Font selection for epubs?

[RootlessAgrarian]

I am not sure how tricky a feature this would be to implement... but...

Ideally, my "perfect" ebook reader would allow me to remember -- per book -- what font I wanted to read that book in. It's part of the aesthetic experience of reading.... the font should be old-fashioned for "old classic" literature: for example Kipling or Conan Doyle might be appropriately dressed in Goudy Old Style or Baskerville Old Face. Nostalgic kid-books might look comfortingly familier in Century Schoolbook. More recent literature like William Gibson might call for a more modern face.

Now, I have epubs in hand and I have Calibre, so I can make my own "editions" -- embed my own fonts and edit the CSS files and so on (very tedious artisanal stuff), but this would hardwire each epub for just one font, and I'd have to store N copies of fonts in many epubs on the reader (what a waste of space). What I'd really prefer is to store N fonts on the reader and assign a font to an epub anytime during the reading process, while the book is "open" -- to be remembered, like a bookmark. The assignment I suppose would be fprgotten when that epub is deleted from the reader.

I am as yet a newbie to this software realm and so am not sure whether I'm asking for the moon and the stars here, or a relatively trivial (if tedious) bit of bookkeeping. So far the native firmware (and Tirwal) on the Hanlin V3 offer only one font change option: you can change from the "default" system font to another font of the user's choice, but at the topmost level, not per book. And I have not yet been able to make even that basic selection affect the display of ebooks. I'm still exploring the html and css inside the epub zip archives from PG and other sources, and doing document conversions with Calibre to see what effect various format tweaks have on the output.

In other words, I'm ignorant and well aware I may be talking through my hat :-) but "all I want" is to be able to choose what font is used to display an epub on my V3 -- for both readability and aesthetic pleasure. Is there any prospect (hope) that OI may provide this feature any time in the next year or so?

[dottedmag]

Who knows? Open a ticket and we'll see.

[RootlessAgrarian]

Originally Posted by dottedmag

Who knows? Open a ticket and we'll see.

I opened a ticket just for the sake of learning the ticket system but the more I play with the epub reader in OI, the more I suspect that just about everything I'm asking for is already there :-) the only thing I have yet to discover is how *long* the selection of font for an epub persists. everything else -- ability to change fonts while reading, font dir with naming convention where I can put my own ttf fonts -- is implemented already.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by RootlessAgrarian

the more I play with the epub reader in OI, the more I suspect that just about everything I'm asking for is already there :-) the only thing I have yet to discover is how *long* the selection of font for an epub persists.

FBReader's initial philosophy was that the reader should select the font they liked best and use it for all ebooks, so the font selection is a global selection. On the other hand, some CSS is now honored for ePubs in FBReader. I don't think this includes fonts (it certainly does not include embedded fonts), but it could in the future. One problem, though, is that the Font Family (etcetera) would have to be exactly right in the ePub for FBReader to pick up the font from those installed on the device.

[rmm200]

I would like to be able to install maybe a dozen TTF fonts on my Sony PRS-600 in a standard place, then modify the CSS on a per-book basis to reference the desired font. I think this is all doable; I would just love someone to do a tutorial.

A pointer to a set of public domain fonts that look good on this device would help too...

Robert