Nazli nor Lateef are installed on my system.

Interesting. I generated the mobi file which I send you with Kindle Previewer 2.751 on XP machine on which Nazli and Lateef fonts are installed. However, when I generate a new mobi file with Kindle Previewer 2.8 on Windows 7 machine on which the fonts are not installed, I get very similar result. I am sending in the attachment two screenshots on which @font-face is added or commented out. Kindle Previewer doesn't seems to use installed fonts.

It is also interesting that your prewiever's default font and my prewiever's default font are not the same in terms of showing alaf with fethah. Besides, Kindle Previewer in my XP machine and win7 machine show fethah and kesrah with different slopes. One shows horizontal and one shows inclined....

Because of inconsistencies, I gave up embedding Arabic font. However, it is still boring that not all kindles will show vowel signs even with its default font. It seems it is better to convert text to image or preshape the text.

[Ahmed Ismail]

Originally Posted by Gazella

What's the use of this? Are there Arabic ebooks available online? I'd be interested to know. Arabic is my main language but I always read English ebooks as I rarely find Arabic ebooks on the web.

yes bro there is many website for that, and i have already around 600 book beside you can read pdf after cutting empty spaces by briss , its sooo interesting how ever what is the kind of your reader?

thanks
Ahmed

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by Ahmed Ismail

yes bro there is many website for that, and i have already around 600 book beside you can read pdf after cutting empty spaces by briss , its sooo interesting how ever what is the kind of your reader?

thanks
Ahmed

A Kindle Paperwhite. Could you please post the websites you get them from.

[memo]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

If you had problems with shaping or RTL layout, you most likely used Amazon Cloud or Calibre to transfer the files to your Kindle.
You'll need to manually transfer the files via the USB cable.

Hi Doitsu,

and what application do you use to convert the Persian pdf file to a mobi file? I copied your mobi file to my Kindle by cable and it worked fine but when I do the same with my converted mobi file, it doesn't work properly. I think maybe it's because I used calibre to convert it, but I don't know if there is another free program to do it.

Regards.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by memo

... what application do you use to convert the Persian pdf file to a mobi file?

I didn't use a PDF file. I converted an .ePub file that I created with Sigil with Kindle Previewer,. You can also use Calibre to convert ePub files (and other formats), however, you'll need to select AZW3 as the output format, because the old MOBI format doesn't support Persian text.
(Kindle Previewer will generate a MOBI file, but it's a special MOBI file that also contains an AZW3 file.)

If you're trying to convert a PDF file, activating the Heuristics options in Calibre usually will get you somewhat better results.
(Calibre > Preferences > Common Options > Heuristic Processing )

However, I'd recommend converting to ePub first, because this'll allow you to check the converted file with Sigil and edit it, if necessary.

[memo]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

I didn't use a PDF file. I converted an .ePub file that I created with Sigil with Kindle Previewer,. You can also use Calibre to convert ePub files (and other formats), however, you'll need to select AZW3 as the output format, because the old MOBI format doesn't support Persian text.

Thank you for your kind response.
It's got better but still I'm not able to view the correct format.
I think it has something to do with my computer's settings or basically I don't know how to do it.

I tried to convert the pdf to epub with Calibre and it didn't go well. So, I tried to copy/paste the text from pdf to sigil and convert it to epub. Here I got better results. However, in a quick look it seemed to be OK but then I noticed that it'd changed the order of the words/letters in some parts of the lines.

I think that the problem is with the copying form PDF (I tried two different documents and the result of one of them was better than the other! It wasn't perfect but it was readable, the other one wasn't). I also tried some free pdf to microsoft word converters to find out if they respect the order of the text but with no results.
Maybe I have to change some settings or to install some extra package to fix up these kinds of problem but honestly I don't know how!!! I was searching online and I couldn't find any information! I would appreciate if you could provide me some extra help in this issue.

Thanks.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by memo

Maybe I have to change some settings or to install some extra package to fix up these kinds of problem but honestly I don't know how!!!

You might be able to fix some of these issues by changing the following tag in Sigil (in Code View) mode:

From: <body>
To: <body dir="rtl">

However, even some PDFs with English text in them often have conversion problems. For example, words separated by random spaces, random line breaks etc. I.e., you shouldn't expect a perfect conversion.
It all depends on the program used to create the PDF. Some use normal (unshaped) Perso-Arabic Unicode letters, others preshape Perso-Arabic letters and in some really old PDF files you might find non-Unicode text with embedded custom Farsi fonts.

Originally Posted by memo

I also tried some free pdf to microsoft word converters to find out if they respect the order of the text but with no results.

When it comes to text conversion, all of these converters aren't any better than Acrobat. I.e., you might as well open the .pdf file press CTRL+A to select all text and copy it to a new Sigil .ePub.

BTW, there's also a program that'll reformat PDF files so that they can be viewed on 6inch screens K2pdfopt.
Its user interface sucks, but it works. Don't forget to use the -r option if you use it with Persian text.

[memo]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

BTW, there's also a program that'll reformat PDF files so that they can be viewed on 6inch screens K2pdfopt.
Its user interface sucks, but it works. Don't forget to use the -r option if you use it with Persian text.

This program is great. My problem is solved!! You're right, it's not user-friendly at all but works fine. Thanks a lot
I also tried the first solution you mentioned but this one is perfect.

[ars543210]

Finally i managed to install custom Persian Font on my "Kindle E-reader 8th Generation"
using this method:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=187752



but not all fonts displays correctly.
for me this fonts worked together:
https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/iranian-sans
https://github.com/rastikerdar/vazir...r-Code.ttf.zip

thanks to 'Saber Rastikerdar' developer of Vazir-Code font.

[knc1]

Note: You are bumping a 5 year old thread with model and firmware specific changes.
It would have been better if you had started a new thread (threads are cheap here).

Please post what firmware version your KT3 is running.
There have been a lot of changes in the past 5 years from the K3 (3rd generation, Kindle Keyboard) to your 8th generation KT3.

[ars543210]

Sure
I will create a new thread.