aluretek libre cyrillic support for fb2

[alexcrc]

Hi,

I have just got the device, and seem to like everything about it, except for apparent lack of support for reading fb2 books in russian. All I see is punctuation marks.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? I guess i could convert fb2 files to some other format such as pdf, but that is not the ideal solution, as I already have a large collection of books in fb2, and there are more books available in that format. Also I am not sure if other formats will support russian text better on this device.

I read on the forums that I can try to load jetBook firmware on the device. Is this going to help me with russian text in fb2? If so, that may be the option. Maybe it can be done by adding some fonts to the device or changing them in the fb2 ..

Hopefully somebody had some experience with getting Aluretek Libre to display russian or Cyrillic text in fb2, and can advice me on how to proceed. If not, I'll try to hack it to support the above and will document my efforts in this thread.

Thanks,
Alex.

[Kris777]

jetBook and jetBook-lite have support for FB2 format and russian text looks perfect on it.
I'm not sure if you can load jetBook firmware on Libre.

[alexcrc]

ok, thanks. i guess i'm off to reading this thread for now https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65256

[alexcrc]

seems like that thread is about running aluratek firmware on jetbook, i want the opposite. Can anyone point me to any information about doing this?

[alexcrc]

Looking around and trying different thigs, i came to conclusion that it is not trivial to get aluretek libre to run jetbook firmware, if the libre is already running a recent version of its firmware. While I have not read this anywhere explicitly, my understanding is that before you could just reflash libre with jetbook firmware, but recent versions of libre firmware prevent using jetbook and other firmwares on the device -- I just get an error message (after I press OK key to approve firmware) that correct firmware is not available on the sd card.

Maybe they cnaged encryption key or something like that ..

Also I found a thread here where it is described how to decrypt the .bin firmware file for the jetbook, but I don't think this will work for Libre (Libre's firmware is the .bin file only, ot does not come with any mtd files).

I tried downgrading to older versions of libre firmware with the hope that it will allow me to eventually install jetbook fw, but i couldnt find old firmwares.. my libre came with fw v 0.15k , and i did find links to 0.15h and 0.15e on this forum, tried both of them, but with no success. I think i would need something older, perhaps v0.14

I'll hack at it some more tonight, and if I don't fix or brick it, I'll return it to the store and will get a real jetbook instead.

If anyone has any tips, please share them

Thanks.

[afryntov]

To read russian books on Aluratek
transform your .fb2 into .ebup with embedded russian fonts.
Use for instance online converter:

http://sorotokin.com/fb2epub.html

Best, regards,
Alex

PS
If you do not like the appearance of
produced .ebup
you may unzip it, change OPS/style.css
to what you want, and zip it again.
You may even use the fonts you like
from your computer (.otf, ttf will work for sure)

[afryntov]

Originally Posted by alexcrc

Hi,

I have just got the device, and seem to like everything about it, except for apparent lack of support for reading fb2 books in russian. All I see is punctuation marks.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? I guess i could convert fb2 files to some other format such as pdf, but that is not the ideal solution, as I already have a large collection of books in fb2, and there are more books available in that format. Also I am not sure if other formats will support russian text better on this device.

I read on the forums that I can try to load jetBook firmware on the device. Is this going to help me with russian text in fb2? If so, that may be the option. Maybe it can be done by adding some fonts to the device or changing them in the fb2 ..

Hopefully somebody had some experience with getting Aluretek Libre to display russian or Cyrillic text in fb2, and can advice me on how to proceed. If not, I'll try to hack it to support the above and will document my efforts in this thread.

Thanks,
Alex.

You CANNOT read fb2 files in Russian ( without
reflushing firmware), since fb2 CANNOT
support embedded fonts.
The reasonable solution: convert it to .ebub
with embedded fonts. How to do this: see my
comment bellow.