![]() ![]() Then, you will need to test the reader support of that obfuscation. See Licensing Fonts for Embedding in EPUB for more details around how font licensing is evolving with the EPUB 3 specification.Īssuming you’ve sorted out the licensing, you will probably need to obfuscate the fonts, which means finding a tool to add the obfuscation algorithm. Many foundries are still figuring out realistic licensing models that both the publisher and foundry can live with. If you decide to embed commercial fonts, your font foundry may or may not grant you a license to do so. Great!įiguring out the licensing can be daunting. In Figure 4-1, the Google Play Books iOS app defaults to the embedded font, which in this case is UbuntuMono. If a reading system does default to the embedded fonts, the user can override those fonts at any time, which can sometimes lead to unexpected and undesirable results.įigure 4-1 and Figure 4-2 show an example of a reading system behaving oddly. ![]() The embedded fonts must be toggled on, and that toggle can be buried in a menu option that a user may never think to access. There’s been little indication that reading system vendors are likely to get their acts together anytime soon.Įven more discouraging, perhaps, is that even if a reading system supports font embedding correctly and consistently, the user may never see those fonts because many reading systems default to system fonts. It is advisable for a Reading System to support the OpenType font format, but this is not a conformance requirement a reading system may support no embedded font formats at all.Īnd while it’s encouraging that the EPUB 3 specification takes a much clearer stance on the issue of reading system support for font embedding- requiring support for OpenType and WOFF fonts-the precedence for poor support has been established. ![]() Finally, you’ll gain an understanding of the various font licensing options and how those options are evolving as digital book reading systems mature. ![]() From there, you’ll see how font embedding has changed in the EPUB 3 specification from 2.0.1, and you’ll learn how to embed, obfuscate, and style fonts. There is not one reason why you might want to embed a font in an EPUB-your reasons may range from capturing a particular aesthetic to fit the content, to creating a consistent brand across your product lines, to addressing more pragmatic concerns such as embedding for unusual or specialized glyphs that are unlikely to be found in a standard system font.īecause of these potential complexities, this chapter-instead of diving immediately into the technical specifications-starts by asking you to consider your reasons for embedding. In doing so, the chapter aims to give you the information that you need to decide for yourself what the “best practice” is around font embedding, which will be influenced by a number of factors, including-perhaps most importantly-the kind of content that you publish. This chapter does not argue for or against embedding fonts, or perhaps more accurately, it argues for both. Also, licensing for embedding in general can be an administrative and technical nightmare. Also, while embedding fonts is trivial, adding the required obfuscation-required by most commercial font foundries-is much less so. While embedding fonts in an EPUB file is simple enough, how reading systems support embedding has been and remains spotty and inconsistent, often frustratingly so. It is a straightforward enough process that a technical overview can be summarized succinctly in a single blog post. Sounds simple enough, right? From a technical perspective, embedding fonts is simple, and the EPUB 3 specification leaves little room for ambiguity on this topic. You must then include references to that font within the CSS and the OPF manifest of the EPUB so that the font is rendered across reading systems. When you “embed” a font within an EPUB file, you include single or multiple font files in the EPUB package. Director of Publishing Technology, O’Reilly Media ![]()
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