To Embed Fonts or Not to Embed Fonts

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by najgori

We could badminton our opinions all day.
I think it is better to start somewhere (blitz or paul salvette css framework) and learn by editing existing code.
You think it is better to start with empty sheet of paper and stumble upon every device glitches and nuances. Well, good luck with that.
I will here rest my case.

Sure you can edit existing code. But do you know what to do when you want to edit it? You have to know what you are doing. You have to know how to edit the existing code. Also, the existing CSS has to match the classes in your eBook. How are you creating the book? How are you getting it from whatever format it is to ePub?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You have it all wrong. A template like you are suggesting is not going to help. You need to create the CSS based on what you need it to be, not what some template has for CSS.

Deletion. -Ed/

By template, najgori meant taking an "already working EPUB" and tweaking the innards for your own purposes... similar to how many of us here learned... by picking apart ebooks and seeing how they work.

Originally Posted by najgori

I think it is better to start somewhere (blitz or paul salvette css framework) and learn by editing existing code.

Agreed... but I would avoid those two mentioned.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you are going to be creating eBooks, [...] The idea is to keep it clean and simple and that requires doing ithe coding by hand. Also, clean and simple means better compatibility across a range of devices and programs.

Agreed, although sometimes it's best to just go back to the source document and clean it there. This will make converting and cleaning the HTML much easier.

For a clean source document, the best thing you can do is to learn to use Styles. Here's the video I've been referencing a lot lately: "How to REALLY use Microsoft Office: Word Styles 101". If you already know HTML+CSS, Styles are very intuitive (it's pretty much assigning classes and <span>s).

Then if you keep your book's Styles/CSS simple, you only have to do minor tweaks to handle the occasional odd/unique cases.

Like mine... I've done 550+ books, all using ~ the same CSS for 8 years.

Anyway, according to keress's initial post, they already know HTML+CSS, so all that would be needed is learning what's safe and what's not in ebooks.

[JSWolf]

The video on Word Styles 101 is excellent. I highly recommend it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The video on Word Styles 101 is excellent. I highly recommend it.

I dunno, Jon--I've watched a few minutes and so far, he hasn't even mentioned WHY they matter. Does he?

Hitch

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by keress

I've seen articles cautioning against embedding fonts -- articles eight years old. I'm trying to get a feel for what the current wisdom is. I was excited to learn that epub simply uses HTML and CSS. I've been writing both pretty much on a daily basis since 1999. I have a novel written in ms word. I used Kindle to make an ebook, but now I want to use epub. It seems to be offering much better creative control of my material.

I converted the .docx to HTML and then spent FAR too much time taking out all that crappy ms word code. I'll look at a better converter in the future. Any suggestions? I want everything gone except all italics, bolding, links, etc. All those things I'd have to read the whole thing word-for-word to rebuild.

The print version of the book is using two fonts I really like. They're both from Google fonts (TTF fonts). I did all the embedding. It looks great in Sigil and Chrome epub reader. I even got some drop caps to display perfectly with just a minimum of CSS styling.

Then I tried viewing it in Adobe Digital Editions. I'm very disappointed. It's rendering fonts in funky ways. I have a slight variant for the first paragraph in a chapter. It just has no initial indent. And there's a span styling a Drop Cap. In Adobe, that whole paragraph is rendered as bold. No drop cap is displayed. I thought maybe it was getting the 'bold' idea from the drop cap, but that doesn't use a bold, so it makes no sense. It seems Adobe can't handle a simple 'span.'

I don't get it. I'm using very basic, solid CSS tags. All weird MS Word stuff is gone. Why can't Adobe read basic CSS?

So, all the others have addressed your CSS and all that--and yes, you need some work on that.

I'll talk about the wisdom--or not--of embedding fonts. You've seen what your Kindle version actually looks like, and I hope that you've taken it off sale, if indeed it looks like that--and you can pretty much trust the people who've posted here on that front.

You should NOT use embedded fonts unless/until you actually know how to use them. You have made some fundamental mistakes around the fonts--the CSS, like for Bold, etc. and size setting, but you need to learn how to use your fonts correctly and to NOT force the reader to see them on the body, particularly.

