Aldiko Font Rendering Engine

[Nabodita]

I'm not too hopeful that someone will be able to answer this but, well...

In Aldiko, if you go to settings and enable publisher formatting, the app will display the ebook in the font embedded in the epub file. I've found this particularly useful for creating epubs in a language that is not natively supported by the device.

Now, I've installed Aldiko on my first generation Kindle Fire and successfully read an epub file which was created with a Bengali font. I then took the same epub, ran it through KindleGen and created a mobi (output generated without errors) which also had the font embedded. This file, however, did not render correctly on the Kindle. Bengali is not officially supported on Kindle.

My question is which engine is rendering the font in Aldiko? Does Aldiko have an inbuilt font rendering engine or is it using the Kindle's rendering engine?

Any thoughts appreciated...

Cheers
Nabodita

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Now, I've installed Aldiko on my first generation Kindle Fire and successfully read an epub file which was created with a Bengali font. I then took the same epub, ran it through KindleGen and created a mobi (output generated without errors) which also had the font embedded. This file, however, did not render correctly on the Kindle. Bengali is not officially supported on Kindle.

Wallcraft had this to say way back in 2010.

You can't embed a font in a MOBI. You can use a named font, but if it isn't on your system (and it won't be on a Kindle) you get the default font. In general, MobiPocket advises against trying to set the font in a MOBI because that way the reader can chose the font they like. On the Kindle, you always get the same font for MOBIs.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

I then took the same epub, ran it through KindleGen and created a mobi (output generated without errors) which also had the font embedded. This file, however, did not render correctly on the Kindle.

Mobi/AZW doesn't support embedded fonts, but KF8/AZW3 does. If you're using the latest version of KindleGen or Kindle Previewer for creation then it should be taking your ePub and creating a file that contains both a Mobi and KF8 along with the ePub source. Perhaps the Fire is reading the Mobi from this file instead of the KF8? Maybe use KindleUnpack to separate out the parts and try just the KF8/AZW3?


Disclaimer: I haven't been paying tons of attention to this subject lately so I may be slightly off on some details, but I'm sure someone will correct me.