Aura HD Kindle Bookerly font problem with italics

[AbominableDavid]

I loaded the Amazon bookerly font on my Aura HD. I like the way the font looks, but things that should be in italic show up in bold instead.

I copied all four ttf files (Bookerly-Bold, Bookerly-BoldItalic, Bookerly-Regular, and Bookerly-RegularItalic to the fonts folder on my HD.

Actually, now that I typed that I realized maybe it's a problem with "RegularItalic" instead of just "Italic."

I just changed the filename to "Bookerly-Italic" and now Italics show up correctly.

I'm going to leave this up in case anyone else has a similar problem.

[John F]

This doesn't seem to work on my Glo HD; I always get bold italic instead of italic when using Bookerly. I tried renaming Bookerly-RegularItalic to Bookerly-Italic and no difference. I rebooted after renaming the file.

[oren64]

EDIT: Not working, RegularItalic is BoldItalic.

[GERGE]

Renaming doesn't always work. I use TransType for metadata related font issues. You can also use free FontFOrge. Also, if you strip Bookerly's hints, it performs much better.

[oren64]

I succeed to change the RegularItalic(bold) font to Italic by FontForge.
open "Bookerly-RegularItalic.ttf" by FontForge->file->generate fonts->ttf extension (TrueType)->generate.

[rashkae]

I just removed the BoldItalic variant. For the few times a book actually uses BoldItalic, the Kobo can fake it well enough with just the Italic version.

If you like reading at small font sizes (on an HD device, H20 or Glow HD), try adding this to the [Reading] section of your kobo.conf file

readingFontWeight\Bookerly=0.20

[cybmole]

i have similar issues with bookerly , but in a different app/ device ( mantano on Fire tablet). yet on PC, in word for example the bookely font works in all bold and/or italic modes, as it should, likewise in the amazon fire app

I noticed the mismatch within names, and I checked other fonts.
I saw that both bookerly and drioid-Serif append regular within the file name. most other fonts do not

so the majority of font sets go name.ttf, name-bold.ttf, name-italic.ttf...

but a minority use name-regular.ttf, name-bold.ttf ....

and some font sets appear as a single instance not as a set of 4 ?

i would have thought that internal names would exist within the files, rather than a dependence on file name ?

I also noticed that adding / removing "regular" to standardise the name was having some effect but I ran out of testing patience before logically working through all combinations

so what are the rules for how set should / must? be named in order to work

my final example. I think that my mantano app sees bookerly-regular and bookerly-bold as two different fonts , because of the broken naming convention. yet it has no trouble with driod serif which is named similarly...
most puzzling ?

i want to have a master set of fonts so that all my reading options - kobo, fire.,voyage.. have same font choices but bookerly is not playing nice or consistently

[GERGE]

Names shouldn't really matter, you should check metadata.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Names shouldn't really matter, you should check metadata.

1. how do I do that for a .ttf please

2. so if I take a genuine font file, original-name.ttf and rename it to test.ttf. i should not then see a font choice called "test", but i should still see a font called original-name in the reader

3. when the kobo, or whatever, says you now have a font called bookerly - it shoudl be getting that name from metadata, not from a file name ?

[GeoffR]

When mentioning a problem or solution for a font naming issue, please also mention if you have tested in the EPUB or KEPUB readers. There are some fonts that work fine in the EPUB reader but have problems in the KEPUB reader, perhaps vice versa too, and only the KEPUB reader will automatically create italic/bold versions of fonts if those styles are missing.

I haven't tried Bookerly, but the problems sound similar to what happens to Gentium Basic in the KEPUB reader.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

I haven't tried Bookerly, but the problems sound similar to what happens to Gentium Basic in the KEPUB reader.

I'm pretty sure there is no legal way to try Bookerly on anything but a Kindle.

[doubleshuffle]

I don't know about the Bookerly font, but for a font to work properly on a Kobo device, the internal font name and the name of the file should be identical. Open the font in a font editor and check for full font name. If your font file is called Whatever-Regular.ttf, then the internal font name should be Whatever-Regular as well.

If the font names are identical and it still doesn't work, I have no idea what to do. So far, whenever I had an issue with a font on my Kobo that was the problem.

ETA after reading Geoff's post above: I only use regular epubs, never kepubs, so I can't say anything about them.

[trekk]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I just removed the BoldItalic variant. For the few times a book actually uses BoldItalic, the Kobo can fake it well enough with just the Italic version.

That looks really ugly, especially in kepubs, where you will see the faked Italic on every page in the footer.

I had the Bookerly issue in kepubs on a Glo HD. Renaming the font names to Bookerly.ttf, Bookerly-b.ttf, Bookerly-i.ttf, Bookerly-z.ttf and restarting the device solved that problem for me. Italic shows up correctly now.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm pretty sure there is no legal way to try Bookerly on anything but a Kindle.

I'm sure it is against Amazon's terms and conditions to use it with anything but a Kindle or Amazon app. But then it is against Amazon's terms and conditions to remove DRM from kindle books, or to read kindle books on anything other than a Kindle or amazon app.

As I understand it, when the the terms and conditions of a contract conflict with the law, then the law wins. So it is legal to remove DRM and to read kindle books on other devices in many countries despite what Amazon's T&Cs say, as long as doing so doesn't break other laws such as copyright law. Perhaps the same applies to fonts?

Edit: Of course to use it I would have to obtain the font legally in the first place, such as by buying a Kindle with the font installed. I don't mean to suggest that the font could be distributed, any more than a purchased ebook could be.

[GERGE]

Originally Posted by cybmole

1. how do I do that for a .ttf please

2. so if I take a genuine font file, original-name.ttf and rename it to test.ttf. i should not then see a font choice called "test", but i should still see a font called original-name in the reader

3. when the kobo, or whatever, says you now have a font called bookerly - it shoudl be getting that name from metadata, not from a file name ?

I use TransType for easy editing. But I also have Glyphs Mini. But you could use open-source FontForge too.

And yes, font names shouldn't matter at all in a proper software. I just gave some random names to the font files of the Bookerly I optimized for my Glo; I edited them with Glyphs and FontForge myself, so I know that metadata is correctly set.

It appears Kobo's software for recognizing type isn't that good. It checks both filenames and metadata. With random names and proper metadata, typeface family is recognized correctly but the styles are all messed up. Random even, I believe. With proper filenames and wrong metadata what you get is already written here so I didn't test it.

Therefore for Kobo, we must both have metadata and filenames correct.