Forma I will use whatever the default font face is set for a book. Here's why. - Page 10

Skinjob · 09-20-2020, 11:53 PM

I've done extensive testing of a lot of fonts, on my Kobo Glo. Not just for readability, which is what everyone else does.... but also, for how well each font pulls you into the content.

My ultimate choice was "Georgia E-Ink". A nicely heavy, weighty font, usually with extra weight applied. It provided not just readability (for my decaying eyes), but the pace that I was looking for.

....Only lately, I've been testing the "Publisher's Default" font. And so long as it is sized large enough, I am becoming convinced that it is better than my old stand-by, Georgia E-Ink. Perhaps because it is not too heavy, so far, I find I'm reading at a faster pace, with good retention, and an even more comfortable experience.

Now, what is this font?? Well, I looked at the CSS for the book with the serif/sans mixed in the body of the text, and simply "serif" is specified. This means, it is using my Kobo's default serif font, which is "Georgia". Using Calibre's KoboUtilities, I now specify "Georgia" as the default font for all books. I find it is quite comparable to what you typically see in print books.

I've also compared "Bookerly" to Georgia, and superficially, most would have a hard time telling the two apart. At least, in a single line of text. Just a very slightly different curvature to some of the letters, that's not the least bit apparent. The most obvious difference, is in the spacing. "Bookerly" changes the layout quite a lot, enough to put paragraphs on different pages. Because even though both fonts were set at the exact same size, Bookerly produces 14 line pages (at this size), Georgia does 15 line pages. Yet both appear to be the same size font! I still had a hard time choosing, but what gave Georgia the edge over Bookerly, is that it had a better 'feel', during reading.

So, this to say, I used to not give a second thought to the Publisher's Default font, and now it's become my default!

davidfor · 09-21-2020, 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skinjob

I've done extensive testing of a lot of fonts, on my Kobo Glo. Not just for readability, which is what everyone else does.... but also, for how well each font pulls you into the content.

My ultimate choice was "Georgia E-Ink". A nicely heavy, weighty font, usually with extra weight applied. It provided not just readability (for my decaying eyes), but the pace that I was looking for.

....Only lately, I've been testing the "Publisher's Default" font. And so long as it is sized large enough, I am becoming convinced that it is better than my old stand-by, Georgia E-Ink. Perhaps because it is not too heavy, so far, I find I'm reading at a faster pace, with good retention, and an even more comfortable experience.

The problem is, I don't know what font this is? I would apply it to all books, if I knew. (I only happened across this thread, in an effort to find the name of the font!). I know not all books have the same default font. But many of my books do have this serif font, when set to "Publisher's Default" (though sometimes, the publisher combines it with non-serif fonts within the text!).

It is quite similar to the Kobo's regular "Georgia", but it's not quite that.

So, this to say, I used to not give a second thought to the Publisher's Default font, and now it's become my default!

Using "Publisher's Default" means: Use whatever font the book specifies, and where it doesn't specify a font, use the system default. And the system default on a Kobo device is their Georgia font. Except where Chinese or Japanese, in which case it uses one of the fonts there specifically for that (whose names I don't remember and am to lazy to go and look for).

There is some difference between epub and kepub font handling. For kepubs, if the glyph is missing from the font, it will fall back to another font that has more complete set of glyphs (one of the fonts I can't remember the name of). This doesn't happen with epubs.

rashkae · 09-21-2020, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skinjob

I've also compared "Bookerly" to Georgia, and superficially, most would have a hard time telling the two apart.

Okay, you lost me there. Preference for one over the other is almost guaranteed to be subjective, but those two fonts are night and day from each other. The only way Bookerly could be more different from Gerogia is if i twas a flat out Sans Serif font.

Personally, I have become very fond of Kobo's Malabar on on high DPI devices, and pretty much despise all the Amazon fonts... (Cecilia was *great* when e-ink devices were 167DPI, and pretty much needed slab serifs to not look like crap.)

hobnail · 09-21-2020, 01:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skinjob

I've also compared "Bookerly" to Georgia, and superficially, most would have a hard time telling the two apart. At least, in a single line of text. Just a very slightly different curvature to some of the letters, that's not the least bit apparent. The most obvious difference, is in the spacing.

To me the most obvious difference is the variation in the thickness of the strokes. Bookerly has less variation while Georgia has more. When a font has less variation it's called a low contrast font (or typeface?), and for me, a low contrast font works better on e-ink. Adding extra weight to a font can affect that stroke variation and make it feel like it's lower contrast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi...pecimenAIB.svg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ace_sample.svg

Quote:

"Bookerly" changes the layout quite a lot, enough to put paragraphs on different pages. Because even though both fonts were set at the exact same size, Bookerly produces 14 line pages (at this size), Georgia does 15 line pages. Yet both appear to be the same size font! I still had a hard time choosing, but what gave Georgia the edge over Bookerly, is that it had a better 'feel', during reading.

