Embedded fonts?

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by pholy

By the way, I wonder if the publisher actually obtained the rights to distribute those Ariel fonts... The Tex project does have substitutes, after all.

and I think that may be the greater issue, rather than hardware/software limitations; do the publishers or the distributors (depending on responsibility) have licensing rights to use particular fonts within an ebook? in my example, the epub was obviously built up to use time new roman, but the font files themselves were missing, defaulting to the device's fonts.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psyke

I actually got curious about this as I thought about it a little more, and decided to check something. I'm sure what I've found is probably known to most seasoned vets here, but I'm still an ebook noob, so I was a little confused about something.

So, I downloaded the epub version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from my kobo account, and de-drm'd it (shhh). I then opened it up in Sigil and started to poke around. In the fonts folder, the only font's embedded into the epub container were Arial variants.

looking at Styles CSS file, I noticed a discrepancy...all the arial fonts are defined, each under it's own @font-face, so that's good, but when you look at what fonts were actually supposed to be used in the books structure, it's mostly listing "Times New Roman", everything but quotes, which turns out to be the email exchanges in the books, and this was arial.

So, I grabbed the Times new roman fonts from windows and put them into the fonts folder of the container, then defined @font-face for it, pointing to that new file, and low and behold, the Kobo displayed them. Now, I can admit that I can't see huge differences between relatively similar fonts, so I imported another font and re-defined it to replace the Times New Roman...this is what I got.

Now, again, I'm a newb, but this seems to me that the kobo can display embedded fonts well enough, but it really depends on if the book is coded properly or has the fonts it's looking for included with it in the first place...or am I missing something obvious?

I made a slight mistake. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from an ePub made from a Mobipocket edition. But the other two Larsson eBooks I read from original ePub. #2 & #3 do have embedded fonts. So I incorrectly thought # would as well in an original ePub. So give one of the other 2 a try and see what happens. If I am not mistaken, they put the font declaration in body which is not incorrect.

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I made a slight mistake. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from an ePub made from a Mobipocket edition. But the other two Larsson eBooks I read from original ePub. #2 & #3 do have embedded fonts. So I incorrectly thought # would as well in an original ePub. So give one of the other 2 a try and see what happens. If I am not mistaken, they put the font declaration in body which is not incorrect.

Luckily, I did indeed purchase all three books, so I downloaded the epub versions of them, as well as of Millenium falcon and Under the Dome (this last one is giving me problems to decrypt though..). the two other Larson books give me the same results as the first. Arial is embedded in the fonts folder, but the font that's actually defined is Times new Roman.

The reason I picked up the other two books (although I was only able to check the StarWars one) is I wanted to see if maybe during the decription process, something was being changed, but it actualy had a different Font. It's embedded font was CharisSIL, and while @font-face, none of the actual styles were, so they were all like:

h1.contents {
font-size: medium;
text-align: center;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
}

instead of what I've seen in the other three books:

.h1
{
   	font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;
    	font-size: 200%;
    	margin-top: 4em;
    	margin-bottom: 0.5em;
    	text-align: center;

I'll play around with the Starwars book because I don't know if the omission of the embedded code means it defaults to them or the machines fonts, but I believe it's probably the latter. I'll change the font that's easily recognizable as I did with my first test and see. But it really does seem that if the ebook is not coded properly, and it would seem like this is the case, then they are not going to show embedded fonts, even if they are present in the container. This isn't a bug in the device(s), it's publisher lazyness, which unfortunately isn't all too surprising

[JSWolf]

The 2nd and 3rd Larson books do have Charis embedded and set to be used in the body style. The copies I've read were from the library. I do not know why yours are different.

I have seen some books with embedded fonts that don't properly have the CSS set to use them. I've had to go into the CSS and fix things to work.

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The 2nd and 3rd Larson books do have Charis embedded and set to be used in the body style. The copies I've read were from the library. I do not know why yours are different.

