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Chris Stead
Participating Frequently
April 22, 2018
Question

ePub export - Fonts not working in iBooks suddenly

  • April 22, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 2542 views

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if anyone is suffering this issue. I have been exporting ePubs just fine from indesign CC, and loading them onto my iOS devices to see them function perfectly.

Suddenly, this does not work.

None of my specified fonts are working. They show up in Adobe Digital Editions, but as soon as you move it to an iOS device all the embedded fonts still break. Even fonts I have used perfectly fine before.

It seems to me that something has changed in the way that iBooks works; like it wants the fonts to be declared in a different way than they were before. The content.opf declares all the fonts correctly, and sets "specified fonts" to true as it should.

Does anyone know what has happened here? What is the new way that iBooks wants ePubs to declare fonts?

Thanks for you help!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    5 replies

    Owlree
    Owlree
    Participant
    June 20, 2019

    Hello,

    I know this is an old post, but maybe my response will help somebody. I don't use InDesign, I write the HTMLL / CSS / XML in my ebooks by hand with a text editor. For some reason, iBooks refused to acknowledge my embedded fonts in paragraphs when I added <meta property="rendition:orientation">auto</meta> in my content.opf file. It happens whenever I set something related to rendition to auto, so my advice is to open your content.opf file and look for this, and try to delete everything related to it (unless you put it there on purpose, of course).

    L
    lostinlodos
    Participating Frequently
    July 27, 2018

    There is definitely an issue in iBooks with embedded fonts That started some point earl this year and persists to the latest version of 11 dot as of July.

    It‘s not an Adobe issue, as it is happening to me using calibre as my final publisher and swappin and embeddin the font in preflight to ePub. There are reports from users of Word and Pages ePub export as well having issues.

    For the user reporting no issue directly above, have you tried importing a new (name changed) copy? Because works that displayed fine that were loaded PRIOR to March have the same lost font issue when the file is imported again. With no changes to the file on my part. Also does your test device have the new Apple file system or the old one.

    My best guess from a development standpoint is something changed in the file system layout with inflation (extraction) when the file is inflated for iBooks on iOS devices.

    I could be off but I believe the issues coincided with the change to the new file table for iOS devices. System links did change from the old + file system. That may be the culprit.

    It’s Apple iBooks that has an issue. If you find out the solution please let everyone know.

    C
    Chris SteadAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    June 18, 2018

    Does anyone know how I can get in contact with someone at Adobe about this?

    This is not an iBooks problem. I know this, because the older books - exported from older versions of indesign - still display with the fonts working fine on an Apple device. The fonts are being seen by iBooks still in the older export.

    It's something in the fixed layout ePub export that must have changed. It's not placing embedded fonts in the directory (or in the way) that iBooks wants. So it cannot see them.

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 18, 2018

    Best place would be here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/

    C
    Chris SteadAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    May 1, 2018

    Bump!

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 1, 2018

    Nothing's changed to the best of my knowledge and if you don't provide details and screenshots, nobody can help.

    What version of InDesign? What operating system? What fonts? Are they OpenType?

    C
    Chris SteadAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    May 2, 2018

    Hi Bob,

    Fair enough - here are some pics.

    Digital Editions works fine, see below.

    But on iPhone

    Everything is up-to-date - latest Indesign CC, latest iOS, latest Windows 10. Latest adobe editions. Fonts are embedded (and have correct rights), correctly called in the content.opf and otherwise worked fine.

    Head scratcher.

    Steve Werner
    Community Expert
    Steve WernerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 22, 2018

    Moving to InDesign EPUB forum

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