Creating epub books using Bangla fonts

[seanos]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Another question: Is there any way I can use embedded fonts to display the TOC? So far I've tested the sample epub on iPad 3, Aldiko on my android phone and ADE on my laptop. There doesn't appear to be any problem with the book in iBooks but Aldiko is rendering the font in the TOC incorrectly and ADE is displaying boxes where the TOC entries should be. Also, ADE is displaying boxes for the title and author as well.... I take this to mean that the font embedding has worked but since ADE does not natively support Bangla (I confirmed this earlier by testing without embedded fonts but having the font installed on my system), the TOC is displaying incorrectly.

It’s not ideal, but after you create your TOC you could add one in HTML. In Sigil...Tools | Table Of Contents | Create HTML Table Of Contents. This will insert a page of links into your epub which you can format like any other text.

The ‘virtual’ TOC depends on the system fonts on the device so there’s not much you can practically do about that.

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by seanos

The ‘virtual’ TOC depends on the system fonts on the device so there’s not much you can practically do about that.

That being the case, if I can install the font, say on my android phone, then the TOC should display correctly? I know that's not a solution for mass distribution; my curiosity in this case is academic...

ADE definitely will not display the TOC correctly since I already have the font installed in my system...

Another question: When I view the epub in Aldiko or ADE I am unable to change the font size. Is this because I have declared the font size in px in my stylesheet? (I was reading somewhere on this forum that if you declare the font size in absolute terms, it will not resize...) Or am I back to font rendering issues?

[seanos]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

That being the case, if I can install the font, say on my android phone, then the TOC should display correctly?

If you can figure out what font the reading program on your phone is using and then replace that font, it would probably work, but it might cause problems for other apps depending on your replacement font.

You would also need root access to your phone’s font folder of course.

[seanos]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Another question: When I view the epub in Aldiko or ADE I am unable to change the font size. Is this because I have declared the font size in px in my stylesheet? (I was reading somewhere on this forum that if you declare the font size in absolute terms, it will not resize...) Or am I back to font rendering issues?

Don’t think I’ve tried setting a size, but that’s probably the cause. If you’re worried about the default being too small or big you could also experiment with font-size: smaller or font-size: larger in your stylesheet.

I’ve recently come across a book where the text was all set font-size: small. For most reader devices this isn’t too much of an issue since you have a wide range of font sizes to choose from.

In general it’s probably best to avoid explicit font sizes though as readers will change them.

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by seanos

If you can figure out what font the reading program on your phone is using and then replace that font, it would probably work, but it might cause problems for other apps depending on your replacement font.

You would also need root access to your phone’s font folder of course.

Hmm, no; I don't think I want to mess around with the fonts after all; I guess that means I have to go with the html TOC.

Originally Posted by seanos

you could also experiment with font-size: smaller or font-size: larger in your stylesheet.

Ok, I'll give that a go and report back.

[Nabodita]

Edited my stylesheet as follows:

Used font-size=larger for my chapter headings
Used font-size=medium for my text

The headings and text is displaying and resizing correctly in ADE and Aldiko. Seems that the Chapter Headings don't become *noticeably* bold when I increase the font size... wonder if that's a glitch or it is bold and I can't tell the difference!

Thanks
Nabodita

P.S.: Will get back with further updates.

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

In the metadata section of the content.opf file I've declared the name and author of the book in Bangla; is that a bad idea? What I'm trying to ask is will that affect the searchability of the book when I finally upload it for distribution? My guess is yes, but I just want to be sure...

Could someone please respond to this? I don't think I can have multiple dc tags for title and contributor - one set in bangla and one set in English... or can I?

Also, if I create an html TOC, I assume I will then have 2 TOCs in my ebook... is that right? Can I force ADE to display the html TOC instead of the toc.ncx in the side panel?

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who's taken time to read and respond to this topic; I couldn't have come so far without all of you!

Nabodita

[seanos]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Also, if I create an html TOC, I assume I will then have 2 TOCs in my ebook... is that right? Can I force ADE to display the html TOC instead of the toc.ncx in the side panel?

No ADE will only display toc.ncx in that way.

There might be readers that would display it differently (since that’s the kind of TOC MOBI format has), but I wouldn’t count on it.

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Could someone please respond to this? I don't think I can have multiple dc tags for title and contributor - one set in bangla and one set in English... or can I?

Well I think you can add multiples of some tags (e.g. Author) but I think there can only be one Title. If the book is in Bangla wouldn’t it make sense for these fields to be in Bangla too?

Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will appear once the USA comes online!

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by seanos

If the book is in Bangla wouldn’t it make sense for these fields to be in Bangla too?

Exactly! But what happens when I upload the book for distribution? Can someone search for it? Me guesses not...

Will work on the html TOC and report back with queries and results. Thanks seanos!

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Could someone please respond to this? I don't think I can have multiple dc tags for title and contributor - one set in bangla and one set in English... or can I?

You can, and it's valid (and somehow even recommended), but I doubt there's any software that supports that.

For example, in La divina commedia I included the title in several languages, because the book actually includes multiple translations:

<dc:title xml:lang="it">La divina commedia</dc:title>
<dc:title xml:lang="de">Göttliche Komödie</dc:title>
<dc:title xml:lang="en">The Divine Comedy</dc:title>
<dc:title xml:lang="pt">A divina comédia</dc:title>
<dc:title xml:lang="ru">Божественная комедия</dc:title>

but ebook readers and managers will usually display only the first or the last of them.