I have seen some books with embedded fonts that don't properly have the CSS set to use them. I've had to go into the CSS and fix things to work.

could depend on the source it came from. I'll download copies from my library later this evening and compare them.

But can you admit that it's really not the devices at fault for this and more to due with shody programing at the publishers end?

- hmm..will have to wait; all books are already checked out.

[JPenguin]

Originally Posted by Psyke

could depend on the source it came from. I'll download copies from my library later this evening and compare them.

But can you admit that it's really not the devices at fault for this and more to due with shody programing at the publishers end?

Well according to JSWolf it isn't shody programming from the publishers. It is a combined issue of lack-of-detailed-spec for the ePub format and it not being a high priority for Kobo. I would personally see page-jumping as a more useful feature than 100% bug-free embedded font support.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psyke

could depend on the source it came from. I'll download copies from my library later this evening and compare them.

But can you admit that it's really not the devices at fault for this and more to due with shody programing at the publishers end?

- hmm..will have to wait; all books are already checked out.

I do admit there is some shody programming out there and that's why the embedded fronts fail to work. But, in this case, I am positive it's not shoddy programming as I've tried the books via ADE for Windows, ADE on a Sony Reader PRS-505, & the txtr app for the iPad. The embedded fonts worked in all cases. The only place they failed to work was with Kobo Readers both original and wifi.

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I do admit there is some shody programming out there and that's why the embedded fronts fail to work. But, in this case, I am positive it's not shoddy programming as I've tried the books via ADE for Windows, ADE on a Sony Reader PRS-505, & the txtr app for the iPad. The embedded fonts worked in all cases. The only place they failed to work was with Kobo Readers both original and wifi.

Can you try the enclosed file.. I think it's the most basic you can get in regards to embedded fonts... and I actually had problems at first. I had taken the girl with the dragon tattoo book as a base, stripped it all of but one page, the fonts and the css file. Despite the fact that I could get the pristina font to work when I added to the dragon tattoo book, it didn't want to work for me in here, or at least not completely...

when I loaded the file in both sigil and calibre, all the fonts showed (including wing ding), but in ADE and the Kobo, both wingding and pristina did not and the default fonts showed. Wingding itself didn't suprise me, considering what it is, but the fact that Pristina didn't work perplexed me, considering I got it working previously. Also, it wasn't suprising that it wasn't working in both ADE or the Kobo at the same time because, from what I can tell, they use the same rendering engine for epubs. if it had worked in one, and not the other, then I would have been more concerned.

so I went through the epub again, and in the CSS, there was, what seemed, some orphaned code. so I removed it. after that pristine started showing for all 4 renderers. It just goes to show just a little error somewhere in the code can and will affect something elsewhere in the code, and it will sometimes be ignored by some renderers, and not by others.

The fact that your books have worked in ADE, but not in the kobo is really strange, again for the same reason mentioned above. I'd need to see the books to be sure, so hopefully once my library books become available, they came from the same source as your own and I can replicate what you're seeing..

[Greenmantle]

Interesting Psyke,

I loaded this into the Kobo and also opened it with the calibre build in viewer and ADE and compared the three side by side.

calibre was the only one that displayed the Wingdings hyroglyphics.

Comic Sans, Pristina and Segoe I thought looked the same on all three.

Times New Roman and New Courier had minute differences that I could see on the Kobo and ADE but not in calibre (both lines were Times New Roman)

When "sans serif" was selected on the Kobo the only font to change was New Courier.

Incidently 1.4MB is a pretty big file for a few lines of text???

Thanks for the test
Cheers

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by Greenmantle

Interesting Psyke,

I loaded this into the Kobo and also opened it with the calibre build in viewer and ADE and compared the three side by side.

calibre was the only one that displayed the Wingdings hyroglyphics.

Comic Sans, Pristina and Segoe I thought looked the same on all three.

Times New Roman and New Courier had minute differences that I could see on the Kobo and ADE but not in calibre (both lines were Times New Roman)

When "sans serif" was selected on the Kobo the only font to change was New Courier.

