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The Standard Ebooks toolset for producing our ebook files.
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problem with selector character #699

Closed ousia closed 4 months ago

ousia commented 4 months ago

@standardebooks,

this is another issue I experience with an older reader (#697).

All endnotes (at least in Plato) have these back links, such as in:

<a href="laws.xhtml#noteref-527" role="doc-backlink" epub:type="backlink">↩︎</a>

But these links contain two characters: : U+21A9 and U+FE0E.

Being U+FE0E a variation selector (number 15), it can only give problems in an older reader.

I mean, the reader I use displays always ? for a character without defined glyph.

I may find a font with a glyph for U+21A9 (after all, it is an arrow), but a variation selector shouldn’t contain any glyph.

Would it be possible that the back link contained only the single character ↩︎ in the compatible ePub?

Many thanks for your help.

acabal commented 4 months ago

Unfortunately not, we have to add that character to make it compatible with iOS; otherwise iOS renders the arrow as an emoji. Right now iOS compatibility is more important than older ereaders, sorry :( Again, this is a font issue in your ereader. If you were to use a different font with that character, the issue would be solved.

ousia commented 4 months ago

Unfortunately not, we have to add that character to make it compatible with iOS; otherwise iOS renders the arrow as an emoji. Right now iOS compatibility is more important than older ereaders, sorry :(

Sorry, @acabal, from the replies I received in #697, I thought you were interested in adding more compatibility with older readers.

I have other issues, but at least now it is clear that it doesn’t make sense that I report them.

Again, this is a font issue in your ereader. If you were to use a different font with that character, the issue would be solved.

Correct me if I‘m wrong, but this is not the issue. I cannot add a glyph to a pure functional and empty character.

From your description:

[…] otherwise iOS renders the arrow as an emoji.

If this happens and two characters are involved, one of them is not being displayed.

In fact, it should not be displayed at all. U+FE0E is described as a variation selector.

Right now iOS compatibility is more important than older ereaders, sorry :(

I only have a reader, but a basic way to solve this would have been to replace the arrow with &lt;&lt;.