Need help with Russian support on EZReader 6"

[igelfeld]

I am totally new to the world of e-readers and just bought an Astak EZReader 6" at Fry's.

One of the reasons why I chose Astak was its out of the box support for Russian (among other languages). So I immediately tried to load some Russian books to see what the experience of reading them would be like.

I have immediately run into some problems and I hope that they are a user error and not fundamental issues with the device.

Some of the books were in TXT format and once I switched to Russian in Settings menu I could view them just fine. Some were in MS Word DOC format and while I could view them the font was too small. I tried zooming but was not satisfied with the reflow and tried to increase font size in MS Word and resaving the file. I had also converted it to RTF and TXT seeing that EZReader handled RTF and TXT better. Both converted files could not be viewed on EZReader. I got garbage onscreen. Just simple Save As RTF or TXT would guarantee that the file will be unreadable on the device.

I also had some books in EPUB format that were intended to be used with Stanza on iPhone. I could view them just fine in Calibre but on EZReader all text was showing up as question marks. Navigating from page to page would crash the reader almost right away requiring a complete reboot.

I also had a big (several MBs) book in RTF and it would crash the reader as well after a few pages.

All in all, I am not quite a happy camper I am afraid.

Could anyone offer any suggestions on how to deal with these issues, preferably someone who reads a lot of Russian and already figured all these issues out?

[SmartyPants]

Originally Posted by igelfeld

Could anyone offer any suggestions on how to deal with these issues, preferably someone who reads a lot of Russian and already figured all these issues out?

that would be me! well sort of. I am still in the process of trying to find the best format for my russian books.
My solution was to download a Fiction Book Designer program and convert all TXT files to fb2 format. None of my russian TXT files were vieweable, but once converted i had no problems with them. The conversion process is extremely easy.

You can download Fiction Book Designer from here:
http://www.bookdesigner.org

let me know how you go!

[polly]

If you're really comfortable in Russian, you might want to try the LBook firmware. The Hanlin V5 is branded as PocketPro in the US and LBook in Russia (same device, different brand name). I've never tried it with a Russian book, but would assume that since it's written by Russians for Russians it should work.

I would recommend FB2 or ePub as formats. Word and RTF files never worked well on mine. If you use Calibre, converting into these formats is quick and painless.

After writing this, I noticed that you were looking for help with the 6" instead of the 5". I don't have any experience with any of the firmware options for the 6", but LBook has firmware for it.

[wallcraft]

I agree that switching to the LBook firmware may solve your problems.

For some formats, including (I think) TXT you can add your own fonts that include the characters that are showing up as missing (?). If some TXTs are working and others not, then they may be using different character set encodings. This is difficult to allow for in TXT, since it has no metadata. The default encoding for TXT was probably switched when you selected Russian as the primary language, but there is more than one possible encoding.

For ePub, you can add your own fonts but only by adding extra CSS to each ePub, see Fonts and Epub - What works on Sony, Works for Pocket Pro too!

[irenas]

I have Astak 6' EZ reader and I would recommend to use fb2 format with your russian books. I used Caliber to convert couple of the books from other formats to fb2 and it worked great for me. I also tried other formats with russian books but nothing worked better for me then fb2.

Good luck!

[igelfeld]

Originally Posted by SmartyPants

that would be me! well sort of. I am still in the process of trying to find the best format for my russian books.
My solution was to download a Fiction Book Designer program and convert all TXT files to fb2 format. None of my russian TXT files were vieweable, but once converted i had no problems with them. The conversion process is extremely easy.

You can download Fiction Book Designer from here:
http://www.bookdesigner.org

let me know how you go!

Darn it :-)! It is for Windows only and I am on the Mac.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by igelfeld

Darn it :-)! It is for Windows only and I am on the Mac.

Doesn't the MAC have a crossover program similar to WINE on Linux?

[igelfeld]

I tried converting one of the Russian EPUB to FB2 in Caliber and indeed got better results. Thanks to everyone for this suggestion.

[igelfeld]

I will investigate adding custom fonts to an EPUB file, although conversion to FB2 seems a simpler solution at this point.

But where do I get a custom Russian font, especially a font that I can be sure will work correctly with a given EPUB?

Apple provides Cyrillic fonts on Macs. Will copying one of them work?

[igelfeld]

TXT so far worked fine for me if I switch to Russian in EZReader settings.

Caliber can convert only from EPUBs, FB2s and TXTs but not apparently from .DOCs.

Any solution on how to go from .DOC to FB2?

An interim solution that I had adopted for now is to convert .DOCs into PDFs but that has some reflow issues, too, although for some reason better than if I simply zoomed in on a .DOC file in EZReader.

[igelfeld]

Originally Posted by theducks

Doesn't the MAC have a crossover program similar to WINE on Linux?

Yes, there are options to use VMWare and Parallers products to have a virtualized copy of Windows but I would have liked to avoid this option if at all possible.

Caliber appears to be doing a decent job converting EPUBs to FB2s that seem to work on EZReader so I might stick with that solution for EPUBs.

Just need to figure out a workflow for other formats.

[igelfeld]

I see that in Caliber you can specify various conversion settings. Right now I am going with the defaults.

Does anyone have extra settings that they use to convert Russian files to FB2s with Caliber and that give more pleasing results than a default conversion?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by igelfeld

TXT so far worked fine for me if I switch to Russian in EZReader settings.

Caliber can convert only from EPUBs, FB2s and TXTs but not apparently from .DOCs.

Any solution on how to go from .DOC to FB2?

An interim solution that I had adopted for now is to convert .DOCs into PDFs but that has some reflow issues, too, although for some reason better than if I simply zoomed in on a .DOC file in EZReader.

Convert the DOC to HTML first. (Open office "save as" will do this)

[igelfeld]

Originally Posted by theducks

Convert the DOC to HTML first. (Open office "save as" will do this)

Thanks! I'll try this.

[igelfeld]

a good source of books in Russian in EPUB format: http://www.zone4iphone.ru/index.php?p_id=3