Hi,
I am interested in reading a book from archive.org in iBooks. It is in ePub format but in an Indian language called Marathi. I downloaded the book and synced through iBooks. However, all I see in iBooks is junk characters. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Attached is the link to the book
It looks to me like it is written in some non-standard ascii devanagari encoding instead of the required Unicode utf-8. I don't see how anyone could read it, unless you could perhaps download the non-standard font it was composed with and then get the epub reader to use that (definitely not possible with iBooks).
you will need the fonts to read those hindi or marathi language books
nancyiphone wrote:
you will need the fonts to read those hindi or marathi language books
Yes, and you cannot add those non-standard fonts to any iOS device. They only support books written in Unicode.
Hi Tom,
Can we add standard Unicode fonts on iOS whcih can be used as a default font on that system>
Sarang Kulkarni wrote:
Can we add standard Unicode fonts on iOS whcih can be used as a default font on that system>
I don't think you can change the general default font for iOS, unless you are talking about a script for which there is not already one present. iOS already has Unicode fonts for most Indic scripts.
As for books, you can embed fonts in either .epub or .ibooks format which should be used by the book instead of any default.
What is it exactly you want to do, and it what language?
Thanks. I want to use Devanagari fonts on my Macbook as well as iPad. The existing Devanagari on Mac and iPad are not readable and has errors. I am attaching an image which is very diffcult to read the last word, it is incorrect. We generally read Sankrit, Marathi and Hindi on screen its really painful. Earlier fonts are better. I read 3 language on screen.
I don't think you can do anything to change the way the iPad will display Devanagari, except in the case of an ebook where you could embed a different font.
On the MacBook, you should try making sure the font is set to Devanagari MT.
Could you post that Devanagari passage here as text (not a photo) so I can copy it and compare the display with different fonts?
Sarang Kulkarni wrote:
I am attaching an image which is very diffcult to read the last word, it is incorrect.
Could you tell me exactly what is incorrect? My Mac seems to show the same thing using 3 different fonts, Devanagari MT, Devanagari Sangam, and Sanskrit 2003:
Thanks Tom, I am attaching same image with remark. Both the correct top adn bottom font were deloped form letterpress, so these look very old style. The monolinear middle one is not designed by Indian designer, so its loosing the Devanagariness in the font. And ofcourse the conjuncts are incorrect.
Thanks much for the detailed info!
Regarding the general style, I would be interested in what you consider to be a good, more modern one, using the examples at
http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Devanagari.html
Apple has been using the old style for a very long time now, but it may be worth asking for a change. They recently did that with Thai (although this has also generated complaints from those used to the old style).
Regarding the conjuncts, it appears that Devanagari Sangam always uses the wrong glyph for the "eyelash RA". Definitely a bug that should be reported to Apple. Here are some older bugs which I have not had time to recheck with 10.9 yet:
http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2013/08/bug-in-apple-devanagari-fonts.html
To report these problems to Apple, use
ePub books in Indian languages
