602 Changing fonts in fbreader

[qariwa55]

I am a relatively new owner of the Pocketbook Pro 602. One reason I bought it was to be able to read Arabic books on it. It came with FW 2.0.4 and Arabic letters were not joined. Following the company's advice, I upgraded to the 2.0.5 Arabic FW version and then 2.0.6. Arabic is now joining, but I cannot switch fonts AT ALL in fbreader (but is not problem on coolreader or the interface font). I went back to FW 2.0.5 (NOT the Arabic), and then back up to 2.0.6. All three FWs look the same: I cannot change fonts in fbreader for any of them. I CAN change font sizes. I have tried books in both Arabic and English, but cannot change fonts for any of them.

I tried loading fbreader180. That can switch fonts, but it does not have joining in Arabic (which makes it virtually impossible to read Arabic).

The font that fbreader is stuck on looks horrid in Arabic, though not terrible in English (I cannot tell what it is for sure, but something ling Liberation Sans).

I talked with the American branch of the company, but they do not seem to have a clue.

Any ideas?

[paola]

Hi qariwa, what fonts would you like to be able to switch between? I have firmware 2.1.0, and I could try and see whether arabic works for me (though it won't be before monday, as i am travelling without my PB903). You could also try to see whether the jacked adobe version works - it should read CSS files (assuming that is the problem). One other thought:what format are you using? on my360 I noticed that FBreader180 displays the wrong font for mobi (at least on one book).

[qariwa55]

Originally Posted by paola

Hi qariwa, what fonts would you like to be able to switch between? I have firmware 2.1.0, and I could try and see whether arabic works for me (though it won't be before monday, as i am travelling without my PB903). You could also try to see whether the jacked adobe version works - it should read CSS files (assuming that is the problem). One other thought:what format are you using? on my360 I noticed that FBreader180 displays the wrong font for mobi (at least on one book).

I have tried using fbreader on epub files, both Arabic and English. I like using CharisSIL which I downloaded. It is close to DejaVu Serif. For Arabic, I would like to use Droid Sans MTI Arabic (for Arabic), both Regular and Bold, which came with the firmware. I also downloaded Scheherazade from SIL, which looks good when I put it as the interface font.

I haven't ever looked at a mobi document.

As a relative newbie to ebooks, I don't know about the jacked adobe version. Certainly the regular adobe digital editions viewer cannot handle Arabic (would it really be so hard for Adobe to fix that???).

The Arabic ebook I have experimented with doesn't even have CSS files. I played around with the font declarations (at the beginning of the body of text) in the Arabic ebook, but this had zero effect one way or the other. I can't change fonts in the free English-language ebooks I downloaded at books.google.com with fbreader anyway, so I don't even think the problem has to do with Arabic.


I do think it is a pocketbook screwup with their firmware.

Thanks for trying this out on 2.1.0

[paola]

Hi, I have checked, and unfortunately no, I cannot change fonts either. Plus, I have tried the hacked adobereader version, but on my PB903 it does not work. I guess for the moment the only fix is to embed your preferred fonts in the document

[qariwa55]

Originally Posted by paola

Hi, I have checked, and unfortunately no, I cannot change fonts either. Plus, I have tried the hacked adobereader version, but on my PB903 it does not work. I guess for the moment the only fix is to embed your preferred fonts in the document

paola, thanks for checking. I tried embedding fonts, and even that did not work, though perhaps I am not doing that right.

I would say that not being able to change fonts in fbreader is a pretty major bug. How can we let the developers know? Or rather, get them to fix it?

[paola]

Originally Posted by qariwa55

paola, thanks for checking. I tried embedding fonts, and even that did not work, though perhaps I am not doing that right.

I would say that not being able to change fonts in fbreader is a pretty major bug. How can we let the developers know? Or rather, get them to fix it?

in the meantime, the good news is that FBreader180 would allow you to do that - though of course you wont' have the notes!

The guys on the russian forum are pretty vocal, so either they would let the programmers know, or they've found a workaround, or we here are doing something wrong. The problem for me is that there is a lot I think I am missing from googletranslate.

Here we can let mtravellerh know and ask him to feed this back to the GiK, though I haven't seen mtravellerh around too much lately. I guess if worse comes to worst I'll try and googletranslate a question on the Russian forum! Since they say they fixed bugs in fbreader, I wonder whether I/we are doing something wrong, though, as it seems to me those guyst are not complaining about being unable to change fonts.

Tomorrow I'll experiment with embedded fonts, and let you know.

