Hyphenation frequency

[frapperla]

Hi guys!
I just bought a Kobo Aura h2o and I want to have the best reading experience. I noticed that hyphenation (I'm Italian so I read books in Italian) is very rare, leaving many blank spaces between words. Could you tell me how to fix it and make it happen more often? I've red online that I have to open a .dic file (in my case called hyph_it.dic), but I don't know where to find it.
Thank you very much!

[Turtle91]

Hi frapperla, welcome to MR!

I'm not able to help you with setting up hyphenations (I loath them and think they are completely unnecessary in an ebook) but I am sure someone will be along shortly to help with that.

All that extra space between words is caused when your device is selected to read with "full justification" or sometimes just "justified". It adds the extra space to make sure the words begin and end evenly at the edges of the screen. Way back in the ancient history of typography it was considered "professional" to have the words neatly fit on the page...back then they were right, it was a lot of work to get it to look that way! In today's electronic environment, it's not really a sign of any kind of professionalism...it's accomplished by computer with the selection of a button. Sometimes the computer does it well, sometimes not so much. When you are reading on a smaller display medium, and have a book with big words, this spacing effect can be more pronounced and you will see what some call "rivers of whitespace" in the middle of your display. What some devices do to fix the rivers is to break off words at the end of a line with a hyphen and continue the word on the next line.

My alternate suggestion is to simply change your device settings to "Left-justify". This will put all your words together with normal spacing. If there is not enough space for a word at the end of the line it simply puts it on the next line. This leaves the whitespace on the right side of the screen. Some people don't like the way that looks...to each their own. I figure I'm not trying to save any paper...it's an electronic screen. When I'm reading and my eyes get to the last word on a line, they just go to the next line. I don't ever have to worry about words getting chopped up (sometimes incorrectly) with hyphens and my brain having to work extra hard to put them back together again. Hey, when I'm in the zone I don't want any distractions! lol

I hope that helps!

Cheers,

[sadowski]

The parameters controlling the lengths of the hyphenated parts are at the top of the .dic file:

LEFTHYPHENMIN 5
RIGHTHYPHENMIN 5

Five was the default in mine, I reduced them to 2 to increase hyphenation.

The .dic files need to be in /usr/local/Kobo/hyphenDicts. To get them there, you need to create a KoboRoot.tgz archive with this path (without the leading "/") and your changed .dic file in it and copy it to the .kobo directory on the device. When restarting the device, its contents will be copied to the root of the operating system's file system.

There are also symlinks to the dictionary files from /usr/share/hyphen but they probably stay intact if you only replace an existing dictionary. If not, they need to be included in the .tgz archive.

You can see this file structure and the default hyphenation dictionaries in some of the Kobo update files (KoboRoot.tgz), whenever Kobo included them in an update.

There are some glitches re. hyphenation in the ADE reading software. First lines of paragraphs are never hyphenated if they are indented--lots of white space there--and some quotation marks and some punctuation are counted as part of the hyphenated words, leading to unexpected hyphenation results when the parameters above are set to small values like two.

Cheers,

Jens

[Dr. Drib]

Moved to the Kobo Forum


Don
(Moderator)

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by sadowski

First lines of paragraphs are never hyphenated if they are indented--lots of white space there

That was fixed in firmware 3.15.0.


Edit: When changing the LEFTHYPHENMIN and RIGHTHYPHENMIN values in the hyphenation dictionary, beware that the KePub and ePub readers both use the same dictionary but in recent firmware they interpret these parameters differently -- the KePub reader counts the value as one less than specified, so if you read KePubs then make the values one higher than the value you actually want. If you read both KePubs and ePubs then you'll need to find a compromise.

(And personally, I find full justification and hyphenation to be absolutely essential features. I'd go back to reading paper books rather than read ebooks left-justified or unhyphenated.)

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by frapperla

I've red online that I have to open a .dic file (in my case called hyph_it.dic), but I don't know where to find it.

The files are in the internal system partition, but here is a mod that moves them to the user partition for direct editing:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=266005

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

(And personally, I find full justification and hyphenation to be absolutely essential features. I'd go back to reading paper books rather than read ebooks left-justified or unhyphenated.)

Better stop reading the forums then...they are all left justified...lol

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Better stop reading the forums then...they are all left justified...lol

A forum is not a book... But if I did ever buy an ebook that was typeset like a webpage, and couldn't easily fix such a stupid publishing mistake myself, then I would be asking for a refund.

