iPad Embedded Fonts

[cmdahler]

I'll take a look at it as soon as I can knock my daughter off the desktop so I can put it on the iPad. Kids!

[cmdahler]

Ok, I tested it. No good. iBooks ignores your font and just displays the text in whatever font is chosen by the user.

[frabjous]

Very disappointing, but thanks for testing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Very disappointing, but thanks for testing.

Yes, it is disappointing. iBook users are stuck with whatever fonts Apple thinks we should like and that's it. So if we want to embed our own font, too bad for us.

[volwrath]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes, it is disappointing. iBook users are stuck with whatever fonts Apple thinks we should like and that's it. So if we want to embed our own font, too bad for us.

Are you an owner of an ipad?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by volwrath

Are you an owner of an ipad?

No, I do not own an iPad. But one does not have to own an iPad to know some of the limitations of the software.

[frabjous]

I don't own an iPad and no interest in such a silly product, but I'm mainly interested in this fonts issue as someone interested in designing ebooks... knowing that if I try to use certain things in an ebook, they won't work for a large segment of the audience is very disappointing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I don't own an iPad and no interest in such a silly product, but I'm mainly interested in this fonts issue as someone interested in designing ebooks... knowing that if I try to use certain things in an ebook, they won't work for a large segment of the audience is very disappointing.

None of the ePub viewers on an iPad (that allow you to use your own content) will display embedded fonts. It's a shame that Apple botched iBooks.

[tomsem]

I think there's a reluctance to expose users to 'complexity' in terms of font selection and other design choices (justification, hyphenation etc.), for which most people have no expertise or interest, but it may be such features will come along later. These are all first generation applications.

On Kindle, there's the opposite issue: 'Topaz' format is notorious for having embedded fonts that look like crap (though some look ok), which Kindle and the various Kindle apps dutifully display. As a user I wish I could override a bad design decision (or more likely lack thereof), and substitute a different font, but I can't.

Given that epub allows embedded fonts, I think a reading system should do its best to respect that and show what the designer intended, by rendering the embedded fonts (if possible). In some cases that may give a result that is not optimal for the display, or that a user finds unattractive, in which case there should be a simple way for users to substitute a system font for at least the embedded font used for the main text. Substitution is not guaranteed to give a better result, but seems preferable to a system that offers no flexibility about it.

At this point, however, seems all we can do is discuss what could or should be.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I think there's a reluctance to expose users to 'complexity' in terms of font selection and other design choices (justification, hyphenation etc.), for which most people have no expertise or interest, but it may be such features will come along later.

This has nothing to do with the user. The fonts would have to be embedded by the person who makes the ePub.

I'm fairly sure that it already respects the CSS inside the ePub regarding justification.

Hyphenation support would be nice, but no ePub renderer supports that currently (short of converting to PDF with Prince XML), so it's hard to fault them too much on that.

But, really, what kind of patronizing attitude is it to think that these choices are "too complex" for their user base?

These are all first generation applications.

That's a little misleading. ePubs are zipped .xhtml; so ePub software uses the mostly the same algorithms as web browsers do. They're no doubt re-using Safari code to display the actual contents of the book. Safari supports embedded fonts of various sorts, and mobile Safari supports embedded .svg fonts. It must have been a deliberate choice to remove these features from iBooks.

Certainly I have no problem with giving users the option to override the embedded fonts or main text font, so long as it defaults to the embedded fonts, and characters not included in the font used for the override revert to the embedded font if need be. Sounds like a good idea, actually