Nickel won't display secondary font in body text

[ZodWallop]

I'm reading a book (The Bright Lands by John Fram) that has a lot of text messages and emails that are supposed to display as sans serif, but Kobo seems to be ignoring that.

I've attached a picture of Nickle displaying the text.

Here is the code from the book:

<p class="body-text"><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.24.1">actually it’s not ok.</span></span></p>
			<p class="body-text"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.25.1">Joel tried to call. </span><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.25.2">It went to voice mail after two rings.</span></p>
			<p class="body-text"><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.26.1">can’t talk rn</span></span><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.27.1">, his brother wrote. </span><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.28.1">sorry.</span></span></p>
			<p class="body-text"><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.29.1">Lil D</span></span><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.30.1">, Joel wrote — an old pet name that felt rusty from disuse — </span><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.31.1">What’s wrong?</span></span></p>
			<p class="body-text"><span class="ef"><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.32.1">dumb dreams. </span><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.32.2">bad dreams. </span><span class="koboSpan" id="kobo.32.3">i’m stupid.</span></span></p>

The class "ef" is supposed to display a different font. Here is the code from the style sheet:

.ef {
    font-family: "Verdana", "Helvetica", "Arial", "Ubuntu", sans-serif;
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: normal
    }

I added the "Ubuntu" bit because that is a font installed on my Clara BW. I then downloaded and added Arial. Still no joy.

Other changes to the stylesheet do work. The body text was set to left and I changed it to justify. That worked.

Also, in Sigil, the different font does display. So it's just Nickle.

I'm travelling (I'm posting this from SeaTac airport). So I can edit the book in Sigil until my flight boards. But I can't do A/B testing with an ePub vs. kepub or see how calibre displays it right now.

[PeterT]

Dumb question but is the font setting on the device "Publisher Default"? If not I believe all fonts in the book will be overridden.

[Aleron Ives]

Are you reading EPUB or KEPUB? Unless you select the publisher's font on KEPUB, your chosen font gets used for everything, and all font changes in the CSS get ignored.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Dumb question but is the font setting on the device "Publisher Default"? If not I believe all fonts in the book will be overridden.

Nope. And changing that fixed it. I don't like that setting for kepub. I would prefer changing the font to just change the body text, But calls for special cases should be respected.

[Aleron Ives]

You can adjust the behaviour with the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs" patch, if you so desire.

[DNSB]

I took a quick look at your book but did not see where you used an @fontface to link the font in the fonts directory to your ebook. I haven't tried that in a while but did remember having to do this a few years back.

I tried this and epub had not issue while kepub did require publisher default to show the alternate font. I've attached the epub with the @fontface bits and a couple of screenshots (1st is the epub, 2nd is the kepub).

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I took a quick look at your book but did not see where you used an @fontface to link the font in the fonts directory to your ebook.

I'm home now and opened the actual purchased ePub and you're right. It doesn't have the @fontface links. However, switching the kepub to Publisher Default does now correctly display those fonts as sans serif.

I'm moving away from patches. For the most part Kobo's firmware is good enough without (well, I still use better hyphenation dictionary).

I do think I'll test the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs" patch Aleron mentioned, as I don't like whatever the default Serif font is as much as I like Literata Book.

[ZodWallop]

In the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs", aside from changing enabled to yes, do I need to do anything with alternatives 1-3?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

In the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs", aside from changing enabled to yes, do I need to do anything with alternatives 1-3?

Alternative 1 seems to be working well enough out of the box.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I'm home now and opened the actual purchased ePub and you're right. It doesn't have the @fontface links. However, switching the kepub to Publisher Default does now correctly display those fonts as sans serif.

I'm moving away from patches. For the most part Kobo's firmware is good enough without (well, I still use better hyphenation dictionary).

I do think I'll test the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs" patch Aleron mentioned, as I don't like whatever the default Serif font is as much as I like Literata Book.

A lot of purchased eBooks have fonts listed (for in use classes) in the CSS that are not embedded.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

In the "Un-Force user font-family in KePubs", aside from changing enabled to yes, do I need to do anything with alternatives 1-3?

You only need to comment out alternative 1 and un-comment alternative 2 or 3 if you find that alternative 1 does not give high enough preference to the publisher's font.

[DNSB]

I was just editing one ePub that had a font-family line with 7 named fonts and serif for every bloody block level style. Also a mass of inherited items repeated in those entries. Removing the unneeded duplicates shortened the CSS from 2014 lines to 240 lines. This also reduced many entries to blank entries which were removed.

Oddly, most of the fonts seemed to be Android oriented, Droid Serif, Roboto Serif, Noto Serif, Georgia, Times New Roman are the five I remember off the top of my head.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I was just editing one ePub that had a font-family line with 7 named fonts and serif for every bloody block level style. Also a mass of inherited items repeated in those entries. Removing the unneeded duplicates shortened the CSS from 2014 lines to 240 lines. This also reduced many entries to blank entries which were removed.

Oddly, most of the fonts seemed to be Android oriented, Droid Serif, Roboto Serif, Noto Serif, Georgia, Times New Roman are the five I remember off the top of my head.

I wonder if it's because the Google fonts are freely available?

I have seen some very poorly formatted books in my time.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I wonder if it's because the Google fonts are freely available?

I have seen some very poorly formatted books in my time.

Probably. For this ebook, my first thought was that someone thought Vellum didn't create complex enough CSS. Oddly, the formatting wasn't that bad, just that the CSS was ridiculously overcomplex.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Probably. For this ebook, my first thought was that someone thought Vellum didn't create complex enough CSS. Oddly, the formatting wasn't that bad, just that the CSS was ridiculously overcomplex.

Maybe whoever did the formatting also works for StandardEBOOKS.