PRS-T1 Best font on PRS T1?

[sonyreaderfan]

Being a font junkie, I would like to know from PRS t1 owners what do they think is the best font installed on the T1 for reading.

I have PRS+ installed on my 950 and would like to experiment adding fonts to emulate the T1 reading experience. FWIW, I've read that the Amasis font included is pretty good and is better than the one on Nook. I'm not familiar with the other newish fonts installed on the T1 (Frutinger neue -- what is that?) .

Btw, I have to mention this: thanks to dwanthny for this:

http://booxusers.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=201&start=10


The Georgia font on the site for download is the best font I've seen so far for reading.

[jackie_w]

The PRST1 has the standard Sony Original 3-font set (serif, sans-serif, monospace), just like previous models, plus 3 serifs (Amasis, Palatino nova, Really No2) plus 3 sans-serifs (Frutiger Neue, Univers Next, Verdana).

The 3 serifs are all better to read with (IMO) than the Original serif. Unfortunately if you select any of the 6 'specials' it seems totally random whether the bold and/or italic text in your book will be rendered as such. Some will be some won't. There's even a note in the User Guide admitting the problem.

Note
When you select other than the [Original] font, boldface/italics/italicized boldface may not be displayed correctly.

The only way I've been able to use my own fonts is to physically embed them in the epub. There is also a cautionary note about doing this but so far I haven't experienced a problem. Time will tell.

Note
The font size and font of some content with embedded fonts may not change.

Here's a link to a summary I did in another thread. I am somewhat surprised there haven't been more new T1 owners commenting on this problem. Perhaps most people don't mind if italics go AWOL.

[dodgyr]

I am trying not to play around with fonts too much. The only thing I can determine so far between my original T1 that froze and crashes and my current T1 that has not yet done either is that I haven't changed the font on this one (not even size). No idea if there is in fact any link at all, but so far, it is the only difference I can identify and dont want to mess it up until we know for sure what the actual cause is. :P

[pssquirrel]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

... Unfortunately if you select any of the 6 'specials' it seems totally random whether the bold and/or italic text in your book will be rendered as such. Some will be some won't. There's even a note in the User Guide admitting the problem.

What's especially weird: when I was playing with a T1, I found that when I changed fonts from, say, Original to Amasis, the italic would disappear. But then, when I changed the font-size (not changing fonts, still Amasis, just a different font-size), the italic would suddenly re-appear. Then if I changed the font-size back, the italic disappeared again.

And then, when switching from, say, Original to Verdana, the italic would remain. But when I closed the book and re-opened it, the italic would disappear!

ADDED: This is all within the same book, so it's not a matter of different epubs using different formatting.

The only way I've been able to use my own fonts is to physically embed them in the epub.

Can you still put a folder of your own fonts in the root directory then add @font-face {src: url(res:///Data/fonts/MyFont.ttf); } to the epub's css? Or do you have to embed the fonts in each individual epub for it to work on the T1?

[log]

I've been trying to use Amasis wherever possible, think it looks the best to my eyes.

jackie, so far I've noticed only one issue where bold/italic fonts wouldn't render correctly on Amasis but worked on Original. If you find epubs like this make sure you take note of them maybe we come up with the cases where this happens and see if they can be included in the output profile for calibre (not sure if this possible, need to check with the devs).

So far what I've found if the epub CSS had a class of "font-weight:bolder" applied to text, it would not render correctly on Amasis and reset to plain style, whether being used on a bold or bold/italic text. It does render correctly on Original though.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I've been using Amasis on my T1. I really like it.

Bold/italics are properly rendered with Amasis on the EPUB that I am currently reading. As jackie_w notes, some work and some don't. I have another EPUB that I am reading that has to be kept in original (the italics matter in that book because it's a play). I have read a few books so far that had embedded fonts. I think that most people haven't read enough books on their T1 yet to really notice the bold/italics issues. Depending on the type of content that you read, some people just might not notice or care about lack of italics/bold.

[jackie_w]

I have not found the problem to be specific to particular epubs. Every epub I've looked at shows the problem. Some of the italics (also bold but there are less occurrences of these) in the book display correctly and some, in the same book, don't. If I close the book then reopen it the italics which were correct originally, may not be anymore and vice versa. Unless you are checking the same epub, page by page, on 2 different readers (which I did) it won't necessarily be obvious when italics are missing. Of course some might say, if it's not obvious, why on earth does it matter?

@log, I tried replacing font-weight:bolder with font-weight:bold, but it made no difference in my small test epub.

If anyone does come up with a definitive set of css rules to ensure bold and italics stay put in any epub, I'd love to hear about it.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Interesting! I haven't noticed that behavior, but now I will pay more attention. The current book I am reading uses italics for thoughts inside a character's mind as well as quite a few foreign expressions and quotes from songs/poems. Therefore, it is an example where missing italics are more obvious than typical.