Edit: I haven't ever come across an ebook that had hyphenation disabled, and out of about 400 ebooks read to date only a handful have had the problem of the publisher forcing left-justification.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

That was fixed in firmware 3.15.0.


Edit: When changing the LEFTHYPHENMIN and RIGHTHYPHENMIN values in the hyphenation dictionary, beware that the KePub and ePub readers both use the same dictionary but in recent firmware they interpret these parameters differently -- the KePub reader counts the value as one less than specified, so if you read KePubs then make the values one higher than the value you actually want. If you read both KePubs and ePubs then you'll need to find a compromise.

(And personally, I find full justification and hyphenation to be absolutely essential features. I'd go back to reading paper books rather than read ebooks left-justified or unhyphenated.)

Aren't preferences wonderful! I would much rather have a book left justified. I sometimes read with a very large font, and even WITH hyphenation on will have large spaces between words. If I set to left justified, all of the extra space is at the end of the line, and therefore much less noticeable. (less noticeable to me, that is, YMMV)

...and I would NEVER go back to reading paper books, for the simple reason that I need to be able to adjust the font size.

Shari

[dordale]

Originally Posted by shalym

Aren't preferences wonderful! I would much rather have a book left justified. I sometimes read with a very large font, and even WITH hyphenation on will have large spaces between words. If I set to left justified, all of the extra space is at the end of the line, and therefore much less noticeable. (less noticeable to me, that is, YMMV)

...and I would NEVER go back to reading paper books, for the simple reason that I need to be able to adjust the font size.

Shari

Shari--I agree! It's great that we can all have our own preferences and that e-readers allow us to modify the display as we choose! I'm firmly in the full justification camp when reading a novel. I don't know why, but that's what I want to see. And regarding font size--that changes with the lighting and how tired my eyes are. It's something I frequently change--sometimes multiple times in one reading session.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

Aren't preferences wonderful! I would much rather have a book left justified. I sometimes read with a very large font, and even WITH hyphenation on will have large spaces between words. If I set to left justified, all of the extra space is at the end of the line, and therefore much less noticeable. (less noticeable to me, that is, YMMV)

...and I would NEVER go back to reading paper books, for the simple reason that I need to be able to adjust the font size.

Shari

All you need do is fix the hyphenation dictionary such that it hyphenates better and you are good to go full justified.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

All you need do is fix the hyphenation dictionary such that it hyphenates better and you are good to go full justified.

Well...that's all you have to do if you have a hyphenation dictionary, if you've loaded the dictionary in the right place in the right way, if you've set the internal hyphenation settings the right way (re post #3)...

Or.... settings/left justified...

Seems to me the second option is MUCH easier, especially for those that are not technically inclined.

Weather you prefer your space at the end of the line or the middle really effects me not at all. More power to you. It's just really funny to see those that are absolutely adamant that it's "unprofessional" to have a book in any format except full justification. They are usually very happy to read webpages/forums all day long left justified, but a book - egads, I can't read a book left justified!! And yet some of those same people will also swear up and down that proper css formatting, punctuation, grammar, and spelling in a book doesn't matter at all - it's all about the story!

Cheers,

[frapperla]

Originally Posted by sadowski

The .dic files need to be in /usr/local/Kobo/hyphenDicts. To get them there, you need to create a KoboRoot.tgz archive with this path (without the leading "/") and your changed .dic file in it

EDIT:
In my KoboRoot.tgz there's not the "hypenDicts" file.
I don't understand what is "this path (without the leading '/')".
How I can obtain my changed .dic file?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

All you need do is fix the hyphenation dictionary such that it hyphenates better and you are good to go full justified.

Yes, but since my preference is left justified anyway, it's wonderful that I don't have to worry about doing that. It's also wonderful that I can set the justification however I want on my Kobo. It's one of my favorite things about it.

Shari

[JSWolf]

Here is an English hyphenation dictionary that will work better for both ePub & kepub. It's the one I use.

Just download the attachment, unzip it to get the KoboRoot.tgz. Drop it in your .kobo directory in your Kobo (attach the Kobo to the USB port). After you eject your Kobo, it will install the hyphenation dictionary. This will work with firmware 3.11.0 and up.