In your case, maybe what you want is not the title in two languages, but in two different writing systems, I don't know if you can mark this with any attribute. Something similar happens with the author, you can evidently have several authors, but I don't think there's a way to specify that several different instances refer to the same person.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Another question: Is there any way I can use embedded fonts to display the TOC?

AFAIK, the NCX TOC font is reader specific and cannot be controlled by adding code to the epub. However, you can use the title attribute in Sigil to have Sigil use a number instead of the heading text when generating the NCX TOC. For example:

<h3 title="1">অধ্যায় এক</h3>

Originally Posted by Nabodita

The headings and text is displaying and resizing correctly in ADE and Aldiko. Seems that the Chapter Headings don't become *noticeably* bold when I increase the font size... wonder if that's a glitch or it is bold and I can't tell the difference!

Did you embed both regular and bold Bengali fonts? If not, you won't be able to display bold text.

BTW, I'm somewhat surprised that you're still testing your book with ADE. I thought that I had established in this post that ADE does not support Bengali text.

[Nabodita]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Did you embed both regular and bold Bengali fonts? If not, you won't be able to display bold text.

You're absolutely right, I did forget to embed the Bold font.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

BTW, I'm somewhat surprised that you're still testing your book with ADE. I thought that I had established in this post that ADE does not support Bengali text.

True. Inspite of having the font installed on my system the TOC and the cover (where I only had the title and author in Bangla) were displaying boxes. However, by embedding the font and using "!important" with the font-family declaration in the stylesheet, it seems the Bangla font is displaying correctly, including glyphs, in the actual text of the book. Strange, I know! I've posted a screenshot of a preliminary test file... do take a look.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

you can use the title attribute in Sigil to have Sigil use a number instead of the heading text when generating the NCX TOC.

This is an option I hadn't considered; I'll give it a shot. As seanos suggested, an html TOC is also an option, I suppose, although its not a very tidy solution...

Another thing I've figured out is that I may have to write separate epub files for different readers. For example, Aldiko on my android phone displays the ligatures incorrectly in the title and TOC... the text is fine if I use the font embedding trick I mentioned above. I assume this is because my HTC phone doesn't support Bangla natively. However, the same test file displays everything perfectly in Aldiko on my friend's Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

The testing process is going to have to be long and extensive...

@Jellby: I did what you suggested. Since I want iBooks to display the title and author in Bangla on the top of each page, I tested and found that iBooks displayed the latter entry. Unfortunately, when I search for the book using iBook's search function, it doesn't show up.

Could you elaborate about the writing system? I can google it if I know what I'm looking for!

Thanks for all the inputs...
Nabodita

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

Inspite of having the font installed on my system the TOC and the cover (where I only had the title and author in Bangla) were displaying boxes. However, by embedding the font and using "!important" with the font-family declaration in the stylesheet, it seems the Bangla font is displaying correctly, including glyphs, in the actual text of the book. Strange, I know!

Not that strange. ADE simply doesn't use system fonts (as far as I know). For the book's content, it just uses its default font or the embedded fonts in the book (if correctly coded and if the planets are in the right places). For titles and TOCs, it's only the default font.

Could you elaborate about the writing system? I can google it if I know what I'm looking for!

Let's see... One thing is language, a different thing is writing system. English, Spanish, French, German... all use the same writing system (Latin script, mainly). Greek uses a different script, Russian uses yet another one, but Bulgarian uses the same as Russian (Cyrillic).

In Greek, we can say that Ὅμηρος wrote Ὀδύσσεια.
Still in Greek, but in Latin script (transcription/transliteration): Hómēros wrote Odýsseia
And translated into English: Homer wrote the Odyssey
Translated into Spanish: Homero wrote la Odisea
etc.

So, do you want to translate the title into English or keep it in Bengali, but written with Latin letters?

[Nabodita]

There are two issues here.

One is making it possible for people to search for the book on the site where its been uploaded. I don't know how the search engine (say on Amazon) will retrieve the book from its database if the title and author are meta tagged in Bangla. Or maybe the search engine uses the actual filename of the epub; that would be Bangla written in Latin script. I don't have any idea about this whatsoever.

The second is that once someone has loaded the epub onto their reader, they should be able to search for the book by title or author. That is not possible if the title and author are coded in Bangla script. (Already tried that).

Furthermore, in iBooks the name of the author is displayed at the top of the right side page while the title is displayed on top of the left side page on every page of the actual text. This will display in Bangla script if it is written in Bangla in the meta tag. However, you can no longer use the search function to find the book, either by title or by author. It simply doesn't come up in the results.

It looks like I'll have to write the meta tags in Bangla using the Latin script. Which is such a pity because I'm mildly obsessive and I really think that if its a Bangla book, everything that I see on the screen of my ereader should be in Bangla. Nevertheless, unless someone has a brilliant workaround for this, I'm stuck with using the Latin script.

Thanks for the explanation, Jellby...don't need to google it after all!

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Nabodita

It looks like I'll have to write the meta tags in Bangla using the Latin script. Which is such a pity because I'm mildly obsessive and I really think that if its a Bangla book, everything that I see on the screen of my ereader should be in Bangla. Nevertheless, unless someone has a brilliant workaround for this, I'm stuck with using the Latin script.

What you need is an OS and reader that supports non-Latin scripts in general, and Bengali in particular. That alone is, I guess, not easy to find, but if you want to make it available in a web store, then you need their systems to have the same support, which is utopic at the moment, I'm afraid, unless it's a store located and developed in a Bengali-speaking area, maybe.