kobopatch users & non-Kobo-supported languages

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by vostro

thanks, as long as it could be fixed by full reset it's ok.

I've written the mini-patch, but it seems like Kobo have just released a new upgrade, 4.18. I wasn't expecting that.

I'm going to need to put this on hold until I've made sure all the patches I'm responsible for will work. I'll return when that's finished.

In the meantime, it did occur to me that I should ask what format most of your books are. Are they epub/kepub? I seem to recall reading that a lot of Chinese readers prefer PDF. If they are all PDF then that might give difficulty regarding what I said in post #2. As long as you have access to at least one epub/kepub on the test Kobo we should be OK.

[vostro]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Are they epub/kepub?

yes, no pdf files. thanks.

[dmapr]

@jackie_w, tried your patch on 4.17.13694. First of all, many thanks! Looks a heck of a lot better than the default display. Second, some observations. For the record, contrary to the post #2, I didn't have to lift a finger to get the right fonts to show up in the GUI, both on the first boot after the patch was applied and after a subsequent power off/power on. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance — I assume once the 4.18 patches are ready. Also I've only checked the Books, Authors & Collections, if there are additional views you want me to check out please let me know.

Once again, thanks a bunch for your awesome work!

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by dmapr

@jackie_w, tried your patch on 4.17.13694. First of all, many thanks! Looks a heck of a lot better than the default display. Second, some observations. For the record, contrary to the post #2, I didn't have to lift a finger to get the right fonts to show up in the GUI, both on the first boot after the patch was applied and after a subsequent power off/power on. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance — I assume once the 4.18 patches are ready. Also I've only checked the Books, Authors & Collections, if there are additional views you want me to check out please let me know.

Once again, thanks a bunch for your awesome work!

You're welcome. It's great that a simple idea worked as hoped.

Regarding the "didn't have to lift a finger" that's very welcome news, but I'm not yet 100% convinced it would be that easy for any old font. If you have some free time, please would you try the same trick with these font scenarios and report back:

1. one built-in font, e.g. Malabar, that you haven't already "improved" by sideloading a "better version with the same name" to your /fonts directory.
2. one of your sideloaded fonts with a name that Kobo knows nothing about, e.g. Bookerly, Arial, Calibri, ... Don't use 'Times New Roman' as Kobo half-knows about that one.

Some time this week would be fine, no need to rush as I'm still a bit busy.

[jackie_w]

... meanwhile the user who had managed to "fool" Kobo by internally renaming their sideloaded font-of-choice to Georgia has managed the same trick with Avenir. Who would have thought that encryption/obfuscation of system fonts doesn't really matter.

I need time to do some testing of my own. If it turns out to be easy and reliable then maybe this is a better way forward than using kobopatch.

I'm not yet convinced that the above would work for CJK fonts.

[dmapr]

@jackie_w, funny you should mention "non-improved" fonts. Looking into the 4.17 release archive I noticed that the sizes of the fonts I've been "improving" have shot up, so I thought maybe Kobo has added those glyphs themselves — and they did, so no need to improve those anymore! So I renamed my fonts directory to hide all added and "improved" fonts, powered off/powered on and it still worked as desired. I'll test tonight with Bookerly/Literata and report back. Might even track down a non-monospace sans-serif font just in case

[dmapr]

Played some more. Using "foreign" fonts certainly gets things a lot more muddy with the need for the post #2 more apparent. If I use both foreign fonts I definitely need to load the font list first. It seems that if one of them is built-in then there's a chance it'll load both but maybe my eyes have just started to deceive me after all the changes. But with both fonts set to built-in it remained rock solid picking them up right off the bat.

[Vetchy]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've attached a simple patch which works on the biggest CSS stream in nickel which handles all the basic GUI widgets. It will change all occurrences of Georgia and Avenir to use whatever sideloaded font(s) you specify in the patch.

Thanks of your works.
I was tested next patch:

    Custom new header/footer font: yes
    Custom GUI system fonts beta1: yes

In first case I used Cuprum font (it sideloaded) and it works fine. But it applied only for part of header/footer. Patch change book/chapter title, but not effect to progress of page.

Second patch affected home screen and book list. I'm not found where it used yet. But it not needed for Russian language. Because we haven't translated to Russian UI, and all language sensitive text use Georgia.

Now I have 2 place, where text looks ugly.
1. When I open menu in reading mode I see Back to home in top of menu and Chapter name on bottom. And bottom text has additional spaces.
2. Progress of reading (page 1 of 50) in header and footer.

All other can be corrected by other patches.

[dmapr]

Originally Posted by Vetchy

Thanks of your works.
I was tested next patch:

    Custom new header/footer font: yes
    Custom GUI system fonts beta1: yes

Second patch affected home screen and book list. I'm not found where it used yet. But it not needed for Russian language. Because we haven't translated to Russian UI, and all language sensitive text use Georgia.

Actually that is not completely right. The series names are by default using sans-serif font, so instead of Georgia (serif font) or Avenir (missing glyphs) it falls back to one of the other sans-serif fonts, which is a wide-spaced momospace font and so Russian language series names look really ugly. So it is not needed in the sense that we will see them but it is needed to make them look good.

