Clara BW kepub - Chinese fonts not appearing at specific font sizes?

[Krytes]

I'm trying to read a Chinese book which has sections of handwriting, but efforts to make it appear nicely with extra fonts are frustrating. Some of the fonts that I've tried don't work at several of the font sizes on the font-size slider (text in those fonts just defaults to something ugly and blocky at those sizes), but the font sizes that don't work are different for each of the handwriting-ish fonts that I've tried, and since the font slider doesn't show sizes, I have to fiddle with fonts every single time I switch between Chinese and English books. Is it possible to either find out which font sizes won't work for a given set of fonts and block them out of the font-size slider, or get some clearly legible handwriting-type fonts that will work for all of the sizes offered by the font-size slider? So far I've tried

• Hanyi Senty Candy
• FZMiaoWuS-GB
• Xiaolai SC
• YRDZST-Medium
• StarLovePencil

[Krytes]

It looks like, at least for now, the solution is to move to KOReader.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Krytes

I'm trying to read a Chinese book which has sections of handwriting, but efforts to make it appear nicely with extra fonts are frustrating. Some of the fonts that I've tried don't work at several of the font sizes on the font-size slider (text in those fonts just defaults to something ugly and blocky at those sizes), but the font sizes that don't work are different for each of the handwriting-ish fonts that I've tried, and since the font slider doesn't show sizes, I have to fiddle with fonts every single time I switch between Chinese and English books. Is it possible to either find out which font sizes won't work for a given set of fonts and block them out of the font-size slider, or get some clearly legible handwriting-type fonts that will work for all of the sizes offered by the font-size slider? So far I've tried

• Hanyi Senty Candy
• FZMiaoWuS-GB
• Xiaolai SC
• YRDZST-Medium
• StarLovePencil

Can you show us some screen grabs or photos of the screen? Thanks.

[Krytes]

Sure. This is on a kepub. The first pic is the desired behaviour (works at some font sizes). The second is what happens at several other font sizes. It works fine in koreader regardless of font size.

[Aleron Ives]

As someone who doesn't have much experience with how Chinese should be rendered properly, what exactly is the problem? The characters look slightly more pale in the second image, but it could just be the camera. You said the fonts "won't work" at some sizes, but it certainly looks like the characters are rendering, so you might want to be more specific regarding what the problem is.

[Krytes]

The problem is with the first few lines at the top of the page - they're supposed to be rendered in a handwriting font, as opposed to the more general "Kai Ti" style font of the rest of the document.

The first picture uses the correct handwriting font for those first few lines. The second picture doesn't use the correct font at all for the handwriting lines and defaults to something ugly and blocky. I've attached some clearer screenshots from my computer to show the difference.

[PeterT]

I wonder if the issue might be missing characters in the fonts you are setting as primary fonts on the Kobo, and those missing characters are being displayed from the Supplemental font specified on the Kobo?

[Krytes]

I don't think that there are any missing characters in the font, since all of the characters display correctly at some of the available font sizes. I had thought that maybe the handwriting fonts I've tried were bitmap fonts instead of outline fonts and had issues scaling because of that, but they all seem to be outline fonts, and KOReader has no problem displaying the handwriting font correctly at any size I choose (KOReader has far fewer available font sizes than the default kobo reader though)