Aura Sideloaded fonts

[pgaunt]

Can someone explain to me where I'm going wrong with sideloading fonts onto my Aura or if it's actually a bug in the software?

I load fonts into the directory called 'fonts' and name them using the scheme 'FontName-Face' where 'Face' is one of Regular, Italic, Bold or BoldItalic.

Around half the time this works fine but the rest of the time the Aura gets muddled and thinks that the fonts aren't as they are - sometimes it will, for example, think that the Italic font is the Regular font and other times it will think that the Bold font is.

The problem, if it exists, always shows up in the font menu but usually only affects the actual display of kepubs but not epubs.

There seems to be no system to whether it gets it right or wrong leading me to suspect that it might just be kind of random.

I'm getting the fonts from various sources - off my Mac and from Google's webfonts.

[booklover6]

Mine are named Font Name-Regular like this-

Charis SIL ModifiedLarger-Regular

I have no idea if the spaces are required, but they work on all my Kobo's.

[6charlong]

I copied some of mine from my Mac too, and they work fine. Here's how they look:

Trebuchet MS-Bold.ttf
Trebuchet MS-BoldItalic.ttf
Trebuchet MS-Italic.ttf
Trebuchet MS-Regular.ttf

They appear on the menu of fonts without designators like this: 'Trebuchet MS'.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Mine are named Font Name-Regular like this-

Charis SIL ModifiedLarger-Regular

I have no idea if the spaces are required, but they work on all my Kobo's.

Would you mind giving my new hinted version a try? thanks..

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ga...r+-+Hinted.rar

[pgaunt]

Trebuchet and Charis are two of the fonts which work for me too. Two which don't, just as examples, are Google's Gentium and Merriweather.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you mind giving my new hinted version a try? thanks..

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ga...r+-+Hinted.rar

Jon, that is the font I am embedding for all the books I put on my Sony PRS T2. Looks awesome! I can't remember if I tried it on any other reader. Which one do you specifically want to know about?

Alright, I put it on my Aura. It looks the same, to my eyes, as Charis SIL ModifiedLarger, but smaller. I like a larger font.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Jon, that is the font I am embedding for all the books I put on my Sony PRS T2. Looks awesome! I can't remember if I tried it on any other reader. Which one do you specifically want to know about?

Alright, I put it on my Aura. It looks the same, to my eyes, as Charis SIL ModifiedLarger, but smaller. I like a larger font.

That's odd. The link I gave is to CharisSIL Modified Larger. The only difference between that version and the original version is that this one has hinting so the lines are more uniform and looks better at a smaller size. It is odd that it would be a smaller size. Unless of course, the hinting screwed up the font metrics and it's no longer larger. I'll have to look into that and see what's what.

[booklover6]

No, I might have but the wrong one on. I'll check it tomorrow.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by pgaunt

I load fonts into the directory called 'fonts' and name them using the scheme 'FontName-Face' where 'Face' is one of Regular, Italic, Bold or BoldItalic.

Around half the time this works fine but the rest of the time the Aura gets muddled and thinks that the fonts aren't as they are - sometimes it will, for example, think that the Italic font is the Regular font and other times it will think that the Bold font is.

The problem, if it exists, always shows up in the font menu but usually only affects the actual display of kepubs but not epubs.

There seems to be no system to whether it gets it right or wrong leading me to suspect that it might just be kind of random.

I'm getting the fonts from various sources - off my Mac and from Google's webfonts.

A couple of items come to mind. First is to check is that you were using the font family name and not the name of the font file when naming your font files. You might want to take a look at a message I wrote quite a while back in the Modified Fonts sticky thread ( https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=11 ). Under Windows, I use the built-in Windows Font Viewer utility, under Mac OS X, I was using Font Info dialog from within FontForge (which is horrendous overkill just to read the font family name), I've since switched to TTFEdit but not using it all that much -- FontForge was nicer but now only comes in source code and hasn't been updated in a couple of years.

In a spoiler in the first message of Modified Fonts thread, you'll find a quote from a Kobo developer, George Talusan: "but Qt doesn't allow us to introspect a TTF/OTF for its font family/weight without difficulty." which requires us to use the font family name with -font style/weight.

When I looked at the hinted version of Charis SIL that JSWolf mentioned in a previous message in this thread, I had to rename the files in the archive to get them to work happily on my Kobo -- the CharisSILCompactLarger files needed to be changed to Charis SIL CompactLarger (with the embedded spaces) and the CharisSILSmCPCompactLarger files needed to be changed to Charis SIL SmCP CompactLarger (again embedded spaces).

The other item to remember is that after installing a new font, you MUST power cycle your Kobo ereader before attempting to use the font.

My personal choice of font that I use the vast majority of the time is JSWolf's modified Charis SIL package. My alternative for books with a lot of Greek/Cyrillic is Deja Vu Serif.

Edit: added screen cap of font viewer showing the font family name.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's odd. The link I gave is to CharisSIL Modified Larger. The only difference between that version and the original version is that this one has hinting so the lines are more uniform and looks better at a smaller size. It is odd that it would be a smaller size. Unless of course, the hinting screwed up the font metrics and it's no longer larger. I'll have to look into that and see what's what.

Renamed the font files to add the embedded spaces, copied to my fonts directory, power cycled. Checked and I could see no size difference between the old Charis SIL ModifiedLarger version and the new Charis SIL CompactLarger version of the fonts. At my usual font size, I suspect that any differences due to hinting would not be very visible. After doing a quick edit for the new small caps variant, no real difference visible there either.

Regards,
David

[booklover6]

As DNSB says, the fonts look the same. However I didn't power off after adding the font. So I've done that, and it still looks the same.

[pgaunt]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A couple of items come to mind. First is to check is that you were using the font family name and not the name of the font file when naming your font files.

Thanks. I think I've already tried that but I'll try again when I get the chance.

[JSWolf]

Take a look at the hinted version at a small size. That's where it really shows. At least the regular modified one does.

[pgaunt]

Originally Posted by pgaunt

Thanks. I think I've already tried that but I'll try again when I get the chance.

Now tried all those things and it made no difference at all. The Aura still gets muddled when reading kepubs (and constructing the font menu). Generally epubs are fine.