03-18-2013, 10:10 PM | #16 |
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Hi
I can't really argue on your points. If I was trying to sell my books, I would indeed have chosen another path and tried to meet the needs of the largest reading audience. No question about that. Feeling no pressure... It happens that I publish non-commercial EPUBs, so I feel no pressure for two reasons: 1 - As far as I can see, the situation is not too bad: for the time being, I already provide a fallout solution. The Kobo displays the six inch PDF exactly the way I intended - Too bad for the unlucky Kobo Mini users... 2 - These books will be here for a long time because they are classical books. They will not be out of fashion next year, they are already out of fashion. And dropcaps have been around for centuries. They will survive this period. Meanwhile, the current technical limitations of the Kobo will very probably not be eternal. As an example, remember some years ago, people said:" if you publish for the IPAD, you cannot embed fonts." Well, Apple changed its mind. Currently it seems IPADs (or better said iBooks) does not seem to display nnbsp. Should we stop using them for this reason? This situation can change overnight. Look for fonts: not long ago, people argued that, for ebook readers, we should discard the old print fonts and switch to web optimized fonts (like Georgia), for hard fact reasons. Now, people begin to realize that old fonts can also be used because the screen resolution on nearly all devices has been vastly increased. I also enjoy using Garamond on my - 213 ppi - Kobo screen. These considerations apply also for dropcaps. This is a philosophical question, not a technical one... ... but looking for a solution If I feel no pressure, it does not mean that I do not care about how easily the reader can read them now. It happens that I have just been aware of this Kobo dropcap problem for some days (I bought a Kobo Glo) and I am looking for a solution. I already have to discard one solution proposed above: I will not use only one single font for body and dropcaps for a plain reason: I tried it already, and the resulting display is not nice nor elegant. The Linux Libertine Display font has been optimized for the display of big size characters but it's much too light-weight to be used for regular display. It would be a pity not to use it for what it has been intended for. Up to now, I try to understand how Kobo deals with embedded fonts. Are there any quirks regarding font-family names? If I have to change some names, I would gladly do it, as far as it does not trigger any collateral damage. If you found a solution to display fancy dropcaps, I would be keen to learn it (hoping these dropcaps are not just images). Finally, it seems there is also one thing that makes a correct display of EPUB dropcaps more difficult. You need to recreate the exact original balance for the three cursors (size, line-spacing and margin) if not the dropcap will not display as planned as it seems that these Kobo settings take precedence over the EPUB CSS values (but for EPUBs only, not for PDF)... Last edited by roger64; 03-19-2013 at 05:46 AM. |
03-19-2013, 11:50 AM | #17 | |
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03-19-2013, 12:22 PM | #18 |
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IIRC, if you don't set display to block (I'm assuming you're using a span, because you really shouldn't be using a div inside a paragraph), most renderers will ignore the top margin. Depending on the font, you may also need to set the line-height to at least 1.2, and you may want to set the box's height property to avoid wasting too much space below the drop cap on whitespace.
There are lots of other fun surprises if you aren't careful. Take a look at the CSS section of the EPUB article on the wiki site. Most of those quirks are reader-specific bugs that I discovered while doing drop caps. Last edited by dgatwood; 03-19-2013 at 12:25 PM. |
03-19-2013, 12:31 PM | #19 | |
Wizard
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I took care to bring back the right balance for the three Kobo cursors but as Kobo does not provide numerical values, you never can be 100% sure about it. I have good hope, with some more trials, to achieve a nice result. So, the good and plain answer seems to be: "Do not forget to add the Kobo font suffixes to your embedded fonts" Thanks for the tip!! Nota: I selected the option: "Default document" for the font choice. @jackie Thanks also for your implementation of dropcaps. I will look at it. Last edited by roger64; 03-19-2013 at 12:37 PM. |
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03-19-2013, 09:43 PM | #20 |
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You're welcome! As well as adding the right suffix, the name itself needs to match the proper font name - so if you have any further trouble, you might want to check that as well.
