Best font stack?

[roger64]

Hi

On the other hand, even some "Western Europeans" may enjoy for example using true smallcaps (coming from embedded font). These can be added with as few as 60k to each EPUB. Even if smallcaps represent probably less than 1% of the EPUB text content, I think they are really nice looking and are a worthy addition (see screenshots below).

I checked that these true smallcaps can be properly displayed both on ADE (contrary to the - fake - font-variant: smallcaps) and on my old PRS-505.

If they are not seen by some ebook readers, what happens? Will these ebook-readers display a standard default replacement font ? A user-controlled one? I can live with that.

If they crash the EPUB, it would be a different story, and it would make sense to provide two EPUBs, one with them, one without.

To make a sound decision about this, some down-to-earth information of this kind would be needed. To condamn it on principles is a little like refusing to add salt to your menu to avoid coronary diseases. Sure, it's an extra step (adding salt too...). I understand that sometimes it could be better to avoid it.

But when? For whom?

[Jellby]

What if the embedded smallcap font doesn't match the chosen/default font for the rest of the text? I'd rather have no smallcaps than smallcaps in a clashing font in that case.

[roger64]

I have no clue. I will follow on for some weeks publishing with smallcaps and ask reader's feedback.

In the end, it's fairly possible, I decide to publish in dual mode, second choice being with all fonts stripped.

[JSWolf]

If you like, I can post the samllcaps version of Charis SIL. Works very will on my 650 Charis SIL. Looks quite nice too.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by roger64

These can be added with as few as 60k to each EPUB.

60k is already quite a lot for A-Za-z in smallcaps. Most likely your font covers a much wider charset (which kind of makes sense, as your example also has to deal with accents and punctuation). But it's sad indeed if smallcaps is not part of the default functionality...

[roger64]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you like, I can post the samllcaps version of Charis SIL. Works very will on my 650 Charis SIL. Looks quite nice too.

Please, do it. Don't forget to join the @font-face declaration. It makes life easier.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

60k is already quite a lot for A-Za-z in smallcaps. Most likely your font covers a much wider charset (which kind of makes sense, as your example also has to deal with accents and punctuation). But it's sad indeed if smallcaps is not part of the default functionality...

You are right on both points.

FontSquirrel provided me with the web-font of a regular smallcap of LinuxLibertine. I use now the ttf version.

It's true that I selected probably conservatively too many options (accents bien sûr and others) but I'm OK with the end result. I have other smallcaps about 30k each.

Smallcaps are not widespread.

if you publish using a world-widespread font, it misses smallcaps
if you embed everything, readers may not accept your book

I am trying now a small path in the middle, just embedding smallcaps. I'll see if it's working.

[Freeshadow]

What I tought about was the possibility of a python script (because Fontforge is accepting it) which scans an epub for all used chars + variants (as mentioned smallcaps monospace naumerals and ligatures) per every used font passes said charlist to Fontforge which throws everything not on list out of the fonts. The script renames the stripped fontfiles and the replaces the still full-char fonts in the epub with the stripped ones.
Combined with the spec-compliant font encryption as shown on MR by pdurrant this would be a solution not only to save space but also to embed commercial fonts in an epub without distributing whole fontfiles, which should be in accordance with the licenses, being kind of the same thing that's done when you do embedding in PDFs

[JSWolf]

Here are the Charis SIL Smallcaps fonts. They do look a lot better then simulated smallcaps.

Enjoy!