07-26-2014, 06:06 AM | #16 | ||
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I ended up testing the system by, err, reluctantly, buying my own book, frankly a bargain at $3.75. But not such a bargain when the font has indeed been stripped, and, I already have a more attractive version on my computer. I have a few ideas that I might run through in order to rule them out as being an issue. First. This is the head of my content.opf file. Should I be using version="2.0" or should this be version="3.0" Quote:
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07-26-2014, 06:14 AM | #17 |
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The second issue is the naming of the font itself.
The font "Oswald" actually comes in four versions in separate packages: Oswald-Regular.otf Oswald-Bold.otf Oswald-Light.otf Oswald-stencil.otf I have installed only Oswald-Regular.otf because I do not use bold or the other versions. I use the name of the font "Oswald" in all the CSS because that is how it is referred to inside the font package. It validates with that name and has embedded. If I try to call the font "Oswald-Regular" it says that the font can't be found and can't be embedded. Are there any little tricks I may have missed here? |
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07-27-2014, 07:47 AM | #18 | |
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I'm wondering if I have a similar problem as the one had by Mathew Reuther in the following forum thread:
Months of Runaround From KDP Support: Font Embedding Fails...HELP! He says: Quote:
That looks altogether similar to what my issue is, guess KDP is choking on valid HTML and CSS once again. I removed all those useless spans although to be honest the Pages .epub conversion managed to create about 60 separate classes of which I only need about 8. Guess I'll have to whack a few back in, and test it again. This thread was from just on a year ago, I thought maybe KDP might have fixed it. Last edited by GJ Coop; 07-27-2014 at 07:51 AM. Reason: added my bit about spans |
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07-28-2014, 07:07 PM | #19 | |
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You want my short version, or the long version? Short: OTF bad. TTF Good. Long: 18 months ago, we had a similar font-stripping situation. Some fonts simply will NOT work at the KDP; either the font, in its entirety, along with all font formatting, styling, etc., is stripped in the KDP "PW" (Publishing Workflow, which is what occurs to the book after you hit "save and publish" but before it goes on sale), or the font itself is corrupted (want fun? Try the dreaded Papyrus!!!). We have screenshots of some books that look like the lettering actually came "unstuck" from the page (think a Harry Potter spell), and the letters just moved hither and yon. Now, you can sit there and bang your head against the wall from now until hell freezes over, or you can find another font. I'd highly recommend you find another font, and as Amazon tells you to stay away from otf's, I would. Even when we've tried converting some otf's to TTF, for pathologically-determined clients, we've had issues, so we tend to stick to TTF. We have had an ongoing discussion with Seattle--not the dreaded customer service--about this issue, and I'm not sure that they know what it is; it's simply a glitch. But they've already said, in the Formatting Guidelines, IIRC, to stay away from otf fonts. Once you've made the book, upload it at the KDP, and ensure that you download the preview mobi. If the preview mobi is solid, you're likely in good shape. That's not 100% certain that the font won't be stripped out in the PW, but you can be absolutely positive that if the preview mobi doesn't have it, it won't be magically reinstalled in the PW. You'll obviously have to re-download the book (contact customer service and have the new version delivered to your devices, as they'll keep sending you the original otherwise) to ensure that the font is really, really there. In all likelihood, it's not your coding--Reuter's issue was unique. We spent a weekend troubleshooting that book with him, as a favor, and NO font worked in his book. That WAS a coding error. Most font issues, though, are the font, not anything else. Simply try substituting a different font, that's a ttf, and see if your problem resolves. Hitch |
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07-28-2014, 10:06 PM | #20 | |
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Actually, for some reason, something I read somewhere, I originally had the Oswald as a .ttf and changed it because I thought KDP recommended .otf. I'll search out the original .ttf font. As an aside it's just plain kooky that the KDP Previewer doesn't preview the ultimately converted file. Why on earth would you preview an intermediate stage? At least that's confirmation that it might, in fact, not be totally due to my own ineptitude. Who would guess that KDP would choke on valid XML? Man, once I get this sorted it will be such a relief. It's been going on for 5 weeks. Thanks again. |
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07-28-2014, 10:23 PM | #21 | ||
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Does it make me Oh, yeah. Along with Hitch |
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07-29-2014, 04:27 AM | #22 |
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Well, I've re-uploaded a new .mobi file, created as an .epub in Calibre and converted in Kindle Desktop Previewer, for probably the 20th time, I'm getting to know the mechanics of The System. It looks OK in the KDP Online previewer. Actually it looks exactly what I want, so fingers crossed for tomorrow morning.
