Older Kindles losing store access in August

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, Hebrew in and of itself, or Arabic, etc.--they work fine.

Now.
But I bought a new DXG from Amazon and was appalled that it only did Latin-Roman and some Greek (not all Greek).
I think the first Touch Kindle I had didn't do Chinese. Pathetic.

RTL and LTR on same line is tricky. It's crazy to edit.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Hitch

So, you gotta experiment and play with them.
Hitch

Over the past several decades I have worked on highly technical projects with teams of very intelligent highly educated people.

Most of them would rather spend hours arguingdebating a point of contention than doing a 10 minute experiment that would resolve the issue.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Now.
But I bought a new DXG from Amazon and was appalled that it only did Latin-Roman and some Greek (not all Greek).
I think the first Touch Kindle I had didn't do Chinese. Pathetic.

RTL and LTR on same line is tricky. It's crazy to edit.

Well, Chinese--that's the limitations on the unicode. I mean, I forget now how deep into the Unicode you gotta go, with the numbers are VAST to encompass all the characters in Chinese. I mean, VAST and well beyond what 99% of Kindles have. And other eBook readers, too.

The DXG...that's the last of the K2 Kindles, pretty much, the KF7's, if memory serves, so NOPE, ain't gonna do much in the realm of R2L, Greek or anything else. But you already know that, Quoth.

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Over the past several decades I have worked on highly technical projects with teams of very intelligent highly educated people.

Most of them would rather spend hours arguingdebating a point of contention than doing a 10 minute experiment that would resolve the issue.

That's because arguing is fun; testing is laborious. I'm up for either but when push comes to shove, I'll take a real test any time. As you say--resolves the issues.

Hitch

[Quoth]

And Japanese surely is worse because they have two writing systems of their own AND use Chinese glyph things when it suits them.

On the DXG I used an image once (we all know how badly that works) with the "official" pinyin and after that only the pinyin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

But such scheme can sometimes be wrong, cf Roman transliteration of Russian, Ukrainian etc (Cyrillic transliteration often varies with country), Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew. Or even English pronunciation of Irish (often in USA), which looks terrible to people in Ireland and Scotland even when they can't read/speak Gaelic. USA Celtic themed fantasy with mh, bh, c and s etc replaced with w, v, k and sh. Though dh and gh are tricky depending on if modern pronunciation or pre-1948 or pre 16th Century. The gh can be as in Lough which can be in North like Scottish Loch, or silent like in English "dough", but it's never like gh in "tough"! Actually ancient Celtic was similar to ancient Latin. Neither had J (That's an initial I) and c was always hard. Both lack letters in modern English. Hence Kaiser is closer than modern pronouncing of Caesar.

Computers & text was USA English centric too long. Example HTML has center, invented by Webster because he didn't want any words to end in -re.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, yes, I know. But you know, Jon...when a customer comes to you with this sort of book, you have to at least try, in a sample. See how far the firmware has come or...whatever.

I would have bet money that putting both English and Hebrew on the same line would not have worked in Kindle--but it did. I would have thought I'd get further with iBooks on an iPad, than I would with Kindle, but I would have been wrong.

So, you gotta experiment and play with them. And yes, it's still an imaged world, for Hebrew and other RTL languages, mixed in with English (and other LTR tongues), but...still, we try. (I do want to note that if the Hebrew had been solely in its own paragraphs, it would have worked for KDP. And ADE and iBooks. It just couldn't, mixed in on the same line.)

Hitch

How do you handle Hebrew in Mobi?

Can you make a Hebrew font that doesn't work like a Hebrew font for when you need to mix Hebrew and English? That way you can do Hebrew in RTL just putting in the letters so it reads as though it's LTR?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How do you handle Hebrew in Mobi?

Can you make a Hebrew font that doesn't work like a Hebrew font for when you need to mix Hebrew and English? That way you can do Hebrew in RTL just putting in the letters so it reads as though it's LTR?

God no, talk about losing your mind! You just can't, it would take you months to do even a smattering of "Hebrew," You'd need a special font, you'd need...nah. Far far far too much work.

