Best Practice: Embed Fonts??

[luthar28]

I recently did an export from InDesign to Epub. Seems to work really nicely (before, I was only given a press-ready PDF...which made it a lot more difficult).

Anyhow, InDesign even embeds the fonts. Generally speaking, is this okay to do? Will these embedded fonts cause some readers to not display correctly? Or does this break any best practices rules?

The press I'm working for puts a lot of work into their books in regards to design, so if I could actually use their chosen fonts (title headers mostly) I'd like to do it -- but not at the expense of ruining it in certain readers.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by luthar28

I recently did an export from InDesign to Epub. Seems to work really nicely (before, I was only given a press-ready PDF...which made it a lot more difficult).

Anyhow, InDesign even embeds the fonts. Generally speaking, is this okay to do? Will these embedded fonts cause some readers to not display correctly? Or does this break any best practices rules?

The press I'm working for puts a lot of work into their books in regards to design, so if I could actually use their chosen fonts (title headers mostly) I'd like to do it -- but not at the expense of ruining it in certain readers.

Firstly, I don't know that there are any 'best practice rules'. There are a lot of opinions, but they vary from person to person.

Secondly, my personal preference is that publishers NOT embed fonts in body of the text - for headers and title pages and so on is fine, but not the rest of the text. I very much like to have the option of choosing among the font families that my ebook reading devices offer me, rather than be forced to read using someone else's favourite font.

Thirdly, I suggest that you say to yourself three times before brushing your teeth 'ebooks are not print books'.

Regards, Alex

[Jellby]

I don't think font embedding will prevent the book from working in any reader, at worst, the embedded fonts will not work and default fonts be used.

The main "problem" is InDesign will probably encrypt the embedded fonts. There are currently two methods for encrypting fonts in ePUB, one is suported by the official specification, the other is used by Adobe. If the generated ePUB uses the second method, it won't be standard-compliant, but it will work in ADE-based readers.

As for whether it's better to embed or not to embed fonts, I prefer not embedding them, at least not for the main text, so that the user can choose his preferred font. For some decorative or special purposes (titles, blackletter fragments, pieces of handwritten text, etc.) embedding is fine

[charleski]

As Jellby said, there's a whole issue with font obfuscation when it comes to InDesign. On the whole, though, I far prefer it if ebooks do embed fonts. Ebooks aren't print books, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be treated with the same respect and be presented in a font that reflects and enhances the content. It's not a matter of having a 'favourite font', since you should use a different font for setting Tolstoy compared to Roth. But some publishers have adopted the practice of embedding the same rather sub-standard font in all their epubs, and that's certainly a practice to avoid, since it adds nothing to the text.

iBooks doesn't use embedded fonts (and the submission guide states you shouldn't use them), but other readers don't have a problem with them.

The major issue is licensing. The majority of font licences don't allow embedding in epubs, even if obfuscated. One way around this that I saw used in Philip Pullman's latest book is to specify the font in the css, but not embed it, so that it will be used if present on the reader's system.

[luthar28]

Font licences -- good thing that was brought up. I never would've considered that (I would've thought this would be similar to a distributed PDF) and the last thing I'd want to do is get my publisher in hot water.

My publisher puts a lot of effort into the look of their books (font choices for headers, formatting, etc) so I was hoping to carry some of that over -- but without screwing up the experience.

Honestly, a lot of this reminds me of the browser wars back in the 90s. Sure, you could do some really cool stuff, but often it excluded one segment or another. And that's what I wanted to stay away from.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by charleski

... since you should use a different font for setting Tolstoy compared to Roth.

As I said, there are a lot of different personal opinions. For what it is worth I think I exercise a great deal of care and show a great deal of respect when preparing ebooks for the forum.

And it has been my experience that most if not all books with embedded fonts in the text body do prevent me from exercising my choice of font family with my Cybook and ECO Reader.



Regards, Alex

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Jellby

.

The main "problem" is InDesign will probably encrypt the embedded fonts. There are currently two methods for encrypting fonts in ePUB, one is suported by the official specification, the other is used by Adobe. If the generated ePUB uses the second method, it won't be standard-compliant, but it will work in ADE-based readers.

By 'ADE-based readers' I assume you are not referring to ADE itself (which doesn't support them, at least not yet), but rather to readers which use Adobe Mobile Reader SDK (e.g. Sony, Nook, etc.)?

[charleski]

Originally Posted by tomsem

By 'ADE-based readers' I assume you are not referring to ADE itself (which doesn't support them, at least not yet)

Desktop ADE supports fonts embedded by InDesign just fine. They're actually obfuscated rather than encrypted.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Secondly, my personal preference is that publishers NOT embed fonts in body of the text.

you read english only don't you?

[nyrath]

I can also see a need for embedding fonts if you are trying to display mathematical symbols or other non-standard special characters.

[Freeshadow]

and some subsetting solution as an anti bloater d' be nice

This issue at hand should not be whether or not fonts be embedded in an epub and it should not be whether or not epub creators override the device's default font. Embedding fonts and overriding device fonts are valid as part of the whole XHTML and CSS ethos.

The issue, rather, should be the inability of the device to provide the last and most important point of control of CSS inheritance. That is: the user has final control of font choice and size.

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

you read english only don't you?

Originally Posted by nyrath

I can also see a need for embedding fonts if you are trying to display mathematical symbols or other non-standard special characters.

For instance in academic publications. Even if they are in English you will have names of persons and places of every nationality. Not many default fonts will support for instance Icelandic, Turkish, Russian and Polish characters. I work at an accredited academic publishing house, and misprinting the name of a researcher is BAD.

That's primarily why we embed fonts. In some readers the user can choose another font, and that's good. Other readers won't use embedded fonts at all, in that case we haven't really lost anything. All in all I feel that we provide a better product with embedded font, the 4-500 KB added to the file size is negligible for most modern equipment IMHO.

On a side note I wholeheartedly agree with shall1028, unfortunately most reader implementations are still bad. Hopefully in the future we can concentrate on making quality source material, and don't need to wrestle with the Big Companies' sloppy work

[Adjust]

Also you cannot rule out the Font License, when dealing and embedding font into ePub, because you can't subset, you are effectively distributing full and complete font without having permission to do so. Unless you use free fonts, which the majority of publishers do not...

I think for this reason alone, the readers have their own set of fonts to choose from

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

the 4-500 KB added to the file size is negligible for most modern equipment IMHO.

There is a place for saving space. I well remember optimizing a number to character conversion routine to save 3 or 4 bytes off of a 20 byte subroutine on a computer with a whopping 16 kilobytes of memory (circa 1980).

But given that my Kobo ereader has 3 gigabytes of memory (that's 187,500 times as much as that 16K machine) I also don't worry about a bit of extra size in an epub file. A quick perusal of my font folder shows 161 files only 60 of which exceed 400K. The remainder tend towards 100 to 200K.