MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Font behavior of different e-readers

beiti · 03-08-2020, 02:26 PM

Okay, this discussion seems to go in the wrong direction. I didn't want to start another "embed vs. not embed" discussion.
The fact that my Kindle Paperwhite seems to handle e-books with embedded fonts basically different than e-books without embedded fonts was just an accidental observation I made during my tests. To avoid confusion I shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place. I'm sorry.

In fact, my initial idea was all about avoiding to embed fonts. I thought I could use the fonts that are already stored inside common e-readers. It worked out (mostly) with the Kindle Paperwhite, but not so much with the Tolino.
Now that I tested it with my Kindle and Tolino e-readers I would be interested how other devices handle certain font names (when the fonts are not embedded).

Let's just assume for a moment I know that most of my readers will read my book on a Tolino e-reader or app. Since fonts like 'Bitter', 'Fira Sans' or 'OpenDyslexic' are available on most (if not all) Tolino e-readers/apps, I thoght I could just assign these font names via CSS (without embedding them) and the reader would show them. But it does not - or I'm doing something wrong (and it's not the comma vs. semi-colon thing - because in my example files I only use one font name at a time).
The only way to get other fonts than the standard font on Tolino seem to be the generic names like 'sans-serif' or 'monospace'.

It's different on the Kindle. Here I can use the names of built-in fonts like 'Caecilia' or 'Baskerville' in the CSS and then these fonts are in fact shown (except for 'Caecilia Condensed'). Since Amazon customers tend to use only Kindle devices/apps it could be a good concept to make use of those Kindle font names whenever I need a font that's not standard. But unfortunately I found out that, other than Tolino, for Kindle there is no fixed list of fonts (e.g. in my Kindle app on Windows I can only choose between 'Bookerly' and 'Georgia').

There are some more oberservations with the built-in fonts:
Seems like both my e-readers have some additional fonts built in that are not in the list you can manually choose from. Both e-readers have a Courier-like monospace fonts that show up only if you assign 'monospace' in the CSS. On Kindle it seems really to be Courier. Oddly, the Tolino doesn't recognize the font name "Courier" and uses its standard serif font instead, so you only get the built-in Courier (or whatever its name is) if you assign 'monospace'.

03-08-2020, 02:26 PM	#5
beiti Member Posts: 18 Karma: 50 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: several	Okay, this discussion seems to go in the wrong direction. I didn't want to start another "embed vs. not embed" discussion. The fact that my Kindle Paperwhite seems to handle e-books with embedded fonts basically different than e-books without embedded fonts was just an accidental observation I made during my tests. To avoid confusion I shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place. I'm sorry. In fact, my initial idea was all about avoiding to embed fonts. I thought I could use the fonts that are already stored inside common e-readers. It worked out (mostly) with the Kindle Paperwhite, but not so much with the Tolino. Now that I tested it with my Kindle and Tolino e-readers I would be interested how other devices handle certain font names (when the fonts are not embedded). Let's just assume for a moment I know that most of my readers will read my book on a Tolino e-reader or app. Since fonts like 'Bitter', 'Fira Sans' or 'OpenDyslexic' are available on most (if not all) Tolino e-readers/apps, I thoght I could just assign these font names via CSS (without embedding them) and the reader would show them. But it does not - or I'm doing something wrong (and it's not the comma vs. semi-colon thing - because in my example files I only use one font name at a time). The only way to get other fonts than the standard font on Tolino seem to be the generic names like 'sans-serif' or 'monospace'. It's different on the Kindle. Here I can use the names of built-in fonts like 'Caecilia' or 'Baskerville' in the CSS and then these fonts are in fact shown (except for 'Caecilia Condensed'). Since Amazon customers tend to use only Kindle devices/apps it could be a good concept to make use of those Kindle font names whenever I need a font that's not standard. But unfortunately I found out that, other than Tolino, for Kindle there is no fixed list of fonts (e.g. in my Kindle app on Windows I can only choose between 'Bookerly' and 'Georgia'). There are some more oberservations with the built-in fonts: Seems like both my e-readers have some additional fonts built in that are not in the list you can manually choose from. Both e-readers have a Courier-like monospace fonts that show up only if you assign 'monospace' in the CSS. On Kindle it seems really to be Courier. Oddly, the Tolino doesn't recognize the font name "Courier" and uses its standard serif font instead, so you only get the built-in Courier (or whatever its name is) if you assign 'monospace'.