Certain font characters not rendering in the correct font

[omskillet]

Hello All,

I'm new to the forum so forgive me if this is posted in the wrong location. I'm working on converting an epub to mobi/kf8 with embedded fonts. Everything has been going smoothly except for one issue. Certain characters in my fonts do not show up properly when viewing the file on the Kindle and Kindle Previewer.

For example...

In the words "Jane Collins & Bob Smitz" the J, & and Z render in the default Kindle font.

I've dug through the font and the characters/glyphs do exist. They view properly in InDesign as well. I've moved out of the InDesign file completely and am fully coding html and css. This problem has me pulling my hair out.

Here is some sample code. This is happening for more than 1 font so I'm not convinced it has to do with the font itself. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

<span class="ch_backcover_author">Jane Collins & Bob Smitz</span>

span.ch_backcover_author {
color:#ffffff;
font-family:"Gibson Light", sans-serif;
font-size:1.2em;
font-style:normal;
font-weight:200;
}

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by omskillet

In the words "Jane Collins & Bob Smitz" the J, & and Z render in the default Kindle font.

Since "Gibson Light" is a non-commercial font, it's most light incorrectly coded. Try replacing it with another font.
If the problem persists, please answer the following questions:

1. Which default Kindle font (Caecilia (serif) or Helvetica Neue (sans-serif)) is being displayed?
2. Does the font display change if you change the size of the font on the Kindle and/or enable/disable the Publisher Fonts option?
3. Have you checked the ePub with ePubCheck online?

[omskillet]

I purchased the entire Gibson family ( including light ) for commercial use on this book. Here are the answers to your questions!

1. On the Kindle Fire HD the characters ( J, &, Z and a few numbers ) are rendered in whatever font I have selected as default. Currently in my case Georgia

2. Yes all characters do scale when I adjust the font size on the device.

3. I ran the validator and got the following results. It says that each individual font is not included in the "package". Aside from the obvious of what its saying...the fonts are in the Sigil project when I open the epub there. I see them getting recognized in kindlegen as well. Quite strange...

ERROR OEBPS/content.opf 18 86 attribute "http-equiv" not allowed here; expected attribute "id", "name", "scheme" or "xml:lang"
ERROR OEBPS/content.opf 18 86 element "meta" missing required attribute "name"
ERROR OEBPS/toc.ncx 27 42 assertion failed: identical playOrder values for navPoint/navTarget/pageTarget that do not refer to same target
ERROR OEBPS/toc.ncx 33 42 assertion failed: identical playOrder values for navPoint/navTarget/pageTarget that do not refer to same target
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 5 2 'OEBPS/fonts/arezzodemi.ttf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 11 2 'OEBPS/fonts/gibson-bold.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 17 2 'OEBPS/fonts/gibson-light.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 23 2 'OEBPS/fonts/gibson-lightit.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 29 2 'OEBPS/fonts/gibson-regular.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 35 2 'OEBPS/fonts/gibson-semibold.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 41 2 'OEBPS/fonts/louisiana.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.
ERROR OEBPS/Styles/style.css 47 2 'OEBPS/fonts/minionpro-regular.otf': referenced resource missing in the package.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that you did not reference the fonts in the CSS. Here is a sample from one of my stylesheets from an ePub edited in Sigil.

@font-face {
font-family: Charis;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(../Fonts/CharisSILR.ttf);
}
@font-face {
 font-family: Charis;
 font-style: normal;
 font-weight: bold;
 src: url(../Fonts/CharisSILB.ttf);
}
@font-face {
 font-family: Charis;
 font-style: italic;
 font-weight: normal;
 src: url(../Fonts/CharisSILI.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: smallcaps;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
src: url(../Fonts/CharisSILSmCp-R.ttf);
}
body {
font-family: Charis;
widows: 0;
orphans: 0;
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;
text-align: justify;
font-size: 92.5%
}

[omskillet]

I do indeed have them referenced.

@font-face {
	font-family:Arezzo;
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:bold;
	src : url("../fonts/arezzodemi.ttf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:"Gibson Bold";
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:bold;
	src : url("../fonts/gibson-bold.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:"Gibson Light";
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:200;
	src : url("../fonts/gibson-light.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:"Gibson Light Italic";
	font-style:italic;
	font-weight:300;
	src : url("../fonts/gibson-lightit.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:Gibson;
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:normal;
	src : url("../fonts/gibson-regular.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:"Gibson SemiBold";
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:600;
	src : url("../fonts/gibson-semibold.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:Louisiana;
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:normal;
	src : url("../fonts/louisiana.otf");
}
@font-face {
	font-family:"Minion Pro";
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:normal;
	src : url("../fonts/minionpro-regular.otf");
}

[Jellby]

Is the directory called "font" or "Fonts"? File and directory names are case-sensitive.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Is the directory called "font" or "Fonts"? File and directory names are case-sensitive.

