Where do I put the font EULA?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Wolfie, Wolfie, Wolfie:

Now, now, let's not be disingenuous. It's true that PRC, and K7-mobi, does not allow for font-embedding, but K8 formatting does. I know I saw you in a discussion somewhere around here as to what to call a K8-formatted book, but, Amazon calls it a "MOBI" file. There's no such thing, from the input side, as an AZW3 file; that's a Calibre output format meant strictly for reading on one's own device (as it cannot be uploaded at the KDP).

K8-formatted books can certainly contain some fonts. It can get very cranky with Type1's (just don't use 'em). Some fonts, particularly Adobe fonts, just won't work, for reasons not quite clear to me. They just don't. I mean, letters "fly" around the page, coming unhinged from whither they should be parked, like something out of a movie. (I think that there's a scene in "Young Sherlock Holmes" which is similar to this, but maybe I'm mis-remembering.) Some letters just don't display. It's a weird thing.

Yes, KF8 can embed fonts. But, there is a problem with that. Unless the eBook has a note in it for the KF8 side to tell the person reading the book to turn on the publisher font, there is a good chance this won't happen. Amazon made a rather stupid (IMHO) mistake by making the publisher font default to off. And as for the Mobipocket side of things, that's just a wash in this case. Any books that require an emebdded font or fonts just won't work for the older devices and it looks like (unless I am wrong) there's no way to upload just a KF8 file.

However, all that being said, he can always try it. The issue will be a) fallbacks for the blackletter for K7 devices, and b) whether or not the font will display correctly. Much of what was attempted in the ePUB won't work in the MOBI, like trying to force words to stay together, etc. I don't remember everything that was discussed on this book; I know something that seemed to work originally was shown to not work by simply enlarging the font...but he can always just take his ePUB and drop it on KP, and see what happens. It's only a minute or two out of his life.

I would expect most of what's needed to work might work. But then the best way to test this is on an actual eInk Kindle that handles KF8. I know KP will maybe work. But then, maybe not.

BUT, again, cannot stress this strongly enough: what will you do for the millions of people who have Kindles, Kindle2's and DX'es, that can't display an embedded font?

And don't forget (I think) the iOS Kindle app. Doesn't that not do KF8 or not do embedded fonts or both? That there could also be an issue if I am correct. I don't know about the Android Kindle app and what if can or cannot do.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

I guess while I'm here and asking about amazon, it does seem that my current epub also works in ADE, which I understand is what other non-Kindle readers work in? Where do I go to market it for that platform? Is that, like, Barnes & Noble or something?

You can publish your ePub with Barnes & Noble and Kobo. You could also try a direct ePub upload to Smashwords, but Smashwords is a crap shoot if it will be accepted there. Have you validated your ePub with epubcheck? 3.0.1 is the latest version.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can publish your ePub with Barnes & Noble and Kobo. You could also try a direct ePub upload to Smashwords, but Smashwords is a crap shoot if it will be accepted there.

Thank you! Is that basically it, all the places that sell ebooks (of whatever format), i.e. those three that you just mentioned, plus iBooks and Amazon?

Have you validated your ePub with epubcheck? 3.0.1 is the latest version.

Oh, I have been validating my ebook with Sigil's built-in validator (which uses something called "FlightCrew" -- whatever that is, I don't know). Is that no good? My epub validates with "no problems" in that (except when I change something and make a mistake, of course -- but then I fix it).

UPDATE: I had, actually, downloaded epubcheck before, unzipped it, and then realized that one had to run it from a command line (which is a pain) so I just said screw it and figured I'd stick with Sigil's built-in validator. Your comment got me curious to go looking for a GUI version of epubcheck, and I found this one...

http://www.pagina-online.de/produkte/epub-checker/

Downloaded it, ran my epub through it, and am happy to report that it came through with flying colours, "No errors or warnings detected."

[Toxaris]

You can use http://validator.idpf.org/. That is an online checker that uses the latest version of epubcheck.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

You can use http://validator.idpf.org/. That is an online checker that uses the latest version of epubcheck.

