Sony Reader - German language support?

matulk · 01-08-2007, 08:26 AM

Hi there,

I am thinking about getting one. I am observing this nice device quite a while now. So finally I registered into this forum

There is just one importing thing I need to know first. Does it support also the german "special" chars?

It's quite important, because I want to be able to read german books. So, any german users out there, who can confirm that the Sony Reader can?

And another thing: I am planning to read mainly IT books in pdf format on it. There are most of the time bigger than A5 but smaller than A4, I think. Is it possible to read those comfortable, or are you restricted to the ebooks form the sony online store.

Thank you very much in advance.
matulk

magogo · 01-08-2007, 10:34 AM

I think you can get German support by embedding fonts in the pdf or converting documents to LRF format. Sony reader also supports rotating the pdf so that you could read them in a landscape mode.

HarryT · 01-08-2007, 11:11 AM

No need for anything like that. Reader definitely support European accented characters such as accute, grave, and circumflex accents, umlauts, etc. Many of the PG books have them and they display fine.

matulk · 01-08-2007, 11:41 AM

Thanks for the fast answers. Sounds good

Do somebody have a last word about reading ebooks in PDF format, because I have a few. Reading through the forum I get the impression, that maybe the Reader isn't the right device for that. Seems like you have to use this user created tool "PDFraster..something" to get it work.

Is that right or am I worring too much

Thanks again.

HarryT · 01-08-2007, 12:38 PM

The problem with PDFs is that, because it's a "page" based format, Reader has to scale the PDF page to fit the screen. Most PDFs which have been sized for A4 or US Letter come out way too small on the Reader as a consequence.

If you create PDFs specifically for the Reader, and use the correct page size, the results can be excellent, but generally speaking, you'll get poor results with PDFs that have been sized for a PC screen.

NatCh · 01-08-2007, 12:42 PM

It depends on the page size the PDF was created at. If it's A4, then it's going to be scaled down to the Reader's screen, and be rather small to read. For reference, you can take an A4 page and reduce it on a copier to ~41% and you'll have a fair approximation of how it'll look on the Reader. (I just tested that, so I hope it proves useful to somebody

)

If the pages are sized for the Reader in the first place (see the Wiki for sizing info), they seem to be fine, except that some folks find the fonts faded. I stick with RTFs, so I can't really comment on that.

vstefanyuk · 01-29-2008, 05:10 AM

deleted - please refrain from blatant product advertisement -alexander

tribble · 01-29-2008, 05:37 AM

Hi vstefanyuk!

Could you please stop posting the same message over and over on every thread you think might remotely be interested. If you do not want to spam, please post individually and answer a question. Then you can gladly leave a link to the post where you describe your tool.

What would you think, if i would post "Buy it from me! Buy it from me!" in every thread that is about what reader to chose.

luisvela · 03-19-2008, 04:07 PM

Hello everybody
I have just today recieved my new 505. I have no problem reading english texts. I have problems with the German characters (fonts). I Use .txt or .rtf to import manually to the USB disk. I have a mac with osx 10.4. Can anyone give me a tipp if the problem is in the font I save my files? If so in which font should I save to have a correct display in the 505. is there any special feature in the settings.
Thanks a bunch
Luis

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

No need for anything like that. Reader definitely support European accented characters such as accute, grave, and circumflex accents, umlauts, etc. Many of the PG books have them and they display fine.

Hvatum · 03-19-2008, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

The problem with PDFs is that, because it's a "page" based format, Reader has to scale the PDF page to fit the screen. Most PDFs which have been sized for A4 or US Letter come out way too small on the Reader as a consequence.

If you create PDFs specifically for the Reader, and use the correct page size, the results can be excellent, but generally speaking, you'll get poor results with PDFs that have been sized for a PC screen.

The problem isn't the size of the PDF, more so it's the bad display of it on the Sony reader. The reader's software has a hard time displaying the fonts on PDFs, which were designed to be displayed on an LCD screen. Also it displays the background of the PDF as off white, hence the border, which obviously is just silly. The application to fix this is PDF Rasterfarian:

http://hightech.afmag.net/rasterfari...sion-here.html

That converts PDFs to LRF format extremely well (You need Windows to run it, but it works fine in VMWare/VMWare Fusion/Parallels). I'll load a German PDF with it tonight and post a picture of what it looks like. I think you'll find it quite nice. Since it just rasterizes the original PDF it can be in any language and will work fine on the reader. The only question is how RTF and LRF files with Deutsche characters will display. I'm 100% sure that you'll be happy with the results of PDF Rasterfarian.

Übrigens, I spreche auch Deutsch.

Hvatum · 03-19-2008, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by luisvela

Hello everybody
I have just today recieved my new 505. I have no problem reading english texts. I have problems with the German characters (fonts). I Use .txt or .rtf to import manually to the USB disk. I have a mac with osx 10.4. Can anyone give me a tipp if the problem is in the font I save my files? If so in which font should I save to have a correct display in the 505. is there any special feature in the settings.
Thanks a bunch
Luis

Hi,

Could you maybe upload it to Mega-Upload or something and PM me the link? I have some experience with German text's on my PRS-505. Ich hab' gerade Goethe von Projekt Gutenberg auf Deutsch gelesen. It displayed without any problems.

