Duokan FAQ

[mdovell]

Originally Posted by montalex

when you restart after update, you'll see the usual boy under tree image, then the screen will flash, and you'll get the same imagine with the loading bar. After about 20% progress, the Duokan screen boot screen will flash. It is only there for a few seconds, so be ready to press Q (Kindle3) or 1 (Kindle2).

hmm I seem to be having a tad of trouble.

I can get it to install but I don't get how to put it into english

I press menu
I go to 0 (the settings it has a wrench logo)

I go to the 3rd page
(it says 0.5.13.6613 beta 26)

B, D and E can be selected

E goes to a menu thing in chinese

D goes to a thanks section to developers

B kinda has text come up but nothing appears to happen

[charliefx]

Looks like in the DX, the Language option is in the second page (I have a DXG):

- press Menu.
- press 0 (settings).
- Go to the 2nd page.
- Choose the G option (right below the date & time).
- A Option windows pops up, select the third option (number 2)

Enjoy

[WS64]

English:

[mdovell]

slightly different but not by much it is G on the 2nd page

[curstpriest]

There's a few more things:

Fonts:
You can add TTF fonts to the fonts directory in the DK system folder, and they will show up in the fonts list, worked fine for me. I extracted the fonts from the fonts hack in the wiki that contains droid sans etc.

These look a bit ugly though
Tried some other more typical book fonts like baskerville bembo palatino, look much better.
You are limited to how many fonts you can add. I think only 7 or so. And it doesn't seem to like otf, only ttf.

Loading images:
They are gifs stored in system loadingpicture.
You can edit them if you want. I removed the chinese text from the USB image to test this out, because it was bugging me. I'll fiddle with editing the duokan logo. I don't mind the logo, but I don't really like seeing the characters, I'd rather it be in english .

The typesetting and translation on a lot of the stuff is very poor.
A lot of the text strings are reused - "normal" is used over and over again for like 3 settings.

Does anyone know how to edit the other text strings/where they are stored. What's in the .img files/ .dat files, and how the whole layout of everything works. I have not had the time to fiddle with much yet.

[montalex]

Originally Posted by Polvo

I haven't tried this but that's what it says on the Chinese FAQ which some of the above FAQ is based on.

I had TTS right after installation. It worked with the dictionary also, with the default female and male voices. I then installed the aforementioned WyabdcRealPeopleTTS in system/dict. All this gives you is a nice female voice for the dictionary. It does nothing for the book TTS. It is a whopping 166mb folder (my poor Kindle was glowing and giving off smoke as I copied it over, and I heard the terrified voices of the 300 books that it displaced!).

All in all, not very important unless you like your dictionary to read to you.

Would there be a way to install this for the book TTS? Somehow, I doubt it.

[Starko]

Does Duokan PDF viewer suupport highlighting of text based PDFs?

[montalex]

Originally Posted by Starko

Does Duokan PDF viewer suupport highlighting of text based PDFs?

I just tried highlighting in pdf. I couldn't find a way to do it (not to say there isn't one). But the dictionary works in pdf, and you can select a passage and add it to notes. This only works in Smart Layo (Aa key when in pdf). ( I kind of like that instead of Layout -- just trying saying "layout" with a bad Chinese accent. Of course, then you'd have "Sma Layo".

[hondamarlboro]

Can anyone share if or not Duokan does block Kindle's official firmware update via OTA in order to avoid the unexpected brick?

[hmf]

I've looked for settings to select things like line spacing, justification, a hack to extend text to the edge of the screen. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to change them like on the stock kindle. I can't stand the wide left and right margins I get. And finally the biggest problem...I get a space after apostrophes which is very disconcerting. Any solutions?

[curstpriest]

Originally Posted by hmf

I've looked for settings to select things like line spacing, justification, a hack to extend text to the edge of the screen. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to change them like on the stock kindle. I can't stand the wide left and right margins I get. And finally the biggest problem...I get a space after apostrophes which is very disconcerting. Any solutions?

change

HORIZONTAL_MARGIN=40 (to a number divisible by 2, like 10)

the file is located in
X:\system\com.amazon.ebook.booklet.reader\reader.p ref
it may be hidden, so display hidden files
Restart the kindle after changing this setting by going settings -> restart, don't try to change the spacing inside of a book or it will reset the margins again

[hmf]

That setting does not work on the Duokan firmware...wish it was a simple as that.

[curstpriest]

Oh, no idea...
There are some text files for layouts in there but not sure how they set stuff up. The whole system is very confusing.

[bthoven]

Originally Posted by montalex

It seems impossible to download dictionaries from the above mentioned site:

http://reciteword.cosoft.org.cn/star...-dic/dict.org/

The downloads time out after an hour or so. Any other source?

Edit: I found another place to download dictionaries:

http://xdxf.revdanica.com/down/

One must select stardict format in other options, download format.

Works brilliantly! Thanks so much.

I also install dictionary from xdxf website. The problem is the meaning also displays all the html tags along with it. Is it supposed to be like this?

The other problem is the ePub rendering is not so good. It always shows two words next to each other without space in-between; and any alphabet behind the apostrophe will have too many spaces in-between.

[montalex]

Originally Posted by bthoven

I also install dictionary from xdxf website. The problem is the meaning also displays all the html tags along with it. Is it supposed to be like this?

The other problem is the ePub rendering is not so good. It always shows two words next to each other without space in-between; and any alphabet behind the apostrophe will have too many spaces in-between.

When I move the cursor to a word to open dictionary, the only tags I see are around the word to be defined, thus: <k>word</k>

When I select the voice function in dictionary, the first time it is used in a particular book, there is a spoke phrase in Chinese, then the word pronounced in English. Subsequent use of the dictionary does not generate that phrase. I wonder what it is?

I tried the WyabdcRealPeopleTTS in dictionary, and it does indeed provide far superior TTS for the dictionary only. This is great for second language users, but is far too large to be interesting for native English speakers. But I guess I already expressed that somewhere.

Yes, the full-space apostrophe is irritating, but I got used to it quickly. What is more of a problem is when the keyboard is set to Latin. In French, you then get all accented letters in a strange, wide font. It doesn't look so bad in KindleBlackBox, but it is really disturbing in Helvetica, etc.