Embedding .symbol font?

[Kivgaen]

Okay, here's the issue...

We're just using basic fonts for all of our epub ebooks, because I know some readers don't have the capabilities to read the embedded fonts, and also a lot of readers these days allows the user to over-ride the fonts used anyway... So to keep it simple, we made the decision to stick with basic system fonts for ALL of our ebooks and not embed them.

But then there's the suit symbols...

So far, ALL of the readers that we have tested, namely: Sony reader, iPad, Kobo, etc... So far, ALL of the readers have capability to display the suit symbols properly when the font is NOT embedded to the .epub file.

I'm very confused and not sure which direction we should go.

1) Should we embed the fonts? Why, when they are just basic (default) fonts (just like you would design for a web page)? (Times, Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, serif, Symbol).

2) Can I embed a font AFTER the fact? I mean, after the .epub has already been exported, fixed in Sigil, edited, etc. Can I embed the font without going back to the InDesign source file?

3) If your answer is "Yes, embed the fonts", then: Using InDesign, how can I embed a True Type font?

I would appreciate any feedback on this subject. Thanks in advance,

Luise

[Catire]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

Okay, here's the issue...

We're just using basic fonts for all of our epub ebooks, because I know some readers don't have the capabilities to read the embedded fonts, and also a lot of readers these days allows the user to over-ride the fonts used anyway... So to keep it simple, we made the decision to stick with basic system fonts for ALL of our ebooks and not embed them.

By basic font you mean you don't actually declare any font in the css or xhtml so the display engine picks whatever it uses?

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

But then there's the suit symbols...

Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is a suit symbol?

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

So far, ALL of the readers that we have tested, namely: Sony reader, iPad, Kobo, etc... So far, ALL of the readers have capability to display the suit symbols properly when the font is NOT embedded to the .epub file.

If the embedded font does not include the symbol you are using then it wont display in the ePub unless the epub rendering engine does not support embedded fonts and in that case the symbols will appear(because the rendering engine wont be using the font with the missing symbol).

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

I'm very confused and not sure which direction we should go.

1) Should we embed the fonts? Why, when they are just basic (default) fonts (just like you would design for a web page)? (Times, Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, serif, Symbol).

2) Can I embed a font AFTER the fact? I mean, after the .epub has already been exported, fixed in Sigil, edited, etc. Can I embed the font without going back to the InDesign source file?

3) If your answer is "Yes, embed the fonts", then: Using InDesign, how can I embed a True Type font?

1) In my personal opinion different fonts for different books give them a different "feel" I like to vary the font I use in books. Plus some font families greatly enhance the readability of epub files, specially in e-ink.

2) In Sigil you can do it easily

If you want to embed fonts with Sigil just import the fonts you want to use with the epub into the font folder of sigil, declare the fonts in the css and use them in a style.
For example if I want to use X font family on the whole book i'd use this to declare it

@font-face {
font-family: "x family name";
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
src: url(../Fonts/x-Regular.xtf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "x family name";
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
src: url(../Fonts/x_Bold.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "x family name";
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
src: url(../Fonts/x_Bold_Italic.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "x family name";
font-weight: normal;
font-style: italic;
src: url(../Fonts/x_italic.ttf);
}

and then I would apply it to the whole book just by having the body style use it:

body {
font-family: "x family name";
}

3) Do you actually have a choice in the matter, what I mean is are you going to sell your epubs through a third party vendor? Do they even allow you to use embbeded fonts (as far as I know apple does not).

If you can I say yes embed the fonts in the worst case scenario the ePub rendering engine that does not support embedded fonts will ignore the fonts and just use what it regularly does, but in the best case scenario you'll have an ePub that looks how YOU want it to look.


This page should tell you how to embed fonts with indesign : link

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

I would appreciate any feedback on this subject. Thanks in advance,

Luise

No Problem

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

But then there's the suit symbols...

Originally Posted by Catire

Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is a suit symbol?

These suits?

♥ U+2665 (♥)
♦ U+2666 (♦)
♣ U+2663 (♣)
♠ U+2660 (♠)

[Kivgaen]

Thanks Catire for the quick response. A few follow-up comments:

Originally Posted by Catire

By basic font you mean you don't actually declare any font in the css or xhtml so the display engine picks whatever it uses?

I mean that I don't embed the fonts, but that I declare my fonts in the CSS in the same way that I would declare fonts on a web page. For example:

p.TF {
      font-family: "Times", "Times New Roman", "Palatino", "Minion", serif;
}
p.H1 {
      font-family: "Arial", "Helvetica", sans-serif";
}
span.suitSymbol {
      font-family: "Symbol", sans-serif;
}

Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is a suit symbol?

