CSS to Approximate a Telegram?

[bookman156]

I'm going to have to disagree. If you have all the text uppercase, it won't work with small-caps. It needs to be lower case.

I've just tested this in the Calibre editor. I made a few words uppercase and then used a span around those words and a few others in lower case and only the lower case words were in smallcaps.

Though usually true, if the font supports it you can have CSS to do large caps to small caps. This is quite handy as it is a gracefull fallback. But will only work in readers based on web browser technology (but you get the good fallback to normal caps if unsupported). Good in Lithium and Pocketbook Readers. You can unlock such wonders of OTF fonts and get the appropriate CSS here:

https://wakamaifondue.com/

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Embedding fonts for Kobo isn't a problem. But if monospace is done right then the basic mobi version made by Amazon will work.

So no "small caps" use CAPS SOURCE. It's a Telegram, not a paragraph intro.
Do the CSS with an embedded monospace font of choice and declares to suit things that don't use embedded.

I have formatted ebooks simply by converting docx and had monospace (for a Terminal session) work on everything (kepub, epub, same epub to Amazon and download sale of mobi, azw3 and KFX).

The font engine in Kobo has change since firmware 4.32. So you now need to embed a monospace font for KePub and in fonts you need one called Courier (internal font name).

[Quoth]

I've always done that anyway.

[enuddleyarbl]

I'm not sure if this is the method to embed a monospace font your talking about, but according to this page:

https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2022/m...-kobo-ereader/

it doesn't work any more. Unfortunately, the page doesn't give details on why it doesn't work and I haven't found anything else about it.

Connect the Kobo to your computer.
Create a folder in the root of the device named fonts.
Put your chosen monospace font in the fonts folder.
Rename the fonts to follow this naming convention: Courier <Font Family>-<Font Weight>.ttf.
The leading Courier is required for the eReader to use the font for monospace text in books and not just show the font as an option in the reading settings.

EDIT: I've not tried any of that. I just ran across the page while I was researching this and am passing it on.

[bookman156]

Why not just embed a sans condensed monospace font, such as DevaVu Sans Mono, rather than the serif monospace font Courier, which only resembles a typewriter font?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I'm not sure if this is the method to embed a monospace font your talking about, but according to this page:

https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2022/m...-kobo-ereader/

it doesn't work any more. Unfortunately, the page doesn't give details on why it doesn't work and I haven't found anything else about it.

Firmware 4.32 changed how fonts work. So the directions in that post do not work. To get monospace to work with ePub, you need to rename the monospace font's internal name to Courier. I've also changed the filenames of the font family to Courier. As to KePub. you need to embed a monospace font. The use of an external font will not work.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I'm not sure if this is the method to embed a monospace font your talking about, but according to this page:

https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2022/m...-kobo-ereader/

it doesn't work any more. Unfortunately, the page doesn't give details on why it doesn't work and I haven't found anything else about it.



EDIT: I've not tried any of that. I just ran across the page while I was researching this and am passing it on.

What Wesley Moore omitted is that the method he documented only ever worked for standard epubs not kepubs.

In addition Kobo's font handling changed a lot in fw 4.32.19501 (April 2022). Since then the rules have changed:

EPUB:
The 4 monospace font files you sideload to the Kobo /fonts directory must now be named simply and precisely Courier both internally and externally.

Renaming the external filenames is trivial (e.g. Courier-Regular, etc) but *internal* renaming requires using some kind of font editor (e.g. FontForge or ttfedit). In other words you can no longer get away with sideloading a monospace font whose name begins with Courier but whose full name is longer, e.g. Courier PragmataPro Mono to quote his example.

KEPUB:
As far as I can tell, embedding the monospace font is now the *only* method which works.

Prior to fw 4.32 all that was necessary was to include the full name of any sideloaded monospace font in the kepub CSS, e.g.

.mono {font-family: "Courier PragmataPro Mono", monospace;}

or even just

.mono {font-family: "Courier PragmataPro Mono";}

ETA: It looks like JSWolf beat me to it

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm going to have to disagree. If you have all the text uppercase, it won't work with small-caps. It needs to be lower case.

