MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - embedded fonts vs e-reader fonts

jackie_w · 05-23-2019, 08:38 AM

@lumpynose,

I'm not sure whether you already know this, but if you're using a Kobo the easiest way to use Bitter as your standard font is to create a fonts directory in the root of your Kobo and copy the 4 Bitter .ttf files there. After a full power off/on you'll have Bitter as one of the options in the font list in the Aa pop-up. They should work fine no matter whether you're reading kepubs or standard epubs. Then you won't need to embed any fonts and you don't need any @font-faces.

You need to follow the correct naming convention for the .ttf files but, based on your post #2, it looks like your Bitter files are already correctly named.

Remove font-family completely from your body {...} CSS. This also helps to avoid problems if you want to read the epubs in a variety of epub reading apps.

A couple of other FYIs:

you don't need the strong, b {...} or em, i {...} CSS styles.
on a Kobo font-family:serif always gives you the built-in Georgia, so only use it if you don't mind that.
if you want to be able to adjust the weight of sideloaded fonts, such as Bitter, there is a Kobo patch available to do that.
if you find there is a problem with a sideloaded ttf font family, where bold and italic don't seem to be displaying correctly, there is usually a way to fix it with some minor surgery using a font editor such as the free FontForge.

05-23-2019, 08:38 AM	#4
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,252 Karma: 16544692 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	@lumpynose, I'm not sure whether you already know this, but if you're using a Kobo the easiest way to use Bitter as your standard font is to create a fonts directory in the root of your Kobo and copy the 4 Bitter .ttf files there. After a full power off/on you'll have Bitter as one of the options in the font list in the Aa pop-up. They should work fine no matter whether you're reading kepubs or standard epubs. Then you won't need to embed any fonts and you don't need any @font-faces. You need to follow the correct naming convention for the .ttf files but, based on your post #2, it looks like your Bitter files are already correctly named. Remove font-family completely from your body {...} CSS. This also helps to avoid problems if you want to read the epubs in a variety of epub reading apps. A couple of other FYIs: you don't need the strong, b {...} or em, i {...} CSS styles. on a Kobo font-family:serif always gives you the built-in Georgia, so only use it if you don't mind that. if you want to be able to adjust the weight of sideloaded fonts, such as Bitter, there is a Kobo patch available to do that. if you find there is a problem with a sideloaded ttf font family, where bold and italic don't seem to be displaying correctly, there is usually a way to fix it with some minor surgery using a font editor such as the free FontForge.