Font embedding frustration

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Hitch

If I may--without trying to get in your business--you may wish to not lose sight of the forest for the trees. A book's value is in its content--not how fancy the typography is.

Yes, I agree -- except when the typography is, in essence, the content.

So...I'm sure your book would stand alone even if done in Times New Roman, right? Didn't you have some message about doing it in "regular" font, and then putting the blackletter version at the back? Think of it that way for Amazon--your Fire version can have blackletter, even though I personally would not "go" for that--and your other versions will simply be in Caecilia, which is a TNR clone.

I can only suppose that perhaps you didn't download the earlier sample versions of my epub that I've posted here, or maybe I didn't explain this little project of mine very well -- I don't know, but I suppose the easiest thing is to show you.

I've put this newest "sample" version together just for you, Hitch (and anyone else who might be interested, of course) -- and view it on an iPad, in iBooks, otherwise it's quite likely that the excerpt from the appendix won't display correctly (I'm assuming an iPhone would display it okay, too, but I don't have one so I don't know).

The first part you see are the opening pages (i.e. the "front matter", minus a couple of incidental pages like the table of contents, etc.), including the entire opening "Prologue" to my book. The first, main part of my book is all written like that, in modern English, and the only "fancy" typography I do, really, is for the title/headings. Surely you don't think that's overkill, typographically? And I'm sure you'd agree, too, that the embedded font that I've used for the headings enhances the book's appeal, more than just a plain ol' text face would.

And then I've included the first part of the "Appendix". This appendix, in the complete version of the book, is the entire work completely re-written in late-Middle English, and typeset (so to speak) in an authentic digitally-reproduced font from that period, complete with all those "long-esses" and a whole variety of ligatures, etc. The "Prologus" that I included here is the exact same text as you can read in the Prologue (except in late-Middle English, but the wording/phrasing is entirely the same).

See what it is that I'm endeavouring to do here -- I hope? The text for this book I wrote myself, and the transliteration into late-Middle English I also did myself (after a great deal of research and study on my own), and all the typographic design, "book" design, graphic design and everything else you see represents literally a lifetime of study on my part. This isn't just an ebook that I'm publishing, but one that truly represents "me".

Now, it's truly unfortunate that the appendix only seems to work (correctly) in iBooks, but for the time being that's good enough for me. If at some point I did decide to try to get this out on other platforms, well, I would probably have to resort to just doing that section up in graphic format (as I basically did in this sample for the title page -- or, rather, half-title page -- for the late-Middle English version).

I hope that helps you to understand what it is that I'm trying to accomplish here -- and if you have any comments or suggestions on that, well, once again I would truly be most appreciative!

And thanks!

[JSWolf]

Your main text is in a grey color that looks not that good on the laptop and will look terrible on an eInk screen.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Your main text is in a grey color that looks not that good on the laptop and will look terrible on an eInk screen.

Oh! Ha ha -- my bad. The style sheet I'd adopted from the website version of this work, and I simply overlooked that bit of styling there. I didn't notice that, because I don't really "see" that on the iPad screen.

Thanks for pointing that out!

What platform (and/or app) were you looking at it in? How did everything else turn out -- perchance did the appendix come out okay, without anything noticeably funny going on?

Thanks again!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Psymon

I don't really know anything about Kindle (yet!), but if Kindle Fire is basically the only one that can handle really nice, visually-appealing designs, can one design only for that (Fire) and have it not available for the other Kindles (in which one's design would probably fall apart)?

There was a short time when the fire was the only reader for KF8 but that is no longer the case. By the way you can read about KF8 in our wiki. Currently all except the oldest K1 and K2 and Kindle DX devices will read KF8 I believe. KindleGen will automatically build two versions, KF8 and KF7 (mobi).

Dale

[Psymon]

I wanted to follow up on my own post from earlier with my "success story", because rather surprisingly I inadvertently discovered another rather quirky little bug -- and it's solution! -- that I'm very, very sure will surely help others resolve this whole full-page image problem (and getting a blank page afterwards).

