Font embedding frustration

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Margins, indents and font sizes are usually much better done with relative sizes like em or percentages. That way they will scale with the reader.

For things like indents, font sizes, etc. I can see/understand that, margins? If I set the margins to be relative (and not px), then if someone was to bump up the font size then the bigger they make it, the bigger my margins will be, too -- and the smaller the available text area as well. So you end up with bigger and bigger font sizes, and smaller and smaller text area, until... what? You'd end up with one word per line!

If you're going to set margins at all, wouldn't they be better done in px?

In that regard, I only have an ipad myself (apart from the ADE reader for PC, which I only just downloaded this morning), and in ibooks -- when you have it in the two-page landscape mode -- the viewing area is so small to begin with that I don't know why you would want to make it any smaller than it already is. I suppose there might be some contexts, but just for general "book reading" I can't imagine why anyone would want to (except, perhaps, for what I was thinking of doing before, using a background image on every page -- an idea which I've now scrapped).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Margins, indents and font sizes are usually much better done with relative sizes like em or percentages. That way they will scale with the reader.

Margins and Indents are best as em. A % can make them change too much based on the screen size of the device you are reading on.

[Toxaris]

I personally don't use percentages at all, only for line heights if I have to.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Psymon

If you're going to set margins at all, wouldn't they be better done in px?

Depends on which kind of margin. Margins are often used to add some spacing between elements (between paragraphs, between image and text, etc.). For those it's usually a good idea to have them scale with font size.

But if you mean page margins, I would still avoid px, because it might not work as you expect. In CSS, "px" is not a real pixel, but some kind of absolute unit whose size depends on the "typical viewing distance". I wouldn't be surprised if some reader implements it simply as a pixel, though, and even if the implementation is correct, I wouldn't trust what the developer thought was a typical viewing distance...

If you want some absolute (resolution and font size independent) unit, use "mm", "cm", "in", "pt" or "pc".

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I personally don't use percentages at all, only for line heights if I have to.

I do use percent for the base font size. Other then that, it's em.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Okay, my ignorance showing (again) here -- I never even heard of "ADE" until yesterday, in fact! But spurred by your reply here, I found that reader and installed it, and checked my epub in it -- everything seems to come out okay! No problems at all with displaying the font correctly, and although I only skimmed through it quickly, I didn't notice any issues with the lines wrapping in mid-word (due to those special characters) or anything. So that's reassuring.

No offense, but then you didn't try hard enough. I got your words to break just by resizing the reading pane. That's why I told you, it won't work. Don't forget, that ridiculous two-page, fill-the-monitor view that ADE defaults to when it installs bears no relationship to how 99% of the population will see your book, which is in a reader-sized screen: 3.5" by 4.75" with a 1/4" margin all-around.

This does bring up a related question, actually. For website design, there's a site somewhere (I forget the URL, off-hand) where one can check one's site in a TON of browsers -- like 20 or 30 or something, both different browsers and different versions of them -- all at the same time.

Is there any kind of site that's similar for checking epubs? Ideally, it would be nice to have an iPad, a Kindle, a Nook, and every other ereader -- but who the hell can afford that? And the "Kindle Previewer", but I really have to wonder if what one sees in that is actually how things look in the real thing. It would be nice if there was a website like that other one for website design.

No. Those of us in the biz full-time do have all of those devices, I'm sorry to say. Somewhere around here is an image of two Maine Coons lounging on about $3K worth of devices, on a (relative to 10 devices and 35lbs of Maine Coons) small table next to my desk in the office.

Of course, it would be even nicer if all these manufacturers could just come up with ONE standard -- and then all comply with it, of course.

Dream on. I gave up that bit of idealism about two years ago, when the whole "Apple hijacked the ePUB3 specs" thing became inescapably obvious.

Hitch

[st_albert]

Originally Posted by Hitch

No. Those of us in the biz full-time do have all of those devices, I'm sorry to say. Somewhere around here is an image of two Maine Coons lounging on about $3K worth of devices, on a (relative to 10 devices and 35lbs of Maine Coons) small table next to my desk in the office.

Ah, that's what's been missing from our operation. Maine Coon Cats. Unfortunately the boss won't budge on this issue until the current Resident Cat passes. (He's now about 20 human years old.)

Dream on. I gave up that bit of idealism about two years ago, when the whole "Apple hijacked the ePUB3 specs" thing became inescapably obvious.

Hitch

We've been able to restrain our idealism by observing the relative percentage of sales from Amazon, B&N, <other epub2> and Apple (my way, or the highway). Guess whose voice speaks loudest.

Albert, whose situation is significantly different than that of Hitch. Gottseidank.

[cybmole]

ADE:
the previous 1.7 version is much better then the current 2.0 version.
For some reason v1.7 will auto associate for ascm files & thus will open library loan downloads correctly , but v2.0 will not. ( in windows 7), and in my view the layout in 1.7 is nicer. Google will find you an installer.

To remove the 2 page display, just click enlarge text size, button, you then get a single page, as you would in an e-reader.