That GUI version that I gave a link to also uses the latest version, it would seem.

[mrmikel]

The only shortcoming of the online version is that the file must be less than 10 MB.

It is the latest version and it does not require loading Java onto your computer which some people, including me, regard as a security risk.

[Psymon]

Hrmph. On a totally unrelated note, I just discovered that -- on top of "wordwrap" not working in ADE, neither does letter-spacing, word-spacing, nor smallcaps.

I'm confused why everyone bemoans iBooks, when everything I try to do works great in that, and it's ADE that's causing me more problems that require utterly absurd solutions, or else have no solution at all (no idea about Kindle... yet). :/

[DomesticExtremis]

I hope when you're done you will be uploading your book to the library here

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Hrmph. On a totally unrelated note, I just discovered that -- on top of "wordwrap" not working in ADE, neither does letter-spacing, word-spacing, nor smallcaps.

I'm confused why everyone bemoans iBooks, when everything I try to do works great in that, and it's ADE that's causing me more problems that require utterly absurd solutions, or else have no solution at all (no idea about Kindle... yet). :/

Well, to be fair here, in the specifications of ePUB2 (which is what we are talking about here) a subset of CSS2.0/CSS2.1 is supported. Word-wrap is a CSS3 property, so that should not be supported anyway.
The other two, letter-spacing and word-spacing, are not in the specifications either. They are not part of the subset that should be supported. So, actually it is not the fault of ADE, but more that iBooks is supporting thing that are not in the standard.

Small-caps is a totally other question. That is a real issue/fault and not true for all (but most...) readers. They can be emulated though. The best results are obtained by embedding a smallcaps font. IIRC it is the problem that fonts on the reader don't have smallcaps in it.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

IIRC it is the problem that fonts on the reader don't have smallcaps in it.

I have fonts with real smallcaps in my reader, both as a separate font file (like italics/bold) and as OpenType feature. I haven't seen any of them working. So the problem in my reader is not the font but the renderer (or maybe I have yet to find how to make it understand I want the smallcaps).

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Well, to be fair here, in the specifications of ePUB2 (which is what we are talking about here) a subset of CSS2.0/CSS2.1 is supported. Word-wrap is a CSS3 property, so that should not be supported anyway.
The other two, letter-spacing and word-spacing, are not in the specifications either.

Oh, I didn't realize that -- thanks for the explanation.

Small-caps is a totally other question. That is a real issue/fault and not true for all (but most...) readers. They can be emulated though. The best results are obtained by embedding a smallcaps font.

And if one doesn't have a smallcaps font, then another way to fake it would be to just set the entire line in ALLCAPS, and then run a span across each word except for the first letter and resize the font size down 75% or something. Very kludgy, of course, but I guess that would/should work if for some reason one really "needed" smallcaps somewhere.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

I hope when you're done you will be uploading your book to the library here

I would, if only to say "thank you" to those here who have been of so much help to me, but if I did that then wouldn't it be rather pointless to try to sell it (if anyone can get it for free here)?

Seriously, I've thought about that, but I don't know how to go about it without effectively shooting myself in the foot. :/

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Psymon

And if one doesn't have a smallcaps font, then another way to fake it would be to just set the entire line in ALLCAPS, and then run a span across each word except for the first letter and resize the font size down 75% or something. Very kludgy, of course, but I guess that would/should work if for some reason one really "needed" smallcaps somewhere.

That is in fact what must of us do...

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

That is in fact what must of us do...

Well, so much for my "brilliant idea" -- one of these days I'll come up with something new that never occurred to anyone else here.

I hope.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Psymon

but if I did that then wouldn't it be rather pointless to try to sell it (if anyone can get it for free here)?

I guess there's still many people who buy badly converted public-domain books, rather than searching here or other places for better (and free) versions. So I expect some people may still buy the book, even if it might be available from free somewhere else.