Bookerly font woes

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

I should have mentioned that I only read Kepub.

That’s the convention that worked for me.

Maybe it also depends form where you got the Bookerly fonts, what version*?

From what I know, I don't think there's any Bookerly that's not in need of fixing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

But, Jon, the long-form suffixes don't work for kepubs unless the panose weight is also fixed - as I tried to say in my lengthy post #52.

I replied to an earlier post. Your post was not yet posted or I had not yet read it.

I've not used Bookerly with KePub. So I didn't know of the problem until someone pointed it out on MR.

[corinthian]

Hi all, I've been through this post and many others trying to find a solution for the Bookerly bold italic issue and in my case, the only one that worked was using FontForge to change the panose weight. I tried three or four different naming conventions, and had no luck with any of them. This was with v1.000 and v1.020 of the font. So for anyone who is in my situation, to save them wading through many threads across the forum, a summary of the solution is as follows:

- The -Bold and -BoldItalic files are fine, and do not need modification
- The -Regular and -Italic files both have a panose weight of Medium, which is problematic according to jackie_w's explanation: "Instead of values Medium/Demi Kobo expects values of Book/Bold respectively."
- jackie-w provides clear instructions as to how to change the panose weight here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...81&postcount=9

I would like to add that another user in the Kindle sub has created a set of slightly modified Bookerly files, with font hints removed and em-size corrected from 1000 to 2048:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...67#post4023567
They present the same issue with bold italic text but again, the fix is a simple one in FontForge using jackie_w's instructions. There is a portable version if anyone doesn't want to install another program.

Obviously I'm not presenting any new information, just trying to summarise jackie_w's and raghiid's info.

[gogu1904]

On Panose information, I saw and tested myself two approaches: (a) strip the Panose information altogether via ReadifyFont; (b) edit the Panose information via FontForge to meet the Book/Bold rule. Is there a difference? I verified with Kobo books aquired from the Kobo store (kepubs) and with KOReader and in both cases I could not see a difference, i.e. apparently both work.

Also, with this Panose editing sorted out, what is your advice on Bookerly 1.201? It becomes all right, or I should keep using 1.020? Thank you!

[NiMa]

Don't know if this will help anyone, but Bookerly font (italics) works well in ePUBs in KOReader and Plato as of August 2020.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by corinthian

Hi all, I've been through this post and many others trying to find a solution for the Bookerly bold italic issue and in my case, the only one that worked was using FontForge to change the panose weight. I tried three or four different naming conventions, and had no luck with any of them. This was with v1.000 and v1.020 of the font. So for anyone who is in my situation, to save them wading through many threads across the forum, a summary of the solution is as follows:

- The -Bold and -BoldItalic files are fine, and do not need modification
- The -Regular and -Italic files both have a panose weight of Medium, which is problematic according to jackie_w's explanation: "Instead of values Medium/Demi Kobo expects values of Book/Bold respectively."
- jackie-w provides clear instructions as to how to change the panose weight here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...81&postcount=9

Minor disagreement. The Bookerly-Bold variant is okay but Bookerly-BoldItalic shows a Panose weight of Demi and needs to be changed to Bold.

[tops2]

Originally Posted by corinthian

Hi all, I've been through this post and many others trying to find a solution for the Bookerly bold italic issue and in my case, the only one that worked was using FontForge to change the panose weight. I tried three or four different naming conventions, and had no luck with any of them. This was with v1.000 and v1.020 of the font. So for anyone who is in my situation, to save them wading through many threads across the forum, a summary of the solution is as follows:

- The -Bold and -BoldItalic files are fine, and do not need modification
- The -Regular and -Italic files both have a panose weight of Medium, which is problematic according to jackie_w's explanation: "Instead of values Medium/Demi Kobo expects values of Book/Bold respectively."
- jackie-w provides clear instructions as to how to change the panose weight here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...81&postcount=9

I would like to add that another user in the Kindle sub has created a set of slightly modified Bookerly files, with font hints removed and em-size corrected from 1000 to 2048:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...67#post4023567
They present the same issue with bold italic text but again, the fix is a simple one in FontForge using jackie_w's instructions. There is a portable version if anyone doesn't want to install another program.

Obviously I'm not presenting any new information, just trying to summarise jackie_w's and raghiid's info.

Oh my goodness! Been searching on and off over the past year to fix the Bookerly font and guess never came across the post from jackie-w! It works perfectly.
The only thing I had to do in addition is I did a reboot (I went to sleep mode, then held down power button until my Clara HD rebooted). Then the Bookerly font is fine from the 2 books I tried (one is the font checker book from here, and another was a library book from Overdrive).

(Before the reboot, it didn't look like the fix worked. But after the reboot, the font was working as I expected from my sample of 2 books)

[corinthian]

Glad to hear that, tops2. I had forgotten to mention the importance of the reboot, which is mentioned in a number of the messages in the various threads.

[tops2]

@corinthian: Maybe the problem I had before in editing the fonts is that I didn't reboot!

Kinda funny how long I've been looking for Bookerly font fix..I used Bitter font for a while during this time and have gotten so used to it. Almost don't care about the Bookerly font even though its nice to have it finally working.

Main reason for a bit of preference for Bitter is at about the same font size, Bitter seems to have slightly less space between letters so a bit more text can fit per line without making the font too small. With Bookerly font, my eyes have to "move" more to read the same amount of text.

[corinthian]

Yes, that will have been a problem.

Fonts are such a personal question, I hope you find what you're after. Mine is a simple dream: a single font that I completely forget about after a few hours' use, and never feel the urge to replace. Still not there yet.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by corinthian

a single font that I completely forget about after a few hours' use, and never feel the urge to replace.

That's Literata Book for me. The only time I mess with it is when I hear others talking about another font. Yet I always go back to Literata Book.

[NiLuJe]

Yep, one more vote for Literata (3, not that it changed much) on high-dpi devices, Bookerly or Bitter on lower end devices.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Yep, one more vote for Literata (3, not that it changed much) on high-dpi devices, Bookerly or Bitter on lower end devices.

The line height on regular Literata is too high for me. Literata Book allows you to put more lines of text on the screen with the same settings. (I shared screenshots of the difference here.)

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

The line height on regular Literata is too high for me. Literata Book allows you to put more lines of text on the screen with the same settings. (I shared screenshots of the difference here.)

Agreed. Which is why I build one myself with mangled vertical metrics .

[Buhaj47]

Thanks, got the same issue, will test jackie_w's instruction. What about em-size - does it have to be changed from default 1000 in FontForge?