[Script] Koboify Fonts

[NiLuJe]

Okay, I hadn't yet played with the new and "improved" Bookerly, so, that was the perfect excuse to go ahead and try my hand at handling the Panose stuff like FontForge, but with fontTools instead: fix-panose.py.

And, apparently, it works .

My usual shenanigans for Bookerly, which I used to do by hand via FontForge:

fonts=("${(@f)$(ls -1 ./Bookerly-*.ttf)}")

for font in "${fonts[@]}" ; do
	gftools fix-vertical-metrics -a 802 -d -198 -l 0 "${font}"
	mv -v "${font%.*}.fix.ttf" "${font}"
	gftools nametable-from-filename "${font}"
	mv -v "${font}.fix" "${font}"
	fix-panose.py "${font}"
	mv -v "${font}.fix" "${font}"
done

(That's ZSH. Too lazy to dumb that down ;p).

And it behaves .

Sidebar, since I'm using an unhinted CFF Literata 3, and I tried the latest unhinted TTF Bookerly:

ACCESS (Monotype's iType?) *really* doesn't like unhinted fonts, CFF or TTF.
RMSDK appears to deal with unhinted CFF mostly properly (makes sense, it's Adobe), but deals with unhinted TTFs only slightly less badly than ACCESS.

TL;DR: You'll probably want to stick to hinted TTFs, or eventually unhinted CFFs if you read plain ePubs.
(Official Literata builds ship as TTF anyways).

[sherman]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Sidebar, since I'm using an unhinted CFF Literata 3, and I tried the latest unhinted TTF Bookerly:

ACCESS (Monotype's iType?) *really* doesn't like unhinted fonts, CFF or TTF.
RMSDK appears to deal with unhinted CFF mostly properly (makes sense, it's Adobe), but deals with unhinted TTFs only slightly less badly than ACCESS.

TL;DR: You'll probably want to stick to hinted TTFs, or eventually unhinted CFFs if you read plain ePubs.
(Official Literata builds ship as TTF anyways).

It all depends on the hinting...

I've seen some hand-hinted fonts that look truly awful on the Kobo (RMSDK, TTF), but no font with the hints stripped have every given me any problems, so YMMV.

[NiLuJe]

Yeah, some old/complex truetype hinting going kablooey doesn't surprise me all that much .

My experience with unhinted fonts has been pretty much uniformly terrible, on the other hand (but I tend to prefer CFF, which prooobably doesn't help).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by sherman

It all depends on the hinting...

I've seen some hand-hinted fonts that look truly awful on the Kobo (RMSDK, TTF), but no font with the hints stripped have every given me any problems, so YMMV.

ChareInk isn't hinted and it works well with RMSDK, Access, and Kindle.

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

ChareInk isn't hinted and it works well with RMSDK, Access, and Kindle.

Ah. Then you might add "depends on taste/sensibility", to the list, too, because I'd definitely consider that one to render like crap on Kobo .

(And I do mean on Kobo. Because, while I don't necessarily *like* it, it renders much better on Kindle and/or with recent FreeType versions in KOReader or Plato).

[JeanPierre]

Hi sherman, thank you for maintaining the ReadifyFont script.

I wanted to alert you to a possible shortcoming I found when running the output of the latest Literata v3 build through the script where Styles (SubFamily) attribute wasn't modified as expected to match the configuration in the script, so I had to manually correct these before using the ReadifyFont output on my Kobo device.

More details in this post.

[NiLuJe]

@JeanPierre: Literata 3 is a curious beast, because the main target is a variable font.

Which means the "fixed" builds end up having wonky metadata, sometimes dangerously so on Kobo.

Here are my own notes on how I deal with Literata (when building it from source): http://trac.ak-team.com/trac/browser.../REMINDER#L125

[gogu1904]

Something is not right. Or, I do not understand (which sounds more plausible). I start with the downloaded Bitter HT font and work from there, in three manners.

(a) Modify with ReadifyFonts the fonts Medium and MediumItalic, to rename them to Regular and strip panose info. Add the downloaded fonts Bold and BoldItalic.

(b) The same four files as above. Modify ALL of them via ReadifyFonts.

(c) The same four files as above. Edit the two Medium fonts via FontForge. Add the downloaded fonts Bold and BoldItalic.

I tried with Kobo KEPUB reader (with store KEPUB books) and with KOREADER with sideloaded EPUB files). The only option that works is (c). Otherwise the fonts are defect (letters like B, d, p have their "eye" filled in black).

This is not consistent. For some other fonts, the three options are equivalent.

[jesson345]

Error info:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\kobo\KoboifyFonts-v0.3.1\KoboifyFonts-0.3.1.py", line 136, in <module>
for key, val in fontDic.iteritems():
AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'iteritems'

What should I do?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jesson345

Error info:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\kobo\KoboifyFonts-v0.3.1\KoboifyFonts-0.3.1.py", line 136, in <module>
for key, val in fontDic.iteritems():
AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'iteritems'

What should I do?

That looks like an error you get when you run a Python 2 script using Python 3. Changing "iteritems" to "items" on line 136 of the script might fix it (I can't remember if the Python 3 dictionary has the method items). Or install Python 2 and run it under that.

[jesson345]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That looks like an error you get when you run a Python 2 script using Python 3. Changing "iteritems" to "items" on line 136 of the script might fix it (I can't remember if the Python 3 dictionary has the method items). Or install Python 2 and run it under that.

Thanks！I will try it.

[jesson345]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That looks like an error you get when you run a Python 2 script using Python 3. Changing "iteritems" to "items" on line 136 of the script might fix it (I can't remember if the Python 3 dictionary has the method items). Or install Python 2 and run it under that.

Thanks again!It worked!

[iandol]

Isn't it recommended to use the more recently maintained ReadifyFont scripts rather than the older kobify-fonts one? At least that script seems to work with either version of Python...

https://github.com/shermp/ReadifyFont

[sherman]

Originally Posted by iandol

Isn't it recommended to use the more recently maintained ReadifyFont scripts rather than the older kobify-fonts one? At least that script seems to work with either version of Python...

https://github.com/shermp/ReadifyFont

b9a7d4e on Nov 10, 2016

Err... "recent". Yeah, it's been a while since I worked on any of this font stuff.

I kept meaning to move to using something like fonttools instead of FontForge, but it never quite happened. Maybe some day...

[zertyuiop]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Here are my own notes on how I deal with Literata (when building it from source): http://trac.ak-team.com/trac/browser.../REMINDER#L125

Can you please share your notes again as well as fix-panose.py?