Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
(Is there some technical point of competency here yet being debated? Is there? I mean, those of us who've done this for a bit know that there are mystery limits, undocumented and worse, not understood at KDP/Amazon, around font calls in CSS.
|
The original question was how to get a different font in different chapters based on a change in narrator. Basic CSS knowledge would make that an easy question to answer. The only technical question that caught my eye in this discussion was whether
Kindle supports multiple fonts....
Someone mentioned Kindle only allows so many css font calls... I'll be the first to admit I don't have any idea of the internal programming required on a reader to display an html page with the proper styling as defined on an attached CSS sheet. So I don't know how (or why) the reader/device would 'count' the number of times a reference to the CSS was made???
I know that Kindle doesn't want people defining the font for the entire book and would rather leave that to the customer to choose.
Quote:
"Body text should not have a forced font face. Make sure that you have followed the guidelines for embedded fonts. Not following these guidelines could lead to customers not having the ability to change their preferred reading font."
- Kindle publishers guide
|
In general, I agree with the sentiment. However, if the author
really, really, needs to have a different font to denote some story point, How do they go about making it happen?
I suppose you could do like
Harry Potter and make a "Kindle in Motion" type book where the reader needs to 'opt-in' to see all the special magical features of the book.
While that probably works, and it is readable, without the magic, on devices that don't support it, it seems like a LOT of work for the eBook coder; and some users may not want to be bothered with the 2 button pushes it takes to enable it...
Having said ALL that, I think the problem may just be in the WAY people have been coding the book. If "the number of CSS calls" is the problem, then why not reduce the number of calls? Based on the coding I've seen in most of the books I've read, I can easily believe that people are putting font calls in each paragraph. Instead, they should just put a single call in each body tag.
OBTW, that is also how
Kindle recommends you do it:
Quote:
|
The primary or main font in a book should be set at the <body> level. If you prefer to use additional text styling such as bold or italics, ensure that the styles are set on the text rather than the font so that any font that the customer selects correctly displays these styling elements. Below are examples of both correct and incorrect implementation of customizing fonts in a Kindle book.
|
Although my 'put all styling in the CSS sheet' philosophy cringes at putting styles in the html, I would think that following kindle's own recommendations would work, no?
Anyone experiment with that??