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I've been trying to bone up a bit on typography and book design of late.
One of the things "they" bring up is the idea that a book invokes a feeling, and that the design of the book can extend that feeling by design, font selection, layout, and so forth.
If the font selection, even the base body copy font choice, makes a positive (or negative) difference, then embedding would be worth the trouble.
Except, there are other tools used to realize a book that are limited or even absent in epubs, like kerning, h&j, precise placement control, it goes on.
So, if we can't have better h&j and kerning (etc), does the base font really make that big of a difference that's worth while? I can see the argument that the book is more than just words, that beauty in the expression of the words in an of itself makes a significant difference.
But until the rendering engines in the readers improve (lots), I agree with Jelby: font embedding only serves specialty needs (like weirdo characters), or to "slightly" alter the appearance of bits and pieces of the book.
The only other directional change I can think of is if we could call pre-built files for each different typesize change: on a reader, there would be 5 files for each chapter file (who knows how many for a Nook), one for each size, specifically built and called on; rather than having the system re-render, it just calls the next sized file.
Bleah. Sound like an inordinate amount of work. I'd have to get paid.
-bjc
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