Apr 07, 2017 Thanks for A2A. Go to site Library Genesis.
Lonely Planet once had 2 great ideas:.Adding Chinese names to the English names of cities, streets, bus stations, highlights, food, et cetera. Great in it's simplicity, because as a non-Mandarin speaking foreigner now you could just point at the Chinese spelling and people would push you in the right direction. Life is easy.Publishing the massive physical China guide book as an eBook so you can just take your eReader, tablet or notebook that most long-term travellers already have with them anyway and avoid a kilogram of book.So far for the great ideas as after buying the China ePub version I found out that NONE of the Chinese names are included in the eBook! Which makes the eBook completely useless as virtually NOBODY will ever understand what you're trying to say, no matter how hard you try.After exchanging 5 or so emails with LP they told me that eReaders can't show Chinese characters anyway and therefor they decided to leave them out. Apart from the fact that this isn't true (they're displayed absolutely beautiful in the language chapter for instance) there's more people that use the guide book on a tablet than on an eReader and now THEY also have a useless eBook.I have to say that the PDF DOES show the characters but if you have over 1,000 pages it's absolutely impossible to use the search function. I tried a couple of times but after waiting for 5 minutes I realized it's useless once you want to ask people for directions or so. Also, PDFs are terrible to read because of the limited formatting.
Second, LP has just refunded my money because the eBook isn't useful to me at all. Well, although that is very kind I wished they had DOUBLED the price and send me a functional eBook instead!So although it took many years before they finally started producing eBooks they may as well stop straight away. Because anyone who wants to buy the worldwide most used ePub version (I don't know about the Kindle version - please respond) will find out it's useless and therefor a waste of money. I say it's time for a good old-fashioned thick, heavy, tree-burning and expensive physical guide book! Back to the Stone Age.By the way: This MAY apply to ANY eBook with non-Latin Characters like India, Thailand, Russia, Japan, et cetera. I hope this will be published in the LP shop to avoid problems for potential buyers.LP, please respond with good news.drftr.
While I use quite a lot of tech products, I still buy 'traditional' paper guide books. I've been tempted by the e-versions, but navigating pdf files has put me off, and now thanks to the OP for telling us that the ePub version does not work with Chinese script.I use the written script a lot in China (not that I can write Chinese). Instead I'll cut an A4 piece of blank paper into 8 pieces, and on each one I get hostel / hotel staff to write down the characters of important places I need to go, with approximate pinyin for me to say, and with a brief English translation. While it is a very low tech solution, it generally works for me, and I feel it is much safer than handing over my mobile phone to a stranger so that they can read where I want to go - I am probably being over cautious but it just takes one person to do a runner. If I look at my used guidebooks, half of them look like they have been dropped in a swimming pool.
And they practically have: I was last in Sao Tome trying to walk over the mountains and the rain storm that caught me up was equivalent to standing under the shower for 2 hours. My phone didn't survive (water behind the screen) as wouldn't have any of the e-reader gadgets mentioned above, even inside whatever backpack (unless packed in carefully sealed plastic maybe). Other examples include traveling on back of motorcycle for 100+km or on top of truck for days rainstorms included, or simply having stuff on the floor of a hotel room, which in the morning you find half inundated by the thunder storm that raged overnight. But at least these paper books can dry up, and still be used, be it that they have become a bit more voluminous. And then we haven't talked about all the thieves you attract with ipads and such.
So for me: long live the paper brick book, no e-stuff please. I considered that option Westwood but since I'll be in China for about 5 months I basically have to print about 75% of the book - an expensive option. But finding the physical book in China outside of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong may not be possible so it's gonna be either using the PDF on my tablet or printing the whole thing.Having said that, does anyone know if the.mobi version (Kindle) have the same limitations? I might be able to find an app that works with Windows 8.1 on my tablet.Tnx. I found out that the.mobi eBook version DOES include Chinese characters so if you're desperate download that one instead and install an app that can read.mobi files.Unfortunately though (oh well.) you can't search in the.mobi version while you CAN in the.epub version. For instance, if you search for Jincheng in the.mobi you'll get zero hits while you get plenty in the.epub version. The fact that they don't include an index in their eBooks (!) makes using the.mobi an enormous hassle.
Why wouldn't they include an index in an eBook? Especially if Search does't work then it's about your only way to navigate - unless you know exactly in which chapter to search but that only works if you're a China specialist.Funny enough (again: oh well.) the PDF version DOES come with an index.So now we have 3 completely different digital versions that only work well if you use all 3 of them together. I guess there's some work to do out there.Unfortunately I don't have a good workaround for new buyers yet. I'm awaiting an answer to my emails to LP to see what they advice.drftr.
Hi drftr,My name is Megan, and I am the Destination Editor who looks after China and the rest of North Asia for Lonely Planet. First I wanted to say thanks for your post and for using Lonely Planet! Also, congrats on heading to China for five months - are you going to be travelling around, teaching or working (or all three)?I'm really sorry that our.epub product doesn't include the Chinese script. I can personally attest to how invaluable it is to have access to the characters for names and addresses when you're travelling around China. I just wanted to let you know that I'll be contacting our ebook production team to see if there's anything we can do about the way Chinese renders in the.epub so we can try to get the script back in the ebook product, and also if there's anything that can be done about the search in the.mobi book.Just so you know, I really sympathise and I appreciate you taking the time to contact LP through our official channels first so that you could get the refund.Any questions, do get in touch!
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