Fonts, fonts, fonts ....

[Ghitulescu]

First, my situation at the moment.

I had to embed a font in an ePub in order to able able to display some diacritics, which were not in the stock font (of the Sony PRS-T1 if this matters, but try not to link your answer to this, I am not interested in a circumventional solution for T1) with calibre, again if that matters.

After embedding, I used the ePub preview of the calibre and saw no problem.

On all the eReaders I've checked this ePub, a certain unicode punctuation was replaced by the "missing character" glyph, a square in this case.

Now, the book has been heavily edited within calibre, that means the original XHTML files cannot longer be used for recreating the book.

So I am facing two alternatives:
- one is to change the font
- the other one is to export the ePub into a different format then reimport it with a new font

The first solution has the disadvantage of heavily editing (the initial font has been subset) and no control up to the hardware eReader.

The second one seems to destroy my carefully (and long) edited TOC. To which I have again no solution in sight.

Is it a method to replace the embedded font/s that only replaces the font/s, but doesn't alter nothing else (and subsequently also subset them)? And is there any method to check whether the glyphs used have indeed the required corresponding glyphs in the selected font?

I searched the internet, this forum and read the documentation, but couldn't find anything pertinent.

Thanks.

[HarryT]

Moved to the "Workshop" forum.

[Chi Cygni]

Don't quote me on this one and I may be wrong but last time I checked sony never liked special characters. When I was choosing ereader I realised that unless I tweak sony firmware there is no way it will display my fonts. Needless to say I decided not to buy sony ereader.
In short I suspect no matter which font you apply end result will be squares.

Good luck though.

[Ghitulescu]

The Sony is no different than any other eReader (I presume) if one embeds the fonts. That is, the fonts inside the ePub will be used instead of the stock fonts.

It works on all my eReaders.

My problem is that I embedded a wrong font. I need to correct this, without recompiling the book (I'll lose some formatting and the hand-made TOC).
That is my problem in fewer words .

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

The Sony is no different than any other eReader (I presume) if one embeds the fonts. That is, the fonts inside the ePub will be used instead of the stock fonts.

It works on all my eReaders.

My problem is that I embedded a wrong font. I need to correct this, without recompiling the book (I'll lose some formatting and the hand-made TOC).
That is my problem in fewer words .

That's no problem. An ePub book is just a ZIP file. Simply replace the font file (giving it the same name as the original) in the ZIP file.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

... (the initial font has been subset) ....

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's no problem. An ePub book is just a ZIP file. Simply replace the font file (giving it the same name as the original) in the ZIP file.

Ok, I'll see what I can do. I'll probably have to make sacrifice editions of the book with various unicode fonts to see whether the punctuation (or other diacritics) exist, then I'll see how these fonts subset, finally I'll see whether I have 3-4 fonts (for normal, bold, italic, bi) or only one, and do the replacement/s.

[Toxaris]

You first can check if the font has the diacritics you need. Some use FontForge, but that is perhaps quite heavy. However, be aware that most fonts are not allowed to be embedded. One font that is allowed, is Charis Sil. It is also quite complete, although on the heavy side.
If you open your ePUB in Sigil or the Calibre Editor (I have a love/hate relationship with the Calibre editor with regards to fonts), you can replace all the fonts and adapt the stylesheet to ensure the fonts are used.

Subsetting of the fonts can be done with the Calibre Editor. My own program FontShrinker can also subset all the fonts in an ePUB, but you need the current version that is not released yet. The older version works differently and less friendly. I hope to release that one tonight, depending on some testing from one of the residents on this forum.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

You first can check if the font has the diacritics you need. Some use FontForge, but that is perhaps quite heavy.

I have two problems.

One is that I don't know which diacritics I use. I hoped there is a sort of automatic check, much in the sense calibre does when subsetting the fonts.

The second is to use, work, view, etc. fonts that are not within windows (in other words, not installed).

I hope your program would consider these two issues.

[Toxaris]

My program just retrieves all unique characters used for that specific font en removes all other glyphs from the font. It does not matter if the font is installed, as it only works with fonts embedded in the ePUB. It will take into account the whole font-family. So, if a character is used bold-italic but not in italic, it will be removed from the italic font but not the bold-italic font.

There is way to get all the characters in your ePUB. These will not be specified per font, but all. There is a report in Sigil called 'Characters in HTML files'.