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Old 07-04-2013, 02:45 PM   #8
Anak
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Posts: 603
Karma: 641742
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: DE
Device: Kobo Glo
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacEachaidh View Post
Oh, I hadn't come across that one. (Yet.)

This is a little off-topic for my own thread ( !), but since you mention fonts, may I ask — are there any known problems with screen display for fonts that didn't come with the Touch?

I have a couple of favourite fonts for reading, that i tend to use for all my own documents because of their clean lines and legibility. I tried loading them onto my Kobo — I read up about the naming conventions that the Kobo expects, and in that they worked fine. (By which I mean, they behaved correctly as far as bolding and italics went.) But when I tried to use them as the basic font for a book, they looked bloody awful.

At first I thought it might be a screen resolution thing, and I'm aware that anti-aliasing is limited; I tried a couple of different versions of the fonts, varying the encoded true type hinting in the font itself, and playing with the advanced settings on each of the font variants to see if I could find a display-friendly setting.

There was no such thing. They all looked like exceedingly clumsy bitmapped fonts at the wrong resolution. Just a mess.

I'm sure it's impossible for someone to tell me what I might have done wrong without seeing the fonts for themselves. But are there guidelines somewhere on basic steps to follow — not in loading the fonts or getting the Kobo to recognise them, because I achieved that just fine; but in standard ways to optimise the fonts for an eInk display, and to understand what may or may not be helpful in anti-aliasing and hinting within the font itself?
I've had this with some sideloaded fonts in TTF format. The styles in font family worked correctly but the font rendering itself looked terrible: a very pixelated instead of smooth output.
What it caused? I don't know.

The only advise I can give is: if possible, take a OTF instead of a TTF font.
I've never encountered this pixelated output with OTF fonts. TTF fonts can give mixed result. On a individual font family basis, only trial and error will tell.

If you don't have or can't find a OTF version of a TTF font then a font editing program can help to convert your pixelated TTF font into a smooth OTF font. You don't have to do change any setting to smoothen the font but you do have to check manually if all internal font family references (naming and ID) are correct. If not, you're font looks smooth but renders a bold variant instead of italics (sounds familiar, isn't it).

@MacEachaidh, PM me, I'll try to fix your TTF font as described above.
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