Aura HD Simple Fix for the Stupid Italic/Bold Bug

[doubleshuffle]

(Sorry if someone has come up with this in one of the many bug threads already - haven't read them all...)

Recently got an Aura, and while I'm generally very happy indeed, the bug that text in italics is rendered bold in some fonts really gets on my nerves.

It got on my nerves so much that I felt I needed to fix this - a task far beyond my capabilities unless it was very easy to do, implying that the bug is more stupid than a sane person would imagine.

It is. I renamed the italic font -Bold.ttf and the bold one -Italic.ttf. Now italics are rendered correctly, but bold is rendered in italics now too (which is far less annoying for me than bold instead of italics...)

I'll play with it a bit more, but listen, Kobo: This really should be easy to fix.

[John F]

Are you talking about internal/built-in fonts?

[doubleshuffle]

I'm talking about a bug that occurs with some of the pre-installed fonts that come with the reader as well as with fonts installed by me.

Can "fix" only the ones installed by me, though. It isn't really a proper fix of course. I was getting a bit over-enthusiastic when I tried out my idea and really saw italics where bold had been instead. What I have achieved is simply substituting one fault for another, since now I have italics where there should be bold type. It's considerably less awful than the other way round, though.

But of course Kobo should really fix this problem ASAP. It can't be that difficult to make the machine access the correct font files, can it.

[Anak]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

(Sorry if someone has come up with this in one of the many bug threads already - haven't read them all...)

Recently got an Aura, and while I'm generally very happy indeed, the bug that text in italics is rendered bold in some fonts really gets on my nerves.

It got on my nerves so much that I felt I needed to fix this - a task far beyond my capabilities unless it was very easy to do, implying that the bug is more stupid than a sane person would imagine.

It is. I renamed the italic font -Bold.ttf and the bold one -Italic.ttf. Now italics are rendered correctly, but bold is rendered in italics now too (which is far less annoying for me than bold instead of italics...)

I'll play with it a bit more, but listen, Kobo: This really should be easy to fix.

The font sub style selection seems to be based on the font ID. And that is why two of your renamed fonts are displayed in one sub style (italics).
When I've 'doctored' my own sideloaded fonts with FontLab Studio and Kobo is not displaying them correcty I know that the font ID is the problem and forgot to update that part.
See, my previous post here

And yes, it is really easy to fix (by Kobo).

[doubleshuffle]

Thanks for that explanation. It is consistent with which fonts are displayed correctly and which aren't on my reader. Is there an easy way to change the font ID? I've never meddled with fonts before...

[Anak]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Thanks for that explanation. It is consistent with which fonts are displayed correctly and which aren't on my reader. Is there an easy way to change the font ID? I've never meddled with fonts before...

Easy with a font creation program like FontLab Studio or FontForge. For sideloaded fonts. But why should a user fix faulty default, device embedded fonts that where added by Kobo. These should work perfectly. And if not, it should be fixed by Kobo asap (which should have been done a long time a go).

Just as other simple, minor bugs. A lot of these small bugs can be fixed by one developer in one or two days, maybe even in a few hours. The bugs are mentioned here on the forum.

[doubleshuffle]

It's not really the fonts that are faulty - they do work on other readers, don't they? Shouldn't Kobo program their products to read the file name of the font instead of the font ID?

And indeed, this bug, and especially their neglect to fix it, doesn't make Kobo look good. I mean, seriously, fonts are one of the most essential features of a reading device, aren't they?

Has anyone else problems with Linux Libertine and Biolinum, btw? On my Aura, both are smeared across the whole screen, completely broken and unusable.

[Danger]

Just a side note, does your font file name match your font name? Sounds redundant I know but. I had this problem with my favorite font Sabon.

eg. font original file name: SabonLTStd-Italic, SabonLTStd-Bold, SabonLTStd-Roman

However when previewing I see instead that it should be Sabon LT Std

Renamed accordingly: Sabon LT Std-Italic, Sabon LT Std-Bold, Sabon LT Std

No more bold as italic or italic as bold problems.

[rayhigh]

Agreed, it is completely lame that a Kobo font like Nickel renders italics as bold. What is the problem with the bozos on their dev team?

[doubleshuffle]

@Danger:

Yeah, that's what Anak explained in his post he linked to. Unfortunately, that correction works only if the font IDs also end in -Bold, -Italic, etc. As soon as they are different, you are screwed unless you get a font creation program; which I will probably do now. Nice thing to be forced to do after buying "the only premium eReader on the market".

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

@Danger:

Yeah, that's what Anak explained in his post he linked to. Unfortunately, that correction works only if the font IDs also end in -Bold, -Italic, etc. As soon as they are different, you are screwed unless you get a font creation program; which I will probably do now. Nice thing to be forced to do after buying "the only premium eReader on the market".

As far as I can tell, if you have the font names correct for sideloaded fonts, a Kobo ereader has no problems with using the fonts and variants correctly. I installed a couple of fonts that had Oblique variants instead of italic but renaming, as an example, the Oblique font file to Deja San-Italic.ttf uses the oblique font for italics.

As George Talusan once commented: "This is true. The Adobe SDK allows us to specify a URL to a font file but Qt doesn't allow us to introspect a TTF/OTF for its font family/weight without difficulty.

The resolution is that fonts should end with -Bold, -BoldItalic, -Italic, or alternatively, b, i, z."

