Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
How do you get someone uisng a Kindle to select the publisher font?
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It's been
discussed hundreds of times before by Hitch.
You can't.
MOBI/Kindles
You can just
hope users select that option, but 99% probably don't.
Or maybe leaving a little note in the frontmatter (or a very first footnote) saying:
"Please enable Publisher Fonts on your Kindle to get the best experience"
but not many people even look there either.
The good thing about Kindles though is they have fallback fonts. So as long as you're using the proper Unicode characters, it has a very high likelihood of displaying.
If you try to embed fonts covering the entire ebook though... (applying to <body> or <p>)... there's a very high likelihood Amazon will strip them on upload. Again, see the Hitch link above.
EPUB
EPUB may be a little bit better on the Publisher CSS front, since the majority of devices/reading-programs follow the standards.
If you design your ebook well, and use the embedded fonts sparingly:
- rare characters
- scenebreaks
- only headings
- only signs / diary entries
then the embedded font will probably work (and not piss off the user).
But even in EPUB, a portion of users use non-standards compliant readers that completely override
everything (Moon+, etc. etc.).
Again, there's no solution. And you definitely can't
force a font on the user (this would be disastrous).
* * *
It would be nice if Amazon had some sort of checkbox during upload to say:
"Hey, this book has some rare scientific symbols. Default enable Publisher Fonts when the book is downloaded."
... but I could see that being completely abused by 99% of the authors, especially big publishers. Maybe heuristics would be able to minimize that damage though (maybe only allow it if <10% of the book is in that font).
Side Note: You + me + Hitch even discussed
Amazon Publisher Font enabling later in that very same Japanese thread, talking about the B-hat symbol. Most fonts DO NOT display those accents properly, so that's where an embedded mathematical font would be the correct choice.
* * *
Great ebook design though:
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) + get the hell out of the way of the user's preferences.
Don't force the constraints of the Print design onto the Ebook.