Also, in another post I put a link to PDFRasterfarian. It makes PDFs look really nice on the 505 - the issue is not the screen not being large enough, its that the fonts don't display well at all on EInk displays since they're designed for LCDs. It didn't let me post that though.

So to find it just go in Google and search "PDFrasterfarian AFMag." The first result is a download site.

There's no copyright issues any more with Rasterfarian, the the guy who wrote it used some small trial versions of basic PDF utilities in the first version, but in this version the whole toolchain is open source!

igorsk · 03-19-2008, 08:39 PM

TXT files have to be in UTF-8 or UTF-16 with BOM or in Windows-1252 codepage.

luisvela · 03-21-2008, 05:01 AM

Dear Hvatum,Good morning
Thanks for your help and comments.
I have found an excellent solution which is libprs500 https://libprs500.kovidgoyal.net/. It was mentioned in another forum. This opens source application works very well in Mac OSX. I have even donated some $ to the team. With this app you can load very comfortable to the 505 german texts and they show correctly.
Greetings to all.
Luis

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hvatum

Hi,

Could you maybe upload it to Mega-Upload or something and PM me the link? I have some experience with German text's on my PRS-505. Ich hab' gerade Goethe von Projekt Gutenberg auf Deutsch gelesen. It displayed without any problems.

Also, in another post I put a link to PDFRasterfarian. It makes PDFs look really nice on the 505 - the issue is not the screen not being large enough, its that the fonts don't display well at all on EInk displays since they're designed for LCDs. It didn't let me post that though.

So to find it just go in Google and search "PDFrasterfarian AFMag." The first result is a download site.

There's no copyright issues any more with Rasterfarian, the the guy who wrote it used some small trial versions of basic PDF utilities in the first version, but in this version the whole toolchain is open source!

01-08-2007, 08:26 AM	#1
matulk Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2007	Sony Reader - German language support? Hi there, I am thinking about getting one. I am observing this nice device quite a while now. So finally I registered into this forum There is just one importing thing I need to know first. Does it support also the german "special" chars? It's quite important, because I want to be able to read german books. So, any german users out there, who can confirm that the Sony Reader can? And another thing: I am planning to read mainly IT books in pdf format on it. There are most of the time bigger than A5 but smaller than A4, I think. Is it possible to read those comfortable, or are you restricted to the ebooks form the sony online store. Thank you very much in advance. matulk

01-08-2007, 10:34 AM	#2
magogo Member Posts: 17 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands	I think you can get German support by embedding fonts in the pdf or converting documents to LRF format. Sony reader also supports rotating the pdf so that you could read them in a landscape mode. Last edited by magogo; 01-08-2007 at 10:36 AM.

01-08-2007, 11:41 AM	#4
matulk Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2007	thanks.. pdfs? Thanks for the fast answers. Sounds good Do somebody have a last word about reading ebooks in PDF format, because I have a few. Reading through the forum I get the impression, that maybe the Reader isn't the right device for that. Seems like you have to use this user created tool "PDFraster..something" to get it work. Is that right or am I worring too much Thanks again.

01-29-2008, 05:10 AM	#7
vstefanyuk Connoisseur Posts: 54 Karma: 12 Join Date: Mar 2007	PDFCropper v1.1 RC1 deleted - please refrain from blatant product advertisement -alexander

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01-08-2007, 11:11 AM	#3
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	No need for anything like that. Reader definitely support European accented characters such as accute, grave, and circumflex accents, umlauts, etc. Many of the PG books have them and they display fine.

01-08-2007, 12:38 PM	#5
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	The problem with PDFs is that, because it's a "page" based format, Reader has to scale the PDF page to fit the screen. Most PDFs which have been sized for A4 or US Letter come out way too small on the Reader as a consequence. If you create PDFs specifically for the Reader, and use the correct page size, the results can be excellent, but generally speaking, you'll get poor results with PDFs that have been sized for a PC screen.

01-08-2007, 12:42 PM	#6
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	It depends on the page size the PDF was created at. If it's A4, then it's going to be scaled down to the Reader's screen, and be rather small to read. For reference, you can take an A4 page and reduce it on a copier to ~41% and you'll have a fair approximation of how it'll look on the Reader. (I just tested that, so I hope it proves useful to somebody ) If the pages are sized for the Reader in the first place (see the Wiki for sizing info), they seem to be fine, except that some folks find the fonts faded. I stick with RTFs, so I can't really comment on that.

01-29-2008, 05:37 AM	#8
tribble iLiad Maniac Posts: 1,382 Karma: 2369 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Germany Device: Bookeen Opus (i love that thing) and iPad (what an irony)	Hi vstefanyuk! Could you please stop posting the same message over and over on every thread you think might remotely be interested. If you do not want to spam, please post individually and answer a question. Then you can gladly leave a link to the post where you describe your tool. What would you think, if i would post "Buy it from me! Buy it from me!" in every thread that is about what reader to chose.

03-19-2008, 08:39 PM	#12
igorsk Wizard Posts: 3,442 Karma: 300001 Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Belgium Device: PRS-500/505/700, Kindle, Cybook Gen3, Words Gear	TXT files have to be in UTF-8 or UTF-16 with BOM or in Windows-1252 codepage.

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