Best Way To Insert Image In A Line Of Text

[Chris Panny]

Windows 10 64-bit, InDesign CC 2107

I'm assembling a reflowable ePUB 3.0. I have to insert tiff files that contain transliterations, which are text characters used to describe hieroglyphs. These need to appear in the flow of the text, between words, as if they are part of the sentence, just like the other text. First I tried to insert them as inline objects, but they end up appearing a little too high above the rest of the text when I proof on my iPhone 6s+. I tried selecting the tiff and lowered the baseline shift, which drops it into place in InDesign, but when I export to ePUB, it still appears too high, so the baseline setting is getting ignored. Since it's an image, there's no way to apply this to a character style. Then I tried to custom anchor it to different parts of the paragraph, including the blank space where it was inline, but the image ends up so far out of the text flow, in every attempt. In both cases, inline and custom, I made an Object style. (When I had this inline, I tried adjusting the Y Offset in the Anchored Objects of the style, but this gets ignored on export.)

I've read that inline objects aren't the best approach for ePUBs, but since neither way is working, I wondered if anyone had a suggestion on how to do this. Below is a screen shot of the image in InDesign. Below that is the tiff image itself. I've tried to find an actual font, but have been unable to find one that supports these characters. I've got a few hundred of these that need to appear in the text flow throughout the book.

[Laubender]

Hi soundman,

I don't know if that will help with reflowable ePub 3.0, but you could do your own font—at the minimum one glyph—with InDesign by using this script by Jongware and Marc Autret:

Indiscripts :: IndyFont

There is a free demo version where you are able to save an OTF with one glyph only.

So at least you would be able to test that scenario.

Regards,
Uwe

[Chris Panny]

Since your responses, I found fonts that do the job. One is called, JSesh for the hieroglyphs and another is a series of fonts called, Inscribe. Both work well, but I ran into another snag. Many eReaders don't support either of these so they'll either insert their own font or leave a square block if it can't resolve it. Making my own font won't work, but thanks for the idea, Uwe.

Times NR is a viable option for the transliteration since it's widely supported, but I'm waiting to hear back from my publisher if it's supported on the various eReaders our book would be read on. If it is, then I have the transliteration problem solved, thanks to Ants' suggestion.

For the hieroglyphs, I was thinking of two possibilities:

Convert the 15pt JSesh font to outlines and convert to PNG, upon export. Hopefully they still retain enough detail for legibility.

OR

Make SVGs from the outlines. I haven't done this before so I'm still researching if this is even an option.

Have either of you worked with SVG in ePUB 3 reflowable? If so, can you point me to a source on how to put these into an ePUB? My guess is I'd have to crack open the book and swap out every instance of PNG with an SVG. It would probably involve manually editing the content.opt too to include them ??

[Derek Cross]

This seems rather dodgy, what happens if the reader changes the font or wants to use night reading mode?

What about coming at it from a different direction and have a note number or common symbol on these words that references a page where all the unusual letter forms are referenced. Not elegant but it might be easier to produce and safer. Just a thought!

[AntsTuur]

Hi.

Most of egyptian transcription characters are found in windows times new roman.

If you want to set inline character height acording to character height, there is a way. I cannot appoint you to the exact resource, but it is doable. It includes fiddling with content.opf file and css file.

And it is working only with apple ibooks reader. For most other readers you must use inline graph as div element. And then edit css accordingly.

Ants

[AntsTuur]

You must include font with your epub and tell reader software to use included fonts. I recommend everyone to set their ereaders to use included fons and original layout. Also there may be problems with font obfuscation. Some older models do not support IDPF method. Turn it off for your fonts.

There is no big difference between SVG and png. SVG will scale more smoothly, but your sizing problems will remain. I havent tested recently, but some times ago there were the issues with epubchech in epubs containing SVG graphics.

Ants

[Chris Panny]

Sorry for the delay in getting back. My publisher got back to me and confirmed that iBooks does support the JSesh font for hieroglyphs, so I'm going to leave it in and not convert to an image. The same holds true for Times New Roman for the transliterations.

The only other hurdle I have is how to stack 2 hieroglyphs which occurs in several places in the book. I'm making a new post for this one.

Can Two Fonts (hieroglyphs) Be Stacked On The Same Line In An ePUB?

Thanks to everybody for their input.