Kindle PW3 - Caecila Condensed with KFX broken

[ametzler]

Hello,

is it just my Kindle PW3 -(up to date firmware, 5.8.9.2) or is Caecila Condensed generally broken on KFX format books?

The letters seemed to be zoomed/distorted horizontally (like zooming a 4:3 movie to fill a 16:9 monitor), and Caecilia Condensed is not Condensed anymore but takes up a lot no *more* space than Caecilia.

I have attached a couple of screenshot:
1 KFX with Caecilia Condensed (Character Size 2)
2 For comparison the same page (KFX) in Amazon Ember
3 How it should look like, Caecila Condensed on a AZW3 book.

tia, cu Andreas

[JSWolf]

Caecila Condensed doesn't actually exist. It's just Caecila that's been diddled by the Kindle software.

[jhowell]

I did a test with my PW2 runing 5.8.9.2 and I see the same incorrect behavior.

I created a test book in both AZW3 and KFX with just digits and sideloaded it so that I could tell how many characters fit per line. Using size 2 it holds 50 digits per line using the Caecilia font in both AZW3 and KFX. But switching to Caecilia Condensed gives 59 digits in AZW3 and only 43 digits in KFX.

[ametzler]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I did a test with my PW2 runing 5.8.9.2 and I see the same incorrect behavior.

I created a test book in both AZW3 and KFX with just digits and sideloaded it so that I could tell how many characters fit per line. Using size 2 it holds 50 digits per line using the Caecilia font in both AZW3 and KFX. But switching to Caecilia Condensed gives 59 digits in AZW3 and only 43 digits in KFX.

Thanks for doublechecking, I have contacted Amazon support.

[tomsem]

On my Voyage, Caecilia Condensed seems to work okay for AZW3, but is actually larger for KFX (text size 1).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tomsem

On my Voyage, Caecilia Condensed seems to work okay for AZW3, but is actually larger for KFX (text size 1).

Maybe Caecilla is not being condensed with KFX.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Caecila Condensed doesn't actually exist. It's just Caecila that's been diddled by the Kindle software.

And once again, the famous non-owner strikes out:

ls -l
= = = =
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   455976 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_65_Medium.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   415348 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_66_Medium_Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   451224 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_67_Cond_Medium.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   411936 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_68_Cond_Medium_Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   421028 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_75_Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   413316 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_76_Bold_Italic.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   421132 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_77_Cond_Bold.ttf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1004 5000   413420 2017-05-04 16:06 Caecilia_LT_78_Cond_Bold_Italic.ttf
= = = =

At about 1/2 megabyte each, they sure take up a lot of room in 5.8.9.2 for something that does not exist.

[JSWolf]

Caecilla Condensed didn't used to exist. When did Amazon add it?

[JimmyR]

It's been around at least since the Kindle Keyboard (K3).

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by knc1

And once again, the famous non-owner strikes out:

It is actually *possible* that it was synthesising it on earlier systems, using FT_Glyph_Transform(). (However, the amount of space consumed by one extra font is so limited that frankly I don't believe it either. Transformation matrices are useful if you want to avoid having to lug thousands of rarely-used fonts around... not so much to avoid *one*.)

[knc1]

Originally Posted by NullNix

It is actually *possible* that it was synthesising it on earlier systems, using FT_Glyph_Transform(). (However, the amount of space consumed by one extra font is so limited that frankly I don't believe it either. Transformation matrices are useful if you want to avoid having to lug thousands of rarely-used fonts around... not so much to avoid *one*.)

That filesize shown is the uncompressed size (400KB).
The fonts are inside of a squashFS filesystem, and used from there.
So the actual storage consumed is considerably smaller.

(I have since dis-mounted the 5.8.9.2 image and its fonts.sqsfs file, so I can't give precise sizes now. I could look up the numbers again if anyone was seriously interested.)