ADE is a very good PC tool for testing how epubs will look, & whether they will work ok, on sony e-readers. A crash in ADE <= > crash on sony reader (1:1 match in my experience) - whereas sigil & calibre are both too tolerant - a book can be fine in both of those yet can crash on reader or CSS can fail to work correctly on an ADE-based e-reader.

I don't know how folks test for kobo, nook etc, maybe they just buy all the devices

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Hitch

No offense, but then you didn't try hard enough. I got your words to break just by resizing the reading pane. That's why I told you, it won't work. Don't forget, that ridiculous two-page, fill-the-monitor view that ADE defaults to when it installs bears no relationship to how 99% of the population will see your book, which is in a reader-sized screen: 3.5" by 4.75" with a 1/4" margin all-around.

Oh, that's a bummer -- I just looked at again and resized the window(s), as you suggested, and see what you mean. Well, is there any other alternative to using "white-space: nowrap" that might do the trick for something like this, and keep those words together? I don't know of any.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Those of us in the biz full-time do have all of those devices, I'm sorry to say. Somewhere around here is an image of two Maine Coons lounging on about $3K worth of devices, on a (relative to 10 devices and 35lbs of Maine Coons) small table next to my desk in the office.

I guess if you're doing this professionally, I could see that, but I just can't afford that (maybe if my book became a bestseller, though -- ha ha).

Well, my book does seem to work okay on the iPad (in iBooks, at least). How blasphemous is it to design for just one reader/platform?

Thanks again so much for your input!

Ron

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Well, my book does seem to work okay on the iPad (in iBooks, at least). How blasphemous is it to design for just one reader/platform?

Thanks again so much for your input!

Ron

well it is unlikely to work on other readers anyway, as you are depending on support for embedded fonts and for lots of special characters.

expect to see lots of text appearing as ????? on less functional e-readers or lots of "cant show this character" icons .A version for Kindle is probably a non-starter for the same reasons.

but the good news is that all the ( non-apple) e-readers I know off can display PDF so you could have stopped at the "working PDF" stage & be well into your next project already

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Margins and Indents are best as em. A % can make them change too much based on the screen size of the device you are reading on.

Indents (such as first line of paragraph indents) are certainly best done in em.

Margins (of the whole page) are best set to zero (or not set at all). Let the ebook rendering device set what margins it likes.

If you feel you must provide default page margins, set them to an absolute measurement, e.g. 12pt

Pixels should not be used, unless you really are interested in the resolution of the display device.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by cybmole

well it is unlikely to work on other readers anyway, as you are depending on support for embedded fonts and for lots of special characters.

expect to see lots of text appearing as ????? on less functional e-readers or lots of "cant show this character" icons .A version for Kindle is probably a non-starter for the same reasons.

but the good news is that all the ( non-apple) e-readers I know off can display PDF so you could have stopped at the "working PDF" stage & be well into your next project already

Yeah, that's true, I suppose if I really wanted to be sure that it works cross-platform (or cross-reader) that I could just include the PDF version. In that regard, this work is actually in two parts -- the original is in "modern" English, which I would have no problem displaying in epub format, and then the same, entire text transliterated into late-Middle English (which I shared here).

In that regard, is there a recommended way for including both things in one epub, i.e. to have the main/modern text, and then "embed" (somehow) the PDF version into that? I suppose one would just create a link in the epub to the PDF file? Or is there a better way?

I still think it would be soooooo nice to have this epub version of that "olde" version, even though I only know for sure that it works okay in iBooks on the iPad (since I can't test it anywhere else). Is it terribly wrong to design an epub specifically for just one platform? Like, I could include a note that the work is "oPtimized for iBooks" (or something), and at that particular "olde" section state that "the following pages may not display correctly in readers other than iBooks" (or whatever).

Is that such a terrible thing to do?

[Toxaris]

Don't worry about the fonts. Most readers work fine with embedded fonts and displaying all the characters in the font as long as the embedding is done correctly.

You can of course limit it to iBooks if you want, it is your book. But you will loose a big portion of the potential market.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cybmole

ADE:
the previous 1.7 version is much better then the current 2.0 version.
For some reason v1.7 will auto associate for ascm files & thus will open library loan downloads correctly , but v2.0 will not. ( in windows 7),

That is not true. I do have ADE 2.0 installed here under Windows 7 and it is associated with .acsm files and ePub do open with ADE 2.0 when I download the .acsm files. I still have ADE 1.7 installed. I had ADE 1.7 installed when I installed ADE 2.0.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

You can of course limit it to iBooks if you want, it is your book. But you will loose a big portion of the potential market.

Well, that late-Middle English version is really just more of an "appendix" -- or "bonus", of sorts" -- to what is really the main (and modern) text, and I suppose I could do a version specifically for the iPad (and I presume iPhones) that included that, and then a version without that appendix for other platforms. This particular epub of mine (which is my first) I really don't expect to make me a bundle or anything -- the entire text of it is freely available online as a website anyway, and can't imagine charging anything more than 99 cents for it -- but it's a work that's very near and dear to me and that's why I chose it as my "first" project. I do have other projects in mind that aren't quite as convoluted as this one, and I'm sure I'd have no problem putting together in a way that would work in a variety of platforms/readers.

It's definitely been a learning -- and, by extension, decision-making -- process for me!