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Amazon Kindle and Esperanto

I've been experimenting with the new Amazon Kindle - it's a device for reading electronic books using "e-ink" technology. I've found it to be quite a nice device, allowing me to carry around many books in a very small space. However, the device is still in its early stages, and does not yet support the accented Esperanto letters (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ). It will, however, display several other accented letters (vowels with acute and grave accents, umlauts, etc.).

Files in other formats may be converted to Kindle format for free, using Amazon's file converter. In summary, I've discovered the following:

  • HTML files: Esperanto characters (such as ĉ = & #265; etc.) are converted to their un-accented counterparts. For example, "ĉ" is converted to "c".
  • .DOC (Microsoft Word files) do the same thing as HTML files (letters lose their accents, so "ĉ" becomes "c", etc.).
  • UTF-8 files: These are rejected by the Amazon file converter. You can, however, transfer text files with embedded UTF-8 characters directly to the Kindle using a USB cable—the Kindle can read plain ASCII text files directly. If you do this, the accented Esperanto letters are converted to their un-accented counterparts (as with HTML files). This suggests that the Kindle can at least partially recognize Esperanto letters, but its character set does not yet include the Esperanto "glyphs".
  • Latin-3 files: The characters are converted to their Latin-1 counterparts, so the resulting file is pretty unreadable.
  • PDF files: When I converted a PDF file (originally composed in LaTeX), the accents did appear, but next to the letters, not on top (e.g. c^).
  • Plain text files (h-convention or x-convention) convert OK (but of course there are no accented letters).

I've sent a suggestion to the Amazon Kindle development team requesting support of the Esperanto alphabet in future versions.

Meanwhile, using the h-convention, I've converted all the Esperanto texts in Project Gutenberg to Amazon Kindle (.AZW) format, so they're ready for you to download to the device and read. You may find them on my Web site at:


http://esperanto.davidgsimpson.com/eo-gutenberg-kindle.html

I've created these from the HTML versions of the books; in some cases I had to create an HTML file or modify the existing file so that the text could be converted. I've changed the accented Esperanto letters to the h-convention (ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u) so they can be read on the Kindle.

Hopefully the Kindle will soon support Esperanto characters, and I can re-create these files with normal accented letters.

David

Test file that demonstrates what Unicode Glyphs Kindle Supports

At http://www.freekindlebooks.org under "Unicode" you can find a test file for Kindle which demonstrates what Unicode Glyphs Kindle actually supports. Which is basically less than U+0250 "Latin" and as you mention they often leave off the diacriticals on the high latin letters. Other than that Kindle mainly supports some random Dingbats from DOS prehistory. You can also open this test file from say a Windows desktop if you install Mobipocket Reader, so one can see that the test file actually implements the test points correctly -- its just that Kindle doesn't having the Glyphs internally necessary to display these code points.

Not sure I'd want another "toy"

When the Kindle was announced, I have to admit I felt a bit deflated. For sometime now, I've been trying to limit my gadget buying to items I would find useful. The Kindle might give Amazon's bank accounts a little boost, but otherwise I couldn't see a reason for another e–book device (especially given that Sony has a rival unit). A few more hundred, and I could afford a laptop computer capable of reading the current alphabet soup of file formats out there — including the PDF files of Esperanto materials widely available online. Plus, I could choose my preferred OS (most likely a Linux distro — say, Ubuntu).

For now, my money stays where it is, save for occasional E–USA and UEA retbutiko purchases.

  • By Philip David Morgan at 2008-02-19 04:45
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"Early Adopter" Product

Well, to be fair, the Kindle is still in the "early adopter" stage. For example, it does not even yet support subdirectories, so all your books are stored in one large root directory. The Kindle actually does appear to support a subset of Unicode (á, etc.) but not yet Esperanto characters. They're currently looking for suggestions for improvements in future versions, so hopefully we can lobby to get support for the Esperanto alphabet in the future.

David

  • By DavidSimpson at 2008-02-04 23:43
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La teknologio estas ĉi-tie, fi al Amazon por ne-uzado!

Estas fio, ke Kindle ne uzas UTF-8, la fakta normo jam kelkjare!
Ankaŭ estas nepardoneble, ke Yahoo-grupoj ne kapablas montri la ĉapelitajn literojn.

Mi longe opinias ke ni devu forlasi Yahoo-grupojn kaj anstataŭe uzu Google por la poŝtlistoj.

Dankon pro via sindona laboro kaj la transskribo de la libroj! Ankaŭ mi skribos al Amazon.

"Ripozu nur. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en la mond'."
--Hafiz

  • By frimmin at 2008-02-04 15:21
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Klarigon mi petas

Hafiz,

Kion signifas via komento pri "Via apartigo de Dio"? Mi ne vidas ian rilaton al la temo aŭ al la aliaj mesaĝoj ĉi tie. Ĉu vi povas klarigi, kion vi celas?

Amike,

Lee

  • By Lee Miller at 2008-02-04 17:26
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Pardonu min pro la konfuzo

Mi bedaŭras la konfuzon. Mi ne estas Hafiz, mi estas Jon! Mi forgesis tajpi mian nomon, kaj la subskriba dosiero montris la nomon de la fama Sufia poetisto, Hafiz.

-- Jon
******************************
"Nur ripozu. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en la mond'."
--Hafiz

  • By frimmin at 2008-02-06 20:29
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Estas fio, ke Kindle ne uzas

Estas fio, ke Kindle ne uzas UTF-8, la fakta normo jam kelkjare! Ankaŭ estas nepardonebla, ke Yahoo-grupoj ne kapablas montri la ĉapelitajn literojn.

Mi longe opinias ke ni forlasu Yahoo-grupojn kaj anstataŭe uzu Google por la poŝtlistoj.

Nur ripozu. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en la mond'.
--Hafiz

  • By frimmin at 2008-02-04 15:17
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It's amazing and

It's amazing and disappointing to me how many programs and websites continue to be lame with respect to non-English alphabets. UTF-8 has been around for years and works fine, as can be seen at sites like Wikipedia, Livejournal, etc which correctly handle foreign text.

Probably it's good in letters of complaint to mention not only Esperanto (since they might write that off as an insignificant niche) but to mention that Esperanto and most languages are not handled correctly. Latin-1 represents a tiny fraction of the world's languages.

thanks for the information!

I have been sorely tempted by the Kindle and was probably going to buy one in a few months -- but, the absence of support for Esperanto characters definitely reduces my interest -- or at least makes me more willing to wait a bit.

  • By Ted Alper at 2008-02-03 03:28
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