Troubleshooting K3 chinese font support spotty?

[yejun]

Originally Posted by belem

Press any keys in Home UI, then it will show Search box.

1. Type ;debugOn , press Enter key
2. Type ~changeLocale zh-CN , press Enter key
3. Restart Kindle in Settings

Should be fine to show simplified Chinese.

This works.

But date doesn't display correctly in some places.

[tao]

Originally Posted by Kanru

OK. I think the myth is busted.

According to https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI there is a “locale” field in the mobi header record. By default if the metadata doesn't specify the locale, it is set to “0x0009”. But a .mobi created by Amazon or Mobipocket the field is set to “0x0404” correctly for Traditional Chinese (zh-tw), or “0x0804” for Simplified Chinese (zh-cn).

I have tried to make Calibre output the correct locale and it works! Try add a metadata <dc:language>zh-tw</dc:language> to the epub file then convert again.

Kanru, thank you for the very important elucidation. Would you please specify how to add the locale field in Calibre for mobi?

Say, If I have a text file, I need to convert it into a mobi with the correct locale metadata, do I have to convert it to ePub first? Where can I specify the locale line <dc:language>zh-tw</dc:language>?

Thank you.

[Kanru]

Originally Posted by tao

Kanru, thank you for the very important elucidation. Would you please specify how to add the locale field in Calibre for mobi?

Say, If I have a text file, I need to convert it into a mobi with the correct locale metadata, do I have to convert it to ePub first? Where can I specify the locale line <dc:language>zh-tw</dc:language>?

Thank you.

You can convert it to a opf directory structure first using `ebook-convert <textfile> <dir>' then modify the opf file.

Calibre also set the tag depends on your GUI language preference. It seems the GUI language preference may override whatever you put inside the opf file, but I did generate a correct mobi file then.

NOTE: Although I said the myth is busted but some user still reports that the square font issue seems random and still occur. I don't have a kindle3 so cant really confirm this fix works.

[tao]

Originally Posted by Kanru

You can convert it to a opf directory structure first using `ebook-convert <textfile> <dir>' then modify the opf file.

Calibre also set the tag depends on your GUI language preference. It seems the GUI language preference may override whatever you put inside the opf file, but I did generate a correct mobi file then.

NOTE: Although I said the myth is busted but some user still reports that the square font issue seems random and still occur. I don't have a kindle3 so cant really confirm this fix works.

I did some testing last night. I used Mobi Creator Publisher edition. I filled in all the related metadata, language, locale, etc. Still, after I transfer the books to Kindle, I still see squares, :-(

It seems the

;debugOn
~changeLocale zh-cn
;debugOff

is the only valid way to make Kindle 3 display Chinese properly, regardless of the locale settings of the mobi file itself. I even tried use HEX editor to change the 0x0009 to 0x0804, didn't help.

[tao]

Originally Posted by tao

I did some testing last night. I used Mobi Creator Publisher edition. I filled in all the related metadata, language, locale, etc. Still, after I transfer the books to Kindle, I still see squares, :-(

It seems the

;debugOn
~changeLocale zh-cn
;debugOff

is the only valid way to make Kindle 3 display Chinese properly, regardless of the locale settings of the mobi file itself. I even tried use HEX editor to change the 0x0009 to 0x0804, didn't help.

I was wrong. I made a mistake while testing the Mobi Creator Publisher Edition v4.2. Actually, if everything is done right (filling in the right language and encoding, and click the Update button), the resultant prc file will have the correct locale information, and it will be correctly displayed in Kindle 3, even the device default locale is set to us-en.

The first time, I was testing the Mobipocket Creator in the middle of night, my brain must have been frazzled then.

Sorry for my mis-information in my previous post. So Kanru is right, if the locale is set correct in the mobi file, the device will display Chinese correctly, even the device's default locale is not Chinese.

[jlick]

Hi, I ran into this problem with some Chinese Traditional documents also. There is an easy fix for the language tag using Mobiperl. If you have Mobiperl you can just run this command without having to edit and rebuild the document:

mobi2mobi --outfile fixed.mobi --language 1028 original.mobi