Hacks Foreign language support - doable on 1.0? - Page 2

Chandrakumar · 06-13-2008, 02:14 AM

Hi friends,

My blogs are in UTF-8 character set. I have saved them in to files of .pdf, .htm and .txt formats and sent all the three files to Kindle support for conversion into kindle format. To this, I am in receipt of the following reply form Kindle:
********************************
Kindle uses display technology similar to that of a Web browser and supports the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8859-1 character set, which is based on the Latin languages. The only characters from this set not currently supported are: spades, clubs, hearts, up-arrow, down-arrow, alpha, beta, and gamma. If you have digital content that you did not purchase from Amazon.com but would like to view on Kindle, you should be able to view it if the file is free of digital rights management software, uses characters from the ISO 8859-1 character set, and is in one of the supported file formats

******************************

Now I am hopeless. Their reply is evident that it will not support any non-latin language which includes UTF-8. My only option is to return it within the specified period.

HarryT · 06-13-2008, 02:24 AM

Looks like you're out of luck, unfortunately

. A Sony or a Gen3 should work OK for you, though, if you did fancy trying another make of eInk reader.

seajewel · 06-13-2008, 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elsi

And, perhaps an intermediate step in getting text to JPG as seajewel suggested. I might take some time to experiment with this over the weekend if someone wants to supply a text file in Korean. (And assuming I have a font that would work with it!)

I am attaching a Korean sample text file, it contains about 2-3 pages of text. If you do get around to testing it, please let me know how it goes! Thank you so much!

seajewel · 06-13-2008, 02:56 AM

Ooohh has anyone tried this out on the Kindle? How long are page turns? How is the font (clear enough to read without discomfort)? How did you make it? Thanks!! If this works, I will buy a Kindle now for sure.

EDITED TO ADD: You explained how in the post above. Thank you for trying this! Let me know how it reads. I'm really excited right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovebeta

OK, I decide to share a Chinese book I made. It is Sun Tzu's Art of War. The texts were aligned vertically, as in the traditional style. Please enjoy it even if you don't understand Chinese.

Added: it was make for Kindle specifically (png sized 520x640 each). So I doubt if it would display properly on other devices, such as Cybook.

lovebeta · 06-13-2008, 08:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seajewel

Ooohh has anyone tried this out on the Kindle? How long are page turns? How is the font (clear enough to read without discomfort)? How did you make it? Thanks!! If this works, I will buy a Kindle now for sure.

EDITED TO ADD: You explained how in the post above. Thank you for trying this! Let me know how it reads. I'm really excited right now.

You can preview the file on your PC. I think it displayed beautifully on the Kindle and the page turns are like 1.5 times the normal ones. What's more, you have all kinds of fonts at your disposal. For example, I use Ming to view classical scripts and Gothic/Black for comtemporary ones.

However you do have to put in a lot of work to transform the text. I have done like 10 books before I stopped. I'd advice you to get a Sony PRS-500/505 if you plan to read a lot of Korean. That's why I have both.

seajewel · 06-13-2008, 11:29 AM

Thanks. I think I'll get a Kindle soon then. I only plan on reading about 5 Korean books on the Kindle, the rest will all be English, and I just have a lot more faith that Amazon will be around as an ebook seller than Sony will. That's why I've been sort of holding out on the Sony.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovebeta

You can preview the file on your PC. I think it displayed beautifully on the Kindle and the page turns are like 1.5 times the normal ones. What's more, you have all kinds of fonts at your disposal. For example, I use Ming to view classical scripts and Gothic/Black for comtemporary ones.

However you do have to put in a lot of work to transform the text. I have done like 10 books before I stopped. I'd advice you to get a Sony PRS-500/505 if you plan to read a lot of Korean. That's why I have both.

pilotbob · 06-13-2008, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seajewel

and I just have a lot more faith that Amazon will be around as an ebook seller than Sony will. That's why I've been sort of holding out on the Sony.

Maybe, maybe not. But, it's not really an issue since you can buy LIT books and convert them to the Sony format.

BOb

HarryT · 06-14-2008, 06:54 AM

... or, indeed to Kindle/Mobi format

. LIT is (IMHO) the best format to buy in in terms of "longevity" of the book, because it's so easily converted (on a Windows PC, at least) to so many other formats.

JSWolf · 06-23-2008, 08:54 PM

Actually, that should display fine on the Gen3.

DaleDe · 06-24-2008, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chandrakumar

Hi friends,

My blogs are in UTF-8 character set. I have saved them in to files of .pdf, .htm and .txt formats and sent all the three files to Kindle support for conversion into kindle format. To this, I am in receipt of the following reply form Kindle:
********************************
Kindle uses display technology similar to that of a Web browser and supports the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8859-1 character set, which is based on the Latin languages. The only characters from this set not currently supported are: spades, clubs, hearts, up-arrow, down-arrow, alpha, beta, and gamma. If you have digital content that you did not purchase from Amazon.com but would like to view on Kindle, you should be able to view it if the file is free of digital rights management software, uses characters from the ISO 8859-1 character set, and is in one of the supported file formats

******************************

Now I am hopeless. Their reply is evident that it will not support any non-latin language which includes UTF-8. My only option is to return it within the specified period.