A spade, a heart, a diamond or a club (Contract Bridge terms). In HTML, they are written as: ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣

3) Do you actually have a choice in the matter, what I mean is are you going to sell your epubs through a third party vendor? Do they even allow you to use embbeded fonts (as far as I know apple does not).

As far as I know, we just need them to pass epubcheck version 1.05.

I could be wrong on that though

[st_albert]

I'm pretty sure Apple does not want or allow embedded fonts.

Others, I don't know about. There could be copyright issues if you aren't careful which fonts you use, of course.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by st_albert

I'm pretty sure Apple does not want or allow embedded fonts.

If they're using epubcheck to verify epubs (and they are), then they're allowing embedded fonts.

[st_albert]

Originally Posted by Valloric

If they're using epubcheck to verify epubs (and they are), then they're allowing embedded fonts.

I haven't tried it yet myself, but what I've heard from others is that if you submit an epubcheck compliant epub with embedded fonts, it will be rejected as having failed epubcheck-1.0.5 even though that error message is incorrect.

From the Apple "iTunesConnect Publisher User Guide:

Fonts
- Do not use explicit fonts, as it creates a bad user experience. Explicit font families should be used sparingly, for example, when trying to achieve an effect such as a handwritten note or for a section that must be in a monospaced font.
- Do not use embedded (downloaded) fonts, as they are currently not supported.
- To ensure that the person reading can make the font bigger or smaller, do not use fixed font sizes; use relative sizes instead.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

But then there's the suit symbols...

So far, ALL of the readers that we have tested, namely: Sony reader, iPad, Kobo, etc... So far, ALL of the readers have capability to display the suit symbols properly when the font is NOT embedded to the .epub file.

No need for confusion! The range of extended characters that ADE supports without the need for an embedded font can be found in tables D.1 and D.3 of this document, which includes the club/diamond/heart/spade characters.

The iPad natively supports a much wider range of characters, and also includes those characters, there's a thread on it here.

3) If your answer is "Yes, embed the fonts", then: Using InDesign, how can I embed a True Type font?

After clicking 'Export->ePub' and specifying the filename, go to the contents panel of the export options window that comes up and tick Generate CSS, Include Style Definitions and Include Embeddable Fonts. You need to make sure you've applied your styling through paragraph or character styles (but then you should be doing that anyway).

InDesign will only embed fonts if the appropriate permission bits are set, but the majority of fonts allow PDF embedding (which is not the same thing as embedding in an epub) and so will allow this. An increasing number of fonts allow @font-face embedding though, and there are threads about this in the epub forum.

I would appreciate any feedback on this subject. Thanks in advance,

Topics like this are better handled in the general epub forum.

Originally Posted by st_albert

I haven't tried it yet myself, but what I've heard from others is that if you submit an epubcheck compliant epub with embedded fonts, it will be rejected as having failed epubcheck-1.0.5 even though that error message is incorrect.

If that's true then Apple is being very, very naughty, but that sort of arrogance wouldn't surprise me.

[Kivgaen]

Originally Posted by charleski

After clicking 'Export->ePub' and specifying the filename, go to the contents panel of the export options window that comes up and tick Generate CSS, Include Style Definitions and Include Embeddable Fonts. You need to make sure you've applied your styling through paragraph or character styles (but then you should be doing that anyway).

InDesign will only embed fonts if the appropriate permission bits are set, but the majority of fonts allow PDF embedding (which is not the same thing as embedding in an epub) and so will allow this. An increasing number of fonts allow @font-face embedding though, and there are threads about this in the epub forum.

I guess the source of my confusion is that we already tried embedding the fonts with InDesign using the "include embeddable fonts" option, and then when I opened up the .epub file to take a look at the file, there weren't any fonts in the Fonts directory. I got an error message when tried embedding the fonts that some fonts weren't embeddable, and then I read that InDesign will only embed opentype fonts, but the Symbol font is only a truetype font.

I guess I can add the truetype font after using Sigil... but now you've all got me worried that Apple will reject our files if I embed a font. It's probably safest just to assume that I don't NEED to embed the font since the spade, heart, diamond and club glyphs are supported.

I'm even more confused than I was when I started this thread...

[charleski]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

I guess the source of my confusion is that we already tried embedding the fonts with InDesign using the "include embeddable fonts" option, and then when I opened up the .epub file to take a look at the file, there weren't any fonts in the Fonts directory. I got an error message when tried embedding the fonts that some fonts weren't embeddable, and then I read that InDesign will only embed opentype fonts, but the Symbol font is only a truetype font.

