Touch Embeded Fonts:

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by readingglasses

RE: FONTS AND EMBEDDING



Here goes.
In my experience,
if you make an epub with your fave' fonts included in the epub (e.g. the .TTF file) and reference those fonts with respect to their position in the epub (not on the device in the device's fonts folder), then kobo will still not use those fonts.
Somebody else said they got it working. I don't even believe them at this point. Maybe there is a way.

I remmeber it was rather tricki with the Kobo wifi, though that might have improved in more recent updates. With Kobo touch, however, embeded fonts work very well.

I didn't even realize that they didn't work in the case of body { } sytling until JSWolf pointed it out. (Probably because I end up feeding most of my epubs though Calibre, which automagically fixes when it puts all styling elements into Classes when it re-formats css)

That's rather technical and what not, but if you have an e-pub that uses different fonts in different sections, those should most deffinately work in the Kobo touch with no other modification whatsoever. If you're having trouble with an e-pub, it's probably malformed somehow. I'd be happy to assist if you have an example.

[readingglasses]

If I'm so wrong, then maybe it's because the fonts I was testing were failing to display certain non latin characters. (ancient greek with accents, it displayed the non accented greek alphabet but could never display accented letters). So I'll have to test again with styles that are more visually extreme and see if they are there or not.
Not owning a kobo, I'm not going to go to the store right now soon, so I'll get back to this later.

But maybe someone else having difficulty embedding fonts could get in on this.

Thanks for noticing! I'd be only too happy if I was mistaking character display rendering difficulties to be font inclusion/embedding failures. OTOH, it wouldn't solve the kobo's complex-compound unicode character display problems (or any other reader's problems on that front). But thats another story.

[rashkae]

Not sure about that there either.. The one time I embedded a font myself was becuase I had books that needed to display odd characters that with default Kobo font, were only redering as ?. I had no trouble embedding a font that fixed it. However, I confess, I didn't check the character code to see if it was a Unicode compound character.. I'll have to revisit that.

[readingglasses]

However, I was using the
body{} styling method of css for it.

Again, I'll have to test yet again to be definitive. And my epubs, malformed or not, gave no errors ultimately (and that's after using, I believe 3 separate epub verifiers: caliber's command line tool, also flightcrew or whatever it's called, and the one that's used on threepress and is downloadable which may also be the one recommended by the epub maintainers, idpf, or else by Adobe, maybe it's called epubcheck).
To get to that point, btw, was an exhausting time killer I hope to never repeat, but almost certainly will.

[Geco]

Look at this: I've asked this guy to do a test for me, with Japanese fonts. Seems working.
http://atouchofkobo.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/260/

[frankieGom]

Since you have to install the Japanese "font" on the KT, this is not the same as using embedded fonts where it is part of the book you're reading (as indicated in the OP opening post)... And as I've checked the epub and it does not include the Japanese font, it couldn't work otherwise.

It's good to know that the unit will support exotic languages, though.

[geormes]

Very educational discussion! All this talk of embedded fonts and Kobo bugs caused me to get off my lazy tush and dig into specs!(horrors!!) Now I have even more questions than when I started!

Embedded fonts are fonts used in the epub file and are NOT resident on the ereader? If an ereader does not display the embedded font this is counted as a bug? If the epub code passes through a checker of some sort it is counted as being well-formed?
.
1. Are the fonts TrueType or OpenType? I see the epub specs "suggest/recommend" OpenType. Do both types pass the various checkers?
2. I see the font file is declared in the opf manifest and placed in the same directory. Will some ereaders still display the embedded font if it is not done in this manner and will it pass the checkers?

I am a complete novice when it comes to this sort of thing. I have seen code using the @font-face method then telling CSS to use it in the whole document with the body method. Then it was claimed that because this didn't work on a Kobo the device firmware had a bug. For this to be true wouldn't you have to verify the opf manifest was correct also? I'm not saying this is the case but would it be a "bug" if only OpenType worked?

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by geormes

Embedded fonts are fonts used in the epub file and are NOT resident on the ereader? If an ereader does not display the embedded font this is counted as a bug? If the epub code passes through a checker of some sort it is counted as being well-formed?

