Glo Chinese ebook not displaying

[dpoon73]

I just purchase a Kobo Glo today, and update to firmware 2.3.1

I follow everyone suggestion about create the "fonts" directory and copy the msjh.ttf into the kobo glo.

When I browse my Chinese epub, I can see the filename and author name in Chinese, but when I open the Chinese epub, it give me rectangular box.

I try different Chinese fonts file, and nothing seems to fix this. I tried epub which is generate by myself, and Chinese epub I download, nothing seems to work.

Am I the only one facing this problem? is it because of the 2.3.1 firmware?

Thanks in advance.

[xuyn2003]

After you opened the book, please have a press at the center of the screen, a bottom bar will appear, then you press the "AA" on it, select your fonts.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by dpoon73

I just purchase a Kobo Glo today, and update to firmware 2.3.1

I follow everyone suggestion about create the "fonts" directory and copy the msjh.ttf into the kobo glo.

When I browse my Chinese epub, I can see the filename and author name in Chinese, but when I open the Chinese epub, it give me rectangular box.

I try different Chinese fonts file, and nothing seems to fix this. I tried epub which is generate by myself, and Chinese epub I download, nothing seems to work.

Am I the only one facing this problem? is it because of the 2.3.1 firmware?

Thanks in advance.

In addition to xuyn2003's advice, if the font you are using does not show up when you open the font menu, you will need to check the font name and rename the font file to match that name. For example, on my computer, the msjh fonts shows the font name as being Microsoft JhengHei so the file name for the regular variant would become Microsoft JhengHei-Regular.ttf and the bold variant would become Microsoft JhengHei-Bold.ttf. The -Regular may not be necessary.

On a Windows computer, using the Microsoft Font Viewer shows the embedded font name.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

I did some quick playing around with using a Chinese font. Renaming the font files seemed to allow me to access the font on a Kobo Touch but the text still showed as boxes. I went browsing on Mobileread and found a thread about FeedBooks in Chinese https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27769 which had a file called chinese.epub with the Adobe Song Std font embedded which I downloaded.

I opened the .epub file with 7Zip, extracted the chinese.otf font and took a look at it. Turned out to be an Adobe .otf font file with the font name Adobe Song Std L. Renamed the file to Adobe Song Std L-Regular.otf, copied it to the fonts folder on the KT, opened the LinuxToy epub file with Sigil which promptly removed the font file since it was in the css directory and not the font folder. Copied the resulting 19KB file to the KT, disconnected and opened LinuxToy. Usual blocks until I selected Adobe Song Std as the font and then seemed to look fine. I do not read Chinese so I can't say the correct characters were being used.

If you do try this, could you please give some feedback as to whether this procedure worked for you.

Regards,
David

[dpoon73]

Originally Posted by xuyn2003

After you opened the book, please have a press at the center of the screen, a bottom bar will appear, then you press the "AA" on it, select your fonts.

I did this, and when I browse the font, I can see Microsoft JhengHei

When I select it, on top of my Kobo Glo, it say.. "Updating font settings..."

But afterwards, it still show rectangle box.

[dpoon73]

I fix my own problem. I guess I am a noob, one thing no one mention in all the post related to Chinese is that I need to "soft reset" the Kobo Glo.

I restart the Kobo Glo and now it is working.

Thanks for everyone who have help me.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by dpoon73

I fix my own problem. I guess I am a noob, one thing no one mention in all the post related to Chinese is that I need to "soft reset" the Kobo Glo.

I restart the Kobo Glo and now it is working.

Thanks for everyone who have help me.

This is a known issue that you need to restart the Kobo device after making changes.

A bit of a pain but not as bad as it once was. At once point with the Kobo WiFi, I found that after deleting a book and before replacing it with an updated version, I needed to power cycle the Kobo.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Hi, dpoon73

I owe you a thank you! If you might remember a few messages back, I mentioned that when I copied the renamed JhengHei font to my Kobo, it didn't work properly. I did some more digging and found that, for unknown reasons, about half the fonts in my fonts directory were corrupted. Oddly, I could use the Windows Font Viewer and it didn't show any problems but if I set the default font to one of the corrupted fonts and opened several ebooks using ADE, I either saw a collection of error messages or a ebook that was displayed in random characters. On the Kobo, it simply wouldn't use the corrupted fonts though no stackxx.log error files were generated.

Weird and wonderful toys, these computers.


One question is when you open an ebook using the Chinese language fonts, is it very slow to open?
Regards,
David