The directory Sigil creates is Fonts. So the references to the fonts are incorrect as they need to be with Fonts instead of fonts.

Another problem I see is that two of the fonts are incorrect because they have a number and not a style. ADE doesn't support numeric font weights. It's either normal or bold. 300 or 600 do not work.

[omskillet]

Thanks all for your responses! I've resolved all epub check errors. The font names were not respecting the correct case for folder/file name. However my character issue still remains. I've added some screen shots to help illustrate the problem...

One is the Sigil view. You can already see a rendering problem...

The second is the view in the Kindle previewer. You can see that those eff'd characters are rendering in a default font...

The third is a cap of the font characters/glyphs in the font manager. The characters do appear to exist in the font.

Thanks again for everyone's help!

EDIT: Removed attachments as they contained names of real people.

[omskillet]

RESOLVED! I did not know that the InDesign export embeds a subset of the font based on what characters are being used in the file. I deleted the fonts from the epub and re-added the full clean fonts. All characters rendering properly!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by omskillet

RESOLVED! I did not know that the InDesign export embeds a subset of the font based on what characters are being used in the file. I deleted the fonts from the epub and re-added the full clean fonts. All characters rendering properly!

omskillet:

One last note--when you license a font for "commercial use," it frequently does not include redistribution, which, if you have not subsequently subsetted the font, is what is required for licensing without any issues for ePUBs, where the entire font goes forth merrily with each sale. When you license fonts, for ebooks, make sure that redistribution rights are included in the license. Otherwise, you may find that when foundries say 'commercial rights,' they only mean for print, not for distributing the entire font file over and over. Adobe in particular is downright cranky about this. ;-)

I recommend you try subsetting the font in your ePUBs, which is then again subset in Kindle via KindleGen--it's the safest route, particularly with commercially-licensed fonts.

Hope that helps.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

kindlegen subsets the embedded fonts?

Calibre does subset and I know it works well as I've used it many times.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

kindlegen subsets the embedded fonts?

Calibre does subset and I know it works well as I've used it many times.

Hey, Wolfie:

Amazon says it does, somewhere--the KP manual, perhaps? (Wait...maybe I'm lying...maybe I meant to say, "encrypted." I'll go look it up.)

Hitch

[Hitch]

Wolfie:

Here's what I meant; from Section 3.11 of the Kindle Formatting Guidelines, v.2013.3.

The font files within the book are intentionally obfuscated to reduce the probability of reuse, but it is the responsibility of the publisher to secure the appropriate license rights for fonts. Unless embedded fonts are necessary to convey intent, Amazon recommends using the default set of fonts installed on Kindle devices and apps because they have been tuned for high quality rendering.

So: what the captain meant to say was, "obfuscated." ;-)

Hitch

[omskillet]

Hey Hitch...that's interesting that KindleGen does its own obfuscation. I was able to run the python script I found on one of the mobileread threads on my epub and almost all fonts came through correctly except for that gosh dang Gibson Light! My client only plans to do mobi release via Amazon so would it be foolish to assume that I can leave that one font "un-obfusicated" and Kindlegen will provide at least some support in protecting the font?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by omskillet

Hey Hitch...that's interesting that KindleGen does its own obfuscation. I was able to run the python script I found on one of the mobileread threads on my epub and almost all fonts came through correctly except for that gosh dang Gibson Light! My client only plans to do mobi release via Amazon so would it be foolish to assume that I can leave that one font "un-obfusicated" and Kindlegen will provide at least some support in protecting the font?

omskillet:

Um...that's a complicated question. Here are my responses:

1. If your client licensed the font for use, and it allows free redistribution, don't worry about it;
2. If you/your client didn't license the font, (and it's required, redistribution isn't free, OR ALLOWED AT ALL, etc., which is my recollection of Gibson Light) well...no offense, but I don't want to get involved with that. As I earn my living working with copyrighted and IP material all day, I can't be seen to assist with light-fingering someone else's IP.
3. If your client licensed the font, and it requires payment prior to redistribution, then, no, I wouldn't particularly rely on the obfuscation done by KindleGen. As you can see almost anywhere on the Net, cracking a DRM'ed book isn't that hard. What I don't know--because I've never done it, humorously enough--is "how" obfuscated the font is if you MOBIunpack a post-Kindlegen file. I don't recall the fonts being particularly obfuscated once the file was unpacked. Is Diap here? He would likely know this. Diap???
4. My best practices are to subset ALL, repeat, ALL licensed fonts, period. THEN make the mobi. Use the subsetted ePUB for distro, and use it to make the MOBI. Problem mostly solved. Okey-dokey?

P.S.: Deja Vu Sans or Nobile might work for you where you used the Gibson Light. As far as I remember, they aren't quite as "soft," as Gibson...and the ascenders might be slightly different, but there are much "font-ier" guys on here than I who can likely suggest others. But the DVS will definitely do in a pinch, if you need a sans serif fill-in. And you can redistribute those to your heart's content.

Hitch