fbreader writes hyphen after each word
 

Toshiba Portege R700
Linux Lite 5.0

I have FBReader 0.12.10dfsg 2-4du installed using it mainly to read .epub and it works perfectly except that it writes a hyphen after each word. The space is present so it's all readable but I can find no way to remove the hyphens.

On another laptop running MX and FBReader 0.12.10.dfsg 2-3 the hyphens do not happen, nor do they occur on older versions of FBReader on other machines.

I've found only one mention of this on the web and it appeared to be simply a bug report and didn't offer any comments on possible fixes.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Can't you just downgrade the version?
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1382...ge-via-apt-get
edit: you might need to manually search for the suitable .deb package, install it, then "hold" it.
In the case of fbreader I'd say Ubuntu or Debian, doesn't matter.

Thanks for your input, ondoho,
Yes, I could and may downgrade it or probably just ignore the hyphens and carry on.
I was just interested to see if anyone else had experienced the problem, I don't think it's platform or hardware specific so others should be getting the same bug. The developers of FBReader will most likely fix it eventually anyway.
Thanks.

In Settings (gear icon) > Styles, uncheck Auto hyphenation. This setting won't take effect until you restart FBReader.

The main difference between -3 and -4 versions in Debian is dropping of Qt4 GUI interface. Perhaps, you were using the Qt4 interface on other machines.

AFAIK, the developer of FBReader abandoned the Linux version long ago. The Debian maintainer does a superb job patching security holes in the package, but you cannot expect him to fix minor bugs.

TBH, I'd rather consider moving on to MuPDF or Calibre as an EPUB-viewer.

This.
Look on their web page, the newest Linux version is 0.99, and that's from 2012. One can only imagine how old 0.12 is...
That said, fbreader is still a superb book reader that has been succesfully adapted to many, many platforms.
I keep ending up with it on Android, SailfishOS, all GNU/Linux...

@ondoho. 0.99 only supports Qt4, I guess 0.12.10 is the latest version of FBReader that supported GTK2, and as I said above, Qt4 support was dropped in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS which Linux Lite 5.0 is based on.

Thank you folks,
I wasn't aware that it was unsupported for Linux, or that 0.12 was such an ancient version.
The auto hyphenations box has never been checked, I tried toggling it but it made no difference.
I can't seem to get on with Calibre, FBReader is the best for my situation so I'll just ignore the superfluous hyphens and stop carping.
I won't mark this a solved yet because someone out there may have hit on a workround, I'll give it a few more days.
Thanks again for your time and input.

I'm pretty sure unchecking the auto hyphenation worked for me when I tested it on Ubuntu 20.04 earlier today. Now, I'll try to recall how I did it (I already purged FBReader from the box). I used /usr/share/doc/samhain/MANUAL-2_4.epub as my test document.

1. Open the document in FBReader. Hyphens after each word as you described.
2. Uncheck Auto hyphenation for Base. Click Apply. No difference.
3. Also uncheck Auto hyphenation for Regular text. Click Apply. No difference.
4. Restore Auto hyphenation for Regular text. Close FBReader and start it again with the same document. Hyphens disappear.

Hello shruggy,
I tried your idea (using Kerouac's On The Road).
My version of FBReader has no option for Regular text, only Regular paragraph, it does have an option for Preformatted text.
I tried the uncheck/check sequence on all permutations of Base, Regular paragraph and Preformatted text and I still have a surfeit of hyphens.
I really appreciate the time you are giving me on this but it's not a serious issue, just a minor irritation, I can live with it.
In the meantime, I'll leave the topic open and continue to scratch around on the wider web, I don't want to distract you from more important issues. However, if you do have an epiphany of some sort, I'll welcome it.
Regards and thanks.

Can't you just downgrade the version? See post #2...
Also check fbreader's config files, maybe something got muddled there.

I also had this with book in foreign language. Changed FBReader default language to the same as the one in book and hyphens are gone.

Thanks ondoho,
I think it's not a case of downgrading the application but of downgrading, or changing, the OS. My problem seems to be in the dropping of Qt4 and the geriatric state of FBReader for Linux.
I've scratched around on the internet and started a topic on the Linux Lite forum and in all cases the consensus seems to be that I'll have to put up with the hyphens or learn to love big, fat Calibre.
I've chosen the latter. I've used FBReader for a long time and uninstalling it was like losing an old friend but without support things will only deteriorate - time to move on.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread, I'm going to mark it as closed.

lol

This worked for me. Brilliant! Thanks!

Hello katav,
I was surprised to be notified of activity on a thread that I thought inactive and marked solved. I'm delighted that shruggy's suggestion worked for you.
I'll update this as people still seem to be interested: originally I marked it solved because, reluctantly, I gave up on FBreader and installed Calibre. Calibre is a very comprehensive application but I find it bloated and heavy - I don't get on with it. After trying for a while, I went for the nuclear option, I got rid of Linux Lite and installed MX19. Now everything, including FBreader works perfectly.
Thanks again to all contributors.