Touch Capricious fonts?

[Erkhyan]

Okay, I’m at a loss here.

Apparently each and every single one of my epub books is displayed in what I think is Georgia, independently of which font I choose in the menu (tested with both default fonts and sideloaded fonts). Even using the font customization features fail to bring any kind of visible change on screen… The only exception is epub files that contain an embedded font, which display correctly.

The thing is, I know it’s not the books doing this. They used to display fine and obey my choice of fonts before.

Tested:
Firmware 1.9.17 - Sideloaded fonts sometimes fail to display, even when the files are properly named. Default fonts are all okay. Embedded fonts are okay.
Firmware 2.0.0c - Sideloaded fonts often fail to display, even when the files are properly named (they might display fine now and fail to display after the next factory reset, without any change in filename). Default fonts sometimes fail to display. Embedded fonts are okay.
Firmware 2.1.1 - Both sideloaded and default fonts fail to display correctly between one factory reset and the next. Embedded fonts are okay.

Any suggestions?

[EldRick]

You could try running the books through calibre and a plug-in called Modify EPUB. That could strip out all the embedded fonts for you. Alternately, use calibre to convert to RTF format and back to EPUB.

Then it's pretty much up to the reader to choose a font, although it does not sound like yours is doing it correctly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by EldRick

You could try running the books through calibre and a plug-in called Modify EPUB. That could strip out all the embedded fonts for you. Alternately, use calibre to convert to RTF format and back to EPUB.

Then it's pretty much up to the reader to choose a font, although it does not sound like yours is doing it correctly.

What in the world would make anyone take an ePub, go to RTF and then back? That's going to screw things up to no end. DON'T DO IT!

[EldRick]

I've done it several times when formatting gets bunged up and can't be cleaned up with calibre tools.

For example, I recently had a couple of books that had a negative left margin (off the edge of the page) on a couple of chapters, when viewed in my PRS-950 after converting from azw to epub.

I hope that answers the question of "What in the world would make anyone take an ePub, go to RTF and then back?"

And why do you say "DON'T DO IT!" ? The original file is not affected. These things are just files, not precious jewels...

The book comes through fine after epub->rtf->epub. Try it.

[taming]

If you are working with a drm free ePUB that came to you with a calibre stylesheet (CSS), several features may not work--depending on the choices the person who did the conversion set it up. If you go into Convert Books and then choose Look and Feel, you have a choice in the Filter Style Selection tab of the big text box to remove fonts, margins, and various other things.

I have never had this problem, btw, with a book I bought in epUB format, imported from ADE (and magically lost the drm in doing so) and then made no alterations that resulted in a change in style sheets.

[Erkhyan]

There’s the rub: several of the problem files weren’t conversions. I made them myself, using a hand-made minimal CSS style sheet that does not contain a single call to font-family. And yet, when displayed on the Kobo touch, some of them still don’t follow the choice I made in the menu, and depending on the occasion, it’s not always the same files that have that problem.

[taming]

You can explode the book, remove the style sheet entirely, rebuild the file, and load the book that way. You would think you would have a garbled mess, but that has not been true for me. I've done in a bunch of times with various books and with good results.