Glo 2.4.0 bugs

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

JS Wolf's Charis SIL Modified works for me too, but using JS Wolf's original file names, e.g., CharisSILI.ttf. They only have a "English - United States" language in them. The font matching algorithm is a slippery customer!

Try renaming them as I mentioned. The Kobo is not happy with fonts that do not have a font file name matching their internal font name. I noticed quite a few odd issues until I followed the advice to use that file naming convention. Actually, you can use -I, -B and -Z (italic, bold, bold-italic) with no addition to the font file name for the regular font but I prefer the longer version as being easier for me to read.

There was a message about this a while back from a Kobo developer -- two secs -- https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=italic&page=4 giving the naming convention and why it existed.

Yes, it may not be standard but if it works, I'm not going to waste my time puking on the windward side.

Regards,
David

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

I have a bit more info about the broken fonts - it seems to be a combination of the font name possibly containing a space and the locale of the Kobo. For example: "Charis SIL" is broken irrespective of locale, I think because of the space in the name.

As an experiment I created a copy of the Charis SIL font and called it Charisas (no space in the name). Now the "Charis SIL" font only defines a language of "English - United States". The locale of the Kobo is set in the .kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf file (see https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=206200). This defaults to a US locale (CurrentLocale=en_US) which worked with my new Charisas font (without the space in the name). However, I had previously changed the locale of my Kobo to en_GB (to get dates in DD/MM/YYYY format) so I also had to add a Language "English - United Kingdom" to my Charisas font, and hey presto, it now works: bold and italics are now working on 2.4.0.

Something broke between 2.1.5 and 2.4.0 in how the Kobo finds fonts, to do with the font naming and the device's locale. This should be fixed by Kobo, but at least we now have a workaround.

So if I was to fix up my modified Charis SIL for the latest Kobo firmware, what exactly should I be doing so it works in all instances regardless of country setting?

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So if I was to fix up my modified Charis SIL for the latest Kobo firmware, what exactly should I be doing so it works in all instances regardless of country setting?

I am not sure you need to do anything...I have been using a different version of Charis SIL (weightier), and that may be why I have had problems, because your Charis SIL Modified (which I have only just tried this evening) seems to work OK. I didn't even have to change the file names.

[GeoffR]

Does anyone have an epub for font testing? Something with the name of each font style written in that style, as an easy way to see which fonts are working properly and which not?

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Does anyone have an epub for font testing? Something with the name of each font style written in that style, as an easy way to see which fonts are working properly and which not?

DNSB has posted a very useful file here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...4&postcount=87.

I've used Sigil to add a little bit more to it, especially the word "officer" which a lot of fonts can't handle (the "ff" ligature is rendered as a blank). Please see attached file.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

DNSB has posted a very useful file here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...4&postcount=87.

I've used Sigil to add a little bit more to it, especially the word "officer" which a lot of fonts can't handle (the "ff" ligature is rendered as a blank). Please see attached file.

Thanks, sorry I missed the earlier post :-(

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

I am not sure you need to do anything...I have been using a different version of Charis SIL (weightier), and that may be why I have had problems, because your Charis SIL Modified (which I have only just tried this evening) seems to work OK. I didn't even have to change the file names.

The Charis SIL that was renamed in the Kobo font thread were renamed from the ones I modified.

If there is a problem and it is something I can do to make it work, please PM me and let me know.

[lissandro.sosa]

Originally Posted by tshering

cf. this post.

mmmm I tried this options laters,

but i said, this options not are in the power and sleep setting, there are only limited to 60 minutes. if I wanna never shutdown?, how i can change this settings, if previously i have in shutdown in 30 minutes?

