Electronic Reading Adventures

Here we are again with another post on e-reading! As I noted recently, I’ve been reading tons and I’ve been busy at work to create tweaked versions of various fonts that I can legally distribute. So, I decided that it was time for an update, but I have more to talk about than just altering fonts, this time.

If you missed it: in my original post, I wrote about “patching” fonts with incorrect Panose information and otherwise applying tweaks for a better reading experience on Kobo devices, which included renaming fonts and tweaking the fonts’ ascender and descender metrics.

Then, I also wrote about tweaking EB Garamond into a separate, alternate version, and so NV Garamond was born. In the meantime, I’ve applied the same treatment to a couple of other fonts.

💁🏻‍♂️ If you want to add quality fonts to your Kobo, I have made a selection of FREE fonts, including the fonts discussed in this post, which are now available for download. It's not too difficult: connect your e-reader to your computer, transfer the fonts, and happy reading!

I also maintain a separate page dedicated to these modified fonts, here on my website. Downloads are available on GitHub.

So, what do I want to talk about this time? More about Amazon and their ecosystem lockdown, some Kobo rendering internals, and about some of the new fonts I’ve been tinkering with.

A great time to move to Kobo

With Amazon announcing that downloading your books for USB transfer will no longer be possible, Amazon will have complete control over what content is available on your Kindle devices, if you choose to purchase it from them.

Note that your ability to download a copy of your purchased books is only being taken away if Amazon didn’t already prevent you from downloading the files in the first place, as was the case for me.

Unable to archive

In a time when there is a movement towards authoritarianism in the United States, no one should feel comfortable about a corporation being able to decide what you can and cannot read.

Not being able to archive your legally purchased or licensed content is concerning. Especially in relationships to books. I know that from a licensing perspective this is a corpo’s wet dream.

Imagine if Amazon could come and take away your physical books! Now I’m not saying that Amazon will gladly do this… but if they have the capacity to do so, it could get dicey if some politician in the U.S. decides that a given book is no longer fit for public consumption, and we start “burning books” digitally.

We live in strange times, so who knows what will happen next.

Safeguards

I know: this may seem far-fetched, but that’s the thing about these sorts of protections.

What seems like a silly restriction (or, in the context of other situations, for example, harmless data collection) may turn out to be less silly or harmless when someone new is in power who wishes to abuse a system that was put in place without appropriate safeguards.

That’s something I really don’t like. Rakuten, on the other hand, with the Kobo Store, allows you to download Adobe DRM-protected copies of your books. Other sellers of digital books allow you to do the same. Some even sell books without DRM. For example, Brandon Sanderson sells his books without DRM, and I love him for it.

Yes, you can strip these protected books of the DRM with some additional tooling, but that’s not the point I’m making. I don’t care about that. The point is that you can archive your protected .epub file: you still have a copy of your book. Once you’ve got it, it can be backed up, and used on any device you want. That’s key, here.

Meanwhile, Amazon is tightening their grip on your devices, and with these changes the ecosystem lock-in only gets worse. Maybe it’s something that can be worked around but I encourage anyone to embrace the more open platform regardless.

What device should I pick up?

Anything that isn’t a Kindle, I guess. I personally often recommend the Kobo Libra Color, or a Kobo Clara BW.

You can also go for the PocketBook Era, that’s also very solid. Both Kobo and PocketBook devices can be customized to run a custom e-book viewer called KOReader.

If you want something a little bit different, you can also try one of the Boox devices, but they tend to be a bit more expensive and are potentially more distracting because they run Android. These also allow you to install KOReader.

Technical tidbits

Sideloaded Mode on Kobo

If you navigate to the hidden .kobo directory once the Kobo device is connected to your computer, you can find another directory called Kobo. Inside this directory you can find the configuration file, named Kobo eReader.conf.

Add the following line below the [ApplicationPreferences] block, like so:

[ApplicationPreferences]
SideloadedMode=true

This then unlocks sideloaded mode, which does not require you to sign in to your Kobo account. Your home screen will then show the list of books, or the following screen if you have not transferred any books yet:

RMSDK

Kobo devices work best if you use Kobo ePub files. You might be wondering why that is the case. Aren’t regular ePub files supported, either way?

Yes, they are. But, as it turns out, for regular epub files, and for compatibility with Adobe’s DRM, Kobo e-readers make use of RMSDK, which is effectively a white-label version of Adobe Digital Editions.