The characters from this set not currently supported are: spades, clubs, hearts, up-arrow, down-arrow, alpha, beta, and gamma.

None of these characters are in ISO-8859-1. Check our wiki for details.
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/ISO-8859-1

Dale

pengrus · 03-01-2009, 01:25 AM

I read this thread, and still cannot understand. Could you please share if it is possible to read Chinese on Kindle? And what are the steps?

Thanks a lot!

stevenmoy · 03-01-2009, 01:36 AM

It's not possible for Kindle to display Chinese at the moment.

Thomas Ryan · 03-01-2009, 04:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igorsk

Kindle does support UTF-8 in its Mobi books and probably in the browser. However, the built-in fonts have glyphs only for Latin characters, so any non-Western languages won't work.

To add some color - UTF-8 can be used to represent any Unicode character (just about any character/glyph you can think of displaying), but as noted , Kindle's fonts generally don't have the data to display characters outside the standard Latin characters. There is no built in data to support for Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters.

From wikipedia:
Initially Kindle 1 only supported the ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1) character set for its content and Unicode characters and non-western characters were not supported. The firmware update of February 2009 supports additional character sets including ISO 8859-16.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-16
to gain a better understanding of terminology and what the characters are.

The other route to display characters is image based. Tear apart Da Vinci code, for example. Those funny characters appear in the ebook, but I am not aware of any Unicode encoding for them. They are image based. Thus in an oblique (brute-force) way the "font" is embedded in the content.

This technique could be extended to display just about anything on a Kindle screen. One degenerate case would be one image per page that snapshots the page with any writing system content. This is inefficient, unsearchable, no annotations within a page, no font size changes, etc., but "do-able".
The other would be one image for every character. Same problems.

The analogy for the first is a fax page - you can write whatever you want on a fax page - no encoding, no fonts, no plug-ins, etc required. The analogy for the second is those weird ransom notes you seen in books/movies from the 1980's - images individually clipped from magazines and strung together.

(We HAve YouR ChiLd)

Next, as noted elsewhere, Topaz is Amazon's proprietary format. If you look long enough and hard enough at Topaz content, you might conclude it is a hybrid between mobi (characters encoded) and image-based data.

The site http://www.latenightcode.com/devblog...tions-part-ii/ seems to confirm this.

To summarize, a clever programmer may find a way to add additional UTF-8 font data to Kindle, and it might just work. Or, a clever programmer may create a Topaz content creation/conversion tool to display non-latin characters, and that just might work too.

(Line layout, e.g. bi-directional text, ligatures, etc., needs to move to another thread.)

pengrus · 03-01-2009, 12:03 PM

Thank you Thomas for the detailed background information. Hope soon we will be able to read more language. Per Amazon's mission, it seems to be on their roadmap.

realscore · 03-06-2009, 01:02 PM

Hi lovebeta,

What software and how did you use to create the Art of War.prc? Thanks.

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06-13-2008, 02:14 AM	#16
Chandrakumar Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2008 Device: Amazon Kindle	Hi friends, My blogs are in UTF-8 character set. I have saved them in to files of .pdf, .htm and .txt formats and sent all the three files to Kindle support for conversion into kindle format. To this, I am in receipt of the following reply form Kindle: ****************************** Kindle uses display technology similar to that of a Web browser and supports the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8859-1 character set, which is based on the Latin languages. The only characters from this set not currently supported are: spades, clubs, hearts, up-arrow, down-arrow, alpha, beta, and gamma. If you have digital content that you did not purchase from Amazon.com but would like to view on Kindle, you should be able to view it if the file is free of digital rights management software, uses characters from the ISO 8859-1 character set, and is in one of the supported file formats **************************** Now I am hopeless. Their reply is evident that it will not support any non-latin language which includes UTF-8. My only option is to return it within the specified period.

06-13-2008, 02:24 AM	#17
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Looks like you're out of luck, unfortunately . A Sony or a Gen3 should work OK for you, though, if you did fancy trying another make of eInk reader.

06-14-2008, 06:54 AM	#23
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	... or, indeed to Kindle/Mobi format . LIT is (IMHO) the best format to buy in in terms of "longevity" of the book, because it's so easily converted (on a Windows PC, at least) to so many other formats.

06-23-2008, 08:54 PM	#24
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 74,379 Karma: 129333690 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Actually, that should display fine on the Gen3.

03-01-2009, 01:25 AM	#26
pengrus Enthusiast Posts: 30 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: kindle	I read this thread, and still cannot understand. Could you please share if it is possible to read Chinese on Kindle? And what are the steps? Thanks a lot!

03-01-2009, 01:36 AM	#27
stevenmoy Zealot Posts: 133 Karma: 348 Join Date: Jan 2008 Device: Kindle 2	It's not possible for Kindle to display Chinese at the moment.

03-01-2009, 12:03 PM	#29
pengrus Enthusiast Posts: 30 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: kindle	Thank you Thomas for the detailed background information. Hope soon we will be able to read more language. Per Amazon's mission, it seems to be on their roadmap.

03-06-2009, 01:02 PM	#30
realscore Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2009 Device: Kindle	Hi lovebeta, What software and how did you use to create the Art of War.prc? Thanks.

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