Yes
Matter of oppinion currently
I'm sure people have yet to invent all kinds of badly put together e-pubs that the checkers don't catch.

2. I see the font file is declared in the opf manifest and placed in the same directory. Will some ereaders still display the embedded font if it is not done in this manner and will it pass the checkers?

I don't really know, but probably.

I am a complete novice when it comes to this sort of thing. I have seen code using the @font-face method then telling CSS to use it in the whole document with the body method. Then it was claimed that because this didn't work on a Kobo the device firmware had a bug. For this to be true wouldn't you have to verify the opf manifest was correct also? I'm not saying this is the case but would it be a "bug" if only OpenType worked?

It's not a problem with manifest or font type.

As far as I can tell, Kobo implements user selectable font by appending a body {font-faily: "User Selected Font";} (as well as other applicable parameters. If you want a font to work on the whole document in Kobo, put the parameters in a class.

Example, in css .styling {font-family: "My font";}

In the individual html/xml files: <body class="styling">

[geormes]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Example, in css .styling {font-family: "My font";}

In the individual html/xml files: <body class="styling">

I am referring to a claim of a bug in reference to embedded fonts.

From this link:http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-1...font-selection

In CSS2 font-family is a descriptor used in @font-face. Then font-family is "attached" to H1. I take this as declaring the font then telling the CSS where to use the font. To use in an entire epub attach it to body.
Using Sigil and and looking at 10 or so epubs that "embed fonts" I see almost no use of @font-face or inclusion in the opf manifest.

However the Open Publication Structure
http://old.idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0...tml#Section3.4
Says, "To provide authors with control over the appearance of the text, OPS supports the CSS2 font-face at-rule (@font-face)"
and "Any font files included in an OPS Publication must be included in the OPF manifest with appropriate media type."

I beginning to think the surprise should be when an ereader renders all embedded fonts correctly not when one doesn't!

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by geormes

I am referring to a claim of a bug in reference to embedded fonts.

From this link:http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-1...font-selection

In CSS2 font-family is a descriptor used in @font-face. Then font-family is "attached" to H1. I take this as declaring the font then telling the CSS where to use the font. To use in an entire epub attach it to body.
Using Sigil and and looking at 10 or so epubs that "embed fonts"

This is usually the result of converting another document into epub, probably from either an HTML source or from MS Office, by a program that just grabs the html and stuffs it into epub, with no consideration of e-book fonts. (And yes, I think Calibre will do exactly that in this instance.)

In this case, the font was never actually embedded in the first place. (embedded implies that the font file is within the epub) and the font-family: parameters are just noise from sloppy document conversion.

[JSWolf]

Look, it's very simple. The Kobo doesn't work properly embedding fonts. We know this.

The problem is that if you put font-family in the body style, the Kobo doesn't display the font. If you put font-family in another style and use that style, the font will be displayed. But to have font-family ignored in body is the bug that needs to be fixed.

For example, I have the latest Star Trek eBook in ePub that uses a variety of embedded fonts. The main font for the story won't work on the Kobo because it's activated via the body style in the CSS. Simon&Shuster have done nothing wrong. The ePub is perfectly valid. But the Kobo will not diplay it like it should be because the body style turns on the main font.

It's very simple, put font-family in body and it doesn't work. Other styles that use font-family and it will work. Of course providing that you've defined the font correctly with @font-face.

[readingglasses]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's very simple, put font-family in body and it doesn't work. Other styles that use font-family and it will work. Of course providing that you've defined the font correctly with @font-face.

Would you mind posting a link to some page that describes in detail this "other style" of font-family code?

I use @font-face as the body{} style demands but nowhere have I seen a different style/format of coding BUT the body{} style.

For example, I guess you're saying that these pages won't work on the kobo:
http://blog.threepress.org/2009/09/1...in-epub-files/

http://kemovitra.blogspot.com/2010/0...s-in-epub.html

I apologize in advance for asking instead of going to read through the epub2 spec on the idpf.

[frankieGom]

@readinglasses: if you check the following discussion (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...80#post1738380), you will find two instances of the same ebook with embedded fonts. One works fine and the other one doesn't. The second one was created by JSWolf by adding the font-family directive in the style.css file body line.

[JSWolf]

Has there been any word on the font embedding bug yet?