Font Obfuscation

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Calibre subsets very well and ligatures are not lost.

Good to know. I use a Sigil plugin and don’t know how it might differ, but I’ve not had a problem so far. Probably because there aren’t any ligatures in “CHAPTER.”

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by kso

@JSWolf: I just learned today that subsetting (or modifying---as in fixing---things like kerning) is not permitted by some vendors. These are out, too.

Font vendors or ebook vendors?
Also modification (kerning, hinting etc) is unrelated to subsetting.

[kso]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Font vendors or ebook vendors?
Also modification (kerning, hinting etc) is unrelated to subsetting.

Font vendors can stipulate whatever they want in their licences and some actually do, even if it doesn't make any sense.

klaus

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by kso

Font vendors can stipulate whatever they want in their licences and some actually do, even if it doesn't make any sense.

klaus

Yes. So chose a different font or vendor if it's onerous!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes. So chose a different font or vendor if it's onerous!

But, if you are trying to duplicate the look/feel of the pBook version, a different font won't do.

[Quoth]

It's crazy to duplicate the look and feel of a paper book. Especially if it's fancy.

Also depending on print size on paper, you might want to use a slightly fancier font than an ebook.

We do the ebook first, make a copy of the wordprocessor file and then add extra page styles, headers, footers, page numbers on contents and body pages. Probably different margins on pages and headings. Different resolution and formatting for images. Perhaps add blank pages.

A large print edition, Trade size edition (hardback and paperback can be the same), medium bookshelf size and pocket aka mass market size paper may even use different fonts. The smallest size font on the smallest size paperback is challenging as legibility is important, because print runs or POD may be less good than some 1930s typesetting.
Also the book is only proofed and annotated on epub2 before it's finalised.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, if you are trying to duplicate the look/feel of the pBook version, a different font won't do.

I'm sure the big publishers get special pricing on their sometimes stupid fonts in ebooks.

[JSWolf]

I've not seen many eBooks where using the same fonts as the pBook works. Sometimes it works but mostly not at all.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've not seen many eBooks where using the same fonts as the pBook works. Sometimes it works but mostly not at all.

Exactly my point. Choose a decent ebook font with a decent licence. Not many people read the ebook AND the paper book, so hardly anyone cares if the body fonts are different.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Exactly my point. Choose a decent ebook font with a decent licence. Not many people read the ebook AND the paper book, so hardly anyone cares if the body fonts are different.

Unless there's a real reason to use the same fonts, just let us use the default fonts. The problem in most cases is that the fonts are rubbish for eInk.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by kso

Font vendors can stipulate whatever they want in their licences and some actually do, even if it doesn't make any sense.

klaus

klaus?

What vendor explicitly stipulates that you cannot subset a font, please? I read the page you linked and I'm not sure I agree with your inference. The word subset, for that matter isn't used anywhere on that page. Are you sure you're not conflating subsetting with actual font modification?

Hitch

[kso]

Originally Posted by Hitch

klaus?

What vendor explicitly stipulates that you cannot subset a font, please?

Hitch

Hitch,

before I posted my question I was looking at a lot of fonts (and their licensing terms) for a children's book I've almost completed. Because of the length and complexity of many terms (especially compared to the simplicity of fonts for kid's books) I stopped reading licenses whenever something jarred, deleting the foundry from the list of potentials.

I can't remember which foundry's terms I found the subsetting restriction in first (I only keep URLs and licenses for those not discarded), but searching the hacker news post I linked to last week for either sub or setting you'll find a comment by "JustFinishedBSG":

"You'd be surprised by the number of foundries that explicitly forbid sub setting of the fonts (...), so you're not allowed to only use Latin on your website, gotta load the whole ... thing. The font has weird kerning and you want to fix it? Yeah, not sorry not allowed either."

Klaus

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by kso

Hitch,

before I posted my question I was looking at a lot of fonts (and their licensing terms) for a children's book I've almost completed. Because of the length and complexity of many terms (especially compared to the simplicity of fonts for kid's books) I stopped reading licenses whenever something jarred, deleting the foundry from the list of potentials.

I can't remember which foundry's terms I found the subsetting restriction in first (I only keep URLs and licenses for those not discarded), but searching the hacker news post I linked to last week for either sub or setting you'll find a comment by "JustFinishedBSG":

"You'd be surprised by the number of foundries that explicitly forbid sub setting of the fonts (...), so you're not allowed to only use Latin on your website, gotta load the whole ... thing. The font has weird kerning and you want to fix it? Yeah, not sorry not allowed either."

Klaus

I find the idea that any foundry would preclude subsetting to be odd at best. That means--I mean, let's all think this through--that you can't put it in PDF that's going to be distributed or used for printing. Why?

Because if you put the entire face in the PDF--not subset--then the less-than-honorable can rip out the entire face, and use it. There's nothing that really stops them. What good is using "no subsetting," then???? Is this some sort of half-brained notion that you can force people to pay for an ePUB or App license, by disallowing subsetting of the face? (Which, legally, means that the font is not being redistributed. That's the point of subsetting, from that view--the legal prevention view.)

"No embedding" is one thing--that sort of makes sense, if you're trying to preclude the font from this or that.

