How widely supported are smallcaps?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Brett Merkey

As some of the articles on Hitch's site indicate, authors are quite quick to complain — only their gripes are ill-directed. The pressure should be on Amazon and Adobe and others to properly support international standards which have been written in stone, almost for decades.

It's too late. Even if Adobe was to support small caps, it would not be advisable to use it in CSS for a lot of Readers because there are too many older versions of RMSDK/ADE out there where it's not supported. For example, Sony Readers and Kobo. Sony Readers will never be updated and Kobo probably not.

[najgori]

Originally Posted by Brett Merkey

The pressure should be on Amazon and Adobe and others to properly support international standards which have been written in stone, almost for decades.

"Standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards!" (fake movie quotes)
Amazon and Adobe remind me at William Gibsons zaibatsus. They do not follow rules. They create rules.
Do you really believe you can put pressure to Adobe and Amazon? How? With nukes?
Amazon ebooks is probably less than .1!!! pct in Bezos spreadsheet. Similarly is Adobe.
They just do not give a f...

!!! edit: it is more like .00001pct

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's too late. Even if Adobe was to support small caps, it would not be advisable to use it in CSS for a lot of Readers because there are too many older versions of RMSDK/ADE out there where it's not supported. For example, Sony Readers and Kobo. Sony Readers will never be updated and Kobo probably not.

All Kobos are quite happy to render font-variant:small-caps; as long as your book is a kepub (i.e. everything Kobo sells). The small-caps will be 'simulated' from the font currently in use rather than a true small-caps font.

I wouldn't be surprised if Kindles do the same in at least one (maybe more) of the Amazon book formats.

Kobos are certainly able to display true small-caps by using the industry standard method of embedding a suitable font in the book. I'd hope Kindles would be the same, but I don't know.

There are tricks you can use on a Kobo (kepub or epub) to avoid font embedding by referencing a sideloaded true small-caps font with suitable CSS. It's probably more effort than most users want to be bothered with.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's too late. [...].

Support for OT features (font-variant & al) already exist for Calibre, Sigil and LibreOffice. QuarkeXPress paid a front page publicity in 2018 touting its brand new support for OT features. Some companies do like to brag about their alleged "advanced typography"...

You'll be proved wrong about this sooner than you think.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

All Kobos are quite happy to render font-variant:small-caps; as long as your book is a kepub (i.e. everything Kobo sells). The small-caps will be 'simulated' from the font currently in use rather than a true small-caps font.

I wouldn't be surprised if Kindles do the same in at least one (maybe more) of the Amazon book formats.

Kobos are certainly able to display true small-caps by using the industry standard method of embedding a suitable font in the book. I'd hope Kindles would be the same, but I don't know.

There are tricks you can use on a Kobo (kepub or epub) to avoid font embedding by referencing a sideloaded true small-caps font with suitable CSS. It's probably more effort than most users want to be bothered with.

With Mobi you have to do the simulated small caps. It's a shame that Adobe didn't support small caps properly. If they did, we would not need to code for small caps.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

There are tricks you can use on a Kobo (kepub or epub) to avoid font embedding by referencing a sideloaded true small-caps font with suitable CSS. It's probably more effort than most users want to be bothered with.

Yes, but again, that's fine for personal use; not much good for commercial eBooks.

Hitch

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, but again, that's fine for personal use; not much good for commercial eBooks.

Agreed, I thought that was implicit in me calling them tricks. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Commercial books should only use embedding if true small-caps are absolutely 'required'.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Agreed, I thought that was implicit in me calling them tricks. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Commercial books should only use embedding if true small-caps are absolutely 'required'.

Embedding small caps won't work. Kindles cannot handle that properly. You embed small caps in KF8 and the body font goes to hell. You get serif or sans-serif and not your choice of font. Plus, if Publisher Font is not selected, you get uppercase. Kindles have botched font embedding big time.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Embedding small caps won't work. Kindles cannot handle that properly. You embed small caps in KF8 and the body font goes to hell. You get serif or sans-serif and not your choice of font. Plus, if Publisher Font is not selected, you get uppercase. Kindles have botched font embedding big time.

I wouldn't know. Everyday I'm thankful that I don't need to worry about commercial books or "what would Kindle do?".

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Agreed, I thought that was implicit in me calling them tricks. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Commercial books should only use embedding if true small-caps are absolutely 'required'.

Yeah, just clarifying for the newbies that come along later, when this thread is dust in the wind to the rest of us. :-)

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, just clarifying for the newbies that come along later, when this thread is dust in the wind to the rest of us. :-)

Hitch

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

All Kobos are quite happy to render font-variant:small-caps; as long as your book is a kepub

Thanks for that. I just noticed that font-variant: small-caps; was not working on my Libra 2 with epubs and was researching why.

Looks like I'll have to stick with the following in the CSS

PHP Code:

.smallcaps {
  font-size: 0.7em;
  text-transform: uppercase;
} 


[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Thanks for that. I just noticed that font-variant: small-caps; was not working on my Libra 2 with epubs and was researching why.

Looks like I'll have to stick with the following in the CSS

PHP Code:

.smallcaps {
  font-size: 0.7em;
  text-transform: uppercase;
} 


The reason smallcaps is not working with ePub on your Libra 2 is because the version of RMSDK that's used for ePub is too old. Kobo really needs to use a newer version.

And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.8333em. And I'm not sure that the text-transform to uppercase works or not with ePub and if that is the case, you'll need to drop it and make sure the text is uppercase.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The reason smallcaps is not working with ePub on your Libra 2 is because the version of RMSDK that's used for ePub is too old. Kobo really needs to use a newer version.

And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.888em. And I'm not sure that the text-transform to uppercase works or not with ePub and if that is the case, you'll need to drop it and make sure the text is uppercase.

The text uppercase does work in epubs on Libra 2. I use it for chapter headings which are all caps, so I then don't get all caps in the TOC

0.888em is oddly specific. Any reason? Is there such a thing as smallcap fonts? I should google it.

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by Karellen

The text uppercase does work in epubs on Libra 2. I use it for chapter headings which are all caps, so I then don't get all caps in the TOC

0.888em is oddly specific. Any reason? Is there such a thing as smallcap fonts? I should google it.

There are definitely smallcap fonts. I can't speak to that .888em figure there but you generally want small caps to be a smidge taller than your font's x-height, and that does sound like it'd likely land close for many fonts.