[Hitch]

Originally Posted by GJ Coop

Well, I've re-uploaded a new .mobi file, created as an .epub in Calibre and converted in Kindle Desktop Previewer, for probably the 20th time, I'm getting to know the mechanics of The System. It looks OK in the KDP Online previewer. Actually it looks exactly what I want, so fingers crossed for tomorrow morning.

So: the problem appears solved, then? Is that the takeaway?

Spent some of today fiddling around with spans and classes. In between unblocking, err, the toilet.

Ok. Good to know. Try fibre.

This time the upload has the third font. I initially had a go with Impact, since it's on every computer, but maybe it was copy protected in some way.

Impact...you mean the OPEN TYPE Impact?

The second font was the clearly public domain Oswald, a straightforward compact font. If any font should work, this one was specifically designed and optimised for the web, you would think that one would. It's available as both .ttf and .otf and of course I tried them both.

This third font is also a free web font from Google Web Fonts, the strangely nomenclatured "Yanone Kaffeesatz Regular". It seems to be looking OK, at least in the KDP online preview and on the Kindle Desktop Reader.

As I mentioned, you can't predict which fonts will function correctly, and which won't. I know, factually, of hundreds that will work just fine (we've developed a sizeable stable of them). You'd need a geekier font-maven than I, to explain why some don't work, but honestly: there's a world of fonts out there, and zillions of the blockier ones like Impact, between DaFont, FontSquirrel, GoogleFonts, and the like.

Somehow I'm feeling like I'm transported back to my early days of doing desktop publishing, early 1990s Pagemaker, except back then they could actually get the fonts to work. Not much progress in the last 21 years by the look of things. I guess we see the result in a difference in vision between Jobs and Bezos.

Yes, you do. Bezos created an actual, viable, financially-possible environment for self-publishers, and Jobs manufactured and sells devices. Amazon sells books. Apple sells devices. Don't confuse the two.

I don't think I'm doing anything too special, just a single additional compact sans serif font for a title page and for the chapter headings. I had validating code 4 weeks ago and I'm now at the point where I think I might just have to publish where they use .epub. I want my book to look the simple way I've designed it.

Just having "validating code" doesn't mean anything. Moreover, you could have just called the fonts with a sans serif fallback, so that when it didn't work, it would have fallen back to the already-installed sans serif fonts that are on the device(s).

If you want to talk about competing "visions," try to put an ePUB you've created on a first-gen iBooks, and pray that it doesn't use centering. Or, for that matter, some fonts, unless you include a "special file" that you can't use at most distributors/aggregators. To make an ePUB work on most first-gen iPads, you have to include a crapload of unnecessary code, to work around all the bad in the app. Oh, and if you make an ePUB3-compliant book for iBooks right now, it won't work on those first-gen iPads, either. At least, at Amazon, you can fallback gracefully for the millions of KF7-compliant devices with media queries. Over at Nook, if you have two spans in the first line of a paragraph, the line will break, hyphenating at bizarre locations.

Print layout has been around since Gutenberg. eBook layout has been around for, really, a whopping 5 years. Let's say 8, to be highly charitable and give credit where credit is due, to the early mobi/palm/lit, etc., pioneers. That it's not "done and dusted" and all burned-in is hardly surprising. Moreover, unless you're doing this ALL the time, it changes, literally weekly.

The goalposts move, and they move constantly.

Hitch