I've just tested this in the Calibre editor. I made a few words uppercase and then used a span around those words and a few others in lower case and only the lower case words were in smallcaps.

"small-caps"

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Try using the following example in your testing...it works exactly as I mentioned in both Sigil and Calibre Editor (attached)???

    p {font-variant:small-caps}

  <p>THIS IS ALL TEXT UPPERCASE.</p>
  <p>this is all text lowercase.</p>
  <p>This is all Text with Mixed Case</p>

The first two lines appear the same (see attachments) - just with a different font-size.
The last line - with mixed case can be seen with the capital letters being larger than the lower case letters...but all of them using the capital letter from the font. And, yes, this is not a true SC font, but that's not the point.

[JSWolf]

@Turtle91 your samples are correct. The all uppercase is all uppercase. The all lowercase is in smallcaps. The text with the mixed case is both uppercase and smallcaps. That why I put text-transform: lowercase; in the CSS because if the text is originally using a simulated smallcaps, it's going to be all uppercase.

Smallcaps only work if the letters are lowercase.

[Quoth]

[QUOTE=JSWolf;4253659]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I'm going to have to disagree. If you have all the text uppercase, it won't work with small-caps. It needs to be lower case.

I've just tested this in the Calibre editor. I made a few words uppercase and then used a span around those words and a few others in lower case and only the lower case words were in smallcaps.

Small Caps is a decorative feature for paragraph lead in. If you are putting the text of a telegram the source should be all caps. Small caps isn't needed and shouldn't be used for complete paragraphs. It's an alternate ancient style for lower case. Lower case (or Minuscule) was an innovation about 1400 years ago. The Romans only had upper case. Some writing systems just have a printed version and a handwritten version.

The SMALL CAPS is a decorative feature and shouldn't be used just to make a paragraph all capitalised. Change the source to do that. It doesn't affect capitals because they should be bigger normally.

[Quoth]

Another use of small caps is specified by some style guides, mainly USA, for initialisms such as FM, NATO, BC, BCE, AD, CE, AM, PM. But apart from am and pm those are all usually typed in upper-case in the source, so not sure that CSS small-caps is useful?
The am and pm have many styles.

[bookman156]

Smallcaps only work if the letters are lowercase.

If you have a font with what is known as 'c2sc' inherent in it, you can overcome this limitation.

[bookman156]

Another use of small caps is specified by some style guides, mainly USA, for initialisms such as FM, NATO, BC, BCE, AD, CE, AM, PM. But apart from am and pm those are all usually typed in upper-case in the source, so not sure that CSS small-caps is useful?

If I have something like BCE that would look terrible as 'bce', then I use a font with 'c2sc'. Then if it is unsupported in an ereader it just appears as normal capitals (as on a Kindle, which doesn't even support ligatures), whereas AM and PM, though preferably small caps, are perfectly acceptable as am and pm and so you can then use 'smcp' in the same versatile font, since it would be better as lowercase than full caps. The CSS for c2sc and smcp are supported in things like Lithium and PocketBook readers.

[Quoth]

I think there are 6 legitimate ways of doing am and pm. What ever scheme is adopted, stick to it!
I read a book last week with nosey and nosy. A fail, they needed to use one or the other. So we delete alternate but correct words that are not the versions in our style guide from the spelling checker dictionary. Also per book and per series custom dictionaries.

Everything needs to still "work" in some sane fashion on mobi/kF7, azw3/KF8 and KFX, when on later Kindles "Publisher" isn't selected in Aa. That applies to epub and kepub too. Especially apps as there are many that don't respect CSS and/or embedded fonts.

KISS

Simpler is better, don't try and copy a print version.

[bookman156]

Simpler is better

There is nothing simpler than using c2sc and smcp. If they are unsupported or a different font is used by the reader you get a better result as fallback. What's difficult about that?

If the font is changed or c2sc and smcp aren't supported, the full caps will stay as full caps, whereas the smcp can be backed up with font-variant-caps: small-caps; so you still get small caps if that is supported.

You've done it the best as is possible.