Touch Font questions from a prospective buyer

[MacEachaidh]

Hi folks,
Newbie questions, so please be patient with me. I've tried to find answers to these through these threads, but haven't succeeded, so I thought I'd ask.

I'm looking to buy a new ereader, and am considering the Kobo Touch, so I'm info-gathering to try to make an informed decision on things that matter for me. Can anyone please tell me:

1) Do the fonts loaded in the Touch support extended character sets? In particular, roman letters with accents and diacritics?

2) Does the Touch allow you to load custom fonts and use those as a default for displaying books?

3) If an epub has fonts embedded in it, how does the Touch deal with that? Which takes precedence - the font(s) in the epub, or the font chosen in the settings on the Touch?

Thanks for any info. Oh, and one question unrelated to fonts:

4) What does "sideloaded" mean? Is this an epub file loaded from the PC, rather than downloaded from Kobo? Does the device handle them differently in some way?

Thanks.

[danskmacabre]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Hi folks,
1) Do the fonts loaded in the Touch support extended character sets? In particular, roman letters with accents and diacritics?

Sorry don't know, I expect it does tho.

2) Does the Touch allow you to load custom fonts and use those as a default for displaying books?

Yes. Grab some fonts, connect to the KT, create a folders called "Fonts" and stick your fonts in there.

3) If an epub has fonts embedded in it, how does the Touch deal with that? Which takes precedence - the font(s) in the epub, or the font chosen in the settings on the Touch?

Sorry, don't know.

4) What does "sideloaded" mean? Is this an epub file loaded from the PC, rather than downloaded from Kobo? Does the device handle them differently in some way?

Yes it means any ebooks loaded not using the Kobo desktop or internal kobo software on the KT itself.
Commonly this means using a 3rd party software called "Calibre", although you can just copy PDFs onto the KT directly as a drive letter.

[Xennex1170]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Hi folks,
Newbie questions, so please be patient with me. I've tried to find answers to these through these threads, but haven't succeeded, so I thought I'd ask.

I'm looking to buy a new ereader, and am considering the Kobo Touch, so I'm info-gathering to try to make an informed decision on things that matter for me. Can anyone please tell me:

1) Do the fonts loaded in the Touch support extended character sets? In particular, roman letters with accents and diacritics?

2) Does the Touch allow you to load custom fonts and use those as a default for displaying books?

3) If an epub has fonts embedded in it, how does the Touch deal with that? Which takes precedence - the font(s) in the epub, or the font chosen in the settings on the Touch?

Thanks for any info. Oh, and one question unrelated to fonts:

4) What does "sideloaded" mean? Is this an epub file loaded from the PC, rather than downloaded from Kobo? Does the device handle them differently in some way?

Thanks.

1) Can't really say since I have no epubs that use extended characters. I have however downloaded a unicode font into my KT so that I can read Japanese. So if the default fonts don't have support you can always add it by installing a font that has those extended characters.

2) Yes, though there is good and bad to that since the font you select will become the font you view all other epubs until you change fonts again. This is assuming the epub does not have an embedded font that overrides the KT font setting. Simply create a folder called ".font" and place your font file into it.

3) I believe at present the embedded font takes precedence.

4) As I understand it 'sideloaded' just means you have installed an ebook on your device through means other than purchasing/downloading ebooks from the Kobo shop. e.g. via copy to KT device when connected to your computer and the KT and microSD card (if available) is viewed as an external drive.

**edit: Ah added my post a bit late.

[alexul]

I use Alkaios font for displaying Romanian accents. If a book has embedded fonts you can either choose Document default, which means it will apply the style embedded and it works great for bought books or choose another font which will override the default ones.

Yesterday I had an annoying problem: had a rtf with special characters, when opened in a word precoessors it said book man old style CE. I used Atlantis word processor to save it as epub with the option to embedd fonts but it embedded only some Arial ones. Anyone knows why?

[Geco]

accented letters are supported (I'm Italian, I ue them...). You can add your own fonts copying them in a "fonts" directory you can create in KT root when connected through USB. Then fonts will appear in the fonts list.
Fonts can be directly selected (e.g.: "Georgia", "Delima", ...) or you can specify "Document default" font. Also, for "special" fonts (my wife is Japanese so I'm using UniFont from UniFoundry site, it supports all 64k Unicode characters and it's free), I saw that latest firmware automatically selects available fonts: I'm now reading a Japanese book, with "Georgia" font selected, but Japanese characters are shown correctly from the Unifont I've installed.
Great management, I'm very happy with the fonts.

