no small caps?

[NiLuJe]

I'd argue that the bug lies squarely on the publisher's shoulders, because requesting small caps on an subsetted embedded font without support for it is... not ideal ;o).

And I'd also add that I'd personally prefer *not* to break the font choice by using a potentially completely different fallback font just for that, and instead do fake smallcaps with the requested font .

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Simoncini Garamond Std does not support small caps. So the solution is to use simulated small caps.

span.CharOverride-28 {
font-family: "Simoncini Garamond Std", serif;
font-size: 0.8333em;
}

Actually no, because the text in XHTML is in lowercase. I should change all the text from lowercase to uppercase. I changed the CSS with a simple

font-family: serif;

instead.

Btw, I had to do this in the original CSS files. When I tried to add some CSS in "tweak for this book", KOReader do not use it. Is the original CSS stronger than the tweak I add in KOReader?

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I'd argue that the bug lies squarely on the publisher's shoulders, because requesting small caps on an subsetted embedded font without support for it is... not ideal ;o).

And I'd also add that I'd personally prefer *not* to break the font choice by using a potentially completely different fallback font just for that, and instead do fake smallcaps with the requested font .

You knock an open door: but most of publishers simply export from inDesign without a good workflow for correct ePub. So IMHO add a fallback in KOReader when the embedded font has not the small caps is still a good idea.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

Actually no, because the text in XHTML is in lowercase. I should change all the text from lowercase to uppercase. I changed the CSS with a simple

font-family: serif;

instead.

Btw, I had to do this in the original CSS files. When I tried to add some CSS in "tweak for this book", KOReader do not use it. Is the original CSS stronger than the tweak I add in KOReader?

I've not seen an eBook from a big publisher that does not have uppercase for smallcaps and then simulated small caps.

What book is this? I'm curious where this case from.

[Jellby]

There is another question:

Can KOReader create "synthetic" smallcaps, italics and bold? Some renderers do, and can artificially slant or embolden a font, or automatically display "fake" smallcaps. Synthetic italic and bold are difficult (especially italic, which can only be slanted), but synthetic fake smallcaps are easy: just convert lowercase to uppercase and display smaller.

The following question is:

If a renderer can generate synthetic smallcaps, and a given requested font is available but does not have true smallcaps, should the renderer create the fake smallcaps, or should it fall back to the next font in the list? The same for italic and bold, of course.

[NiLuJe]

@Jellby:

We can do bold, and I'm pretty sure we can do italic (mostly because HB/FT can). Synthetic bold is fairly decent, italic is of course... much less so .

(And, yes, a synthetic version *of the same font* is preferred over a fallback, which was kind of my point above ).

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've not seen an eBook from a big publisher that does not have uppercase for smallcaps and then simulated small caps.

What book is this? I'm curious where this case from.

It is an ebook of two lesbian french writers translated in italian language ("Appunti per un dizionario delle amanti"), but to be honest I saw many export from inDesign from major publishing house here in Italy with Simoncini (or other fonts) subset. I work(ed) in ePub creation: here in Italy the ebook is still the last "porting" of the sacred paper book, and the allocated resources for the ebook version of the book are usually very limited. For example: some weeks ago I bought a comix epub from a italian publisher. A good italian publisher in comix, to be honest. But the ePub was slow, with a lot of problems, so I opened it and check the html and the CSS. I discover the CSS were redundant. I created comix ePub some years ago, manually, and I used more or less 20 lines of CSS code. More or less. Well, this ePub had 94.403 lines of CSS. 94.403. I was speechless.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Jellby:

We can do bold, and I'm pretty sure we can do italic (mostly because HB/FT can). Synthetic bold is fairly decent, italic is of course... much less so .

(And, yes, a synthetic version *of the same font* is preferred over a fallback, which was kind of my point above ).

I've seen simulated italic and it is terrible. I'd rather a fallback for italic.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

It is an ebook of two lesbian french writers translated in italian language ("Appunti per un dizionario delle amanti"), but to be honest I saw many export from inDesign from major publishing house here in Italy with Simoncini (or other fonts) subset. I work(ed) in ePub creation: here in Italy the ebook is still the last "porting" of the sacred paper book, and the allocated resources for the ebook version of the book are usually very limited. For example: some weeks ago I bought a comix epub from a italian publisher. A good italian publisher in comix, to be honest. But the ePub was slow, with a lot of problems, so I opened it and check the html and the CSS. I discover the CSS were redundant. I created comix ePub some years ago, manually, and I used more or less 20 lines of CSS code. More or less. Well, this ePub had 94.403 lines of CSS. 94.403. I was speechless.

I did find a version of the font you mentioned and ran it through the website given to check what features it has. It does not have small caps. That is probably why the small caps failed. I don't mind a subset font. What I do mind is a font that doesn't work for any number of reasons.

I did once find an eBook that had around 500 unused CSS classes. That's nothing compared to the one you found with such a sloppy CSS.

Most eBooks are easy to format. They don't require anything complex. Yet most publishers botch them up somehow.

[Jellby]

So the issue is that KOreader does not simulate smallcaps (and probably does not fall back to another font if the selected font doest not have true smallcaps).

It's still better than ADE (at least the versions I've used), which does not support 'font-variant: small-caps' at all.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by Jellby

So the issue is that KOreader does not simulate smallcaps (and probably does not fall back to another font if the selected font doest not have true smallcaps).

It's still better than ADE (at least the versions I've used), which does not support 'font-variant: small-caps' at all.

ADE supports small-caps in EPUB3

[Quoth]

Yes, but Epub3 is a solution looking for a problem and few things fully support it.
So we only put small caps on paper versions as support is erratic and depends also on fonts.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, but Epub3 is a solution looking for a problem and few things fully support it.
So we only put small caps on paper versions as support is erratic and depends also on fonts.

Just do what most publishers do. They just simulate small caps. It's not perfect, but it works.

ChareInk has small caps for both upper and lower case.

[NiLuJe]

I suspect @Jellby may have meant the RMSDK, which is not exactly ADE .

(As in, we read on eReaders, we don't give a crap about ADE, but we care about what's actually comparable, e.g., Kindle-on-Kindle/Nickel/RMSDK).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

ADE supports small-caps in EPUB3

But if you use ePub3 specific code, you have the problem of that code not working because the program being used doesn't do ePub3. For example, there are still a lot of Readers out there that are not using an updated RMSDK and because of this, they don't do ePub3.