[troll05]

Originally Posted by paola

in the meantime, the good news is that FBreader180 would allow you to do that - though of course you wont' have the notes!

unfortunately FBReader180 is still not working properly with any FW newer than 2.0.4
I already contacted GrayNM about this, but the last thing I heard, he was unable to fix it because missing SDK. Since it's released by now, maybe he'll get it up and running soon

Edit: Hi paola, just read your post in the "903 attention..." thread, now it works, although the wrist turning function is still unavailable

[qariwa55]

Originally Posted by troll05

unfortunately FBReader180 is still not working properly with any FW newer than 2.0.4
I already contacted GrayNM about this, but the last thing I heard, he was unable to fix it because missing SDK. Since it's released by now, maybe he'll get it up and running soon

That is a little strange. My FBReader180 works okay with my FW 2.0.6 (on 602), it seems, including the changing of fonts. However, there is no joining with the Arabic letters, which means there is no Arabic support.

[troll05]

Mine is working now too, thanks to paola

[paola]

Originally Posted by qariwa55

That is a little strange. My FBReader180 works okay with my FW 2.0.6 (on 602), it seems, including the changing of fonts. However, there is no joining with the Arabic letters, which means there is no Arabic support.

does it work also if you show the total page count?

@Troll05: pageturning is working on mine, too, though a little bit erratically (i guess because it is a little bit unwieldy): I had to put the rotation angle to 20 degrees, though.

[paola]

qariwa, we must be doing something wrong - I have tried with other books, and fbreader works perfectly well at changing fonts. I cannot see what the problem is, as I can read the same book on the PB360 in the font I like, so I would have thought there shouldn'd be a major problem with the book itself, but obviously there is. And it was indeed strange that nobody was complaining about that.

EDIT: problem solved (at least in my case). My EPUB are all translated, and in the CSS style file for the declaration of the text I had:

.calibre {
    display: block;
    font-family: "LexiaDaMa", serif;
    font-size: 1em;
    line-height: 1.2;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    margin-left: 5pt;
    margin-right: 5pt;
    margin-top: 0;
    padding-left: 0;
    padding-right: 0;
    text-align: justify
    }

The font family declaration (highlighted in bold) for some reason seem to be creating the problems in the PB903 - I removed it, and all is well. Hope it works for you too!

[qariwa55]

Paola, I am traveling now (in a motel room). I'll try that when I get to my destination, probably tomorrow.

[jane10021]

Paola, where do I find this CSS style file?
I have more or less the same problem: I get the same font, whatever font I choose. Maybe your solution is the problem in my files. But I wouldn't know where to look for this file.

thanks!
jane

Originally Posted by
EDIT: problem solved (at least in my case). My EPUB are all translated, and in the CSS style file for the declaration of the text I had:
[CODE

.calibre {
display: block;
font-family: "LexiaDaMa", serif;
font-size: 1em;
line-height: 1.2;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 5pt;
margin-right: 5pt;
margin-top: 0;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
text-align: justify
}
[/CODE]
The font family declaration (highlighted in bold) for some reason seem to be creating the problems in the PB903 - I removed it, and all is well. Hope it works for you too!

[paola]

Hi Jane,
an EPUB is a compressed file; among its elements there is a style file with extension .css. The easiest way to modify it is to use Calibre.
Once in Calibre, right-click on the book you are interested in and select "Tweak epub". Now a window pops up with a tab "Explode epub". If you click on it, your computer file manager will show all the files in the epub.
Scroll the list until you find a file with .css extension, right-click on it and open it with your preferred text editor - in that file you remove the "font declaration" I highlighted in my previous message.
Close the editor, close the file manager window and go back to Calibre - now you can also click the tab "rebuild epub". Do that, and that's it, you just have to transfer the book back on your device.
Hope it helps!

[troll05]

Originally Posted by paola

Hi Jane,
an EPUB is a compressed file; among its elements there is a style file with extension .css. The easiest way to modify it is to use Calibre.
Once in Calibre, right-click on the book you are interested in and select "Tweak epub". Now a window pops up with a tab "Explode epub". If you click on it, your computer file manager will show all the files in the epub.
Scroll the list until you find a file with .css extension, right-click on it and open it with your preferred text editor - in that file you remove the "font declaration" I highlighted in my previous message.
Close the editor, close the file manager window and go back to Calibre - now you can also click the tab "rebuild epub". Do that, and that's it, you just have to transfer the book back on your device.
Hope it helps!

Sure this works, but it would be far more convenient to have the reading apks like fbreader or cr3 do this for us
I set my hopes to the developers to tweak their programs, so we don't bhave to tweak our Epubs to get the desired result

@GrayNM and pkbo: Great work so far!!!