You can tell what renderer is being used by keeping an eye out for book stats (at the top) and the ePub page number (displayed in the margin on the right hand side). The screenshot above uses the RMSDK renderer.

When using the RMSDK renderer, you can use sideloaded fonts, but you have to follow conventions. That is to say, your fonts must be named:

• FontName-Regular.{otf|ttf}
• FontName-Italic.{otf|ttf}
• FontName-Bold.{otf|ttf}
• FontName-BoldItalic.{otf|ttf}

The Kobo kepub renderer is a little less strict. As long as the fonts have the proper metadata and Panose information, the correct variants will be used.

Ideally, you want to use the naming convention above and with correct Panose information your fonts should work well on whatever book you’ve got on your Kobo device.

This explains why one with sideloaded Kindle fonts may bump into various issues with a possible workaround.

The kepub renderer and kepubify

I generally recommend using kepubify to convert your epub files to the normalized Kobo format. Next to the title, you can see which document type a book uses.

This lets you benefit from the faster renderer. You can also use the Kobo Touch Extended Driver which will automate this process.

The benefits of using the Kobo ePub (kepub) renderer are as follows:

• Everything is just a little bit faster.
• You can always tweak font size and line spacing. This may not always be possible with the Adobe renderer.
• Reading statistics are supported. You can see how much time is remaining for the given chapter and for the rest of the book.
• The book title and current chapter can be displayed in the header and footer if desired.
• Page numbering is handled differently.

Once converted, you get reading stats, like this:

New fonts I patched or altered

Besides working on a resized version of EB Garamond, I’ve also patched a few other fonts. I’ve got a new repository set up with all the fonts.

Here’s what NV Garamond looks like again:

NV Jost

Let’s start with another favorite of mine, Jost. I fell in love with Jost after using it as an alternative to Futura on my Kobo after having tried a Kindle last year.

There were two things that annoyed me with this font: the lowercase g was not to my liking, and I wanted to emulate a single-storey a glyph, as is the case with Futura.

So, I made these changes and exported the font as NV Jost. This font is a good pick if you just want a comfortable, wide sans serif font for reading purposes.

NV Zilla Slab

I wanted to include a slab serif font, because I wanted an alternative for the timeless Caecilia which used to be included as a default font on earlier Kobo devices.

I think that the included addition of Bitter is a good one, and I think I prefer it. If you have an older Kobo device, it might not be included so you can download it here.

NV Elstob

Elstob is a pretty nice font. Because it is a variable font, it actually has multiple optical sizes.

In my repository, I’ve patched the default size (“NV Elstob”) with tighter line spacing, and also added a renamed “NV Elstob Eight”, which is based on the 8 pt optical size, and also contains some metadata changes so that Kobo devices play nicely with this one.

NV Cardo

NV Cardo is a version of Cardo with 20% line spacing, and has been renamed to fit in with the rest of the collection.

NV Charter

This is simply XCharter, but renamed and with an amended copyright notice to clarify the full license terms.

I think Charter is one of the most unobtrusive fonts I’ve ever used. I can just read and the font never gets in the way or gets annoying. A timeless classic, really.

NV Palatium

You may be aware that Kindle devices ship with a bunch of Monotype fonts. One of those is Palatino.

As it turns out, there’s an open-source implementation of Palatino out there, licensed under the OFL license: it’s called Domitian and it serves as the basis for my own renamed font.

For consistency’s sake, I’ve renamed the font so it fits in with the rest, and applied altered metrics, but no other changes were made.

NV Source Serif

This is a bonus font, since I don’t actually use it on my devices, but I figure it might come in handy to some of you out there interested in Source Serif 4.

As it turns out, Kobo devices have a hard time dealing with fonts that end with a number. So, I’ve renamed this one so it works correctly, and adjusted line-height for maximum reading comfort.

Why rename the fonts?

To avoid confusion, mostly, but also:

• These are different from the original fonts, so using their original name seemed misleading and prone to cause confusion.
• In some cases, the fonts needed to be renamed or altered slightly anyway, to function correctly.
• These appear in order one after another on Kobo devices in the font dropdown. That’s just handy.

All of the copyright notices have been retained, as should be the case. None of these fonts are being distributed without permission: each of their licenses is very permissive via the OFL or other free/libre alternative.