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[Toxaris]

The reason you can make them even smaller is probably due to the fact that I keep all the ligatures. So, if the reader makes use of ligatures, they are at least there regardless of the subsetting.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

The reason you can make them even smaller is probably due to the fact that I keep all the ligatures. So, if the reader makes use of ligatures, they are at least there regardless of the subsetting.

Calibre also keeps ligatures. This was a problem when Calibre first had subsetting. Because ADE 2 on up uses ligatures, you got a missing character where you were supposed to have ligatures. That's long been fixed.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find that if I use ePUBOptimizer to reduce the size of TTF fonts, I can still get a little bit more by using Calibre after that to subset. It works better than either one on it's own. Also ePUBOptimizer optimizes images to be smaller without changing the resolution or quality. Try it, it will work rather well and it will make your book that much better. I have to say that hate is a good word in describing authors (who make their own eBook) and publishers who use graphics instead of an embedded font for some characters. This is a serious no-no and should never be done. You did it and I now hate your eBook.

Jon, mon sweetie curmudgeon:

Now, now. I have done this MANY times, when there is no choice. It's all well and good to blithely state that one should never embed an image instead of a font--but you are ignoring that many of us are making books that will be read on Kindle devices/readers, in addition to ePUB. Were I solely building ePUBs, I would never use an image instead of a font, but if you're building for Kindle, at the very least, you're stuck using an image for KF7. And the're brutes to do halfway decently, inline, mind you.

Don't assume that the people doing it are lazy. WE are not. We do it because we don't have a viable alternative. Or, hell, even an non-viable alternative.

@AlanHK: is your client sideloading the AZK to their iPad Kindle reader? or is s/he loading the MOBI file to their iPad? And, do you know what generation iPad s/he has?

Hitch

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

The reason you can make them even smaller is probably due to the fact that I keep all the ligatures. So, if the reader makes use of ligatures, they are at least there regardless of the subsetting.

No the reason calibre's subsetting works better is likely because it reads the rules from the GSUB table to figure out which glyphs actually need to be kept to support glyph substitution features (of which ligatures are just the simplest). So to use a trivial example, if you subset a document containing only the text: "finish" then calibre will only keep the ligatures for ff and fi but not fl, because there is no l in the text.

This is not a big optimization in latin languages, but for more complex scripts it can be a big saving.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Jon, mon sweetie curmudgeon:

Now, now. I have done this MANY times, when there is no choice. It's all well and good to blithely state that one should never embed an image instead of a font--but you are ignoring that many of us are making books that will be read on Kindle devices/readers, in addition to ePUB. Were I solely building ePUBs, I would never use an image instead of a font, but if you're building for Kindle, at the very least, you're stuck using an image for KF7. And the're brutes to do halfway decently, inline, mind you.

Don't assume that the people doing it are lazy. WE are not. We do it because we don't have a viable alternative. Or, hell, even an non-viable alternative.

@AlanHK: is your client sideloading the AZK to their iPad Kindle reader? or is s/he loading the MOBI file to their iPad? And, do you know what generation iPad s/he has?

Hitch

Can't you use media queries to do the images in the Mobi and embedded in the KF8? Do you embed in the ePub and images in the Mobi/KF8?

This is yet another pet peeve that publishers dumb down the ePub because of the Kindle.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can't you use media queries to do the images in the Mobi and embedded in the KF8? Do you embed in the ePub and images in the Mobi/KF8?

When we can, yes.

This is yet another pet peeve that publishers dumb down the ePub because of the Kindle.

Don't forget, Jon--not to sound like a mercenary bitch--God forfend--but generally, we're not being paid big bucks to do this work. Our average fee is less than the price of a perm for long hair at a typical hairdresser's, or dinner for 4 with wine at a 4-star restaurant. When we get to the point that the 5-6 hours of book creation time is supplemented with the same amount ot time "twiddling" around with it, we need to call it a day. Those of you who are a) making eBooks for yourselves and your own viewing pleasure, or b) "fixing" books that you find or buy or whatever, can take however much time you want. We, however, are a business. And I need to ensure that my bookmakers don't spend more hours on the book than I'm being paid to expend.