Incidently 1.4MB is a pretty big file for a few lines of text???

Thanks for the test
Cheers

Because it's not the text; it's the embedded fonts . The text for a book is usually relatively small, but when you start putting in more fonts, particularly higher quality ones, then the size starts to go up. Times is about 800kb just itself. wingding is only 80kb..

[Psyke]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I do admit there is some shody programming out there and that's why the embedded fronts fail to work. But, in this case, I am positive it's not shoddy programming as I've tried the books via ADE for Windows, ADE on a Sony Reader PRS-505, & the txtr app for the iPad. The embedded fonts worked in all cases. The only place they failed to work was with Kobo Readers both original and wifi.

Jon, I did come accross what you've described. I was looking at something different when I noticed two books I had purchased for my daughter. They were 1.5 and just over 2megs. Seeing as they were relative short books, I took it that they had embedded fonts in them, and I was correct. I downloaded and stripped them and sure enough, the fonts showed up in sigil, calibre and ADE, but not on the kobo.

looking at the CSS file, the fonts were define, but the only style that was defined using them was "body". All the other styles entries were set to just make mods to that font when needed. The way it looks, the kobo doesn't like it when the the main body holds the style (doesn't see it), and is looking at each individual style entry to grab whatever font it wants to use instead. Not sure why ADE would pick up the body and not the KOBO, but it could be a "bug" or could have been a consious decision. I'm going to play with it a bit more this week to see if there's something else other than.

cheers!
Steph S.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psyke

Jon, I did come accross what you've described. I was looking at something different when I noticed two books I had purchased for my daughter. They were 1.5 and just over 2megs. Seeing as they were relative short books, I took it that they had embedded fonts in them, and I was correct. I downloaded and stripped them and sure enough, the fonts showed up in sigil, calibre and ADE, but not on the kobo.

looking at the CSS file, the fonts were define, but the only style that was defined using them was "body". All the other styles entries were set to just make mods to that font when needed. The way it looks, the kobo doesn't like it when the the main body holds the style (doesn't see it), and is looking at each individual style entry to grab whatever font it wants to use instead. Not sure why ADE would pick up the body and not the KOBO, but it could be a "bug" or could have been a consious decision. I'm going to play with it a bit more this week to see if there's something else other than.

cheers!
Steph S.

Having the font-family declaration in the body is a common occurrence. Otherwise, you have to have it in every style used. That's why it's in the Body style. By Kobo not supporting the embedded font in Body, they are seriously changing the reading experience for many users.

I am surprised Kobo has not said a word on embedded fonts even though I've brought it up in a number of threads. They just ignore it like everything is working properly which we know it's not.

[3d0g]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I am surprised Kobo has not said a word on embedded fonts even though I've brought it up in a number of threads. They just ignore it like everything is working properly which we know it's not.

Hmm, let's refer to the official kobo feature page:

Customize with 5 type sizes & 2 font styles.

No mention of "embedded" font support whatsoever. Seems to be working as designed to me.

[JSWolf]

3d0g, why do you insist on being a killjoy? You don't seem to want embedded fonts to work. Why?

[3d0g]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

3d0g, why do you insist on being a killjoy? You don't seem to want embedded fonts to work. Why?

I want it to be called what it really is. A feature request.

*IF* it's even possible to do within the hardware limitations of the kobo, I'm all for supporting custom body fonts as long as there's a way to shut them off. Body fonts will be an absolute performance killer on the kobo, just as they are now on the Nook and Sony devices. Kindle, the largest eReader in the world by far, doesn't even support them, also for performance reasons, no doubt.

Bottom line is, it's simply not a bug and never was one. Yet, you continue to cause significant confusion among newbies here by claiming such. You're just going to have to accept that both the kobo and Kindle chose a different path for eBook fonts than you'd prefer. Strangely, there *are* eReader alternatives that *do* provide what you want, which makes me wonder why you're still here.

Only thing I can figure is, you just love to troll.

The upside for me is, I love to pick on trolls.