The font name used in naming the font file must be the font name (Windows font viewer) or font family (FontForge) embedded in the font file -- if a font is named GillSans-Bold.ttf but the internal name is Gill Sans, the file must be renamed to Gill Sans-Bold.ttf to work on a Kobo ereader. Alternately you can edit the font family name but much easier, in my opinion, to change the font file name.

There are other issues pointed out by Anak if you start using other font variants such as a semi-bold instead of a normal in order to get a darker glyph on the eInk screen. You will need to change some of the internal naming but that is not an issue for the majority who are not into editing their own fonts.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rayhigh

Agreed, it is completely lame that a Kobo font like Nickel renders italics as bold. What is the problem with the bozos on their dev team?

One note is that the Kobo supplied fonts render correctly for .kepub.epub files using the ACCESS NetFront BookReader renderer. To me, this indicates that the issue is with the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK which Kobo does not appear to be enthused about spending time and resources on given their involvement in the Readium project. You might also want to note the statement from Datalogics that they will be using the Readium EPUB3 engine to extend the Adobe RMSDK to handle EPUB3 while continuing to use Adobe's ADEPT DRM.

http://blogs.datalogics.com/2013/03/...epub3-support/

Regards,
David

[doubleshuffle]

Thanks again to Anak for the helpful information. I got Type light, a free font editor. No idea if it's any good, but it's free and allowed me to change all the font names, so that now everything is hunky dory.

Still, as the owner of "the only premium e-reader on the market" I definitely shouldn't have been required to deal with this problem. (Are you listening, Kobo?)

The font name used in naming the font file must be the font name (Windows font viewer) or font family (FontForge) embedded in the font file -- if a font is named GillSans-Bold.ttf but the internal name is Gill Sans, the file must be renamed to Gill Sans-Bold.ttf to work on a Kobo ereader. Alternately you can edit the font family name but much easier, in my opinion, to change the font file name.

Not true. I've had fonts ending in stuff like "It" or "Reg" or "Med" in their internal names, and then changing the font file name is of no use at all.

One note is that the Kobo supplied fonts render correctly for .kepub.epub files using the ACCESS NetFront BookReader renderer. To me, this indicates that the issue is with the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK which Kobo does not appear to be enthused about spending time and resources on given their involvement in the Readium project.

You're kidding, right? Nobody told me the Aura only works properly with kepubs. It says it's for reading epubs. Since they advertise with some review's phrasing that the Aura is "the Porsche among e-readers", let me draw this parallel: It's like buying a Porsche that only runs smoothly on petrol bought at Porsche's own filling stations. If you buy your petrol somewhere else, you have backfiring and whatnot. When you complain about this you are told: "So what? It runs fine on our petrol. Of course, in theory, it should also work with other petrol, but you know what? We just can't be arsed to fix that, mate. We've got other priorities just now."

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Not true. I've had fonts ending in stuff like "It" or "Reg" or "Med" in their internal names, and then changing the font file name is of no use at all.

I've never seen any font where the font family name included bold, italic, bold italic variants though I have seen several that used thin, black, etc. See the sample below from FontForge for DejaVuSerif-BoldItalic. The font family (what Windows font viewer calls the font name) is DejaVu Serif. To use this on my Kobo, I needed to rename the files for the four variants as:

DejaVu Serif-Regular.ttf
DejaVu Serif-Bold.ttf
DejaVu Serif-BoldItalic.ttf
DejaVu Serif-Italic.ttf

The -Regular is not actually needed but keeps the font names consistent.

With the font files correctly named, all I need to do is to copy the 4 files over to the fonts directory in the root of the Kobo's internal storage, power cycle the ereader and that font is ready to be used.

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

You're kidding, right? Nobody told me the Aura only works properly with kepubs. It says it's for reading epubs. Since they advertise with some review's phrasing that the Aura is "the Porsche among e-readers", let me draw this parallel: It's like buying a Porsche that only runs smoothly on petrol bought at Porsche's own filling stations. If you buy your petrol somewhere else, you have backfiring and whatnot. When you complain about this you are told: "So what? It runs fine on our petrol. Of course, in theory, it should also work with other petrol, but you know what? We just can't be arsed to fix that, mate. We've got other priorities just now."

Kobo does have other priorities -- the ACCESS NetFront BookReader renderer is likely to be more important to future corporate plans. Even Datalogics who now support the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK are waiting for the Readium project to produce their epub3 code which Datalogics is then going to wrap with Adobe's ADEPT DRM code.

The Aura works quite well with epubs other than a few glitches such as the very long paragraph bug. Overall, I've been very happy with my Kobos and I have used several other brands of ereader.

The font naming issue has been there since Kobo first introduced the ability to sideload fonts. I don't feel that having to specify the font file names is that big an issue. 3 of Kobo's internal fonts have issues with bold/italic and epubs but since I rarely use them, it's not a major issue for me. It is an issue (and a known one) with the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK from some digging I did a while back. I've never had any issues with add-on fonts since I first started using the correct file names.

Regards,
David

[doubleshuffle]

Glad that you're so happy. I'm also not unhappy with the Aura, but this issue sucks and that isn't going to change by your telling me: "Those guys just can't be bothered to fix things for your brand new, latest model top-class machine because they're busy creating the next model."