Displaying Chinese characters

[John123]

Hi All,

I am attempting to display Chinese characters for an ebook. The characters display correctly in the Kindle file and on Sigil, using the font Adobe Song OTF, but don't on ADE.

I have tried other numerous epub ereader "apps" on both hudl2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, none of which display these characters.

The infuriating thing is I thought I would have problems with the Kindle but that worked just great!

I have attached an example of both .epub and .mobi.

Thanks in advance,

John.

[Toxaris]

You need to embed a font that contains chinese characters. Also, be aware that most readers do not support RTL.

[Doitsu]

AFAIK, only the latest ADE desktop version (4.x) supports CJK text, but only in ePub3 files. If you export your book with the Sigil ePub3 output plugin, the Chinese text will display fine with ADE 4.x. However, most dedicated eInk readers come with older versions. If you want to achieve full backwards compatibility, you'll have to convert the Chinese words to SVG images or recommend that the reader use alternative apps, for example, Gitden reader.

[John123]

Hi, and thanks for the replies.

I kinda guessed this would be the case, but I posted anyway in the forlorn hope you guys might have a simple workaround.

What you suggest would, of course, work but this is for general distribution and, as far as I know, Epub3 is still a bit of a way off for general usage.

Doitsu: using SVG images may prove to be the most elegant way, under the circumstances (i.e. Epub2), however, there are approximately 270+ Chinese words containing many different individual characters and I'm not that familiar with Illustrator. Also, I doubt it could be done quickly.

I may just suggest they only offer the Kindle version, since it's widely available on Android devices. Perhaps they could offer the epub, and put a disclaimer on it saying the Chinese characters will not display correctly.

I think I just stepped off the boardwalk on our little wild west town called Ebooks and got my feet muddy )

Thanks again,

John.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by John123

Doitsu: using SVG images may prove to be the most elegant way, under the circumstances (i.e. Epub2), however, there are approximately 270+ Chinese words containing many different individual characters and I'm not that familiar with Illustrator. Also, I doubt it could be done quickly.

You could create SVG images with Inkscape (freeware). It's actually quite simple and it doesn't take much longer than copying and pasting the Chinese text. Here's a detailed tutorial by GrannyGrump.

Originally Posted by John123

What you suggest would, of course, work but this is for general distribution and, as far as I know, Epub3 is still a bit of a way off for general usage. [...]

Perhaps they could offer the epub, and put a disclaimer on it saying the Chinese characters will not display correctly.

Have you tested Gitden Reader for Android? The iOS version even displayed your ePub2 version correctly. (Unfortunately, Gitden doesn't support ADEPT DRM.)

BTW, regarding the Chinese text, I'm only remotely familiar with Chinese, but, IIRC, Pinyin text requires accents to mark tones in Chinese and none of the Pinyin text in your excerpt had any.
For example, the book mentions director Jiang Wen, however, in proper Pinyin it should read Jiāng Wén.

[John123]

BTW, regarding the Chinese text, I'm only remotely familiar with Chinese, but, IIRC, Pinyin text requires accents to mark tones in Chinese and none of the Pinyin text in your excerpt had any. For example, the book mentions director Jiang Wen, however, in proper Pinyin it should read Jiāng Wén.

You are, of course, quite correct. However, I'm the monkey, not the organ grinder ) and would never dare correct an "academic"!!

Anyway, thanks for your advice. I followed GrannyGrump's tutorial and now have a test SVG file converted to paths from the proper font. Given that I have the coding:

<p class="Bibliography"><i>1911</i>. <i>Xinhai Geming</i> <span class="Chinese-Logograms">辛亥革命</span>. Directed by Jackie Chan <span class="Chinese-Logograms">成龙</span> and Zhang Li <span class="Chinese-Logograms">张 黎</span>. People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong: 2011.</p>

What would be the best way to introduce the SVG file into that senario. Bear in mind there are 270+ images to insert and I'm doing this as a favour. So don't want to spend too much time on it.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by John123

What would be the best way to introduce the SVG file into that senario. Bear in mind there are 270+ images to insert and I'm doing this as a favour. So don't want to spend too much time on it.

If I were in your shoes, I'd simply hide all Chinese characters, because they don't add any value to the book and Chinese speakers can probably handle the simplified Pinyin text even though it lacks tone markers.

If that's not an option, I'd to the following:

1. Use this simple Sigil plugin to add consecutive ids to all Chinese-Logograms spans. (Enter span in the Tag box, class in the Attribute box and Chinese-Logograms in the Value box)

2. Generate all Chinese svg files using the incremental ids as the file name. I.e., I'd generate chinese1.svg for <span id="chinese1" class="Chinese-Logograms"> ... </span> etc.

3. Use a regular expression in Sigil to replace the Chinese-Logograms spans with an image reference based on the span id value. (If you plan to upload the book to several bookstores, you could of course keep the Chinese-Logograms spans and hide the images or vice versa, depending on the app/device.)

You'll obviously also need to add a style for inline svg images and fine-tune the vertical-align and height properties of the svg images.

[John123]

Please forgive me, I'm very much a newbie here.

I added your plugin but it's asking me to set a path. Is there a step-by-step guide to using this plugin in the way you suggest?

A dummies guide for total dummies would be very useful

BTW: I have a Maths book incoming so this learning curve is very useful.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by John123

I added your plugin but it's asking me to set a path. Is there a step-by-step guide to using this plugin in the way you suggest?

Sigil plugins require Python 2.7. If you have already installed Python, simply click the Auto button after Python 2.7. This should add C:/Python27/python2.exe to the text box, if you have a Windows machine.
If it doesn't work, you'll need to install ActivePython 2.7.8.10. (Python 3.4.1.0 doesn't work.)

Maybe you find the instructions for installing the ePubcheck plugin helpful. (You can ignore the Java information, if you don't want to actually install that plugin.)

[John123]

Thanks, that all worked perfectly, I do get there ... eventually.

So, just to recap, this added: "id1", "id2", "id3" etc. incremently to all the Chinese Logograms spans as an aid to inserting "chinese1.svg", "chinese2.svg" and so on, to make sure I am inserting the correct image number into the correct slot.

Incidentally, it added a space after the close tag > where punctuation: period, colon, etc. followed this closing tag. No big deal it's easily search and replaced. It's just FYI.

Thanks again.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by John123

So, just to recap, this added: "id1", "id2", "id3" etc. incremently to all the Chinese Logograms spans as an aid to inserting "chinese1.svg", "chinese2.svg" and so on, to make sure I am inserting the correct image number into the correct slot.

Yep. BTW, you can also change the id prefix from "id" to "chinese" (or another unique value) in the plugin dialog.

Originally Posted by John123

Incidentally, it added a space after the close tag > where punctuation: period, colon, etc. followed this closing tag.

This appears to be a "feature" of the Beautiful Soup HTML parser that my simple plugin uses for the searches. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix this.

[John123]

Hi, a very minor thing for such a major aid. I was worried about having to identify these images (270), with a visual. Since I'm not Chinese this task was onerous in the extreme. The plugin greatly simplified this procedure.

Once again thanks for all your help!!