PRS-T1 Super Legible alt "Original" Font

[bibahbuzemann]

This post deals with the font CharisSLI. If you don't like serif fonts, this isn't interesting for you.

There have been any number of threads enumerating the deficiency of the PRS T1’s so called “Original” font. It’s not very legible, the char size just seems wrong and the “italics” aren’t real italics.

I’ve had the T1 since the beginning and changing the font using the options on the reader itself was less than satisfactory. Usually italics didn’t show when using a selected font, and if they did it was according to some random set of options like changing the font-size back and forth several times.

Using the instructions here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=29
I decided that the installed reader font “Really No. 2” was the one which gave me the best readability. With a simple “Extra CSS” script in Calibre I’ve been using Really No. 2 as my “original” font for more than a year now, and I was happy.

I read a lot with my T1 so sometimes I get lazy and don’t convert an epub using Calibre. That’s what happened last week when I started on a new ebook and immediately realized that the embedded font was much more legible than anything I had heretofore seen.

The font was so good I decided that’s what I want all my new books to look like, so I exploded the ebook(Calibre, right-click, tweak) to see what the font was. Turns out it’s CharisSIL.

First I thought, OK, just embed Charis in any new book right? It ain't hard. BUT, Charis is big. It adds about two MB to any ebook.

In the meantime T1 users have come up with the idea of adding fonts to the T1 without rooting or any big programing skills.

With some help from here: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/PRST....28easy_way.29
it was easy to make it work.

Now, according to this:
http://scripts.sil.org/CharisSIL_download
the font should be free to use in the manner I describe. But that’s a lot of legal mambo-jumbo, so I’m just gonna put it out there, that as far as I know it’s allowed. I have no idea what Sony thinks about it, and since I live in Germany and don’t have to abide by excessive rules about what I may or may not do with hardware that belongs to me, I’m not sure I care.(I’m trying to be really circumspect here pdurrant, sorry about the other thing, mea culpa, won’t happen again)

Give it a try! It's very easy to change back.

- Connect the T1 to a PC and add a folder "fonts" right in the root of drive "READER".
- Copy all four of the Charis SLI files to the "fonts" folder. It's a TrueType font and it needs all four if you want italics, bold, etc.
- In Calibre go to "Look & Feel" in the conversion dialog.
- Check "Fonts" on the "Filter Style Information" register.
- Add the following to the "Extra CSS" register:

@font-face {font-family: serif; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; 
            src: url(res:///ebook/fonts/../../mnt/sdcard/fonts/CharisSIL-R.ttf);}
@font-face {font-family: serif; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; 
            src: url(res:///ebook/fonts/../../mnt/sdcard/fonts/CharisSIL-I.ttf);}
@font-face {font-family: serif; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; 
            src: url(res:///ebook/fonts/../../mnt/sdcard/fonts/CharisSIL-B.ttf);}
@font-face {font-family: serif; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; 
            src: url(res:///ebook/fonts/../../mnt/sdcard/fonts/CharisSIL-BI.ttf);}

body, div, p { font-family: serif; }
.calibre { font-family: serif; }

- convert a book to epub(or an epub to epub), presto!