(Son of a... I had a huge response typed up and was working on the last section, but then my Notepad++ crashed and garbled it up. This will be just a tribute!!!)
You'll have to forgive me for this tinier + not-as-detailed response.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell
In my opinion font obfuscation is silly because it offers no actual protection of font files. The de-obfuscation algorithms are widely published and the key needed for it is present in plain text in the OPF file. The only thing it accomplishes is indicating which fonts have license restrictions.
[...]
Also, publishing for Kindle based on an EPUB with obfuscated fonts will cause those fonts to be garbled and ignored as far as I know. Amazon applies their own encryption to Kindle books as long as you select the DRM option when publishing (and in some cases even if you don't.)
|
And for mazdaspeed's own knowledge:
- jhowell = the technical expert on Amazon's file formats.
- He's the creator/maintainer of the KFX plugins, so he knows every little thing about the actual innards of the format.
- Hitch = owner of one of the large conversion companies (Booknook).
- She's dealt with thousands of books/authors + dealt with nearly every store/device/format under the sun.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mazdaspeed
It would be nice if Adobe, Amazon, Apple, IDPF, etc. would step-up and clarify these extremely important issues surrounding licensing EPUB fonts, and the hazards thereof.
|
The EPUB standards explain it fine.
It's Adobe that's lying and saying "it works", when it doesn't.
Again, read that 2021 Adobe font embedding thread for many of the legal/technical details.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mazdaspeed
That's the workflow that led me to this point. I've only been doing this for 2 years so I suppose I didn't know better.
|
And the people warning you against embedded fonts... it's not personal.
These users are warning you because of the 10+ years of "embedded font" topics + headaches + edge-cases + every possible problem under the sun we've seen complained about on MobileRead.
Here's just a few with Amazon's embedded fonts quirks alone:
- - -
Side Note: A similar situation happens with Fixed-Layout (FXL) ebooks.
About once a year, yet another person comes strolling in, saying how:
"Fixed Layout EPUBs out of InDesign look exactly like the Print! Wow, it's so amazing!"
But in reality, it's a complete turd:
- Pinch/Zooming + Pan/Scanning everywhere
- Search/Highlighting stinks
- Can't resize text
- Bad Accessibility
- No popup footnotes
- Can't easily read on a cellphone
- Stuck in a single device/ecosystem.
- ...
And 95%+ of the "must-be-FXL books" would be better as reflowable anyway.
If you want to see some of my latest on FXL, 2 months ago I wrote:
Actual # of FXL book sales are through the toilet, the person is never heard from again.
And about a year later... the cycle starts all over again when someone new comes up:
"Hey, everyone, look! Fixed Layout is so amazing! I've found the holy grail! This time it's different!"
- - -
So, we're not warning against Embedded Fonts for no reason... there are dozens, and dozens, and dozens... of these topics talking about the troubles/quirks/bugs/glitches in real-life stores/devices.
My personally recommendation is to
avoid embedded fonts, unless you're using it for very narrow and specific reasons.
For example, I only use it for
complicated Maths + Polytonic Greek + Chinese/Japanese characters.