For Amazon, that's not even optional; if you force a body font, prepare for the inevitable KindleQualityNotice requiring you to FIX IT.

You need to do wider testing--GoogleChrome and Sigil alone are not remotely adequate, as you've seen. When you set a body font to be 1.2rem and the line-height to 135%, that is also going to be heavily overridden, esp. at Amazon, which will NOT honor that line-height.

And kerning? Fuhgeddaboudit. And what happens, when your reader turns that Gentium body font OFF, but the kerning remains? YOWCH!

So...you need a lot more training, Padawan, before you deploy fonts. When the time comes, you CAN set a "preferred" body font--but not one that gives the reader no choice. You should think about just using chapter head and title page fonts, for now, if you must.

Good luck.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I dunno, Jon--I've watched a few minutes and so far, he hasn't even mentioned WHY they matter. Does he?

Hitch

He's not talking styles in terms of eBooks. But if the person watching knows why styles matters, this will help show how to use styles.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

He's not talking styles in terms of eBooks. But if the person watching knows why styles matters, this will help show how to use styles.

I wasn't talking about books or eBooks. If the person watching it knows WHY Styles matter, why the hell would they watch this?

And is there some reason he sticks his mug in there? Has NO purpose at all.

I can't believe that anyone wouldn't epxlain the big picture, on styles, overall. Yes, the nav pane. OUTLINING, which he totally ignored. Just...well, it's 5 years old, so it won't get fixed. Seems a shame.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I wasn't talking about books or eBooks. If the person watching it knows WHY Styles matter, why the hell would they watch this?

And is there some reason he sticks his mug in there? Has NO purpose at all.

I can't believe that anyone wouldn't epxlain the big picture, on styles, overall. Yes, the nav pane. OUTLINING, which he totally ignored. Just...well, it's 5 years old, so it won't get fixed. Seems a shame.

Hitch

I did look at two other videos on styles and they were rubbish. This one at least showed useful features and how easy styles really can be.

Thing is, even if you know why styles matter does not mean you know how to use styles. So learning how to use styles is a good thing. Remember, Word comes with no documentation and the user is left to fend on his/her own.

[Quoth]

Word used to have a good help. Before that it had printed manuals.

However both only good if you know a concept exists and just want to know where they put the commands.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Word used to have a good help. Before that it had printed manuals.

However both only good if you know a concept exists and just want to know where they put the commands.

MS used to have a really slamming toot, on styles, outlining, and all that jazz. I wonder if I can find it again?

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

MS used to have a really slamming toot, on styles, outlining, and all that jazz. I wonder if I can find it again?

That would be glorious.

Side Note: Since I don't personally use word processors... I haven't gone researching in-depth on them (yet). I know how to apply them and clean up garbage, but I do most of my typing in text editors. Would be nice to gather a lot of the best tutorials in one blog post, then point people towards that to learn Styles.

Originally Posted by Hitch

I dunno, Jon--I've watched a few minutes and so far, he hasn't even mentioned WHY they matter. Does he?

Every time I mentioned the Styles video (at least 6 or 7 times within the past year)... I always include Microsoft's "Word 2013: Use Quick Styles" video too... I still think it's a great quick overview of the why/how.

The one time I took the lazy way out and only linked to 1/2, Hitch swoops in to complain.

Side Note: Anyway, the tools for Styles are getting better all the time.

LibreOffice 7.0 has been working on Styles + Navigator enhancements (their version of the TOC).

All the more reason to learn how to use Styles and apply them consistently! If only just for making your chapter headings, so you can jump around the document much more easily!

Technical Side Note: And there's two future Styles concepts floating around for LibreOffice:

• Styles Inspector
  
  • Similar to "Inspect" in browser pages, where you can see a sidebar with all the attributes being applied/overwritten
• Styles Highlighter
  
  • Will color-code all the applied Styles + show directly formatted text.

For more details, see the video of the FOSDEM 2020 talk, "Proposal to inspect and highlight styles in Writer" and/or read the article from last year.