[MacEachaidh]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

And yes, that does sound impressive, and probably everything I was hoping for in font management.

[Geco]

MacEachaidh, consider this: once I've listed the three best screen for a reader (Kobo Touch, Sony PSR-500 (and the new T1) and Kindle), I went for KT exactly for the font things: not considering Kindle (too closed), I've personally tested Sony PSR-500 here in Italy and it did not support Japanese characters (!) while the same reader, in Japan, obviously did not support accented letters (...). So, I chose KT mainly for the font capabilities, after a "remote" test I've asked to a blogger (see http://atouchofkobo.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/260/).

With KT I am able to install my own fonts (I go with the UniFont, see http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html, almost exclusively since it supports full Unicode), allowing wife and me to read both in Italian and Japanese (and also English, for me) and even at the same time, in the same page (!) with no issues except, okay, the very minor thing that we cannot read Japanese vertically (as they are used to) but only horizontally... but we can read!

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

3) If an epub has fonts embedded in it, how does the Touch deal with that? Which takes precedence - the font(s) in the epub, or the font chosen in the settings on the Touch?

Short answer: It depends

Long Technical boring details:

This might have changed in the newer firmware versions, now that Kobo offers "Default Font" as an option. I haven't re-tested.

The Kobo seems to overwrite the default body style. That means that if the font is specified in the ebook css as a property of body, the Kobo will overwrite it.

If, however, the font property is put in a class, and the book xhtml files use that class for the <body>, then the font will overwrite Kobo choice and the book will display with embedded font.

[MacEachaidh]

Many thanks for that, Geco and rashkae. Very useful information!

I hadn't planned on buying a new ereader, but just recently my existing one simply stopped working. It was still under warranty, so I sent it away for repairs and the repair company claims it "must" have been user-inflicted damage (it wasn't!) and now wants more money than it cost at retail in the first place just to mend the thing. (I'm not impressed; can you tell? )

Anyway, since they also want $100 (for "their time") just to send it back to me (extortion is the word, I think), I decided to cut my losses and buy a new one.

Most of my must-haves are covered by most of the devices available for purchase here in Australia. They include ePub format, decent battery life, memory card expandability, a 6" eInk screen, reasonable document controls and the ability to load books from my PC without being tied to a specific retailer or "the cloud".

The bits I wasn't sure about, and came here to find out about, was the font capabilities (my previous ereader claimed features it turned out not to have!) and the ability to sort and manage books in categories (I know, unfortunately the Kobo can't offer that).

So all in all, the Kobo sounds like close to a complete solution for my specific needs.

(Particularly from what rashkae has just posted: am I correct in thinking that ereaders are a bit like browsers in the early days of HTML - with each of them interpreting "standards" in their own vested-interest way?)

[voom]

I'm curious about the company that behaves that way dealing with your old eReader...

As for the categories it seems pretty close to 100% certain that this will be included in some future firmware of the KT

[MacEachaidh]

Thanks everyone for your comments, suggestions and techie info in this thread. It was really appreciated.

I bit the bullet today and bought myself a Kobo Touch. It's just finished charging, so I'm about to dive in and set it up. I've downloaded the Kobo Desktop setup, though I'm planning to sideload all my books. (I'm a bit old-fashioned with file management, and don't like databasing apps that restructure the way files are stored and make it essential to go through their interface. Personal taste, I guess.)

They had all four colours in stock where I bought it, but I decided to go with the simple black. I think the black frame augments the contrast of the screen, and I'm not fussed about the colour of the back, since I'll be putting the unit in a cover anyway.

I'm a bit excited now! :-)

[Geco]

Good luck with KT! I think the same for black... other colours are too... coloured!

[robko]

And for clarity the PROPER way to add fonts is to put a folder named "fonts" (all lower case, no other characters) in the root directory on your Kobo. Otherwise they won't show up. I noticed a few previous posts here have slightly incorrect versions of what you need to do.