what have new the firmware 5.12.3?

[Jack426]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I have an Oasis running 5.12.3 firmware and Bookerly doesn't look all that bad to me.

I have attached a snippet from a screenshot of Bookerly text size 8 bold 1 showing "i" next to "w". The relative heights look good to me.

I found it to only be noticeable at lower sizes, I was using size 4 with no bold, and noticed that something just seemed off. It almost appears as though overshoots aren’t “overshooting” properly.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Jack426

I found it to only be noticeable at lower sizes, I was using size 4 with no bold, and noticed that something just seemed off. It almost appears as though overshoots aren’t “overshooting” properly.

I don't normally read with font sizes that small, but I tried it and you are right. The stem of the letter "i" is noticeably shorter than "w" at size 4 with boldness 0.

[Jack426]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I don't normally read with font sizes that small, but I tried it and you are right. The stem of the letter "i" is noticeably shorter than "w" at size 4 with boldness 0.

It’s definitely caused by Amazon’s update to the font. I ended up adding the previous version to my Kindle, which displays fine. Hopefully they’ll fix it in the next update, it seems odd that they would edit the font and not notice the bad rendering at lower font sizes.

I’m just glad to know what was causing it. I spent forever yesterday thinking that I had screwed something up in the CSS of the books I had added recently. I even went as far as thinking that maybe I had inadvertently corrupted something with the system and was contemplating resetting the device.

[PoP]

Originally Posted by xl743

What's new in the firmware 5.12.3?
New ugly "Bookerly" font. Before this firmware update Bookerly was great, but Amazon updated the font to 1.201 version and took away hinting data from it. So now freetype library (font rasterization software Kindle devices use) switches to "autohinting" mode and letters got uneven heights, especially with non-Latin characters.

Yup. To document further on my PW3. Though misalignments Jhowell and Jack426 reported can't be observed in my screenshots at size 5 and Boldness 1,

Bookerly v1.020 (from firmware 5.12.1)


Bookerly v1.201 (from firmware 5.12.3)


Show the hinting difference.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by PoP

Yup. To document further on my PW3. Though misalignments Jhowell and Jack426 reported can't be observed in my screenshots at size 5 and Boldness 1,

Bookerly v1.020 (from firmware 5.12.1)
Attachment 176678

Bookerly v1.201 (from firmware 5.12.3)
Attachment 176677

Show the hinting difference.

So the characters are more poorly rendered, and to make up for it they take up more horizontal space.

[TheSmitty]

So, is there a way to get the "old" Bookerly font if already updated to 5.12.3?

[JSWolf]

Has anyone tried the 5.12.3 version of Bookerly other then with a Kindle? Could the problem be an issue witht he font rendering and not the font?

[NiLuJe]

It was updated, and someone already confirmed that the changes was no more truetype hinting instructions, so, while other rendering engines may deal with an unhinted bookerly better, I wouldn't hold my breath for a miracle.

Truetype hinting is *specifically* targeted at making small font sizes more legible.

[PoP]

Originally Posted by Jack426

... I ended up adding the previous version to my Kindle, which displays fine. ...

Originally Posted by TheSmitty

So, is there a way to get the "old" Bookerly font if already updated to 5.12.3?

I didn't want to replace font.sqsh on the root file system so...

I used kindletool to extract the file system image from the 5.12.1 amazon firmware update,
then loop mounted the image,
then copied /usr/java/lib/fonts.sqsh,
then used unsquash to extract the Bookerly font from that squash file system,
then copied the 4 files to /mnt/us/fonts,
then read the book selecting the old Bookerly from the personalised view menu.

[JSWolf]

If anyone running 5.12.3 can install ChareInk (or already has it installed) please have a look at hoe it renders at small sizes. It has no hinting. I'd like ot know if should add hinting for a Kindle version or leave it as is. Thanks.

Here is the URL to download ChareInk. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

[hius07]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Has anyone tried the 5.12.3 version of Bookerly other then with a Kindle? Could the problem be an issue witht he font rendering and not the font?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...36#post3932936

[Jack426]

Originally Posted by TheSmitty

So, is there a way to get the "old" Bookerly font if already updated to 5.12.3?

I got a copy from The Digital Reader website and added it to the fonts folder on my Kindle. It won't display the font name when you select it from the list of fonts in the Page Settings menu, but it didn't seem to interfere with the default Bookerly font. However, I ended up renaming it with FontForge, mainly to locate it more easily.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If anyone running 5.12.3 can install ChareInk (or already has it installed) please have a look at hoe it renders at small sizes. It has no hinting. I'd like ot know if should add hinting for a Kindle version or leave it as is. Thanks.

Here is the URL to download ChareInk. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

No problem with it or any other fonts. It definitely seems to be restricted to Amazon's own fonts, and their odd choice of removing hinting, which appears to be necessary to properly render Bookerly.

BTW, thanks for ChareInk, I've been using it for a while and it looks great.

[PoP]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If anyone running 5.12.3 can install ChareInk (or already has it installed) please have a look at hoe it renders at small sizes. It has no hinting. I'd like ot know if should add hinting for a Kindle version or leave it as is. Thanks.

Here is the URL to download ChareInk. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

Using "ChareInk v1.1" at sizes 1 to 7:

[JSWolf]

@Jack426 and @Pop

Thank you for the information and screen grabs.

I don't know what's going on with Booklerly. ChareInk has no hinting as when it originally had hinting, someone said it looked better without hinting and it did for eInk. ChareInk looks quite good on a Kindle and the line height is a lot more reasonable (IMHO). Plus, you get more text per page with ChareInk then you do Bookerly. And no that I know ChareInk is working on 5.12.3, there's a Kindle PW3 I can update without worry about ChareInk not properly working.

[rtiangha]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Has anyone tried the 5.12.3 version of Bookerly other then with a Kindle? Could the problem be an issue witht he font rendering and not the font?

I noticed the same problem on my Glo HD at the smallest font sizes. It's less noticeable at higher font sizes. I normally read at one size higher than when the problem starts to become more visible which is why I've never noticed.

It's interesting to read the documentation on QT embedded and fonts (I believe that's what Kobo uses; not sure about Kindle). Since it uses Freetype, if a font has no hinting information, default behaviour is that it'll default to using the Freetype autohinter. The only way to disable that (I believe) is for the renderer to turn it explicitly off with FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING. I don't know if Kobos or Kindles do that or not.

I don't know if I'm interpreting this correctly, but does that mean it's possible that all of these fonts are getting autohinted despite some of us explicitly removing hinting information from our sideloaded fonts? Would it be better to rely on a font's default hints or things like ttfautohint to update fonts with crappy (or old) hinting information after all in order to avoid Freetype's autohinter?