Re: [Samskrita] sanskrit texts for kindle

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विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)

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Sep 6, 2025, 6:49:41 AM (4 days ago) Sep 6
to sams...@googlegroups.com, sanskrit-programmers
14 years later, a review on kobo color libre - 

Pathetic support for devanagari/iast/iso. managed to add noto fonts - still renders horribly.  poor user experience.  
display gets stuck often. very slow on large ebooks.  
doest even render html details tags within kobo epubs (kepubs).
added custom sanskrit and tamil dictionary. could not get devanagari typing to work 




Also, dumping some trial epubs and pdfs at https://github.com/vishvAsa/book-pub


On Wed, 2 Nov 2011 at 11:00, venetia ansell <venetia...@gmail.com> wrote:
Namo namaH
EPUB 3, a new eBook standard which has just been launched, supports for the first time non-Roman script content - ie: all Indian languages and scripts will be supported. As of now, Amazon is not using EPUB 3 and has in fact announced its own new format, Kindle Fire 8 (KF8), which may or may not support non-Roman scripts - we'll know more soon when they release the specs.
At the moment, your best option for reading Devanagari or any other Indian script on an eReading device is the iPad which supports various parts of the new EPUB 3 format, but not yet everything. As EPUB 3 has only just been released, device makers and software makers haven't yet caught up but they soon will and at that point most eReading devices, bar the Kindle, will support Devanagari etc.
In the past, it was possible to have non-Roman script in an eBook (rather than a pdf) but only by using images rather than text.  That meant that you couldn't search the text, or copy/paste etc. With EPUB 3 all these things should I hope become possible with Devanagari as well as English.
There are some Indian eReaders, such as the Pi, which are meant to support Indian languages (but presumably only in pdf format) but I have not had a chance to try them out myself.
Venetia

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Jaideep Joshi <jaide...@gmail.com> wrote:
VishvAs-ji, there is a hack which enables unicode fonts on kindle. I thought you had tried it out.
http://blogkindle.com/2009/10/unicode-font-hack-v0-2-now-for-kindle-international-too/

I havent dared to try it... :P

praNAm,
jayadIpa





On 1 November 2011 00:56, Vasu Srinivasan <vas...@gmail.com> wrote:
vishvas mahodaya

thanks for sharing your experience with reading sanskrit in kindle. inability to read sanskritam books (without effort) is the main reason i havent gone for kindle..

my brother got nook color and he rooted it with android 2.3 and has had success with reading djvu (djvu app for android is available i think) and pdf books (non unicode)


On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:06 PM, vishvAs vAsuki <vishvas...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks all - shrI-jayadIp's reply clarifies the problem a bit - mobi format downloads available for sanskrit books are not readable.

PDF scans of sanskrit books and pdf unicode sanskrit books are readable - albeit one has to set it up to read it in landscape mode, and zooming / panning (if required) can be very distracting/ disorienting due to the slow refresh rate. Plus table of content/ searches don't work with scans.

Thus far, I have mainly read sanskrit in ITRANS encoding (and it is easy to convert to it from unicode devanAgarI web-pages) on kindle (the bAlakANDa book linked earlier).

I just came across other work by desirAju hanumantarAv at - http://www.giirvaani.net/ - one can derive mobi books thence with a few commands.

I have not figured out how to convert unicode pdf sanskrit books to mobi format (calibre messes up fonts, but maybe one can try archive.org tricks).

--
vishvAs





On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 00:05, Jaideep Joshi <jaide...@gmail.com> wrote:
Namaste,

The books at archive.org in mobi format only have the english text recognised from the scans. It does not have sanskrit.

VishvAs mahodaya, does your kindle read devanagari also? if so, how?

praNAm,
Jaideep





On 31 October 2011 10:24, shankara <shanka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Vishvasji,

Namaste,

In case you have not notice this, all the Sanskrit books available at archive.org can be downloaded in mobi format (Other formats available are kindle, daisy, djvu and pdf).

regards
shankara

--- On Mon, 31/10/11, vishvAs vAsuki <vishvas...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: vishvAs vAsuki <vishvas...@gmail.com>
Subject: [Samskrita] sanskrit texts for kindle
To: "saMskRRita-sandesha-shreNiH" <sams...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "nandU abhya~Nkara" <sans...@cheerful.com>, "dhaval patel" <drdhav...@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, 31 October, 2011, 12:45 AM


i have found that I like reading books on kindle rather than on the computer, which requires files in mobi or amazon formats (pdf being cumbersome to read on the device). Unfortunately there aren't free-samskrita books readily available online (Eg: rAmAyaNa and mahAbhArata) - only their english translations (which are good, but I want sanskrit verse - preferably even bilingual texts).

For rAmAyaNa, I found bilingual html text here - http://www.valmikiramayan.net/, whence I converted balakANDa (which I am currently reading) appropriately using the software calibre. This file is available here. (I request people hosting sanskrit book collections to copy this ebook version and serve it on their websites - access to ebooks in mobi format is useful to kindle owneres, and I am not able to serve this file for a long time.)

If you have such books (especially bilingual ones) in html or mobi formats, please let me know.

--
vishvAs


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Regards,
Vasu Srinivasan
-----------------------------------
vagartham.blogspot.com
vasya10.wordpress.com


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Venetia Ansell
Bangalore | India

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Vishvas /विश्वासः

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