For those that enjoy reading with old-school, distressed-style fonts, I've created modified versions of Igino Marini's IM FELL family of fonts using FontForge (renamed the "WP Fell" fonts). My primary aim was to enable proper text rendering for small capital letters in KOReader (without small cap glyphs in the font file, KOReader renders small capital letters in lowercase, which I found unpalatable). The small caps already existed in separate "SC" font files, but they were not part of the main files; I merged them in. This allows small cap rendering in any app/ereader that supports native small cap glyphs, including KOReader and Kindle. See the attached screenshot for an example (the top row is from the base IM FELL files, the bottom is from the WP Fell files).
Notes/changes:- For the Italic files, I've created fake, scaled-down small capitals (similar to what Kobo/web browsers do), as there are no native small capital glyphs available for the italic styles. I figured it was better to keep the ornate italics and end up with glyphs with thinner strokes, rather than to just apply an oblique effect to the regular glyphs.
- A kerning fix was made to the Great Primer files (the lowercase g/comma pairing in the regular and italic original files had some overlap, which looked pretty bad).
- Small caps have proper kerning. For the regular font files, the kerning is lifted from the original SC files and should be what Igino Marini intended. For the Italic style, I've matched the kerning of the small capitals to that of the uppercase letters (so a word in small caps would have the same kerning the same word in uppercase).
- These fonts don't include Bold/Bold Italic files; the original IM FELL files didn't have them (bold fonts didn't exist back when John Fell created these many centuries ago, I believe). Kindle/KOReader/etc will apply a fake bold effect when using these fonts if the text calls for bold, which tends to look okay, but YMMV depending on the app you're using them in.
- Like the original IM FELL Files, these are released under the OFL. If you're looking for a modern revival/cleaner version of this type of font, I'd also recommend looking at the Elstob font (it's a modern revival of the Double Pica style that includes bold/bold italic files; it's also free and released under the OFL).
- Kobo's webkit engine "fakes" small caps, even if the font includes them, so there's no reason to download these over the original IM FELL fonts if you're using the stock Kobo reader (unless you want the kerning fix for the Great Primer style). I haven't tested these with the stock Pocketbook reader, Kobo's Adobe engine, or other software.