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03-20-2013, 06:17 AM | #21 | |
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The extreme sensitivity of Kobo to font-family names does not help. It seems they do request. - the full font-family name (no abbreviation, single quotes) - not the postscript name -. - a suffix at least for Regular, Italic, Bold and BoldItalic. I have four embedded fonts: three display perfectly ('Linux Libertine-Regular', 'Linux Libertine-Italic','Linux Libertine OC') the third one being for small-caps. The fourth one: 'Linux Libertine Display-Regular' still has some quirks which defeat the purpose of the dropcaps. This is my way for dropcaps. I do use a block (first span) in which I insert the letter (second span). Spoiler:
For the time being I do not yet get a perfect display of the dropcaps on EPUBs with the Kobo Glo and this precise embedded font. Some letters are nearly OK (S, E, I), some others are badly displayed (L, D..)... Last edited by roger64; 03-20-2013 at 06:37 AM. |
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03-20-2013, 02:05 PM | #22 |
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1. Go to the wiki page (https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPUB#CSS_Tips);
2. If you look carefully you'll see (nearly at the end of the file): CSS Tips; 3. You win! PS To verydeepwater: sorry for hijacking your post. Last edited by Arios; 03-20-2013 at 03:37 PM. |
03-21-2013, 01:46 AM | #23 |
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Ooh. I see somebody reorganized it so that it isn't a giant wall of bullets.
Thanks. |
03-21-2013, 06:30 AM | #24 |
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Thanks. I tried to find this item using the "main page" tree but one needs to be more clever.
For dropcaps, I use a 1.3em line-height for the body. But the one for the box needs to be adjusted. A 1.2 (or 1.3 value) would not fit, I think. |
03-21-2013, 01:57 PM | #25 |
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03-23-2013, 08:19 AM | #26 |
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Kobo
Before giving up with dropcaps and embedded fonts, I had a last try which finally worked. I dumped my embedded fonts (which were a subset created using Font Squirrel) and installed the heavy full ttf regular and italic fonts. This time everything was OK. The display of the dropcaps was perfect. So Kobo is very sensitive to both the name and nature of your embedded fonts. Much more so than ADE and most of other readers. Can we say: "If your embedded fonts works on the Kobo, they should work everywhere..." ? Wiki @DaleDe I am sorry if I gave you so much trouble for an offhand and dumb remark. There is indeed a link in the wiki from an introductory EPUB article toward the EPUB main article. My mistake was that I took this introductory EPUB article as the main one... Many times using Internet, the links are pointing elsewhere, for example to Wikipedia or W3Schools and so I did not bother to use this one. I forgot that a wiki structure is not an hierarchical one. All this comes from a poor judgment from my part. Could I suggest to differentiate the wiki internal links from the external ones? If the internal link points to an exhaustive article like the one on the EPUB, maybe this link would deserve to be written in big bold letters, to distinguish it from the common rabble and catch the attention of not too bright users like me... |
03-23-2013, 11:39 AM | #27 | |
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03-25-2013, 01:25 AM | #28 | |
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Regarding your problem, I suspect something went subtly wrong in your subsetting process, like glyphs being removed from the file without removing matching lines from the calt table or some other alternate glyph table or kerning table or.... |
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03-28-2013, 11:45 AM | #29 | |
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For example, the book 11/22/63 uses embedded fonts and very well too. But the main font used is selected in the body style. The book uses a number of different fonts and the eBook follows this to give a similar look and it works very well. This is a case of yes, you do want the embedded fonts as overriding the fonts will not work as well. I do sometimes embed when the eBook has enough smallcaps and I want them displayed correctly and not simulated. I also have been using Calibre's font subsetting to make the size of the embedded fonts much smaller and it works very well. Last edited by JSWolf; 03-28-2013 at 11:49 AM. |
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03-28-2013, 05:43 PM | #30 | ||
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Nevertheless if I want to read it in this spindly font all I have to do is select 'Document Default' from the font list -- as I believe I already said above. In what way is this a 'bug'? In real life I will select one of my own sideloaded darker fonts from the font list. I can even choose one which is similar to Garamond if I wish. Whichever of these 2 methods I choose, all the other (30 or so) special fonts embedded in this epub display exactly as the publisher intended. Quote:
The Kobo has several quirks/faults but in my experience to date, custom fonts is one of its greatest strengths not weaknesses. To repeat myself, I do not experience the 'bug', which I have seen you quote in multiple threads, on the epub you yourself quote as a prime example of the bug. Do you actually have access to a Kobo to test these bug theories or is it guesswork? |
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