special characters in epub?

[biltron]

Hello,

I have created an epub file that contains some special characters that do not translate properly when viewed as an epub on Adobe Digital Editions. However, the underlying xhtml file, when viewed on a web browser or inside Dreamweaver, shows the proper characters. I'm using an OpenType font (Arno Pro) - and InDesign to prepare the doc and export it to epub. To the point, my question is this... does anybody know why special characters would be displayed correctly in xhtml but not when wrapped in epub? BTW the special characters show up as "?"

Thanks...

[llasram]

Originally Posted by biltron

I have created an epub file that contains some special characters that do not translate properly when viewed as an epub on Adobe Digital Editions. However, the underlying xhtml file, when viewed on a web browser or inside Dreamweaver, shows the proper characters. I'm using an OpenType font (Arno Pro) - and InDesign to prepare the doc and export it to epub. To the point, my question is this... does anybody know why special characters would be displayed correctly in xhtml but not when wrapped in epub? BTW the special characters show up as "?"

Adobe DE doesn't support the entirety of the Unicode standard. Not all characters lacking a direct character-to-glyph mapping (my pet peeve: the fixed-width spaces characters) are displayed correctly, the ones not understood by DE being replaced with the '?' mark you are seeing. The only current solution -- complain to Adobe and work around it if possible.

If you mention the specific characters in question here someone may be able to help you out.

[MickeyC]

Hi biltron and welcome to the Forum

[biltron]

Originally Posted by llasram

Adobe DE doesn't support the entirety of the Unicode standard. Not all characters lacking a direct character-to-glyph mapping (my pet peeve: the fixed-width spaces characters) are displayed correctly, the ones not understood by DE being replaced with the '?' mark you are seeing. The only current solution -- complain to Adobe and work around it if possible.

If you mention the specific characters in question here someone may be able to help you out.

Thanks for the response... The character I'm trying to use most often is an "a" with a line over the top of it... I don't know the proper name for it, but it is often used in transliteration of Farsi or Arabic names.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by biltron

Thanks for the response... The character I'm trying to use most often is an "a" with a line over the top of it... I don't know the proper name for it, but it is often used in transliteration of Farsi or Arabic names.

Oh! That's actually solvable -- in this case the problem is probably just that the font you are using doesn't include a glyph for that character. Your browser etc is able to pull a glyph from another font on the system, but DE can only draw from the set of default fonts and the fonts you embed in the EPUB book. Just embed a font containing the necessary character glyph and you should find that problem solved.

[tkirke]

Hi,
I tried embedding a font into the document that has all of the needed characters such as mentioned in this thread. However, although "Sigil" will render the embedded font correctly, Adobe Digital Editions will still not display all of the characters (using ? instead). I can tell it is using the embedded font as it looks correct. What am I missing here?
for example ī will not display correctly or ū or ā
What is even weirder is that ā may show up in table of contents correctly but not in main document