Somebody made a font tester

[DomesticExtremis]

as an epub, for testing various bold/italics and extended
characters (e.g. umlauts, etc).

I downloaded one copy, but can't find the thread where it was
posted or who kindly provided it. The epub author is Ann Onymous

i'm thinking of makng something to test epub feature support
(for graphics and other layout stuff)and thought this might be a
good place to start, but want to ask the owner first.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

as an epub, for testing various bold/italics and extended
characters (e.g. umlauts, etc).

I downloaded one copy, but can't find the thread where it was
posted or who kindly provided it. The epub author is Ann Onymous

i'm thinking of makng something to test epub feature support
(for graphics and other layout stuff)and thought this might be a
good place to start, but want to ask the owner first.

I was the originator of that epub. You and anyone else have my full permission to use it, modify it, etc. I just ask that you make the result available to the other users of this forum.

As for the author, it was a toss up between using Ann Onymous and Ima Pseudonym. What can I say? My family is convinced that my sense of humour is 3 sigmas east of strange.

Regards,
David

[davidfor]

You might want to ask about this in the epub forum. I am pretty sure there are examples to do all sorts of testing that could be modified to test Kobo specific things.

And David, I know the feeling. My family seem to think the same thing about me. It's just a pity that none of them have a sense of humour.

[DomesticExtremis]

Thanks DNSB.

Here's my first stab a it.
Still lots more to do and having some really funky results
with special characters.
Thus far about the best (but by no means compete) is with
Liberation Serif ttf (sideloaded) and a koboified epub.

I would be interested to hear what results others get.
I will continue posting updates over time.

[DomesticExtremis]

Well it seems having the right fonts installed makes all the difference.
Gnu-free and DejaVu fonts do a pretty good job on special characters in
their serif and sans forms,not so good for the monotype face.
Also, koboifying the epub makes a big difference to which languages get
rendered.
It could take quite some time to get through all the permutations.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

Well it seems having the right fonts installed makes all the difference.
Gnu-free and DejaVu fonts do a pretty good job on special characters in
their serif and sans forms,not so good for the monotype face.
Also, koboifying the epub makes a big difference to which languages get
rendered.
It could take quite some time to get through all the permutations.

I ended up installing Microsoft's Arial Unicode MS font just to allow me to see the various pages without having to switch fonts. While Arial MS has it's issues, I think it has the best unicode support of any font currently available.

I made a few small changes to split the ligatures out from the font styles, remove the 5 blank pages after the Arabic test page and then renamed the file to .kepub.epub to allow handing the direction directives. I've attached that version to this message along with a file from the Azardi website which contains the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 28 languages. The embedded DejaVu font does not work properly but using the Arial Unicode font lets me see most of the text files. Amharic, Malayam and Thai are among the missing.

Regards,
David

[JSWolf]

My modified Charis SIL in the Kobo font thread works very well. It has all the characters in these font tests.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My modified Charis SIL in the Kobo font thread works very well. It has all the characters in these font tests.

That's the major reason I'm using your modified font -- the odd names after the font styles and special characters are from various books I've been reading.

Regards,
David

[DomesticExtremis]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I ended up installing Microsoft's Arial Unicode MS font just to allow me to see the various pages without having to switch fonts. While Arial MS has it's issues, I think it has the best unicode support of any font currently available.

I made a few small changes to split the ligatures out from the font styles, remove the 5 blank pages after the Arabic test page and then renamed the file to .kepub.epub to allow handing the direction directives. I've attached that version to this message along with a file from the Azardi website which contains the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 28 languages. The embedded DejaVu font does not work properly but using the Arial Unicode font lets me see most of the text files. Amharic, Malayam and Thai are among the missing.

Regards,
David

Thanks DNSB, I'll take a look.
Koboifying definitely helps for the bidirectional languages, but
gives some rather strange results elsewhere (e.g. Chinese) where
some of the font characters scale and others do not .
The blank pages were for adding more stuff (which I've now done) so
I'll merge in bits from your copy and post another soon.

[DomesticExtremis]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My modified Charis SIL in the Kobo font thread works very well. It has all the characters in these font tests.

I will grab a copy - I've not yet found a font that handles all the
languages and have ended up installing quite a few from my Linux box.
It will be nice to remove some of them

[DomesticExtremis]

Incorporated DNSB's changes and added lots more stuff.

[PeterT]

I'd suggest you also add the fractional symbols in; some of the Kobo fonts have fractions, other's don't.

Nine Fractions: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞

My testing shows the following:

Amasis: ¼ ½ ¾
Avenir: ¼ ½ ¾
Caecilia: ¼ ½ ¾
Georgia: ⅛ ¼ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ¾ ⅞
Gill Sans: ¼ ½ ¾
Kobo Nickel: ¼ ½ ¾
Malabar: ¼ ½ ¾
Rockwell: ¼ ½ ¾
Gothic MB101: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞
Ryumin: ⅛ ¼ ⅓ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ⅔ ¾ ⅞
Open Dyslexic: ¼ ½ ¾

[DomesticExtremis]

They are there in the special characters section.

[PeterT]

Sorry! I missed seeing those when I looked at the ePub in ADE; not sure what font ADE is using but some of them show as missing in it even!

Sigh!

[DomesticExtremis]

I'll move them somewhere a bit more obvious.

Indeed, I've found more issues related to font choice than I have due
to absence of feature support or poor implementation.
Best (unencumbered) fonts I've found so far are DejaVu and Gnu-Free
fonts I side-loaded from my Linux box.