The weird/frustrating thing about fonts is that font sizes can only be compared within the font. In other words you can say that 9 point Georgia is smaller than 10 point Georgia but you cannot say anything about the size relationship between 9 point Georgia and 9 point Bookerly without measuring how many pixels high and wide each one is.

Way back in the early days of laser printers the Apple Laserwriter had a few built in fonts, and its Times Roman was often used for the body text. If you wanted to use a monospaced typewriter font to simulate programming code or whatever, then you'd use its Courier. But 9 point Courier was huge compared to 9 point Times Roman so you had to fudge it and use a smaller sized Courier.

JSWolf · 09-21-2020, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skinjob

I've done extensive testing of a lot of fonts, on my Kobo Glo. Not just for readability, which is what everyone else does.... but also, for how well each font pulls you into the content.

My ultimate choice was "Georgia E-Ink". A nicely heavy, weighty font, usually with extra weight applied. It provided not just readability (for my decaying eyes), but the pace that I was looking for.

Remove Georgia E-Ink and use Georgia. You can up the weight from the Aa menu. You don't need Georgia e-Ink since Kobo has Georgia.

RobertJSawyer · 09-21-2020, 07:17 PM

JackieW wrote,"Another thing to be aware of is that Georgia is one of the fonts used for fallback if the user's chosen font doesn't contain a particular special glyph."

An aspect of this puzzles me. I read my books as Kepubs, and I have sideloaded the font Noto Sans, which, with my astigmatism, is the easiest font I've fond to read in.

Noto Sans contains a huge variety of glyphs -- indeed, the name "Noto" is short for "No Tofu," with "tofu" being the term for the little empty box or question mark you sometimes see on websites.

And YET, even when using Noto Sans, my Kobo Clara HD still substitutes from, it looks like, Georgia (and certainly from a serif font) for many non-Western-Eurpoean accented characters (like those found in Turkish names, for instance).

I assume this means that somewhere in its software, Kobo consults a table of characters that it assumes will be missing and then substitutes EVEN IF THE CHARACTER IS IN THE CHOSEN FONT.

Hmmm.

https://www.google.com/get/noto/

jackie_w · 09-21-2020, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobertJSawyer

JackieW wrote,"Another thing to be aware of is that Georgia is one of the fonts used for fallback if the user's chosen font doesn't contain a particular special glyph."

An aspect of this puzzles me. I read my books as Kepubs, and I have sideloaded the font Noto Sans, which, with my astigmatism, is the easiest font I've fond to read in.

Noto Sans contains a huge variety of glyphs -- indeed, the name "Noto" is short for "No Tofu," with "tofu" being the term for the little empty box or question mark you sometimes see on websites.

And YET, even when using Noto Sans, my Kobo Clara HD still substitutes from, it looks like, Georgia (and certainly from a serif font) for many non-Western-Eurpoean accented characters (like those found in Turkish names, for instance).

I assume this means that somewhere in its software, Kobo consults a table of characters that it assumes will be missing and then substitutes EVEN IF THE CHARACTER IS IN THE CHOSEN FONT.

Just to be clear, do you mean missing Turkish chars when reading a book using NotoSans, i.e. nothing to do with Kobo GUI book lists containing Turkish names when the locale is set to Turkish?

If so can you give a couple of examples of chars which are "misbehaving"? This is a screencap using NotoSans with a bit of Turkish, including some special (I think) Turkish chars. This book's language is set as English.

Skinjob · 09-21-2020, 10:11 PM

davidfor: Using "Publisher's Default" means

Absolutely. I revised my comment soon after writing it, when I realized I was comparing Georgia to Georgia, but one had the “weight” in the Advanced section turned up more, without my realizing it at the time.

rashkae: The only way Bookerly could be more different from Gerogia is if i twas a flat out Sans Serif font.

Yes you’re right, I ‘spoke’ too soon. I’m no longer sure what I was comparing at the time. Some books use the Publisher’s Default (Georgia), and some don’t. All I know is that when I compared the two again, after what I wrote, I could see plenty of differences between the two fonts.

As I compare Malabar to Georgia, I find less of a difference in the shape of the characters than in the formatting. Characters are closer together with Georgia, resulting in two more lines of text on my reader, than Malabar; which has more space between words (when justified).

For that, Malabar might be easier to read if one finds Georgia too ‘cramped’. Personally, I prefer a more efficient use of the screen, so I have less pages to turn.

JSWolf: You don't need Georgia e-Ink since Kobo has Georgia.

