[Hitch]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

-- Sorry, not sure if I'm getting this.

I have a book with CSS like:

body {font-family: serif; }
@font-face { font-family: 'Fraktur'; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; src: url('../Fonts/OldEng.ttf'); }
.Fraktur { font-family: 'Fraktur', serif; font-style: normal; }

And apply it with a span:
<span class="Fraktur">Christmas Greetings!</span>

First, I admit, I misunderstood you. I thought I understood you to say that when you embedded a font, the body font turned to sans-serif. That's what I thought I was addressing.

If you don't care what the reader does, with the body, you should remove the body font tag. No reason for it, unless you want to force the body font to be serif (and NOT sans serif on the KF8 eInks). If you do want the body font to be other than sans, then keep the body font declaration.

Secondly, don't use spans to create the font for the Fraktur. Apply it to the correct classes, e.g, p.Fraktur, h1.fraktur, or whatever you're going to call them. There's a definite, not-yet-fully-understood issue with fonts on Spans, in MOBI format. For one thing, there's a limit to the number of spans. I'm not sure that it's what's affecting your book, but it absolutely, positively exists.

I can choose a font on Kindle, but then the Fraktur style doesn't show. If I choose "publisher font" then everything else becomes Bookerly. So the reader can choose the body font, at the cost of screwing up the display text.
Is that what you meant?

That should not be happening. Regardless of whether you choose Publisher font or not, the Fraktur should display. Try going back and applying the font on the correct elements, rather than spans, and see if the issue persists. FWIW, unless it's a one-off, at my shop, bookmakers are not allowed to use spans for fonts. Too many issues surrounding that sort of undifferentiated usage.

Originally Posted by jhowell

I suspect that the "body {font-family: serif; }" is causing the problem. You should not need this.

Unless he wants to force the reader to see/read the book in sans-serif, he DOES need that. As I mentioned a post or two back, on the KF8 eInks, there's a bug/thing/issue--once you embed a font, no matter for what, or how many times you need it, etc., all--ALL--the KF8 eInks will display the body in sans-serif only.

It's the devil's choice--the devil and the deep blue sea, but my feeling is that given as all the studies have clearly shown that serif is the better choice for reading comprehension, at least choose on the side of serif as the forced choice. Someone else is, of course, free to make their own choices.

One last n.b.: you should consider using an otf for that use, rather than ttf. That's likely not related to the issues you're having, but IME, otf works better overall.

Hitch