Epub file displaying numbers strangely after export from InDesign

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
February 16, 2023
1 reply
1523 views

Please see screenshots attached. The font is currently Garamond and I have tried changing to Caslon but the same issues happen. Any idea what could be causing this? It doesn't happen to every number and I can't seem to find any logical pattern as to the cause. Thank you!

EPUB

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James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Is this a reflowable EPUB?

Two things. First, it's poor practice to specify/embed fonts in EPUB. It adds nothing to most books, and it's a somewhat fragile process given that most readers insist on managing the display according to their own rules and the preferences of the user. It also bloats the file size.

Second, what reader are you using? They vary considerably and almost everything about how EPUBs display and read is dependent on the reader. I suggest using the fairly vanilla, standards-based Thorium or Calibre readers for proofing EPUBs. Most of the others (Apple, Kindle, Adobe, etc.) are not very standard and don't always present EPUB books properly.

D

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Participating Frequently

Thank you, yes it's reflowable. I'm viewing it via iBooks but my client also sees these numbers displaying incorrectly on their Kindle. I have just tried to replace the font with Times New Roman and I got these display errors so I believe it must be how some of the numerals are formatted in the InDesign document, though I can't see what's different about them.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Funnily enough even when I unembed the fonts I still get the same issue. But I've managed to fix the problem by replacing them with numbers that didn't show an error and retyping the correct number – time-consuming but at least my client has the file now.

Specifying fonts is one problem, embedding them is a second... but oftentimes not embedding them effectively bypasses the spec problem. The problem might have persisted because you spec'ed fonts that most systems would have or map. For giggles, change the font to something oddball in your list and export without embedding. That would normally force the reader to use its default font and mapping, without trying to accommodate a defined font.

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