smallcaps how to?

[JSWolf]

How would I use a smallcap font in an ePub file? Thanks!

[Jellby]

Use "font-variant: small-caps"

... and a reader other than Adobe's

Other than that, you'd have to fake them by hardcoding the caps and using a smaller font-size:

<span style="font-variant: small-caps">Real smallcaps</span>

F<span style="font-size: 80%">AKED SMALLCAPS</span>

[JSWolf]

The font is a smallcaps font already. I just want the ePub to use it.

[Jellby]

Then I guess it's the same as with any other font, at most you'd have to specify the font-variant in the @font-face. You need to define the font in the CSS:

@font-face{
  font-family: "My smallcaps font";
  font-variant: small-caps;
  src: url("../relative/path/to/the/font.ttf") format("truetype");
}

body {
  font-family: "My smallcaps font";
}

Then you have to include the font.ttf file in the epub and add the corresponding line to the <manifest>.

[JSWolf]

Ok, I've got small caps sorted. But one thing you have to do is convert the uppercase of the small caps to lowercase or it just looks like all uppercase. When a book does smallcaps, it just uses some small font size of all caps. So just setting the font does not work. You also have to convert the words to lowercase or upper/lower.

[Jellby]

Yes, of course

You could use text-transform:lowercase, if it were supported, but that wouldn't work if there are real uppercase letters mixed with the smallcaps.

[bentleymaniac]

text-transform:capitalize; ought to make the first letter of each word capital and every other letter lower case.

:facepalm: sorry, just realised that this thread was rather old...

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by bentleymaniac

text-transform:capitalize; ought to make the first letter of each word capital and every other letter lower case.

:facepalm: sorry, just realised that this thread was rather old...

Not only that, it will not work on ePUB2.

[mattmc]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Not only that, it will not work on ePUB2.

Nor will it be "true" smallcaps. The only way to accomplish true smallcaps are by using a smallcaps font.

[doubleshuffle]

All right, now this dead thread is up and walking, we may as well feed it some brainz:

I think I know about all the (im)possibilities of doing smallcaps in epub2; but I have never bothered to find out if they have made it any easier in epub3. Have they?

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

All right, now this dead thread is up and walking, we may as well feed it some brainz:

I think I know about all the (im)possibilities of doing smallcaps in epub2; but I have never bothered to find out if they have made it any easier in epub3. Have they?

It is format irrelevant I am afraid. All the right tools and possibilities are there for ePUB2. After all, the font-variant small-caps is part of CSS2. However, almost all readers have decided not to add a small-caps variant for their included fonts. So, it is not the format, but the support that is failing.
There are more styling options for ePUB3, but if they are not supported by the manufacturers...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by mattmc

Nor will it be "true" smallcaps. The only way to accomplish true smallcaps are by using a smallcaps font.

It will be true smallcaps if the software displaying the ePub uses true smallcaps from the font, as it should if it is available.

The lack of smallcaps support is entirely an implementation problem, rather than a standards one.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It will be true smallcaps if the software displaying the ePub uses true smallcaps from the font, as it should if it is available.

The lack of smallcaps support is entirely an implementation problem, rather than a standards one.

It should work like this, I think: I install a font with a smallcaps variant on my reader (so that I don't just have regular, bold and italic, but also smallcaps as a fourth font file) and then, when I put "font-variant: smallcaps" in the stylesheet for a class of text, that text should be displayed in smallcaps. And that is what doesn't work.

Am I getting this right?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

It should work like this, I think: I install a font with a smallcaps variant on my reader (so that I don't just have regular, bold and italic, but also smallcaps as a fourth font file) and then, when I put "font-variant: smallcaps" in the stylesheet for a class of text, that text should be displayed in smallcaps. And that is what doesn't work.

Am I getting this right?

Yes. The problem is that ADE ignores the font-variant attribute, although it's required to support it according the ePub standard. (See section 3.4 of the 2.0.1 specs.)

ADE is also really bad at supporting selectors. See Section 3.1

It ought to be really simple to specify that the first line of the first paragraph be in smallcaps, with the first letter bold and twice normal size.

But ADE doesn't support first-line or first-letter.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by mattmc

Nor will it be "true" smallcaps. The only way to accomplish true smallcaps are by using a smallcaps font.

Which the OP said he was using.

@JSWolf: I would think a simple font declaration in the CSS for a styled SPAN in combination with embedding the smallcaps font would work just fine. It should work much like the tags for bold and italic. It would work for any format/device that supported custom fonts and would gracefully fall back to C/LC when either the format lacked support for embedded fonts or the user disabled the use of embedded fonts in their reader.