Content How do I get proper italicisation? (PW3)

[Proximanova]

How do I get both the normal and the italicised versions of a custom font on my PW3? Often, I have both the normal and the italicised versions installed, but the italicisation does not take place.

For instance, I have these two fonts on my PW3:

DanteMTW04Regular.ttf
DanteMTW04Italic.ttf

Yet the proper italicisation does not take place. As a result I am barely able to make out which words are italicised and which are not. A good example in the attached screenshots is the word anganwadi, which can barely be made out as italicised. The first screenshot shows the text in the regular font, and the second in the italic font.

[Proximanova]

It is quite disheartening not to have received a single reply. Nevertheless, I am asking again: how do I get the correct italicisation for a set of fonts if I have all of them installed? Is there no proper italicisation for custom fonts the way it is with Amazon Ember or Bookerly?

[tomsem]

In the list of Custom fonts, are there two entries for DanteMT or just one? I have seen cases where Kindle is not able to group two or more font files into the same family, and multiple entries result.

In the screen shot it looks like it is just using Italic - but I don’t know what Regular is supposed to look like.

If it is not grouping there’s probably a way to fix it with appropriate font tool, but I’ve never bothered to investigate it - just move on to another font.

[lumpynose]

In the first screen shot with only anganwandi italicized it looks to me like it's using the regular font and merely skewing/slanting it to the right and producing a faux italic.

My *guess* is that your font doesn't contain the information that declares itself to be italic. And I'm also guessing that this information is in the font file, not just in its file name.

What happens if you use one of the fonts from your computer; e.g., Sitka on a PC.

If that works then look around for something that can dump out the internals of a font and look for the font style metadata.

Alternatively, try downloading it from another site if you downloaded the knockoff/clone and didn't buy it (e.g., from https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/dante-mt/).

[Proximanova]

Originally Posted by tomsem

In the list of Custom fonts, are there two entries for DanteMT or just one? I have seen cases where Kindle is not able to group two or more font files into the same family, and multiple entries result.

In the screen shot it looks like it is just using Italic - but I don’t know what Regular is supposed to look like.

That is precisely the point. Almost all fonts produce faux italics, as @Lumpynose said, despite having both the regular and italic versions on the Kindle.

Originally Posted by lumpynose

In the first screen shot with only anganwandi italicized it looks to me like it's using the regular font and merely skewing/slanting it to the right and producing a faux italic.

But there is one font for which the genuine italics appear: Foco. As you can see from this screenshot, the italicisation is proper. Moreover, Dante MT shows up as two fonts (Italic and Regular), just as you said, but for Foco there is only one font.



And, as seen here, there are separate TTF files for Foco as there are for Dante MT.



Any solution to this problem?

[lumpynose]

What tomsem said.

[Sirtel]

I've used FontForge for editing font metadata. It's free and it works.

[Proximanova]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've used FontForge for editing font metadata. It's free and it works.

I have FontForge, too. Could you guys help me edit the metadata for a font so that the italics are properly supported? I’m new to the software, but I would like to know.

EDIT: Got it! Element menu -> Font info, then set all the values for Font Family to the same value, then File -> Generate and generate the font. The italics work perfectly!

[lumpynose]

Persistence pays off!