Font Best Practices

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

So every user uses the same fonts as ADE 2.0.1 ?
I find that hard to believe.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that he default font for ADE 2.0.1 does not have all the glyphs and that's th standard by which the need for embedded fonts is measured. Some Reader only have the equivalent of ADE 2.0.1 such as some Sony Readers. I only have ADE 2.0.1 installed on all of my Windows computers. And I will be sticking with ADE 2.0.1 for as long as it works. ADE (RMSDK) is the most used program for reading ePub and you cannot say what version a user will be using and on what hardware. So testing on ADE 2.0.1 is highly recommended.

But for apps that allow user font choices, if the font in use doesn't have the glyphs needed, then that's down to the user.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

I'm curious as to how many devices have built-in glyphs for those commonly used fractions?

Again, it's a very bad idea to use Vulgar Fractions.

I just wrote about all the pros/cons a few weeks ago:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...08#post3882608

Those characters were only included in Unicode for backwards compatibility with some legacy encodings.

Use normal numbers: "25/26 or 2/3" and then rely on CSS for OpenType Fractions.

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

Then bug reports need to be filed - even if for the time being we have to work around the bugs - because they are bugs, and bugs should be fixed.

[...]

Users of those devices should complain to the manufacturer, they paid money for an ePub reader and they got one with a very nasty bug.

Yes, but ereaders are extremely long-term devices. There are still millions of 8+ year old devices out there that are still chugging along and being used to read.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For example, anyone still using a Sony Reader will not have working soft hyphens and there's no way at all to fix this.

Exactly. The shelflife of e-ink readers is immense. Like my Nook (1st generation) is still kicking around. Battery life is still pretty great.

And there are millions of others just like it, and they won't ever be patched.

EPUB

And like JSWolf said, older versions of ADE (like v2.0.1) is an okay approximation for many of these older devices. That version of RMSDK was used in many of the EPUB readers.

Newer versions of ADE renders with newer RMSDK (and Readium for EPUB3)... so ADE 4+ will show support for things that many older ereaders just won't ever support (like more advanced CSS3, WOFF, etc.).

Kindles / MOBI

It's kind of like using Kindle Previewer 2 to emulate what an older Kindle would look like... instead of relying on Kindle Previewer 3 (which ONLY shows newer KF8 format). But there are still MILLIONS of older Kindles out there that only support KF7 ("old MOBI").

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

But they should not interfere with search and when an author needs to use them, the glyph should be there even on systems that don't use it.

But the reality is soft hyphens do interfere with Search. They also interfere with Dictionary lookup, and things such as Auto-Translation too (think Google Translate).

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

The calibre reader I use on Linux - maybe there is a plugin that does it, but when I right click on an ePub and choose "Open with E-Book Viewer" there is no automated hyphenation, but if I add soft-hyphens they are used.

If you read a lot of that soft hyphen posts I linked to... "Hyphenate This!" is a Calibre plugin that already does this.

It might be okay for personal copies... but I would never use it for an ebook for sale.

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

So should I refrain from fixing the display of ePub documents on readers that *do* support soft hyphens just because some readers do not have U+00AD or should I go ahead and include the soft hyphens for the benefit of those using compatible readers

Don't include Soft Hyphens ever. Again, the disadvantages are immense.

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

A CSS solution would be better - as in a CSS solution that lets you define hyphenation for words that automated hyphenation get wrong.

There's no such thing in CSS.

In LaTeX, you can then manually create lists of words to adjust hyphenation manually if needed:

\hyphenation{man-u-al}

In Word Processors, you usually have a way to add manual user-dictionaries with hard-coded hyphenations in there.

In the web/ebooks/CSS... no.

* * *

Side Note: See a lot of my previous Hyphenation discussion from 2014, especially Post #20:

Using regex for more elegant hyphenation and word wrap

Side Note #2: For bleeding edge hyphenation info, see:

http://www.hyphenation.org/tex

Also see "Hyphenation in TeX and elsewhere, past and future" by Mojca Miklavec and Arthur Reutenauer in TUGboat Volume 37 (2016) No. 2 (PDF) for some of the discussion on licensing issues + growing pains (updating the patterns for UTF-8, getting patterns into browsers+other programs/devices).

* * *

LaTeX

Hyphenation is based completely on hyphenation patterns (I'll call this "Algorithm-based").

A giant list of pre-hyphenated words is fed, and this creates the pattern for each language.

From what I can gather, this is where much of the hyphenation patterns/research comes from, and then the web browsers sort of adopt solutions from here.

