Why is Sigil 0.7.1 displaying all text oblique?

[Abull]

Yes, every instance of ", fantasy" in the stylesheet, edited out, both inside and outside of Sigil and then the text still goes slanted.

[meme]

What fonts do you have set in Preferences?

[Abull]

The Sigil defaults, I presume - Arial,Times, and Arial for "Book View" and Arial again for "Special Characters".

[Abull]

If I save to epub in FR without font embedding, then the text is displayed in the stylesheet specified fonts without slanting in Sigil "Book View" even after I save a copy of the stylesheet. There is a difference in that without the fonts embedded in the epub, text that is designated as small-caps is being displayed in small-caps - that wasn't the case with the fonts embedded. (The small-caps are rendered in normal text with Calibre ebook-viewer.)

[exaltedwombat]

I wouldn't worry too much about how your book displays in Sigil or Calibre - they are editing tools. How does it perform on a reader program or device? They all have quirks, but if you keep things simple you can write code that displays as intended on most, acceptably on the rest.

[Abull]

There's no problem with embedded fonts if I substitute different ones in my original and embed them when saving to epub from FR. An epub with embedded fonts from GoogleBooks is problem free in Sigil too, even though it appears to have been created with FR. So I think it's something peculiar about those particular fonts that cause the odd behavior in Sigil "Book View", even though there's no problem in ADE or any other desktop reader with them.

I installed ADE 2.0 on another computer I don't normally use that had room for NETframework, and I found a download link for ADE 1.7 which uses flash and doesn't require NETframework be installed.

[exaltedwombat]

I suppose an obsolete version of ADE is better than nothing! Are you running a very old/very small computer? This is beginning to sound like you want to work with eBooks but don't really have tools that are up to the job.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

I suppose an obsolete version of ADE is better than nothing! Are you running a very old/very small computer? This is beginning to sound like you want to work with eBooks but don't really have tools that are up to the job.

Well, what I'm not clear on is where the "slanting" is occurring; in Sigil and Calibre only? I've found neither very good indicators of what will really happen in an actual ePUB.

Vis-a-vis the smallcap comment: Unless there's a small-cap font variant embedded with it, many, many fonts will not work properly as small caps, and the CSS small-cap works almost never at all. And don't even get me started on ligatures, which are a total nightmare.

And in this instance, Wombat is right--using ADE 1.7 won't give you a reliable look at what ePUB readers will now display, you should be using ADE 2.0, or if you can't manage that, try Firefox's free ePUBreader. Or...hell, there are dozens of free e-readers out there that are actual ereaders, not tools like Calibre and Sigil that will help you see what your books will actually look like. If you're going to try to make ePUBs for any consumption other than your own, you'll definitely need the tools.

Hitch

[Abull]

The slanting only occurs in Sigil, not in Calibre. And only with those particular fonts.

I installed ADE 2.0 on a different PC than I normally like to work at and I'm not seeing a difference from 1.7 in how it displays any epub I've looked at so far. I've disabled the FF epub reader because I found it a nuisance when I only want to download an epub.

The font has a small cap variant embedded; Calibre's ebook viewer is the only thing that will display them. Simulated small caps work in all the viewers.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Abull

I installed ADE 2.0 on a different PC than I normally like to work at and I'm not seeing a difference from 1.7 in how it displays any epub I've looked at so far. I've disabled the FF epub reader because I found it a nuisance when I only want to download an epub.

+1
(and it was a very nice reader. but I tend to mostly download , View occasionally. Maybe the Author will make a preference 'View Only local files' )

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Abull

The slanting only occurs in Sigil, not in Calibre. And only with those particular fonts.

I installed ADE 2.0 on a different PC than I normally like to work at and I'm not seeing a difference from 1.7 in how it displays any epub I've looked at so far. I've disabled the FF epub reader because I found it a nuisance when I only want to download an epub.

The font has a small cap variant embedded; Calibre's ebook viewer is the only thing that will display them. Simulated small caps work in all the viewers.

Yes, many smallcaps will work on the viewers. Most will not work on the actual reading devices.

Honestly, Mods, I think that this thread should be moved to ePUB or Workshop, as it contains a lot of questions and discussion on issues that are unrelated to Sigil itself, e.g., smallcaps, and how fonts should be embedded in stylesheets.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

If an ePub has enough smallcaps, I embed Charis SIL along with the smallcap version and it looks good because the smallcaps are not simulated. I also use Calibre's font subsetting to make the ePub smaller. Looks nice and is not too big.

[Abull]

With substitution of otf versions of the original embedded ttf fonts, I'm not having the problem of slanting in Sigil 0.7.1 "Book View".

Now that I have properly working fonts Sigil displays small caps where they're called for. Calibre ebook viewer will display the small caps, but it sometimes when small caps are only indicated for the first line of the first paragraph in a chapter, it uses them for the remainder of the paragraph and subsequent paragraphs. ADE 1.72 and 1.8 use the Roman font lowercase for small cap lowercase. Nook Desktop Reader uses its default font to render small caps as smallcaps, and Sony Desktop Reader does the same.

The odd thing is that when I embed a ttf small cap font with all the other embedded fonts being otf, Nook, Sony and ADE 1.7 & 2.0 use a default font instead of the embedded fonts for all of the text. If the small cap font is also an otf version, then all the embedded fonts are used where they're called for including the small caps.

Although I've not seen any differences in the display of epubs I've looked at with ADE 1.7 and 2.0, I do see that according to reports in this thread on font embedding, some embedded fonts fail to be displayed with ADE 1.72.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=148412
ADE 1.7.2 is using RMSDK 9.1, ADE 1.8 and most of the Nook devices (but not the original) are using RMSDK 9.2 and above. Font rendering was changed drastically between 9.1 and 9.2 (its using a completely separate engine). So it would seem to make sense that this is failing on 9.1 but not on 9.2. You can force RMSDK 9.2 to use the old engine by adding in 'adobe-text-layout: optimizeSpeed;' which may help you with troubleshooting.

So do some readers still use ADE 1.72?

Epub reader for FireFox may display using embedded fonts at first, but renders with default font when scrolling back or forwards across chapters. I have read somewhere that FF epub reader won't display using embedded fonts unless thay are installed on the system, but this doesn't seem to be the case as I've tried viewing it on a PC where the embedded fonts are installed on the system and on one where they aren't installed and I see no difference in the behavior on the two different PCs.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Abull

So do some readers still use ADE 1.72?

Many devices do not / can not get (simple-user installable) updates, so they exist as is.
My PEz is on 2010 (mostly) firmware.

So this will probably also be true for those folk the 'Run them till they drop'