EPUB3: Design mechanism for convenient inclusion of fonts in the generated output

[drmacro]

Need a way to specify and include embedded fonts in the generated EPUB file. Probably need a runtime parameter and maybe a conventional place to put fonts to be embedded. Since fonts need to be coordinated with the CSS it might make sense to just expect fonts to be in the same directory as the CSS file.

[dan-caprioara]

We have an oXygen client requesting this feature. He needs to embed some fonts in order to render special characters. Probably having the fonts directory in the same directory with the CSS file would be fine.

[drmacro]

Would SyncroSoft be in a position to provide an implementation for this? With my current workload I wouldn't be able to look at this until later this week at the earliest.

[dan-caprioara]

Fortunately there is no hurry from the client perspective (he expects to see it in a couple of months). But of course I will take a look at the plugin implementation.

[drmacro]

It shouldn't be that hard to implement but it will requiring thinking through the requirements a bit to make sure the mechanism is sufficiently flexible and extensible.

[drmacro]

Initial approach is to create a "font manifest" file that lists the fonts to be included. This makes it easy for the XSLT process to generate entries for the fonts in the graphic map.

Another approach would be to use a specialized topic ref to point to font files but that requires each document to know what fonts it wants to use, which is probably not appropriate most of the time.

[drmacro]

Have defined a "font-manifest" doctype in the doctypes plugin.

[drmacro]

Also adding common font extensions to the list of built-in files copied by the zip process.

[drmacro]

Closing as implemented in 1.0.0RC17