Glo Is there a way to increase font size in the dict lookup window?

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by tshering

I do. I never leave the house without a magnifying glass and a paper-clip, the most essential accessory for the Touch.

Sadly, to take the Kobo Glo with me anywhere, I've also added a paperclip as an essential must-have-with-me-at-all-times item. At least it's small.

[Uschiekid]

Still uses generic font, no matter your font...BUT good news about the japenese dictionary...it no longer has the teeny weeny font, but rather a normal sized, easily readable. Can't tell you the font, but very comfortable to read.

[filmo]

I have plastic ball headed straight pin with point cut/ground off stuck in top edge of my reader's leather cover. Being prepared seems to eliminated need for pin.

My wife asked, "Why is the pin there."

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

Still uses generic font, no matter your font...BUT good news about the japenese dictionary...it no longer has the teeny weeny font, but rather a normal sized, easily readable. Can't tell you the font, but very comfortable to read.

Thank you for the good news.

[tshering]

Right, the display of the dictionary text is better under FW 2.5.2 than under 2.5.0 and 2.5.1. But it is still not as good as it was under FW 2.4.0. Maybe some people will consider the difference of no importance, but for people with poor sight it matters.

Would be nice, if one could set at least the font size in the configuration file.

I attach a picture for comparison.The left side shows 2.4.0, the right side shows 2.5.2. (When I took the left picture, the user language was set to Japanese. Therefore the text of the dictionary screens is a little different. This does however not influence the font attributes.)

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by tshering

Right, the display of the dictionary text is better under FW 2.5.2 than under 2.5.0 and 2.5.1. But it is still not as good as it was under FW 2.4.0. Maybe some people will consider the difference of no importance, but for people with poor sight it matters.

Would be nice, if one could set at least the font size in the configuration file.

I attach a picture for comparison.The left side shows 2.4.0, the right side shows 2.5.2. (When I took the left picture, the user language was set to Japanese. Therefore the text of the dictionary screens is a little different. This does however not influence the font attributes.)

So you are still able to use your custom dictionaries? I thought I read people had trouble after 2.5.0, or did you figure out how to get around it?

I have as yet not bothered to try to make a custom one, since I don't have any good Japanese ebooks (just some free ones for testing). Wanna share your Japanese-English one?

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

So you are still able to use your custom dictionaries? I thought I read people had trouble after 2.5.0, or did you figure out how to get around it?

Dictionary support has been restored with 2.5.1.

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

I have as yet not bothered to try to make a custom one, since I don't have any good Japanese ebooks (just some free ones for testing). Wanna share your Japanese-English one?

Sure, you can find it here. I would recommend that you take the newest one (dicthtml-ja.zip), and the other two later, if you feel you really need it. The two older dictionaries have the advantage, that you can edit the search string.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by tshering

Dictionary support has been restored with 2.5.1.



Sure, you can find it here. I would recommend that you take the newest one (dicthtml-ja.zip), and the other two later, if you feel you really need it. The two older dictionaries have the advantage, that you can edit the search string.

Awesome. Looking forward to trying that out!

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by tshering

Dictionary support has been restored with 2.5.1.



Sure, you can find it here. I would recommend that you take the newest one (dicthtml-ja.zip), and the other two later, if you feel you really need it. The two older dictionaries have the advantage, that you can edit the search string.

Finally had a chance to intall your dictionaries.

They work quite well, but I have a couple of questions.

1) I'm curious why there needs to be two separate dictionaries japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip....you mention that more difficult initial kanji are in the 2nd file. Is it because of the lookup time increasing too much if the file is too big? For me, having to reselect the same passage if it's not found in the first file is more time consuming.
Anyway just curious if there is a reason I'm not seeing to have them separate.
2) How difficult is it to merge two dictionaries? I would like to keep the original Japn-Japn dictionary as well as your new Japn-English as occasionally the Japn-Japn is useful to me. Maybe you can PM me about this (as you mentioned copyright issues)?

Btw, if you aren't on 2.5.2, then I thought I'd give you a head's up that when you install the japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip in other languages, the Japanese becomes very small...not surprising since the other languages aren't meant to display Japanese...and not that annoying since you can see it using normal sized font either in epub or in the edit search string part.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

1) I'm curious why there needs to be two separate dictionaries japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip....you mention that more difficult initial kanji are in the 2nd file. Is it because of the lookup time increasing too much if the file is too big? For me, having to reselect the same passage if it's not found in the first file is more time consuming.
Anyway just curious if there is a reason I'm not seeing to have them separate.

The number of files in a zip archive is limited to 65,535. Therefore I had to split the dictionary into two parts. As for the "real" Japanese dictionary, the structure is a little different from the other dictionaries. Therefore it does not require as many files.

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

2) How difficult is it to merge two dictionaries? I would like to keep the original Japn-Japn dictionary as well as your new Japn-English as occasionally the Japn-Japn is useful to me. Maybe you can PM me about this (as you mentioned copyright issues)?

Generally speaking, merging is rather easy. I did it with several dictionaries. I can give it a try with the Japanese dictionary and will tell you about the results.

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

Btw, if you aren't on 2.5.2, then I thought I'd give you a head's up that when you install the japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip in other languages, the Japanese becomes very small...not surprising since the other languages aren't meant to display Japanese...and not that annoying since you can see it using normal sized font either in epub or in the edit search string part.

Thank you for this information. This is exactly what I have expected. It does not bother me much with regard to the two Japanese dictionaries, since I do not use them any longer anyway. But it is a sad thing, that this prevents the usage of other dictionaries, e.g. Hindi or Tibetan, at least if one does not want to read transliterated texts. It is especially annoying, since it was better in previous versions of the FW.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by tshering

The number of files in a zip archive is limited to 65,535. Therefore I had to split the dictionary into two parts. As for the "real" Japanese dictionary, the structure is a little different from the other dictionaries. Therefore it does not require as many files.

Oh, I see. That makes sense.

Originally Posted by tshering

Generally speaking, merging is rather easy. I did it with several dictionaries. I can give it a try with the Japanese dictionary and will tell you about the results.

Okay, thanks!

Originally Posted by tshering

Thank you for this information. This is exactly what I have expected. It does not bother me much with regard to the two Japanese dictionaries, since I do not use them any longer anyway. But it is a sad thing, that this prevents the usage of other dictionaries, e.g. Hindi or Tibetan, at least if one does not want to read transliterated texts. It is especially annoying, since it was better in previous versions of the FW.

Yeah, in general not allowing the font size to change based on font size used in epub is really unfortunate...there are people who can't use the dictionary at all since they can't read small font.

And making it harder to use custom dictionaries is just mean
I mean, I get that they don't support every language on the planet, but they should at least make it easy for people to install fonts and dictionaries to support the languages they use!

[tshering]

It seems to work, but I tested only a few words. I PM you the URL when the upload is finished.

[tshering]

I gave up any hope that Kobo will permit the user to choose the font size of the dictionary screens in near future. Bad luck for customers with bad eyesight. Therefore, I did some modifications. I increased the font size of the dictionary pop-up screen a bit, and even a little more of the dictionary full screen.
If anybody is interested in getting the modified file, PM me.
Note: It is only for FW 2.4.0 (84fbb7111a). I have an old Touch (N905B), but it should work for the newer Touch too.