[fishman69]

Originally Posted by sonyreaderfan

Being a font junkie, I would like to know from PRS t1 owners what do they think is the best font installed on the T1 for reading.

I have PRS+ installed on my 950 and would like to experiment adding fonts to emulate the T1 reading experience. FWIW, I've read that the Amasis font included is pretty good and is better than the one on Nook. I'm not familiar with the other newish fonts installed on the T1 (Frutinger neue -- what is that?) .

Btw, I have to mention this: thanks to dwanthny for this:

http://booxusers.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=201&start=10


The Georgia font on the site for download is the best font I've seen so far for reading.

The VAST majority of my book files are from Baen Books and they seem to digitize to ePub in a form where you cannot changed the displayed typeface. I never had that problem with BBeB or with .mobi files on my Kindle 3. I have had the same problem consistently with ePub on my Nook Touch. Just one more reason why I DETEST ePub.

Harvey

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by pssquirrel

Can you still put a folder of your own fonts in the root directory then add @font-face {src: url(res:///Data/fonts/MyFont.ttf); } to the epub's css?

Sorry pssquirrel, I missed this question earlier. The sad answer is no. I'm told the directory location res:///Data has changed to res:///mnt/sdcard but even with the change it doesn't seem to work. I'm happy for someone to prove me wrong, though

See this thread posts #2794/5/6

Fully embedded fonts do work on the T1, or at least the one's I've tried do. It's easy enough to do but it's a manual job for non-DRM epubs only (unless the publisher has already embedded them in a DRM epub). I'm not aware of an automated way to embed the fonts yourself.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by pssquirrel

What's especially weird: when I was playing with a T1, I found that when I changed fonts from, say, Original to Amasis, the italic would disappear. But then, when I changed the font-size (not changing fonts, still Amasis, just a different font-size), the italic would suddenly re-appear. Then if I changed the font-size back, the italic disappeared again.

And then, when switching from, say, Original to Verdana, the italic would remain. But when I closed the book and re-opened it, the italic would disappear!

ADDED: This is all within the same book, so it's not a matter of different epubs using different formatting.

I believe it. I was checking how one of my epubs looked on the T-1 and all was good in Original font. Switching out to different serif fonts, I had headers (coded exactly the same, i.e. they use the same class), sometimes showing up bold and sometimes not. Just from chapter to chapter in the same epub. Weird stuff.

[Bookworm_Girl]

So I've found some more books that don't properly render... Now I'm seeing the same random behavior. I've looked at the code for the book that I am reading that seems to be working properly and consistently. It uses bold <b> tags and italics <i> tags everywhere.

The books that don't do italics and bold properly all use classes. I seem to have problems wth bold more frequently than italics. I have noticed similar behavior to pssquirrel. If you change the font size (or change back to original and then back to Amasis) you will see the bold & italics come back. If you close the book and then reopen, you'll lose the bold/italics but can change the font size to get them back.

I have read 2 books so far with embedded fonts (both had CharisSIL), and they worked fine.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by dodgyr

I am trying not to play around with fonts too much. The only thing I can determine so far between my original T1 that froze and crashes and my current T1 that has not yet done either is that I haven't changed the font on this one (not even size). No idea if there is in fact any link at all, but so far, it is the only difference I can identify and dont want to mess it up until we know for sure what the actual cause is. :P

I've played with every font and font size available and I've had no crashes.

EDIT: Sigh. My reader crashed twice this morning.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

So I've found some more books that don't properly render... Now I'm seeing the same random behavior. I've looked at the code for the book that I am reading that seems to be working properly and consistently. It uses bold <b> tags and italics <i> tags everywhere.

The books that don't do italics and bold properly all use classes. I seem to have problems wth bold more frequently than italics. I have noticed similar behavior to pssquirrel. If you change the font size (or change back to original and then back to Amasis) you will see the bold & italics come back. If you close the book and then reopen, you'll lose the bold/italics but can change the font size to get them back.

I have read 2 books so far with embedded fonts (both had CharisSIL), and they worked fine.

Hi bookworm_girl,

I have attached a test epub which has paragraphs using:

• plain <i> and <b>
• <i class="..."> and <b class="...">
• plain <em> and <strong>
• <em class="..."> and <strong class="...">
• <span class="...">

If you have time I wonder if you'd mind trying the techniques you posted to see if you can come up with a sequence of actions which works every time for you, including returning to a previously opened book.

Initially, I thought I'd found one but it turned out not to be consistently repeatable.

For info when the bold/italics were working correctly for me, they were correct for all 5 of the markup options. I suppose the fact that it's such a small epub may have some effect.

[Bookworm_Girl]

OK. I understand your variations. I'll play around with it on my T1 later today.