Unicode Fonts for Kindle 2 v0.1

Patches were tested by several volunteers and all results were positive. The patch works and doesn’t cause any problems. You can now read books on your Amazon Kindle 2 in Russian, Chinese, Japanese and probably number of other languages.

Currently I’m releasing hack with two different fonts: Liberation that comes from RedHat Linux and Droid that comes from Google Android project. Both fonts are open-source and they are the best ones I could find that suit the needs of this hack. Finding good fonts was much harder than creating the hack itself.

Instructions and download links can be found here. Please-please-please-please-please do be very-very-very-very-very careful if you decide to experiment with adding your own fonts to the hack. If you find good free or reasonably priced fonts that work – please let me know – I’ll test them and make more versions of the hack available here and give you proper credit. Please spread the word about this hack as it will increase chances of someone finding better fonts that can be used with it.

Here are some screenshots of what Kindle 2 with hacked fonts looks like:

kindle-ufhack-v01-liberation

kindle-ufhack-v01-droid

I would like to thank John, Ted and some other folks for helping me test this patch. Another big thank you goes to Igor who created the python script that creates Kindle 2 update packages.

I’ll now shift my attention to figuring out creating custom recovery mode updates. Once this is done – I’ll have much more freedom in messing with fonts and other settings without fear of bricking my Kindle 2.

16 thoughts on “Unicode Fonts for Kindle 2 v0.1”

  1. Hello,
    Is there a chance that you could test hebrew fonts on the kindle? I would be grateful to know the results and see the screenshots.
    Thank you in advance

  2. I’ve tried http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18291 and Hebrew glyphs don’t seem to render with Droid font. I’m positive that it’s just a matter of finding a font that will work.

    BTW I recall seeing Unicode test eBook but can’t find it anymore. Can someone link to it? It would come really handy in testing these and subsequent patches.

  3. Hi,

    This is wonderful! I would really like to see Kindle2 showing Sanskrit fonts. However, I really do not know how to create a patch like this for Sanskrit. Could you please help? I’ll locate the proper font type to make this work.

    Could you please e-mail me back?

    Thanks!
    Gopal

  4. Pingback: Kindle 2 Link Love mid April « Kindle 2, Kindle 2 Review, Kindle Books 2.0 - iReader Review

  5. DejaVu is an excellent free-of-cost open-source font, with amazing support for many languages.

    It has so many languages that they have found technical problems can occur. So now they offer an LGC subset (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic as I recall).

    Download from sourceforge. Google ‘dejavu font’.

  6. I have applied unicode hack with MsMincho font (japanese font) and did not happy with it. I deleted the files appeared in the root directory (except Audible, Documents, music) before uninstalling the font. Now my devices can not restart, I have tried the recovery mode and copy the uninstall bin file into it but it says the update is failed. I contacted the custommer services but I can not do anything because it is violation of user term. Do anyone have any advice? Thank you very much.

  7. You must have used one of the customized hacks or you have customized it yourself. I’m sorry but I’ve written multiple times not to experiment with custom fonts unless you really know what are you doing. It looks like the only way to fix the device now is serial console

  8. Sorry for forgetting one thing. The recovery mode still working so basically I can access the root directory. But I do not know how to fix it. Also I do not know how to fix it by serial consle. If you have any hint, please kindly let me know. Thank you very much.

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