the new bookerly font

[cybmole]

On Kindle Fire, I noticed yesterday that copying the bookerly fonts from thetablet system fonts folder ( where Amazon put them) into the mantano reader app fonts folder only partially works.
In mantano, bookerly displays OK for normal and for italic, but not for bold. any bold text displays as normal. Selecting any other font shows the same bold text as bold, so it is not a book coding issue.

after mucho testing e.g. trying the same 4 bookerly font ttf fiels on PCi, also. removing and re-adding to mantano I conclude that there is some glitch either in the internal naming in the bookerly-Bold.ttf or in mantano's handling of it.
When it is included in the mantano fonts folder. mantano shows an extra unnamed font in its theme-list of available fonts selection (and that blank name font is actually the bookerly bold) - if I select that no name font I get bold everywhere.
the bug seems specific to bookerly - I have added other fonts e.g. caecilia , droid serif to mantano using the exact same process - by adding t 4 x ttf and they are fine

i suppose I need to find a 3rd reader app that I can add bookerly to, in order to prove whether the problme is with mantano reader app( as I supsect) or with the ttf ?

[crane3]

Check Bookerly font with MoonReader; I've got the MoonReader Pro & it is able to select the Bookerly font on my Fire HDX without any copying. Was very surprised that MoonReader Pro also looked into the Fire HDX's font directory for font selections!

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by crane3

Check Bookerly font with MoonReader; I've got the MoonReader Pro & it is able to select the Bookerly font on my Fire HDX without any copying. Was very surprised that MoonReader Pro also looked into the Fire HDX's font directory for font selections!

if it is not too much trouble, can you check whether bold is working ok with bookerly in moon pro please

[crane3]

Originally Posted by cybmole

if it is not too much trouble, can you check whether bold is working ok with bookerly in moon pro please

Just checked & bold is bold while the regular text is regular. The book used for checking is "A Rising Thunder" by David Weber; the book does have many selections that are in bold. However, under Bookerly, the bold texts are also italic; then under Literata, the texts are also italic but it does look like the Literata italic isn't as slanted as the Bookerly italic-bold which made Bookerly look like italic(?).

Actually, I don't know if the bold text is even supposed to be italic!

I just used the "total commander" file manager to copy as I can use a 2 panel view for copying/moving like just dragging the item to another panel as it is more convenient for me. Have you tried re-copying Bookerly for use?

[cybmole]

interesting - I discovered that I do already own Moon + on Kindle Fire, I'd forgotten that.

So it finds bookerly fonts all by itself as you say, and in my test case bold seems to work fine, no issues with bold bits also going italic on me.

So there'as probably a bug in mantano & probably not worth the hassle of trying to convince then its there, as they can just say that bookerly is not a supported font.

Altough all I have to do is copy it from one folder to another on the Fire, the absolute legality of doing that in order to allow a 3rd party app to use a Kinlde font is questionable , I guess

i did all sort of recopying, and also tricks like forcing bold in the theme options. Mantano misfiles that font internally, it classes it as an unnamed font and does not link it to the other 3 bookerly ttf files I reckon.

I am not a font expert, I read that the ttf file name is they key to identifying a font, but maybe there's an internal file identifier also?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Altough all I have to do is copy it from one folder to another on the Fire, the absolute legality of doing that in order to allow a 3rd party app to use a Kinlde font is questionable , I guess

I see no problem with it, personally. It's a part of the firmware, and available for any application to use. When application "A" installs a font on your Windows PC or Mac, do you worry about using that font in application "B"? It's licensed for your device.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I see no problem with it, personally. It's a part of the firmware, and available for any application to use. When application "A" installs a font on your Windows PC or Mac, do you worry about using that font in application "B"? It's licensed for your device.

technically, it is not part of firmware, it has been added to a software folder within android system folders.

I don't worry about it in windows , it is I believe explicit in the windows T&C that system fonts can be used in any PC program, but who is to say that amazon play to same rules

e.g. when I got strongly warned about copyright for posting a copy here a few months ago, I pointed out that licencing terms do not seem to be explicitly stated anywhere. it just arrived on my device, unsolicited, one day.

so what " rules" govern e.g. whether I can put a copy of the font that I was " given" into my dropbox, onto my PC.... or even into another app's data folder.

I personally have no issue with other apps on my fire using the new font, we have already established that moon reader pro does so without asking and works OK, but I can envisage Mantano support saying " we are not licensed to use that font" so we can't test for a bug / can't help you....

and is it a technical licence breach to place a copy to where calibre viewer can use it, or example

[crane3]

Did some checking with different fonts: minion pro & droid serif. It looks the the bold italic is a function of the font since minion pro & droid doesn't have that displayed on the Mantano. Interestingly, both Bookerly & Literata are "recent" fonts & may be the "new" way(?).

Minion Pro & Droid Serif just display the passage font as italic without it being in bold for the same book/page.

So now, Mantano may have a problem but could be something in the format or font specs? Which is correct or is supposed to be correct? Only way to check is to check a printed copy!

[cybmole]

Hmmm, I thoguh I had droid serif workign OK, but I was not testign for bold+italic. I@d have to go back & look for instances of that.
Easiest way to test though is to over ride wheat it in the book. go to mantano theme properties and tick force bold and tick force italic. that makes ALL text display as ticked and should quickly show which fonts are OK which are not.

I usually read win mantano with sideloaded Caecilia and i am sure that does all the combinations OK.

also mantano development tend to fix two bugs, add in one new one, with each release so if we are on different versions we could be seeing different behaviours.

[WillAdams]

Legally, it's a function of the licensing agreement negotiated by the typeface designer and the company doing the distribution.

It seems pretty obvious the limits intended by placing the font somewhere other than the normal locations.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Legally, it's a function of the licensing agreement negotiated by the typeface designer and the company doing the distribution.

It seems pretty obvious the limits intended by placing the font somewhere other than the normal locations.

i don't follow your final sentence. On kindle fire, the bookerly font is placed by amazon in the system fonts folder. some 3rd party apps ( e.g. moon pro) look there, others ( e.g. mantano ) do not.

i read in one google link that it is a font designed exclusively for kindle devices, but nothing about only for amazon's own apps.
That implies it may never appear in Kindle for PC / Mac, but hopefully my Voyage will get it sometime soon.

[Barbara1955]

I got the Bookerly font last week on my new PW2 I found it too Light. I could hardly se to read it. After 30 mins [tried it twice] My eyes Hurt! So I went back to Helvetica.

[zebradude]

Originally Posted by Katie1

I got the Bookerly font last week on my new PW2 I found it too Light. I could hardly se to read it. After 30 mins [tried it twice] My eyes Hurt! So I went back to Helvetica.

I felt EXACTLY the same way. I really loved the Bookerly font on my tablets but on my Voyage it was WAY to light.

So sad as I was really looking forward to it!

[adamselene]

FWIW, I like Bookerly just fine for reading on the PW3. I also like PT Serif (which is free). IMO, the only substantial difference in readability is that Bookerly has a smaller line height, so the text formats more compactly.

BTW you can also trivially extract the 4 Bookerly TTF files from the K4PC executable.

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by adamselene

FWIW, I like Bookerly just fine for reading on the PW3. I also like PT Serif (which is free). IMO, the only substantial difference in readability is that Bookerly has a smaller line height, so the text formats more compactly.

BTW you can also trivially extract the 4 Bookerly TTF files from the K4PC executable.

Nothing to do with the height of the letters Everything to do with how Thin the letters are Not Bold in other words. BTW you can change your height or Size of letter with the Aa Some times that will make it bold But Not in Bookery