InDesign embeds ttf fonts just fine. If you're getting this error it may be because the permission bits in the font file don't allow embedding, as I said. Go to 'File->Package...' and click on the 'Fonts' item, is your font protected?

I guess I can add the truetype font after using Sigil... but now you've all got me worried that Apple will reject our files if I embed a font. It's probably safest just to assume that I don't NEED to embed the font since the spade, heart, diamond and club glyphs are supported.

If you want your book to be readable on the iPad then there's no point embedding a font for special symbols anyway, as it won't work. You definitely DO NOT NEED to embed a font to get these glyphs on either the iPad or ADE-based readers.

I'm even more confused than I was when I started this thread...

It's really very simple.
If you want to get confused, take a look at the terms for font licensing for epubs.

[troymc]

Originally Posted by charleski

If you want your book to be readable on the iPad then there's no point embedding a font for special symbols anyway, as it won't work. You definitely DO NOT NEED to embed a font to get these glyphs on either the iPad or ADE-based readers.

While this is very true I would just like to point out something. The current ereaders with their idiosyncrasies are temporary. Hopefully your ebooks will be around long after the existing ereaders are obsolete. So don't build your ebooks base around current idiosyncrasies, but base them on standards. So embed fonts if you feel you need them - so what if iPad doesn't use them? or the current ADE doesn't need them? Tomorrow things will change. The market is too immature to limit your products to existing devices.


Troy

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

I guess the source of my confusion is that we already tried embedding the fonts with InDesign using the "include embeddable fonts" option, and then when I opened up the .epub file to take a look at the file, there weren't any fonts in the Fonts directory. I got an error message when tried embedding the fonts that some fonts weren't embeddable, and then I read that InDesign will only embed opentype fonts, but the Symbol font is only a truetype font.

I guess I can add the truetype font after using Sigil... but now you've all got me worried that Apple will reject our files if I embed a font. It's probably safest just to assume that I don't NEED to embed the font since the spade, heart, diamond and club glyphs are supported.

I'm even more confused than I was when I started this thread...

Luise:

May I ask a simple question? Is this entire discussion over naught more than the symbols? The suit symbols? You've decided to use html-supported basic fonts like TimesNewRoman and Arial, all that, right? You said that at the beginning of the thread?

Are you using any "symbols" that are spectacularly arcane? Because, if you are NOT, just using the plain old plain old html codes for them works fine, at least it has so far in every epub & mobi I've put out. I use the trademark (tm) symbol all the time, and a bunch of typographical conventions (like tildes). I simply use the ™ version for trademark and that ilk. I'm pretty sure that you can use anything you can find here:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_symbols.asp

In an epub and have it work on every reader and there's absolutely no reason to embed the "symbol" font that I know of. I certainly haven't embedded any fonts and my symbols work fine.

Does this help at all?

Hitch

[Kivgaen]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Luise:

May I ask a simple question? Is this entire discussion over naught more than the symbols? The suit symbols? You've decided to use html-supported basic fonts like TimesNewRoman and Arial, all that, right? You said that at the beginning of the thread?

Are you using any "symbols" that are spectacularly arcane? Because, if you are NOT, just using the plain old plain old html codes for them works fine, at least it has so far in every epub & mobi I've put out. I use the trademark (tm) symbol all the time, and a bunch of typographical conventions (like tildes). I simply use the ™ version for trademark and that ilk. I'm pretty sure that you can use anything you can find here:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_symbols.asp

In an epub and have it work on every reader and there's absolutely no reason to embed the "symbol" font that I know of. I certainly haven't embedded any fonts and my symbols work fine.

Does this help at all?

Hitch

Yes, that's it exactly. I'm glad that we're on the same wavelength -- it makes me feel more confident that we're doing the right thing.

I suppose if the market changes substantially, then we may need to make a change later down the road. But for now, I think we can be fairly safe to continue down our current path.

[Hitch]

My take on that is, if it changes down the road (the standard, for whatever reason), great, change the accursed things then. For the time being, like Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is usually the right one. Embedding symbol fonts for something that can be accomplished with plain old vanilla html is, I think, just over-the-top. PLUS, you don't have the pesky 1.05 epub validation thing to worry over, at least about this.

Good luck!

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Are you using any "symbols" that are spectacularly arcane? Because, if you are NOT, just using the plain old plain old html codes for them works fine, at least it has so far in every epub & mobi I've put out.

That doesn't do what you think it does. An HTML character reference is merely a convenient way of specifying the use of a character that is not easily written using ASCII alone. Basically, aside from comfort and user preference, there is no difference in using a character reference instead of a "real" UTF-8 character.

You still need a font with the required glyph to render a non-ASCII char.

There is no "HTML" font.