02-18-2013, 10:51 AM | #1 |
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Paperwhite Publisher Font Lock
I recently bought some books from Amazon where I could not change the fonts.
It's blocked on some ugly slab-serif semi-egyptienne font, and even though the 'Aa' menu comes up, and I could select a different font, it has no effect on the actual displayed font. I spent half an hour in chat with Amazon, and in the end they said that they'd 'send the request to the tech guys'. In the end it was child's-play to remove the DRM (Thanks Apprentice-Alf) and convert it back to mobi, without all the limitations. Out of curiosity I had a look at the 'exploded' contents of the book and found a CSS that specifies 'Times New Roman' just about everywhere. But the font I see is definitely NOT Times New Roman. It looks like the attachment. What is that font? And why does it propose that? (I tried Identifont.com, but couldn't find anything that looked close enough.) I also just bought another book, and it has exactly the same problem. Is there a faster way to communicate one's displeasure, than spending half an hour in the Amazon chat? (I'm in Switzerland, and they apparently can't phone me here. And I'd much prefer to solve it by email.) |
02-18-2013, 12:17 PM | #2 |
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monospace Amasis?
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02-18-2013, 12:19 PM | #3 |
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02-18-2013, 12:21 PM | #4 |
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This seems to be an issue with KF8 ebooks on the Paperwhite. I've ran into the exact same problem with "Times New Roman" being defined using an inline style on virtually every html element. This seems to prevent the user from changing to any other font. Any user agent, whether it be a web browser, ebook reader, etc., shouldn't behave that way; the user should always be able to select their preferred font.
For now, the only solution is to do as you have done by converting to mobi, request a refund and post a scathing review about poor publishing, or try to contact Kindle customer support. Hopefully this will be rectified in a future update. See: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...66#post2398666 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=15 Edit: I don't believe it was the publisher's intention to lock the ebook to a specific font. Properly made ebooks with embedded fonts do not behave this way. Last edited by JimmyR; 02-18-2013 at 12:27 PM. |
02-18-2013, 03:47 PM | #5 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
Yes it sounds very similar. (That thread is a veritable goldmine!) |
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02-18-2013, 04:31 PM | #6 | |
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Quote:
However, with ePub (and thus KF8), the spec pretty much allows poor publishing like what you ran up against, because of how much CSS is supported. An eBook author can set the font used in the CSS or HTML and it will usually wind up overriding whatever the device tries to set as the font and size. This is definitely a problem with HTML content spat out by a generator, like say, Microsoft Word's HTML output. HTML generators in word processors tend to do stupid things with CSS that results in files like this. |
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02-19-2013, 03:36 PM | #7 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
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02-19-2013, 03:55 PM | #8 | |
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As PRC, MOBI, AZW, Topaz and AZW3 all share the same file container (Palm DB), all the file extension tells you is some expectation of what to find in the DB. The whole point behind AZW3 and KF8 is to provide a means of storing ePub content in a backwards compatible way with Mobipocket content. Otherwise I might as well just use ePub. |
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02-20-2013, 06:29 AM | #9 |
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For what it's worth, I sent a few days ago some feedback to Amazon (UK) about the PW and the general "Kindle experience". One of the things I mentioned was the inability to turn off the publisher font in some books. I have the right tools in Calibre to change that, but given that I have quite a large "to read" pile anyway, what I now do when I buy a book is to immediately check whether the font is locked or not. If it is, then I go with a return/refund. There's plenty of books that don't have that issue, so I'll buy and read those instead
Edit: for the UK, the email is kindle-feedback@amazon.co.uk Last edited by Yolina; 02-20-2013 at 07:20 AM. |
02-20-2013, 12:18 PM | #10 |
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I know that "Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace" by Hugh Howey has a locked font. I didn't run it through Calibre...just bought at Amazon and sent to my PW.
Font cannot be changed, just line spacing and margins. |
02-21-2013, 01:05 AM | #11 | |
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Edit: Yes, that is definately Caecilia - was judging from thumbnail alone. The blowup shows it clearly. Last edited by DuckieTigger; 02-21-2013 at 01:11 AM. |
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02-21-2013, 03:42 PM | #12 | |
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02-21-2013, 07:12 PM | #13 | |
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Quote:
What I can tell from reading the config files is this:
So for the case of Times New Roman it goes something like this (in that order pretty much and on Paperwhite):
In short, if you wanted to change the fall-back font of Times New Roman, it is much easier to simply INSTALL a font with family Times New Roman and be done with it. |
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02-21-2013, 07:43 PM | #14 |
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So if I was to put a version of Charis SIL that I called Times New Roman in the fonts directory, would it work? All this Kindle has installed is USE_ALT_FONT.
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02-21-2013, 07:56 PM | #15 |
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paperwhite, publisher font |
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