[dmapr]

@jackie_w, I was wrong about one built-in font being enough. Have to pick both built-in ones to make the patch work without post #2. I'll also have to test shadowing the built-in fonts more thoroughly as it is now clear that using built-in Amasis works fine for Cyrillic anyway and I wouldn't be able to tell that it picked the shadow copy vs the original.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Vetchy

Second patch affected home screen and book list. I'm not found where it used yet. But it not needed for Russian language. Because we haven't translated to Russian UI, and all language sensitive text use Georgia.

@dmapr has responded to this one in post #24.

Originally Posted by Vetchy

Now I have 2 place, where text looks ugly.
1. When I open menu in reading mode I see Back to home in top of menu

Am I correct in saying this is more a personal aesthetics problem rather than a functional problem reading the text? If your locale is English then the button text contains no Cyrillic, but it is a bit bold and blocky.

As such, I can probably create a patch for you but I'm not sure it would be used by enough people to warrant including it in the standard pack. If that assumption is clearly wrong (based on repeated requests in the main kobopatch threads) then obviously I'll add it to the standard pack. I'll post a beta for you when I've got a bit more time.

Originally Posted by Vetchy

and Chapter name on bottom. And bottom text has additional spaces.

Perhaps you missed one of the new patches Custom page navigation scrubber. See the screenshots for Image3 (unpatched) and Image4 (patched)

Originally Posted by Vetchy

2. Progress of reading (page 1 of 50) in header and footer.

Originally Posted by Vetchy

In first case I used Cuprum font (it sideloaded) and it works fine. But it applied only for part of header/footer. Patch change book/chapter title, but not effect to progress of page.

I had hoped that this thread's patch 'Custom GUI system fonts beta1' might have had an effect on the bold part. It needs more investigation. To do that it would be helpful if I had:

• a real Cyrillic epub (no DRM) to play with. MR user Semwize has now done this
• your Cuprum font files

You can't post copyright material here but if you have any kind of Cloud storage then zip them up and PM me a link.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by dmapr

@jackie_w, I was wrong about one built-in font being enough. Have to pick both built-in ones to make the patch work without post #2. I'll also have to test shadowing the built-in fonts more thoroughly as it is now clear that using built-in Amasis works fine for Cyrillic anyway and I wouldn't be able to tell that it picked the shadow copy vs the original.

Keep up the good work

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've written the mini-patch, ...

If they are all PDF then that might give difficulty regarding what I said in post #2. As long as you have access to at least one epub/kepub on the test Kobo we should be OK.

Originally Posted by vostro

yes, no pdf files. thanks.

@vostro,

Here's a patch targeted at locale "zh-TW" Book list Book title (and one other unknown header, but it shouldn't matter for our purposes).

Originally Posted by jackie_w;

... This is assuming CD2000 is the correct name for your copy of Code2000. I mention this because my own download of Code2000 shows an internal filename of Code2000 not CD2000 and we must be precise if we do this.

I'm quoting myself again because it's important. You must make sure the red bit in the patch matches the actual internal fontname of your copy of Code2000. Double-clicking the .ttf file in Windows would show you the internal fontname.

Put it in nickel.yaml (or wherever you keep your other custom nickel patches).

Custom GUI Chinese TW Book title - beta2

Spoiler:

Custom GUI Chinese TW Book title - beta2:
  - Enabled: yes
  - Description: Change font-family of basic GUI for zh-TW Book title field
  - FindZlib: "HeaderSmallElidedLabel,\nHeaderSmallItalicLabel {\n  font"
  - ReplaceZlibGroup:
      Replacements:
        # Book Title in Book list (HeaderSmallElidedLabel)
        # Change font-family - all Kobo models 
        - Find:    "HeaderSmallElidedLabel[localeName=\"zh-TW\"],\nHeaderSmallItalicLabel[localeName=\"zh-TW\"] {\n  font-family: Sans-SerifZH-Traditional, sans-serif;"
          Replace: "HeaderSmallElidedLabel[localeName=\"zh-TW\"],\nHeaderSmallItalicLabel[localeName=\"zh-TW\"] {\n  font-family: CD2000, sans-serif;"

[Vetchy]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I had hoped that this thread's patch 'Custom GUI system fonts beta1' might have had an effect on the bold part. It needs more investigation. To do that it would be helpful if I had:

• a real Cyrillic epub (no DRM) to play with. MR user Semwize has now done this
• your Cuprum font files

You can't post copyright material here but if you have any kind of Cloud storage then zip them up and PM me a link.

The Cuprum font is free and can be downloaded from https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cuprum
Just mark cyrillic in settings options for downloads.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Vetchy

The Cuprum font is free and can be downloaded from https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cuprum
Just mark cyrillic in settings options for downloads.

I ticked every box in the Google Fonts Customize tab for Cuprum. The 4 files downloaded OK but the filesizes look very small - 96K for Cuprum-Regular. Does that sound correct?