[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The font size, if specified will be honored and most implementations will not override it but some may. It is a bad idea to specify specific font sizes for this reason. Much better to specify relative font sizes. It is one of those things that is a bit messy in ePUB depending on who you think should be in control of the presentation of data. In some cases the implementation may get the units wrong interpreting points as pixels for example. Sony gets this right.

Font typeface is another area that is often implemented poorly in ePUB. The standard lets you specify but the implementation may not support it. In particular ADE seems to have its own notion of fonts. CSS can specify the fonts to use explicitly but most of the time the system cannot find them and will use its own. It is better to use generic names for typefaces rather than specific type font. There is no standard place to put fonts and if the CSS defines an exact place it will likely work in only one system. It is also possible to embed fonts by putting them in the epub file itself. However, you would need to ensure that it was legal for you to distribute the fonts in that case since fonts themselves may be copyrighted. In some cases you can distribute them by encrypting the fonts you embed. There is a defined system (actually two) for doing that. But again the rendering system may not support the way you did it.

Dale

Thanks for the information, it's a great help. As far as font size goes, I'm basically just concerned with its size at my reader's smallest zoom level. Regardless of the format, I prefer the base size of my fonts to be 12 - 14 points at the smallest zoom level and to increase from there.

For example, with RTF files, I've found that an 18 point font in the original document renders as about a 12 point size on my reader. With PDF files, I format my documents so that my fonts render the actual size on my reader.

Thanks for the heads up on legal issues concerning distribution of fonts with ebooks. If I ever get to the point of distributing ebooks I will definitely check on this issue. Most likely and to keep it simple, I will look for non-copyrighted fonts that I can freely distribute for use with my ebooks.

From the way you described it, it sounds like epub doesn't support the HTML guide on specifying fonts which says: specify a specific font, then a commonly available alternative, and then a general type (serif, san-serif, or monospaced). Font issues were one of the main reasons that I started formatting my ebooks as PDFs, the text always appears in the font that I've selected. I was hoping that epub would also provide this kind of font support.

Again, thanks.