Hello
I'm working on this project to create ebooks in Bangla. I've decided to start with the epub format because most of the ereaders on the market support epub... besides, I had a chat with Amazon and they assured me that the Kindle does not support Bangla font and they have no workaround for this.... So, epub.
Now obviously, my first concern is that the font has to display correctly on (most) e-readers otherwise this venture is a no-go from the start... From what i understand (and I hope I'm wrong) many e-readers don't support embedded fonts and even if they do, the user can override the formatting specified in the css file.
So, a couple of queries which I haven't been able to solve by googling (although I may be asking the wrong questions...):
1. Is bangla UTF-8 or UTF-16? UTF-8 appears to be declared by default in the content.opf file.. (I suppose this a good time to mention that I don't know xml; I've signed up on Lynda to do an introductory course and I'm also trying to find a good ebook on creating and editing epubs from scratch)
2. Can I get an e-reader to display the font I will embed in the css file? I created an epub and tested it on an iPad 3 and it displayed perfectly. However, I took a look at the css file and found that the font was referenced but the font file itself was not included in the epub (I converted using calibre).. Now, I won't use the iPad as a benchmark because in my uninformed opinion, apple products can do a lot of things that others can't!
After some research, I've decided to use Pages 2009 to create and convert the document to epub and Oxygen as the XML editor for tweaking the epub.
Any answers, comments, discussions or references would be sincerely
appreciated. I will, of course, be asking for help very frequently since I'm really a noob at this!
Thanks in advance
Nabodita