publisher font

[vanessamartins00]

Hello!
Is there any way to force epub to keep the publisher font on readers (kindle, ibooks, google play books) so that the reader cannot change it? I have some Arabic characters and I would like the reader to keep the font so that these characters appear on all devices.

[Quoth]

No, it's generally impossible. In fact by default some readers don't use the Publisher font and some apps won't let the user choose it!

Older kindles (4 models) neither have publisher font, nor Arabic script at all. Generally if it was an entire ebook in Arabic, only Arabic users with devices/ or apps supporting Arabic would buy it.

Also an image of the word fails due to not resizing with the main font, though it can have the Arabic as the Alt text.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by vanessamartins00

Hello!
Is there any way to force epub to keep the publisher font on readers (kindle, ibooks, google play books) so that the reader cannot change it? I have some Arabic characters and I would like the reader to keep the font so that these characters appear on all devices.

The 'cheat' to get around the issue is Use an image of the character (or word).

The downside: It will not scale well (if at all)

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by theducks

The 'cheat' to get around the issue is Use an image of the character (or word).

The downside: It will not scale well (if at all)

Id suspect it's also not entirely accessible for people who use screenreaders and the like.

[Karellen]

Wouldn't it be better to display the characters from an embedded arabic font file?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Id suspect it's also not entirely accessible for people who use screenreaders and the like.

alt=" " would take care of that if the correct glyph was available
(assumes FONT was for a specific look )

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Wouldn't it be better to display the characters from an embedded arabic font file?

Yes, but:
1) Some (many?) apps ignore embedded fonts.
2) Most dedicated ereaders require the user to pick the Publisher option. The chosen built in font may not have the characters.

It's less of a problem if the entire ebook is Arabic, Chinese, or Asian, Cyrillic etc, as the user won't buy it unless they know how to read it.

There is no "works for everyone" or "works on all ereaders" solution for an ebook mainly in "script x" which has a few words in "script y", where "script" is a particular writing system.

All that is true even if we ignore mobi and only consider epub, or even epub, azw3/KF8 and KFX.

Electronic systems have less support for non-Roman-Latin than other systems. Some won't even take accented words (Irish Health system, and an accent changes meaning!). Systems that cope with two unrelated script systems at the same time are rarer than ones that cope with a particular non-Katin-Roman system.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

alt=" " would take care of that if the correct glyph was available
(assumes FONT was for a specific look )

I mentioned that. However how good are screen readers at multiple languages in one document, even when there is a language property in a span?

All my systems want you to pick "A" language, though you can install multiple ones. Though they are poor subset of languages in daily use.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by theducks

The 'cheat' to get around the issue is Use an image of the character (or word).

The downside: It will not scale well (if at all)

Another downside to images of letters is that some language’s letters (like Arabic) appear differently based on the surrounding letters. So, while you could put multiple letter images together, it wouldn’t read/look right.

Whole words would be a little better, but then you’d need a HUGE number of images for an Arabic book to cover the number of words used, rather than the 28 letters.

[Quoth]

An entire Arabic ebook isn't an issue, as people regularly reading Arabic will know how to do it.

The big issue is a few words in an unrelated language/script to the main body. You often need an embedded font, which might not work anyway.

[Ebookus]

Originally Posted by vanessamartins00

Hello!
Is there any way to force epub to keep the publisher font on readers (kindle, ibooks, google play books) so that the reader cannot change it? I have some Arabic characters and I would like the reader to keep the font so that these characters appear on all devices.

if you mean, the main text is in English and some words are arabic, images would be best bet. That is how LOTR handles runes and the sort.

speaking from a pure user perspective, if a publisher were to force me to use whatever they consider a good font, I would return that book immediately. Very rarely have I found embedded fonts to be any good. If I wanted anything fixed, I would buy a physical copy.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

if you mean, the main text is in English and some words are arabic, images would be best bet. That is how LOTR handles runes and the sort.

speaking from a pure user perspective, if a publisher were to force me to use whatever they consider a good font, I would return that book immediately. Very rarely have I found embedded fonts to be any good. If I wanted anything fixed, I would buy a physical copy.

Sure LoTR botched it. They could have used an embedded font for the runes given that it's ePub.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sure LoTR botched it. They could have used an embedded font for the runes given that it's ePub.

That’s what I “fixed” in LotR. I found a good font with the runes and replaced all the low-quality images with actual runes. MUCH cleaner and responsive!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

That’s what I “fixed” in LotR. I found a good font with the runes and replaced all the low-quality images with actual runes. MUCH cleaner and responsive!

That's what I need to fix when I get a chance.