I have tried both Georgia/Georgia E-Ink, and all other fonts, with various weight settings. There is a dramatic difference between Georgia and Georgia E-Ink. Georgia E-Ink on the minimum weight setting is much ‘weightier’ than Georgia, on its heaviest weight setting. The characters themselves are also not the same, between the two fonts, at any setting.

That said, I used to favour Georgia E-Ink for its boldness, but a ‘normal’ weight font like Georgia seems like a more natural read.

MustardOrMayo · 09-23-2020, 06:05 PM

As someone who's stuck with e-books due to a lack of space for physical books, I do enable what I call "Publisher's Font" (labelled "Publisher Font" on Kindle and "Publisher Default" on Kobo and Libby, and "Original" on Play Books) when it's available! However, and i'm not counting stuff using those print-replica formats I like (I primarily read comics and graphic novels, but also illustrated novels), but only reflowable text formats), not all books/publishers support this feature, but it's one of many things I'm researching as part of a private project!

However, on Kobo, it's harder to tell the difference. What I do know is that for Kindle, just look for the "Publisher Font" option in the font menu, but for Kobo, try switching between "Publisher Default" and the reader's default font which, as of this reply, is usually "Georgia" on their e-readers, and "Droid Serif" in their Android tablet app. Similar thing goes for OverDrive Libby, and on Google Play Books, try switching between "Original" and "Literata".

For an example using my research list, Jarrett Lerner's "EngiNerds" series (at least the first book, and possibly other Aladdin MAX titles too), which I believe are in the format of what I call "regular novels", does appear to support this feature! At least I believe so, but I don't currently have a physical copy on hand to verify this. It has a thing where the first few words of a chapter are in a different font (EDIT: I later found that what I was referring to is called "smallcaps"), in this case the same font as the chapter heading, however I don't currently know what the correct term for that kind of formatting is. It's different from, but used in place of a dropcap.

However, the "Flember" and "Nothing to See Here Hotel" series, which are both illustrated novels, don't support this feature! I get around this by finding photos of pages from physical copies, scanning them into MyFonts search, and finding the closest free font (or font already included in the reader's "fonts" menu) to the font that's used. Sadly, I don't know of any e-book platform apps (like Kindle, Kobo, and Play Books) support sideloaded fonts! However, I can do it on e-readers. For example, with the former, "Flember: The Secret Book" uses "Goudy Old Style" in print editions, and I use "Sukhumala" when reading my Kobo and Kindle digital copies (multiple copies for research, but the Kobo copy is my reading copy).

Then again, EPUB and other reflowable text e-book formats don't handle illustrated novels well, but some publishing imprints handle them better, publishing their illustrated novels in print-replica formats instead!

One example is the original OUP Children's Books releases of what I call the "Reeve & McIntyre" stand-alone titles (no digital releases of the Roly-Poly Flying Pony series yet, but I haven't found out why), but the North American releases by Random House, who released them as the "Not-So Impossible Tales" series and changed 2 of 4 titles in the process, uses reflowable text formats instead! I feel as though RH had no respect for Sarah McIntyre's beautifully intricate art style, but it could just be that they may not know how to publish in print-replica formats!

Another example would be some of the "Geronimo Stilton" books, but I haven't really looked into those much.

davidfor · 09-23-2020, 11:51 PM

@MustardOrMayo: I think you have misunderstood what the "Publisher Default" does.

This option says "Use whatever font the publisher of the book has specified in the book". This means that if the publisher has embedded a font in the book, that font will be used wherever the styles specify to use that font. It also means that if the styles specify a font that is available to the device, it will be used. It is really saying to use the style that the publisher specified as much as possible. And when the publisher doesn't specify a font, then whatever the system has as the default font will be used. Most of my books don't have specified fonts. Some have an embedded font but only use it for a few things, such as headings, or text they want to set apart. A few use an embedded font for the body text. Others specify a list of fonts for the body and if the device has one, it will use it.

When you choose a specific font, it overrides the fonts specified in the book. Any embedded font will be ignored. Any use of other fonts will be ignored.

Both of these happened for formats that support them. The above is happens for both epubs and kepubs, but, they do have some differences. Formats like TXT have no way to specify font. Comic have the text as part of the image. Swapping between "Publisher Default" and Georgia will not show any differences for these types of formats. PDF is a law unto itself, and I have never bothered to work out what it does.

MustardOrMayo · 09-28-2020, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

This is a screencap using NotoSans with a bit of Turkish, including some special (I think) Turkish chars. This book's language is set as English.

I'm curious, since the UI looks a little weird to me, do you have any information on what UI modifications you use, like for the UI font and running header? (Otherwise, I could try to find those myself)

Quote: