Embedded fonts

[Section8]

I haven't seen any books this bad, but I think in the past I have just subset all fonts to clean up unneeded font like this.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Section8

I haven't seen any books this bad, but I think in the past I have just subset all fonts to clean up unneeded font like this.

I've seen one ebook with over 140 embedded fonts. Every personae in the book had their own font which, for me, made the ebook almost unreadable. I tried subsetting the fonts to reduce the size of the file but ended up removing all but one font used for text messages.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've seen one ebook with over 140 embedded fonts. Every personae in the book had their own font which, for me, made the ebook almost unreadable. I tried subsetting the fonts to reduce the size of the file but ended up removing all but one font used for text messages.

What book is this?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What book is this?

I'm not certain as to the title/author, it was a few years back and the only thing that really stuck in my memory was the number of embedded fonts and the nitwitted reason for using them. The book, if I am remembering correctly, was from Kobo's Writing Life self-publishing platform.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Stewart Black

On my current ePub formatting job, I needed "checkboxes" on a set of pages. [...] I duly incorporated Wingding.ttf in the Fonts, [...] However, when I tried the Nook reader, the checkboxes do NOT show, only an indication of an unrecognized character. Any ideas what I missed or how to fix this?

I appreciate any help or insights anyone may have. Thank you.

Wingdings is not a Unicode font, so the characters are all jumbled up.

For example, if you typed the letter "a" in:

• Symbol = α = Lowercase alpha
• Webdings = ✔ = Heavy Check Mark
• Wingdings = ♋ = Cancer
• Wingdings 2 = 🙦 = Heavy North East Pointing Bud
• Wingdings 3 = ➩ = Right-Shaded White Rightwards Arrow

Visually, it might look like a '✔' (heavy checkmark) or '♋' (Cancer symbol)—but underneath, it's actually an 'a'.

This would completely mess up things like Text-to-Speech! Or if the user reading the ebook decided to change their font!

Instead, for any of those symbols you want to use, you should be using the proper Unicode characters.

- - -

Side Note: In 2014, all Symbol/Webdings/Wingdings characters were added into Unicode.

In 2018, Kovid added a feature to Calibre. If Calibre detects a document is using any of those 5 non-Unicode fonts, it will auto-convert the characters to their Unicode equivalents.

There is now no excuse to ever use those ancient Symbol/Webdings/Wingdings fonts!

- - -

Side Note #2: In order to find the proper Unicode symbols, I highly recommend using these sites, which collect them in tables:

• Toxaris's "Mapping Symbol fonts to Unicode"
• https://www.alanwood.net/demos/wingdings.html
• https://www.alanwood.net/demos/wingdings-2.html
• https://www.alanwood.net/demos/wingdings-3.html
• https://www.alanwood.net/demos/webdings.html
• https://www.alanwood.net/demos/symbol.html

If you want a checkbox, then use:

• ☐ = U+2610 = BALLOT BOX
• ☑ = U+2611 = BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK
• ☒ = U+2612 = BALLOT BOX WITH X
• ✓ = U+2713 = CHECK MARK
• ✗ = U+2717 = BALLOT X

Like Doitsu said, to use this in your ebook, you would then need to embed a font that includes these symbols.

Personally, I use the "Symbola" font, but there are plenty of others out there too.

Side Note #2.1: If you want even more info on how to find/insert these obscure characters, also see my posts in:

• 2021: "Will Sigil support the entire Unicode System?"
• 2022: "Does epub format support emoji?"

where I described:

• Sigil's Insert > Special Character + Calibre's Edit > Insert Special Character...
• Word/LibreOffice's "Insert Special Character".
• Emoji or rare characters, like 🌔 (WAXING GIBBOUS MOON) or 🜊 (ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR VINEGAR)
• Tools for finding out which fonts on your system include a given character/symbol.

If you want a step-by-step tutorial on how to embed (and subset) a font, then see my post in:

• 2021: "Japanese characters not showing up on some devices"

I described how to mark a handful of characters using HTML+CSS, then embed and use a font only for those few characters. (Perfect for something like a checkbox or Japanese which is only used in a very small part of the ebook!)