Improved Bookerly

[raghiid]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

What kind of problem? Are you seriously trying to tell me that hinting is necessary on a resolution of 300 ppi?

Dude, it looks way off from the older version.
The letters in the new one look weird, some taller some shorter. Also, The spacing between words is not as uniform as before.
But I don't think hinting has anything to do with it, because in one book it looked normal again, and in another it reverted back.

[Alborghetti]

I think there is something else going on. On 5.12.5 when I change books, the font in which the book opens is not the one I selected in the style I use. I have to change the font, and then change back to the one I was using, so that the device displays it correctly. I am not sure what the "wrong" font is, but it looks like Bookerly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

What kind of problem? Are you seriously trying to tell me that hinting is necessary on a resolution of 300 ppi?

This is from a post by jhowell in the 5.12.3 firmware thread. It is size 4. It's not even and notice how the i is shorter then the w.

[Gibbo]

Is it possible to add it to the kindle app (Android)?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Gibbo

Is it possible to add it to the kindle app (Android)?

Didn't you see my post shoing how off the Bookerly is at a amllish size? It's not improved. It's broken.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Didn't you see my post shoing how off the Bookerly is at a amllish size? It's not improved. It's broken.

Yeah. fwiw I've dug out the original and current Bookerly and have added to my huge bulging todo list to look at improving FreeType's autohinter, using Bookerly as a useful (but rare) example of the autohinter getting it wrong. The whole point of it is that most manual hinting should be unnecessary: this sort of uneven baseline is not meant to happen.

(Mind you, the way my todo list is it'll be about 2027 before I get to it, and I'll probably find it was a bug in FreeType fixed in 2019 and Amazon just never bothered to apply the fix and even if I do fix it, it'll probably be about 2040 before the fix makes it to any Kindles -- but what else can one do, etc.)

[JSWolf]

What I want to know is what's the best way to add hinting back to Bookerly,

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is from a post by jhowell in the 5.12.3 firmware thread. It is size 4. It's not even and notice how the i is shorter then the w.

I rest my case. You should stop pixel peeping at fonts and rather enjoy reading your books. Enjoy them on anything but a Kindle as you do anyways.

[NiLuJe]

@NullNix: They're surprisingly sprightly at tracking upstream FreeType, despite the god-awful state of the rest of the rootfs .

It's also unfortunately heavily patched, more and more as time passes, so, who knows...
Also, interesting tidbit: I'd have to re-double check, but, for instance, I'm pretty sure the new Bookerly is completely fine in KOReader when rendered... *actually* unhinted. Okay, now I see what you mean, if they kept the autohinter on for the new Bookerly, that was a dumb rookie mistake (but mildly understandable if you're familiar with how tricky getting FT to actually do what you want can be ;p).

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@NullNix: They're surprisingly sprightly at tracking upstream FreeType, despite the god-awful state of the rest of the rootfs .

It's also unfortunately heavily patched, more and more as time passes, so, who knows...
Also, interesting tidbit: I'd have to re-double check, but, for instance, I'm pretty sure the new Bookerly is completely fine in KOReader when rendered... *actually* unhinted. Okay, now I see what you mean, if they kept the autohinter on for the new Bookerly, that was a dumb rookie mistake (but mildly understandable if you're familiar with how tricky getting FT to actually do what you want can be ;p).

Honestly, the autohinter (especially not the new one) isn't supposed to make things worse: if it's turning a nice-looking unhinted font into a baseline-wobbly thing like the new Bookerly, that's still a bug you can't expect users to go around fiddling the autohinter on and off for specific fonts! (Assuming they even can: Amazon could do it in this case, but nobody else could.)

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I want to know is what's the best way to add hinting back to Bookerly,

Take the glyphs from the new font, the hinting from the old, combine them, write hints for all the new unhinted glyphs not present in the old font (may be a *lot* of work: hand-hinting is subjective black magic). Or improve the autohinter so we don't *need* the hints to get the baselines non-wobbly (it really does look like it's only getting the baselines wrong enough to notice: the rest of the glyph shapes look OK).

Because typography is hard and I don't even know what most of the new glyphs are *supposed* to look like, but I can do software, I have more hope that I can do the latter. Admittedly this is quite like writing memory allocators in that improving one case is likely to damage others, but I have trust that if I screw up FreeType's autohinter badly enough, people will let me know :P

[corinthian]

Hi raghiid, I thought I'd mention that this font suffers from an issue that's been plaguing Kobo users that want to use the Bookerly font, as described here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ge#post4000559

To summarise, italic text is displayed as bold italic on Kobo devices when using the Bookerly font, probably due to the fact that all v1.020 files doing the rounds online are in fact the same files. I understand that this is the Kindle sub, but I thought I would mention it as I'm sure people will stop by here in search of a solution to that problem (as I did).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by raghiid

I've always hated how when I increase boldness, the text shifts, making me lose focus for a second. So I upped the em size of the font (from 1000 to a proper 2048) and removed its hints using fontforge and it seems to have worked. With every boldness increase, the words remain static.

I used the old Bookerly v1.020, the version before Amazon ruined it. And I renamed it to DaltonMaag, the typographer.

One item with these fonts. The Regular and Italic variants show the Panose font weight as Medium which I changed to Book while the BoldItalic variant shows the Panose weight as Demi which I changed to Bold. The Bold variant was already set to a Panose weight of Bold. I don't think it makes any difference on a Kindle but on a Kobo ereader, it helps with kepubs showing the correct font variant.

[corinthian]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One item with these fonts. The Regular and Italic variants show the Panose font weight as Medium which I changed to Book while the BoldItalic variant shows the Panose weight as Demi which I changed to Bold. The Bold variant was already set to a Panose weight of Bold. I don't think it makes any difference on a Kindle but on a Kobo ereader, it helps with kepubs showing the correct font variant.

Yes, that's exactly the fix that I used, as discussed in the other thread in the Kobo sub. Thanks for providing a link to the modified file.

[Waylander]

When I set DaltonMaag to bold in my KF8 books, it works until I start a new chapter, and then for some reason the bottom margin gets higher up the page. What's the cause of this?