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Hi everyone,

Since I presume many of you know a lot more than me, please allow me to ask you this.
What would be the best font for a book (textbook in physics) intended to be printed
AND
read on a tablet (like iPad)?
I know, an easier question would be "What is the meaning of life":-)

It does not have to be a free font, juste the best one.

Thank you very much.
Normand

I have been using Libertine fonts find them to be excellent. It may be better suited to classical languages, but it is fine printing and viewing font family (both Linux Libertine O and Linux Biolinum O )

Another good face (especially for math and sciences) would be the standard Computer Modern. It's the standard/default font for TeX, and has excellent support for equations and technical notations. There are TTF and OTF formats available, too. (However, while they are great for printed materials, the PPI of the iPad or other tablet might make some of the characters not display as nicely as they print.)

rpcameron wrote:Another good face (especially for math and sciences) would be the standard Computer Modern. It's the standard/default font for TeX, and has excellent support for equations and technical notations.

The Opentype incarnation of Computer Modern is called Latin Modern:
http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/latin-modern

rpcameron wrote:(However, while they are great for printed materials, the PPI of the iPad or other tablet might make some of the characters not display as nicely as they print.)

I do agree, they don't look that good on non-retina displays.

While you are there, have a look at:
http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre
Especially Bonum and Pagella.
Math support for Bonum is still experimental, but Pagella has full Math support.

Axel

I like Minion Pro (similar to Libertine in style, but a little stronger) and Simoncini Garamond (even more "formal", I would say).
In comparison with the other fonts here cited, they might have the advantage of being less widely used, so that they can look "fresher" and more original.

Feanaaro wrote:I like Minion Pro (similar to Libertine in style, but a little stronger) and Simoncini Garamond (even more "formal", I would say).
In comparison with the other fonts here cited, they might have the advantage of being less widely used, so that they can look "fresher" and more original.

I use Minion Pro as my default font in most of my documents in Mellel. It's a very useful font and the version I use is Version 2.112;PS 2.000;hotconv 1.0.70;makeotf.lib2.5.5900 (the info I got from the Font Book supplied by Apple).

However, none of these fonts is available as native on an iPad, so if you're looking to produce an ebook (for example for iBooks) then you'd need to use one of the default fonts.

ozean wrote:However, none of these fonts is available as native on an iPad, so if you're looking to produce an ebook (for example for iBooks) then you'd need to use one of the default fonts.

That’s not actually true. iBooks reads EPUB files, and the EPUB spec allows for embedding of fonts into the file itself. Therefore, any font you wish to use can actually be embedded in your ebook. The same is true for any reader that follows the EPUB 2 or 3 spec. My Nook has no problem reading embedded fonts, but the glyph support is not complete, as Barnes & Noble uses Adobe's rendering engine in their Nook devices, which has limitations. In addition, iBooks (and many other readers) support PDF, which also allows for embedded fonts. (However, make sure you follow the font's licensing terms.)

Also, I tend to echo the thoughts of Matthew Butterick (Butterick’s Practical Typography, Typography for Lawyers), and system fonts in general ought to be avoided. If you’re doing any amount of writing, you really should invest in a good family (or two or three) of professional faces. I’m personally partial to Warnock Pro (which has some interesting and sharp alternate glyphs, especially in Cyrillic and Greek) and occasionally Myriad Pro.

Ah, good to know! Sems I wrongly took the shortcomings of the iOS iWork suite to be true for books too...

ozean wrote:Ah, good to know! Sems I wrongly took the shortcomings of the iOS iWork suite to be true for books too...

Pages EPUB support is really quite poor. Unless they've changed it, you need to use the EPUB template, and your styles must be specifically named. If you're creating EPUBs, you really ought to use something better, like Sigil or InDesign.

(If you're creating EPUBs on a Mac, especially with Pages, you should check out Liz Castro's blog, which includes tips for Pages, InDesign, iBooks and others.)

Right now I'm using Arno Pro. I quite like it.