But "no subsetting" feels ill-advised for any foundry.

ETA: P.S.: do we know if he's talking about entirely, or only for web-usage for the WOFFs, etc.? ???

Hitch

[kso]

Originally Posted by Hitch

But "no subsetting" feels ill-advised for any foundry.

ETA: P.S.: do we know if he's talking about entirely, or only for web-usage for the WOFFs, etc.? ???

I've no idea. But as you say, "ill-advised", fits more than one foundry's licensing terms. I'm somewhat unwilling to accept that there's an existential threat to font designers and sellers were they to allow font embedding on equal terms for both PDFs and Ebooks. I know that you can unzip EPUBs, and that Kindle books before KFX could be unpacked. But I never even thought about extracting fonts from a PDF. So I had a look to see if it's actually possible.

It is. All you need is one of the very first Google results if you're so inclined. One is a stackoverflow page with more than half a dozen ways of getting fonts out of PDF files. Admittedly most are somewhat elaborate, but extract them you can.

Checking my PC I also realised that I wouldn't even have to install any software. Most of the stuff you need is standard Linux fare and just requires a little command line typing, something I do all day (I started my computing career with UNIX III, followed by SunOS, Solaris and since about '97 or '98 Linux in various flavours).

Klaus

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by kso

Originally Posted by Hitch



I've no idea. But as you say, "ill-advised", fits more than one foundry's licensing terms. I'm somewhat unwilling to accept that there's an existential threat to font designers and sellers were they to allow font embedding on equal terms for both PDFs and Ebooks. I know that you can unzip EPUBs, and that Kindle books before KFX could be unpacked. But I never even thought about extracting fonts from a PDF. So I had a look to see if it's actually possible.

It is. All you need is one of the very first Google results if you're so inclined. One is a stackoverflow page with more than half a dozen ways of getting fonts out of PDF files. Admittedly most are somewhat elaborate, but extract them you can.

Checking my PC I also realised that I wouldn't even have to install any software. Most of the stuff you need is standard Linux fare and just requires a little command line typing, something I do all day (I started my computing career with UNIX III, followed by SunOS, Solaris and since about '97 or '98 Linux in various flavours).

Klaus

Yes and that's exactly why subsetting makes sense. Most folks, except in the case of the most outrageously expensive faces (yes, yes, Avenir Next, I'm lookin' at you!) will not sit there and concatenate, find, extract, fill-in, etc. for a font, to make an entire face. They just won't. And if, like our friend Avenir, they're looking at a font with myriad faces and weights, fuhgeddaboudit. They won't. That's why subsetting is rational.

I do think that font designers do face an existential threat.

Warning: RANT FOLLOWS:!

I'm sorry, but I've been on the receiving end of just how "honest" people are, with digital goods and "computer files" and lemme tell ya, they will steal you BLIND. Blind.

This codswallop about how the people that download pirated books wouldn't pay for a book anyway, as if that makes it okay...fine, then they can live without it or break the law or whatever, but I know for a fact that the first two years I had my business open, making (only) ebooks--so, we're talking a few hundred bucks, absolute TOPS back then, for an eBook (and most were more like $125-$150ea, if not even less than that), we were ripped off $10K the first year and $12K the second. That was the END of "pay upon completion" for me.

And back then, that was a good-sized chunk of my annual take. Not a few points, as it would be now.

When I was in Real Estate Development, for decades, people always heard that and made that "oooooh" sound, then saying 'ohemgee, you must work with really dishonest people and run into crooks and the mob, etc. all the time!" And yes, we did work with people like that. And let me say this about that--those people were FAR more honest than what *I've* seen, from people receiving/buying/using from providers, in the digital products and services world. FAR more honest.

I'd extend credit to a "laundry" guy in NYC, again, for laundry service to a hotel, twice as fast as I'd do that for a big expensive ebook job from somebody I didn't know. It's simply numbers. I have been bent over, hosed and ripped-off FAR FAR more, in the digital world, than ever in the world of "real" crooks.

Font designers have every right to be neurotic and paranoid about their products being stolen. For God's sakes, you can find almost any font on some pirate site today. And people have no way of tracking that, at all. I don't blame them one iota for using no-subsetting (even though I think it's nuts, for their sakes) or no-embedding or no-whatever. If they've been in the biz for the last decade, they know what I know; they've experienced what I've experienced.

In short: sadly, people are only honest when they think that they can or will be caught or penalized. Copyright infringement, or in the case of fonts, some minor software theft? That no police station in the world will enforce or arrest them for? Don't make me bloody laugh. It's sad but true and I'll tell ya, I was bloody sad to learn it. I wish I didn't know it, but I do.

That experience has changed how I view people generally; it's tinted my view of the world and I don't know anybody else in the same or similar lines of work that hasn't had the same issues. (If they say that they haven't, typically, they have a very small or trusted client base, or they work for someone else and don't have to collect payments, etc. I'm not saying that apodictically, every single person will cheat, or steal, or that every single business in the digital arena has the same exact percentage of theft, if they're stoopid enough to do pay upon completion--but man, it's widely prevalent and it's...well.)

/end rant.

(And if any of you say, "Tell us how you really feel, Hitch," I'll pimp-slap you.)

Hitch