Here's what I wrote was the "solution" that I discovered, that ended up working for me (and I'll follow up after with this quirky bug that I later discovered)...

Originally Posted by Psymon

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!! To the issue re full page images adding an extra blank page when viewed in portrait mode...

For whatever reason, what was causing the problem was that even though I had each/every full-page image done up as a separate HTML file, in those I had been linking to my style sheet as well -- by simply deleting that, it got rid of the problem! I don't know what it is that I have in my style sheet that causes that extra blank page (only in portrait mode, in iBooks), but that's what it was. In fact, I've now set my image sizes to 100% (not 99% or 95%) and they're coming out fine, both landscape and portrait.

Like I said, that worked just fine! But then I continued to work on my book, adding in new stuff, tweaking everything as I went along, and then all of a sudden I was getting that same stupid blank page again after every full-page image! Sheesh!

For the life of me I was utterly stumped, because I knew that I had somehow fixed it before. Thankfully I've been saving different versions as I work on this, and so I went back to that earlier file that worked, and discovered the problem -- and it's a very odd problem!

In the file that had worked (with no blank pages after full-page images), I had had this in my style sheet...

@page {
margin: 0.000000pt; padding: 0.000000pt;
}

...which I had previously copied from someone else's code. Well, sometime after that, it occurred to me that "0.000000" is the same thing as "0" (duh!), so I then simplified that style to just this...

@page {
margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt;
}

I mean, seriously, that's the same thing, right? Zero is zero!

Well, apparently it's not! Having my style set this second, latter way inadvertently gave me a blank page after every full-page image, but putting it back to "0.000000" got rid of them! And not only that, but I have no problem at all (in iBooks, at least) setting my images at 100%, to boot (as I'd already discovered earlier)!

Just thought I'd share that, because having searched all over these forums (and elsewhere on the 'net) I haven't seen any mention of this bug anywhere -- but I'm tellin' ya, it works! I don't know about other platforms or apps, but it most definitely fixes the issue in iBooks (on the iPad)!

[theducks]

0 should not have any units

0 not 0pt. 0em, 0%

0 is nothing, so how could it have any units ? Logical? Right!

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by theducks

0 should not have any units

0 not 0pt. 0em, 0%

0 is nothing, so how could it have any units ? Logical? Right!

I don't know -- it doesn't make any sense to me, either! Like I said, "0.000000" is the same thing as just plain "0", too! All I know, and all I'm tellin' ya, is that it WORKS! And I can set my images to 100%, with no blank pages coming out after or anything.

In trying to resolve that problem (of getting a blank page after a full-page image) and searching through countless messages here in these forums, I saw so many others with the same issue, but the answer was always to reduce the image size to 99%, or to 95%, or whatever other solution. I tried all those -- and still couldn't get it to work -- but this does work!

I can't speak for any other platforms -- I only have an iPad -- but I do think it's certainly worth a try. If it works, it works -- even if it makes no sense.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that iBooks does some things non-standard so what should work doesn't always and it is buggy.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by theducks

0 should not have any units

0 need not have any units, but it can have units, it's not wrong and doesn't change anything (for compliant renderers, that is)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Jellby

0 need not have any units, but it can have units, it's not wrong and doesn't change anything (for compliant renderers, that is)

Good to know.
I have been diligently correcting this error when seen. I will save my efforts
and I don't have any Apple hardware to worry about.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by theducks

I have been diligently correcting this error when seen.

It's also an "error" that if you set your image size to 100% that it invariably ends up creating a blank page after that full-page image (which means that somehow it's becoming more than 100%). The only solution that I kept seeing made -- over and over again, on these forums and elsewhere -- is to change the size to 99%, or 98%, or 95%, but all I was pointing out is that I learned/discovered that simply by changing ones margin/padding from "0" to "0.000000pt" resolves the problem, too (I don't know if it'll still work if you just put "0.000000", without the "pt" or anything else -- I just haven't tried it yet).

Either way, you're trying to fix an "error" -- but personally, I like my solution better.

That's all I was saying -- just sayin'.