At the moment, all the INLINE Hebrew is in teeny-weeny images. Standalone Hebrew can be Hebrew (or Arabic, etc.). You do have to be aware that in KF7, those standalone paragraphs would NOT be readable.

I have a would-be customer right now--wants to hire me for "consultation" who is blithely ignoring what I say about Thai. I wonder why I bother. He told me that since it "works on his Paperwhite, that proves it's fine." (SIGH).

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How do you handle Hebrew in Mobi?

Can you make a Hebrew font that doesn't work like a Hebrew font for when you need to mix Hebrew and English? That way you can do Hebrew in RTL just putting in the letters so it reads as though it's LTR?

You can't do your own fonts at all really for mobi that's distributed.

Even with KF8 (azw3) you can't assume someone will tap on Aa and select Publisher font for a funky font you've included, assuming you faked the RTL with Right Justified and typing in the text in reverse. Even then you can't do English/Roman and Hebrew on the same line with left justified Roman and right justified fake Hebrew and variable gap, unless maybe a 2 column table works

זה מטורף

It's crazy.
Masuggah in slang.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

You can't do your own fonts at all really for mobi that's distributed.

Even with KF8 (azw3) you can't assume someone will tap on Aa and select Publisher font for a funky font you've included, assuming you faked the RTL with Right Justified and typing in the text in reverse. Even then you can't do English/Roman and Hebrew on the same line with left justified Roman and right justified fake Hebrew and variable gap, unless maybe a 2 column table works

זה מטורף

It's crazy.
Masuggah in slang.

What Amazon really needs to do is make embedded fonts the default if there are embedded fonts and then let you override it if you want. Not the other way round. The way it's done now doesn't work well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

God no, talk about losing your mind! You just can't, it would take you months to do even a smattering of "Hebrew," You'd need a special font, you'd need...nah. Far far far too much work.

At the moment, all the INLINE Hebrew is in teeny-weeny images. Standalone Hebrew can be Hebrew (or Arabic, etc.). You do have to be aware that in KF7, those standalone paragraphs would NOT be readable.

I have a would-be customer right now--wants to hire me for "consultation" who is blithely ignoring what I say about Thai. I wonder why I bother. He told me that since it "works on his Paperwhite, that proves it's fine." (SIGH).

Hitch

Have you ever tried SVG for ePub and KF8/KFX when you need something like Hebrew mixed with English?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Have you ever tried SVG for ePub and KF8/KFX when you need something like Hebrew mixed with English?

Nyet, because I can't use that. SVG only works for ePUB, not all the Kindle formats, so I either end up with two sets of imagery--SVG and then jpgs or whatever--and almost no way to media query that into submission and behavior, or I end up with a mess.

Listen, Jon, mah brother, I PRAY for the day that SVG is the way.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Nyet, because I can't use that. SVG only works for ePUB, not all the Kindle formats, so I either end up with two sets of imagery--SVG and then jpgs or whatever--and almost no way to media query that into submission and behavior, or I end up with a mess.

Listen, Jon, mah brother, I PRAY for the day that SVG is the way.

Hitch

So I take it that KFX does not support SVG or not all that well?

If you took a KF8 or ePub with SVG and converted it KFX, what do you get?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you took a KF8 or ePub with SVG and converted it KFX, what do you get?

SVG images are rasterized and converted to JPEG during conversion to KFX.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So I take it that KFX does not support SVG or not all that well?

One thing it handles poorly is text inside of SVG. It does not make use of any fonts that may be embedded in the book.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So I take it that KFX does not support SVG or not all that well?

If you took a KF8 or ePub with SVG and converted it KFX, what do you get?

See Jhowell's excellent comments below.

Originally Posted by jhowell

SVG images are rasterized and converted to JPEG during conversion to KFX.

( ･｀ω･)b♡

Originally Posted by jhowell

One thing it handles poorly is text inside of SVG. It does not make use of any fonts that may be embedded in the book.

Oh, yeah. That too.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

So basically, Amazon took the only format that handles things pretty well and made a new format that sux poopoo and made it their primary format. Well done Amazon.