Spent some of today fiddling around with spans and classes. In between unblocking, err, the toilet. This time the upload has the third font. I initially had a go with Impact, since it's on every computer, but maybe it was copy protected in some way. The second font was the clearly public domain Oswald, a straightforward compact font. If any font should work, this one was specifically designed and optimised for the web, you would think that one would. It's available as both .ttf and .otf and of course I tried them both. This third font is also a free web font from Google Web Fonts, the strangely nomenclatured "Yanone Kaffeesatz Regular". It seems to be looking OK, at least in the KDP online preview and on the Kindle Desktop Reader. Somehow I'm feeling like I'm transported back to my early days of doing desktop publishing, early 1990s Pagemaker, except back then they could actually get the fonts to work. Not much progress in the last 21 years by the look of things. I guess we see the result in a difference in vision between Jobs and Bezos. I don't think I'm doing anything too special, just a single additional compact sans serif font for a title page and for the chapter headings. I had validating code 4 weeks ago and I'm now at the point where I think I might just have to publish where they use .epub. I want my book to look the simple way I've designed it. Last edited by GJ Coop; 07-29-2014 at 04:30 AM. Reason: "converted" clarification |
07-29-2014, 03:07 PM | #23 | ||||||
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If you want to talk about competing "visions," try to put an ePUB you've created on a first-gen iBooks, and pray that it doesn't use centering. Or, for that matter, some fonts, unless you include a "special file" that you can't use at most distributors/aggregators. To make an ePUB work on most first-gen iPads, you have to include a crapload of unnecessary code, to work around all the bad in the app. Oh, and if you make an ePUB3-compliant book for iBooks right now, it won't work on those first-gen iPads, either. At least, at Amazon, you can fallback gracefully for the millions of KF7-compliant devices with media queries. Over at Nook, if you have two spans in the first line of a paragraph, the line will break, hyphenating at bizarre locations. Print layout has been around since Gutenberg. eBook layout has been around for, really, a whopping 5 years. Let's say 8, to be highly charitable and give credit where credit is due, to the early mobi/palm/lit, etc., pioneers. That it's not "done and dusted" and all burned-in is hardly surprising. Moreover, unless you're doing this ALL the time, it changes, literally weekly. The goalposts move, and they move constantly. Hitch |
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07-30-2014, 12:22 AM | #24 | |||
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Well, no.
I have not yet succeeded with getting the font to embed despite changing to a couple of different Google Webfonts, that's .ttf fonts. One font became distorted so it looked like the hanging letters were dripping down the page in the .mobi in the desktop previewer, might have been tears, or blood. OK, for a crime book, I guess. I decided to cut my losses and create the title page as an image. That was easy enough for me to do, and simplifies the number of embedded font classes in the code from six to two. One for the Table of Contents, the other for the chapter headings. I added the not particularly elegantly named font, YanoneKaffeesatz-Regular, to the Manifest: Quote:
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I guess I could get someone else to do this for me but I really want to nut this process out myself. I am writing short travel style ebooks and there is scope for writing plenty more of them, actually a whole new career and I'm 99% of the way there with the first four ebooks. I'll report back on how KPD has machinated the .mobi. It might just work this time. |
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07-30-2014, 09:34 AM | #25 | |
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07-30-2014, 03:15 PM | #26 | |||||
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FWIW, in the CSS: Quote:
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src: url("../Fonts/YanoneKaffeesatz-Regular.ttf") format("truetype"); And for this, in the manifest: Quote:
Try this: Code:
media-type="application/x-font-ttf" /> Hitch |
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07-30-2014, 06:50 PM | #27 | |
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Hitch
Thank you so much for taking the time with this. I agree embedding six fonts would be entirely ridiculous. I am using one font and six classes. Embedding fonts is one of the most difficult issues to get my head around that I've encountered in coding. It would be helped by KPD having a more explicit Official Guide. But also it seems that there mustn't be any official standard for the construction of the fonts, ie, why some work and others don't. If I hadn't been in the finishing straight I would have been way better to pay someone else to sort this. The amount of wasted time has been quite staggering. I would certainly recommend anyone else having issues with font embedment to get someone who knows what they are doing to sort this out. Like paying for it. It would be money well spent, at least if you value your time. On the other hand, having made 100 mistakes I've come to understand how the font embedment process works. If you are the type to learn from mistakes it hasn't been entirely wasted. Quote:
I think it's probably those missing "" that have been causing my problems all along. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Calibre changes the application to what I had automatically. I'm not sure this is critical, but I'll change it anyway. It's this nitpicky stuff that chokes code up. You must have an extreme eye for detail in this business, playing spot the difference. Get one character wrong, even a " instead of ' and it can come to grief. Well, the day is youngish, there's four ebooks to fiddle with. Hitch, thanks again, your advice has been extremely helpful. |
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07-30-2014, 07:54 PM | #28 | ||||||||
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You are most welcome.
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Good luck. Hitch |
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07-30-2014, 10:40 PM | #29 | |
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Code:
AldusLTStd-Italic.otf AldusLTStd-Roman.otf AlternateGothicNo2BTStd-Regular.otf AmericanTypewriterStd-Med.otf CalibanStd.otf CheltenhamStd-BoldCond.otf CheltenhamStd-BoldCondIt.otf CooperBlackStd-Italic.otf CooperBlackStd.otf EngraversLTStd-BoldFace.otf FrutigerLTStd-Black.otf FrutigerLTStd-Bold.otf Garamond3LTStd-Bold.otf Garamond3LTStd-BoldItalic.otf Garamond3LTStd-Italic.otf Garamond3LTStd.otf HelveticaInseratLTStd-Roman.otf HelveticaLTStd-Blk.otf HelveticaLTStd-BlkObl.otf HelveticaLTStd-Obl.otf HelveticaLTStd-Roman.otf MemphisLTStd-Bold.otf NewsGothicBTStd-Bold.otf NewsGothicBTStd-BoldCondensedItalic.otf NewsGothicBTStd-Italic.otf NewsGothicBTStd-Roman.otf StencilStd.otf TimesNewRomanMTStd-Bold.otf TimesNewRomanMTStd-BoldIt.otf TimesNewRomanMTStd-Italic.otf TimesNewRomanMTStd.otf TradeGothicLTStd-BdCn20.otf TradeGothicLTStd-BdCn20Obl.otf TradeGothicLTStd.otf Last edited by JSWolf; 07-30-2014 at 10:47 PM. |
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07-30-2014, 10:57 PM | #30 |
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Also, keep in mind that the older Kindles, probably millions of which are still in use, cannot display embedded fonts.
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