Patterns get updated every so often, and there are people who keep track of hyphenation exceptions that the patterns get wrong, such as the ushyphex (US Hyphenation Exceptions) package:

https://ctan.org/tex-archive/info/di...phenex?lang=en

In LaTeX, you also have full control over things like:

• Characters to the left/right of hyphen

and because you have full access to the renderer, you can also do more complicated language-specific typography.

(There's very complicated hyphenation in some languages: Letters/spelling changes, double hyphens, duplicated letters, dealing with single letter words, etc... it's why it's usually best to just use babel/polyglossia, assign your document the correct language, and leave it up to the experts.)

* * *

Web Standards

Miles behind LaTeX, but they're slowly playing catchup.

CSS3

You pretty much just have hyphens:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...eb/CSS/hyphens

You specify document language, and hope the support is there (and that it's good). Sadly, Polish isn't one of the better ones... yet.

CSS4

They're adding a few more advanced things to deal with hyphenation:

https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#hyphenation

You'll get access to a few more LaTeX-type things such as:

• (hyphenate-limit-chars) # Chars allowed to the left/right of hyphens
• (hyphenate-limit-lines) # Multiple hyphen line-endings in a row.
• (hyphenate-limit-last) Hyphen at the very end of page/column, etc.

Ebooks

Like JSWolf said, some of the better devices (like Kobo) actually let you replace with your own Hyphenation Dictionaries.

On Kobo, you can also adjust # of chars to the left/right of hyphens.

Devices that support hyphens usually embedded their own patterns (and most likely applying English hyphenation rules to languages like Polish... which is why it's usually abysmal).

But many of the older devices out there don't support hyphenation at all. Again, it's best to just leave it that way. Don't muddle your ebooks with Soft Hyphens, because they introduce much worse problems than poorer justification.

Side Note: Many programs also apply very bad/wrong left/right hyphens... like Microsoft Word has right-hyphen-chars as 2... so you get atrocious hyphenation at the 2-letter "-ly". Proper English typography has 3 (which is what LaTeX sets it to).

[PeterT]

I've often seen issues on Kobo's when reading cookbooks in ePub format. Quite often fractions display as a square due to the symbol not being in the font being used. KePub rendering is normally correct due to the engine finding the missing symbol in the default font.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I've often seen issues on Kobo's when reading cookbooks in ePub format. Quite often fractions display as a square due to the symbol not being in the font being used. KePub rendering is normally correct due to the engine finding the missing symbol in the default font.

Thanks for that info.

[Turtle91]

Or..... just don't use text-align:justify.... no hyphens needed, "ever".

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Or..... just don't use text-align:justify.... no hyphens needed, "ever".

That works with Kobo an looks awful. Might not work with others and will look awful.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That works with Kobo an looks awful. Might not work with others and will look awful.

Personally, I like ragged right much better than justified. For your tastes, seeing a chapter header such as 'CHAPTER ELEVEN' being split into 'CHAPTER' and ' ELEVEN' and having both words stretched across the screen looks good but I beg to differ.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally, I like ragged right much better than justified. For your tastes, seeing a chapter header such as 'CHAPTER ELEVEN' being split into 'CHAPTER' and ' ELEVEN' and having both words stretched across the screen looks good but I beg to differ.

Using your CHAPTER ELEVEN example, that would never happen the way you described. Chapter titles are either left, center, or right justified.

And when you left justify, you are not guaranteeing that there won't be any hyphenation. One thing I really don't like it the gaps you get between the end of the last word and the margin. It can look really bad without hyphenation. Just thing of a line where you have a long word of 7-9 characters that doesn't fit by one character. That looks awful.

Full justified with hyphens looks better to most people (myself included).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Using your CHAPTER ELEVEN example, that would never happen the way you described. Chapter titles are either left, center, or right justified.

And when you left justify, you are not guaranteeing that there won't be any hyphenation. One thing I really don't like it the gaps you get between the end of the last word and the margin. It can look really bad without hyphenation. Just thing of a line where you have a long word of 7-9 characters that doesn't fit by one character. That looks awful.

Full justified with hyphens looks better to most people (myself included).

Jon, Jon, Jon.... Aligned not justified. OTOH, even a single or two word header can be justified though why this author thinks this is a good idea is a matter between her and whatever gods she believes in. I just get to correct this issue which keeps my wife happier. I've attached a sample of the original chapter 11 header open in calibre's viewer (3.99.4) -- I also remove the "need" to have the chapter header alone on it's page.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That works with Kobo an looks awful. Might not work with others and will look awful.

Ummm...that will work with ANY device that honors CSS....and the awful part is a matter of taste.... in fact, you are reading left-aligned now... and it's not that bad, now is it!



edit:
For that matter, on most devices, the user can simply change the alignment to their own choice... so, you can select justify and deal with bad hyphens all you want!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Ummm...that will work with ANY device that honors CSS....and the awful part is a matter of taste.... in fact, you are reading left-aligned now... and it's not that bad, now is it!

