Help with Mantano Help please

[AlexBell]

I've just spent a frustration twenty minutes on the Mantano site trying to get help with font problems I'm having. Clicking on the send email button doesn't seem to do anything at all except bringing up a page with other peoples questions. Is there a way to get emails to Mantano?

Here are the questions I wanted to ask Mantano:

I have Mantano premium 2.4.7 on my Nexus 7.2. I chose Mantano because so far as I can tell it is the android reader which is most faithful to the stylesheet in my ePub ebooks.

Is there any way to change the font family in an ebook? I have an ebook I designed myself, and in the stylesheet I have set it to Amasis, serif. But the ebook displays in a sans-serif font, and I can't see any way of changing it.

There seems to be a kerning problem with the display, in that the words and punctuation are squashed up close together. This does not occur with the same ebook read on my Sony, Kobo, or iPad. How can this be fixed?

Does Mantano allow a range of font families? Every other ebook reader I have allows one to choose between several font faces, no matter what is set in the stylesheet.

Is there a way of importing fonts? If so, how?

[DiapDealer]

Drop your font-family files in the fonts folder. Select the different fonts by editing your theme (Theme->Edit). The first time you go to change fonts, you're asked if you want to download a fonts pack.

Yes, the default font has some kerning quirks where some letters might get squished together occasionally. You can't "fix" it, you can only choose a different font (or provide your own) with the above method.

[AlexBell]

Thanks, DiapDealer, I'll try to work with that.

If I understand you correctly you're saying that after I install a font myself and edit the Themes I'll then be able to download other fonts. Is there no way to download other fonts on a new version of Mantano?

Where do I find the change fonts option? I've looked everywhere I can think of but don't see that option. Or does it appear only if I've installed a font myself? That seems an odd way of doing things.

Also, have you had any success sending an email to Mantano? If so, how?

[DiapDealer]

You don't have to install your own font first. The option to download the fonts-pack will be available when you edit a theme and enter the font-family menu (under 'Edit Theme') the first time.

The option to change fonts is under the 'Theme' menu. You can create a new theme and edit it, or you can just edit the default theme.

Yes, I've sent them email (and gotten a response) before. But I honestly don't remember if I used a website feature to do so, or if I found an email address and sent it manually.

[Teknikal]

It's great feature but it took me ages to find it hidden there myself.

[gbm]

This post may help.

bernie

p.s.
I use AirDriod to download and up load files to my tablet.

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I've just spent a frustration twenty minutes on the Mantano site trying to get help with font problems I'm having. Clicking on the send email button doesn't seem to do anything at all except bringing up a page with other peoples questions. Is there a way to get emails to Mantano?

Here are the questions I wanted to ask Mantano:

I have Mantano premium 2.4.7 on my Nexus 7.2. I chose Mantano because so far as I can tell it is the android reader which is most faithful to the stylesheet in my ePub ebooks.

Is there any way to change the font family in an ebook? I have an ebook I designed myself, and in the stylesheet I have set it to Amasis, serif. But the ebook displays in a sans-serif font, and I can't see any way of changing it.

There seems to be a kerning problem with the display, in that the words and punctuation are squashed up close together. This does not occur with the same ebook read on my Sony, Kobo, or iPad. How can this be fixed?

Does Mantano allow a range of font families? Every other ebook reader I have allows one to choose between several font faces, no matter what is set in the stylesheet.

Is there a way of importing fonts? If so, how?

[AlexBell]

Thanks for your responses. It makes more sense to me now.

[bobstro]

I posted a message to the Mantano message boards when I couldn't find an answer to my query about using font face variations (italic, bold) in styles. They responded via email a few days later indicating the feature would be added in the next release. Not sure if my post triggered the fix, but I was glad to see my preferred fonts used for normal, italic and bold text.

Changing fonts in styles is easy enough, but I have not found a way to do something like change the background color for all styles in one place. Not a huge problem, but mildly annoying.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by bobstro

I posted a message to the Mantano message boards when I couldn't find an answer to my query about using font face variations (italic, bold) in styles. They responded via email a few days later indicating the feature would be added in the next release. Not sure if my post triggered the fix, but I was glad to see my preferred fonts used for normal, italic and bold text.

Changing fonts in styles is easy enough, but I have not found a way to do something like change the background color for all styles in one place. Not a huge problem, but mildly annoying.

Thanks, bobstro, I'll try again to email them.

I was able to download the font package from the suggestions above, but am a little miffed that the sans fonts show italics and numbers in serif. I want to know how to install my own font families with all the variants.

[bobstro]

Make sure you're using the correct file names for each variation of the font family. You also need a recent version of Mantano (sorry, not sure which exactly).

On mine, I've copied the four files for each font into /sdcard/Mantano/Fonts. For example:

Amasis30.ttf
Amasis30-Bold.ttf
Amasis30-BoldItalic.ttf
Amasis30-Italic.ttf

I'm seeing correct variations in ebooks.

[AlexBell]

Thanks, bobstro, that's most helpful. I'll put it on my Jobs To Be Done list.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

... but am a little miffed that the sans fonts show italics and numbers in serif. I want to know how to install my own font families with all the variants.

I've noticed that the problem is actually worse than this. If you select a custom serif font family in your Mantano theme, all 4 variants work properly as long as your epub only needs serif. However, if your epub has some css containing font-family:sans-serif and/or font-family:monospace then only the regular variant is correctly displayed. The italic/bold/bolditalic variants of sans-serif/monospace display in the serif variant instead. So nice try, Mantano, but could do better (although most people probably won't notice or care).

As a result, I've gone back to my earlier method of font customisation in Mantano, which I've been using for 2 years. I'm happy to share this with you, BUT, it does require a minor one-line edit to every epub (or at least all those which need all 4 variants of serif/sans/mono to work properly) and so may be regarded as too much like hard work.

A brief outline of the solution is:

1. Create a small css file (e.g. mantano.css) full of the necessary @font-faces for serif/sans-serif/monospace and store it somewhere on the android device.
2. Make sure the Mantano theme you're using has Font Family set to Default.
3. Insert a one-line @import statement in each css file in the epub, which points to your mantano.css file.

Items 1 & 2 are simple one-off exercises. Item 3 is trivial but possibly too tedious to comtemplate. If you'd like to try it anyway, let me know and I'll try and walk you through it in more detail.

[AlexBell]

Thanks, Jackie

I appreciate the trouble you've taken and your advice. But I've gone another route; I've installed the DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Serif families of fonts into the Mantano fonts folder and no longer have the problem. I've made the default font DejaVu Sans, and made another theme for DejaVu Serif if I need to test a serif font on one of my ebooks.