[PeterT]

One of my gripes (yes I know I have many) is the support or lack there of for the common fractions. It's challenging to read a cook book without them present, so I took the test eBook and added 9 fractions to it; ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞

With my Touch and 2.4.0 I see the following:
Amasis: ¼ ½ ¾
Avenir: ¼ ½ ¾
Caecilia: ¼ ½ ¾
Georgia: ⅛ ¼ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ¾ ⅞
Gill Sans: ¼ ½ ¾
Kobo Nickel: ¼ ½ ¾
Malabar: ¼ ½ ¾
Rockwell: ¼ ½ ¾
Gothic MB101: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞
Ryumin: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞
Open Dyslexic: ¼ ½ ¾

Side Loaded:
Amaranth: ¼ ½ ¾ -- Missing characters replaced by spaces
Charis Sil SmCp Modified: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞
LexiaD DaMa: ¼ ½ ¾ -- Missing characters replaced by spaces

So the only stock fonts with full support are Gothic MB101 and Ryumin.

Worse is the fact that some of the side loaded fonts don't include an easily seen character to say "I can't display that".

[robko]

Originally Posted by lissandro.sosa

mmmm I tried this options laters,

but i said, this options not are in the power and sleep setting, there are only limited to 60 minutes. if I wanna never shutdown?, how i can change this settings, if previously i have in shutdown in 30 minutes?

You might be running into a difference in behaviour due to different "store brand" Kobo's not having the "never" option. I seem to remember some Kobo's (from FNAC in France maybe?) having this because they wanted their store branding to show up. Weird that you originally had the option and now doesn't though.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Does anyone have an epub for font testing? Something with the name of each font style written in that style, as an easy way to see which fonts are working properly and which not?

You could try my Font Tester file. If you have it's first page open and change fonts, the change should show up on the text still visible above the font control panel so you can quickly see if italic, bold and bold-italic work properly.

I've modified it to add several fractions so they can be easily tested with various fonts.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

DNSB has posted a very useful file here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...4&postcount=87.

I've used Sigil to add a little bit more to it, especially the word "officer" which a lot of fonts can't handle (the "ff" ligature is rendered as a blank). Please see attached file.

Thanks for your input in improving the usefulness of that test file. I've added several fractions to your changes as suggested by PeterT and re-uploaded it in a reply to GeoffR. I never bothered with the <i>, <em> and <strong> tags but it's likely that some people will find them useful. Any other changes you feel would make the file more useful to more people, feel free to do so.

Regards,
David

[tshering]

Originally Posted by lissandro.sosa

mmmm I tried this options laters,

but i said, this options not are in the power and sleep setting, there are only limited to 60 minutes. if I wanna never shutdown?, how i can change this settings, if previously i have in shutdown in 30 minutes?

Even if this option is not listed in the power and sleep settings of the menu, the value entered in the configuration file is respected (as long as you do not change the settings via the menu), cf. this post.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by PeterT

One of my gripes (yes I know I have many) is the support or lack there of for the common fractions. It's challenging to read a cook book without them present, so I took the test eBook and added 9 fractions to it; ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞

The situation is a little nicer with kepub.epubs. There, characters not supported by the selected font get automatically supplied by another font that supports them, provided there is one on the system. To my understanding the device chooses the alphabetically first font that supports the respective character for replacement font. Since FW 2.4.0 the two Japanese fonts have moved up in the alphabetical order (because of the prefix A-OTF). Therefore, and since these two fonts support a wide range of characters, they become easily the replacement fonts. The drawback is that these two fonts do not adjust well to the size of the selected font, cf. this post, point 2.

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Thanks for your input in improving the usefulness of that test file. I've added several fractions to your changes as suggested by PeterT and re-uploaded it in a reply to GeoffR. I never bothered with the <i>, <em> and <strong> tags but it's likely that some people will find them useful. Any other changes you feel would make the file more useful to more people, feel free to do so.

No problem. I was wondering about including all the special glyphs (fractions, ligatures etc) in the main text line, so that they get displayed in the different font-styles (bold, italics). This would trap the cases where a glyph is present in e.g., normal style but not bold/italic.

I was also thinking about having a whole sample paragraph (of several lines) in normal, to give an idea of the general reading experience with that font.