I freely admit a serious preference for justified text (I feel that books published with ragged right look like a 5th-grader made them)--but each to their own. This is part of what I kvetched about earlier--this overwhelming need people seem to have to tailor every. single. thing. to their own preferences. FFS, we all managed to survive reading DT books, which have been justified for most of our lifetimes, without our girly bits or wedding tackle falling off. This endless whingeing about how text "has to be" ragged right or this or that...Christ. It seems like the more choices people are afforded now, the more inflexible they become.

edit:
For that matter, on most devices, the user can simply change the alignment to their own choice... so, you can select justify and deal with bad hyphens all you want!

That is certainly NOT true on Kindles, Turtle. FWIW.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jon, Jon, Jon.... Aligned not justified. OTOH, even a single or two word header can be justified though why this author thinks this is a good idea is a matter between her and whatever gods she believes in. I just get to correct this issue which keeps my wife happier. I've attached a sample of the original chapter 11 header open in calibre's viewer (3.99.4) -- I also remove the "need" to have the chapter header alone on it's page.

But that's just really bad code. That's not one of those "Oh dear, I didn't check what would happen when the font was made really big". That was "I made this mess on purpose".

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I freely admit a serious preference for justified text (I feel that books published with ragged right look like a 5th-grader made them)--but each to their own. This is part of what I kvetched about earlier--this overwhelming need people seem to have to tailor every. single. thing. to their own preferences. FFS, we all managed to survive reading DT books, which have been justified for most of our lifetimes, without our girly bits or wedding tackle falling off. This endless whingeing about how text "has to be" ragged right or this or that...Christ. It seems like the more choices people are afforded now, the more inflexible they become.



That is certainly NOT true on Kindles, Turtle. FWIW.

Hitch

Yes, pBooks are justified, hyphenated, have indents, and no paragraph spaces. Did anyone complain about that format before Readers were invented? The only complaints I've read of was the font was too small or the paper too thin. But it was never about the layout.

So if we get a similar formatted eBook, why are there now complaints? I complain when the format is lousy. But with pBooks, the format was not lousy. And we did have some L/R margins because of the spine. Now we don't need such margins because there is no spine.

So can we not complain when an eBook is formatted well enough and only complain when it's poorly formatted? Left justified is not enjoyable to read. Yes, I have read many eBooks left justified, but no more.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes, pBooks are justified, hyphenated, have indents, and no paragraph spaces. Did anyone complain about that format before Readers were invented?

Maybe not complaints. But I know I've pointed out in the past that the magical, perfectly uniform typography of commercially published pbooks, that many people insist on referring to never really existed in the first place. It's a myth. I can pull commercially published books off of my shelf that are ragged right. I can pull some down that have spaces between all paragraphs. Some that have no indent on first paragraphs, and some that do. Some that have a crap-ton of vertical space before new chapter headers and some that have none (and everything in between). Some with hyphens, some with rivers of white. Some with huge paragraph indents, some with tiny ones. Way too much line-spacing and lines that almost touch each other.

The fact is that there has always been a wide disparity of notions about how text was supposed to look on a page--physical or electronic. Enough so that I feel confident in doubting just about anybody who says "this is the way it's supposed to be done." *shrug*

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Maybe not complaints. But I know I've pointed out in the past that the magical, perfectly uniform typography of commercially published pbooks, that many people insist on referring to never really existed in the first place. It's a myth. I can pull commercially published books off of my shelf that are ragged right. I can pull some down that have spaces between all paragraphs. Some that have no indent on first paragraphs, and some that do. Some that have a crap-ton of vertical space before new chapter headers and some that have none (and everything in between). Some with hyphens, some with rivers of white. Some with huge paragraph indents, some with tiny ones. Way too much line-spacing and lines that almost touch each other.

The fact is that there has always been a wide disparity of notions about how text was supposed to look on a page--physical or electronic. Enough so that I feel confident in doubting just about anybody who says "this is the way it's supposed to be done." *shrug*

One reason I like some uniform formatting is that the overrides then work much better. No line hight and I can use the line height slider. No margins and I can use the margins slider. No embedded fonts and I can use the font selection.. Leaving the body font at the default seize and I get the size that works for me with the font slider.

So really, when things are done that prevent these setting from working, then it may not be as good a reading experience. Some of the formatting used in a lot of eBooks looks kind of sloppy (IMHO). And with this sloppy formatting, look at the pBook and there isn't such sloppy formatting.