Just sayin'. That doesn't mean that we don't finish the books as perfectly as we can, and certainly, some books take a lot of extra time, but on the whole, over the course of the year, we need to make a profit, to ensure that everybody--me included, mind you--keep their jobs. ;-)

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Don't forget, Jon--not to sound like a mercenary bitch--God forfend--but generally, we're not being paid big bucks to do this work. Our average fee is less than the price of a perm for long hair at a typical hairdresser's, or dinner for 4 with wine at a 4-star restaurant. When we get to the point that the 5-6 hours of book creation time is supplemented with the same amount ot time "twiddling" around with it, we need to call it a day. Those of you who are a) making eBooks for yourselves and your own viewing pleasure, or b) "fixing" books that you find or buy or whatever, can take however much time you want. We, however, are a business. And I need to ensure that my bookmakers don't spend more hours on the book than I'm being paid to expend.

Just sayin'. That doesn't mean that we don't finish the books as perfectly as we can, and certainly, some books take a lot of extra time, but on the whole, over the course of the year, we need to make a profit, to ensure that everybody--me included, mind you--keep their jobs. ;-)

Hitch

What I've seen in ePub that's a carryover from Kindle eBooks are things that are easy to fix or not do in the first place. For example, images when an embedded font will do, an offset left margin and no offset right margin, fake blockquotes, and 1.2em line-height. all of those are easy to do in an ePub. It's not going to take a long time to do these things correctly.

What is it you do when you need to do something that KF8 can do but you cannot do the same in Mobi?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I've seen in ePub that's a carryover from Kindle eBooks are things that are easy to fix or not do in the first place. For example, images when an embedded font will do, an offset left margin and no offset right margin, fake blockquotes, and 1.2em line-height. all of those are easy to do in an ePub. It's not going to take a long time to do these things correctly.

Yes, but you're making QUANTUM assumptions there, boyo. In KF7, all those things are CORRECT to do. There are no blockquotes with offset right margins, for one thing, in KF7. That's why you see fake blockquotes, offset left margin with no matching right margin (I probably personally have...s**t, I dunno, 150 books out there with that it in, and company-wide, probably 1500.) The 1.2 line height is the standard mobi height (for either KF8 or KF7), and actually, Amazon does not want that changed. You have to tread rather carefully when you DO change it, to ensure that you don't screw the pooch on the K4iOS app, brah.

As far as the embedded font/image, you don't know whether or not the maker had the chutzpah to use an embedded font, or even if that option was available when the book was made! And moreover, there are very few firms that can make embedded fonts work at Amazon. If they made their book with Word --yeah, yeah, save me the spiel, we all know it's a cardinal sin--they certainly couldn't have done an embedded font.

What is it you do when you need to do something that KF8 can do but you cannot do the same in Mobi?

That one's easy. We make a new ePUB, and then modify it for mobi, prior to building the mobi therefrom. Hell, we do that on a good 95% of books, snookums.

This is the thing that far too many experts on these forums constantly forget--that for the average bookmaker, we don't have the luxury of ignoring KF7, as I see done here all the time. For example, Ruben posts CSS and HTML that's inspired--if you only have a Fire, PPW, etc.--a KF8 device. He does't deal with fallback coding via media queries. Those of us in the trenches do. I'm not saying that makes us better, or superior, or any crap like that, but please remember, there are still millions, or at least, hundreds of thousands of KF7 devices out there, and somebody has to make books that those folks can read. If you, Jon, were one of those folks--ye Gods, I can just imagine it!!!--you'd be RANTING about lack of KF7 support from all those blithe spirits that only make books that "look good" on KF8. Us? We make 'em look as good as we can on KF7, and their big brethren, the KF8s.

It's a LOT MORE work, but I admire Amazon's determination not to Apple their clientele and dump support for the older devices. The least I can make sure that we do is to walk the walk, since I've talked the talk.

Hitch