How to remove embeded fonts correctly?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Fonts are just a way to voice types of characters or items.
Monospace = olde CRT computer messages
Script = Handwritten
Emoticons

This lack of 'voice' is why I dislike TTS. (My EZReader had this feature)
Almost as bad as one of the Baen Davids reading their work (on a Baen CD).

To each their own.

Sometimes a font is embedded so you can be sure of getting special characters.

In the book The Martian, I found monospace to be important. It was used to represent the computer.

[Quoth]

Letters, thoughts, Telegrams/Telex, typewriter, poems/lyrics, sub headings, marginalia, inline notes all might need fonts not built in, or at least differentiated. Even the horrible mobi format does:
Serif, Sans-Serif, Monospace and each in: normal, italic, bold and italic-bold.
An epub CSS defining a font-family always should have the fall back too:
generic-family - The name of a generic-family, which is "serif", "sans-serif", "cursive", "fantasy", "monospace".

Any CSS for "cursive", "fantasy" should be edited to have some mix of Italic on Serif or Sans as appropriate so that the paragraph or text span still "works".
Anything using a monospace embedded font needs care for Kobo epubs and conversion to mobi to ensure a monospace font is used as things like ascii art or "white spaced" layout only work in Monospace.

So before removing embedded fonts make sure there is the correct fall back.
Be wary of removing any embedded symbol or non-Latin/Roman font.

Edit: Some old Sony ereader simulate italic with oblique, which is just a slanted version. Real italic doesn't use all the same design of characters as the normal version. Similarly some ancient systems simulate bold by repeating normal with an offset!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Edit: Some old Sony ereader simulate italic with oblique, which is just a slanted version. Real italic doesn't use all the same design of characters as the normal version. Similarly some ancient systems simulate bold by repeating normal with an offset!

I remember using embedded fonts with the Sony Reader (before ePub) so I could get real italics. The simulated italics was a bother.

[C4thie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sometimes a font is embedded so you can be sure of getting special characters.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It works with KFX but not KF8.

Ok, so there's one thing I don't understand yet.

For example. If I read AZW3 book with Bookerly font on Kindle. And I don't use "Publisher font" option.
Then how am I going to see these special characters which rely on embeded fonts? Since all I already see is Bookerly anyway?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by C4thie

Ok, so there's one thing I don't understand yet.

For example. If I read AZW3 book with Bookerly font on Kindle. And I don't use "Publisher font" option.
Then how am I going to see these special characters which rely on embeded fonts? Since all I already see is Bookerly anyway?

When using KFX format the font you choose to read in Kindle only replaces the primary font used for body text in the book. If a different font is used for other purposes, such as headings or special text, that will not be replaced. So as long as the publisher uses a different font for special characters than is used for the main text of the book it will work properly regardless of what font the reader chooses.

[C4thie]

Originally Posted by jhowell

When using KFX format the font you choose to read in Kindle only replaces the primary font used for body text in the book. If a different font is used for other purposes, such as headings or special text, that will not be replaced. So as long as the publisher uses a different font for special characters than is used for the main text of the book it will work properly regardless of what font the reader chooses.

I see.

However Im still using AZW3 (KF8), not KFX.
Because KFX don't support my native language (still don't understand why Amazon ignored it tbh) so hyphens don't work. And I hate how text is formated without hyphens (with large spaces between words).

Anyway, after some tests I think I came up with perfect solution for me.
I won't totally remove embeded fonts.
Here's my route:
- I keep original ebook in EPUB file, with all fonts and stuff. Unmodified. So if I'll need it in the future, then I will have it.
- Convert to AZW3 with proper cover size, removed colors, etc, etc.
I also subset fonts - so by doing it I keep some special characters if needed. But I also reduce size of embedded fonts, since I anyway read with Bookerly. So imo its just waste of space to keep all fonts in every ebook I make for my kindle.
- reduce size of images.
- add hyphens
- small edits within file if needed, like - removing dropcaps or smt
And file is ready and clean looking With small size.

But I'll do some tests with KFX later probably. And see how it looks like with my language. Maybe even if it's not supported, then it won't look bad.
If I won't be satisfied, then I'll use KFX only for english books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by C4thie

Ok, so there's one thing I don't understand yet.

For example. If I read AZW3 book with Bookerly font on Kindle. And I don't use "Publisher font" option.
Then how am I going to see these special characters which rely on embeded fonts? Since all I already see is Bookerly anyway?

If you have the eBook as ePub and convert it to KF8, then you will lose embedded fonts. But if the eBooks was downloaded from Amazon as KF8, you could get media queries that replace the special characters with graphics.

But if the base font you choose has all the special characters, you can remove the HTML/CSS code to give you a graphic image.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by C4thie

- reduce size of images.

When you reduce the size of images. how do you do it?

I reduce the size of large images to 1680 lines. I also do a lossless compression of 70 (*after the compression, calibre will then do a lossless compression). That makes the images smaller and they still look good on eInk.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by jhowell

When using KFX format the font you choose to read in Kindle only replaces the primary font used for body text in the book. If a different font is used for other purposes, such as headings or special text, that will not be replaced.

Another KFX renderer side effect is that if a font does not contain the requested codepoint and that codepoint exists in one of the built-in fonts, then the codepoint from the built-in font will be substituted for display.