Miscellaneous display and editing matters

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My stock body class has widows: 1; and orphans: 1;. I also use the RMSDK Disable orphans/widows avoidance patch. I do remember years back someone mentioned using readingWidows=0 and readingOrphans=0 (or was it =1??) in the Kobo eReader.conf file but in my testing at that time, I did not find those settings having any effect. I did find that settings widows and orphans to 0 in the CSS had two different effects. Some renderers treated 0 as equivalent to 1 and others disregarded it and went with their default of 2 or 3.

I'd guess it was 1 in the conf file, not 0. I've found that together with the book css, it keeps the widows and orphans in line. The patch presumably does the same (I've not used it).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by foosion

Since I'm doing kepubs it seems there's no need for widows/orphans management.

No. I use epubs on my Libra 2, hence the need for widows/orphans management. On my Sage I too have kepubs.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are you certain that you are killing it everywhere? I have one epub where the original CSS specified a padding at the end of each block in the body style, in each paragraph style and in a div style that was applied to every <expletive deleted> paragraph. The lovely part was that the padding was not consistent.

Those are fun. I've also had books with inconsistent left and right margins, inconsistent text indents, inconsistent section breaks and so on. And just now I'm editing a book that has double chapter headings. Yes, the exact same heading twice, first larger and then smaller. Makes one really wonder about people who design those books...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

Find isn't finding "padding". To have an extra line on the page, wouldn't I need negative padding or negative bottom margins? Or would this do it:

<a class="Footnote-Reference" epub:type="noteref" href="05_Chapter_One.xhtml#footnote-002" id="footnote-002-backlink" role="doc-noteref" title="footnote">[*1]</a>

.Footnote-Reference {
  vertical-align: 0.25em;
  line-height: 0;
  font-size: 0.8em;
}

Are you looking in the CSS stylesheets? Anything with padding or margin in a class should be given a hard look. Here's a sample from a recent purchase. Please note that you can find margin and padding in a short hand format with 2 to 4 values.

margin-bottom: 2px;
margin-bottom: 0.1em;
margin-bottom: 8px;
padding-bottom: 0.25em;
padding-bottom: 6px;

You may want to check CSS Margins and CSS Padding on the W3Schools site for more information.

Originally Posted by foosion

Or is it because most files are about 50KB and that's too big for pop-up footnotes?

I seem to remember the limit is 5K in the Kobo documentation. Perhaps look at splitting your footnote files.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are you looking in the CSS stylesheets?

The first code fragment was the from the text referencing the footnote. The second was the relevant CSS for that text. Otherwise the text was just a normal <p> ... </p>, same as the rest of the book.

I tend to kill padding CSS and change main body text margins to 0 0 0 0. Neither appear implicated here.

Originally Posted by DNSB

I seem to remember the limit is 5K in the Kobo documentation. Perhaps look at splitting your footnote files.

You have written that before.

It's a mass market book, so they probably weren't concerned with kobo formatting.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by foosion

My default font and line height results in 15 lines of text on my Libra 2. However, if there's a footnote which would otherwise display at the top of the next page, I get 16 lines of text with the footnote on the bottom line. Is this some widow and orphan manifestation or is it something else?

I've come to dislike large first letters of a chapter, often bold and extending above or below the line, so they need a special margin (such as 0.7em) to display nicely. Accordingly, I've been changing these to regular text. Anyone else?

Why do almost all books not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, but then indent all subsequent paragraphs? I toy with indenting all paragraphs.

Somewhere in the 1.4em range seems best for indenting, although maybe 5%?

Is there some way to automate making sure all actual text (body, rather than headings or special sections) is normal size?

The current book I'm reading doesn't have the footnote preview feature (clicking on a footnote brings you to the footnote) and image viewer. How can I fix this?

All of this relates to kepub files on my Libra 2 (or Clara BW).

I get 46 lines of text on the screen of my Libra 2. You must be using some large font size and some rather large line height. 30 lines would be more normal.

Anyway, if you install Diaps Editing Toolbag then in the editor you'll easily be able to remove the spans that give you the large first letter that you don't like. As to the first paragraph not being indented, that's normal. Not just in eBooks, but in pBooks as well. It shows you that you are at the beginning of the paragraph or section. To me, it looks cheap and tacky when those paragraphs are indented. My preferred indent is 1.2em.

As for Widows/orphans, you can override them in multiple ways.

In CSS, in Kobo ereader.conf with

[Reading]
readingAdobeOrphans=1
readingAdobeWidows=1

but this is only for ePub, and you can apply the patch that gets rid of widows/orphans that works for both ePub and KePub.

Footnotes don't popup with ePub, only KePub. Footnotes should be in a separate HTML file with page breaks in between each footnote.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yeah, I absolutely detest paragraph spaces and those get immediately deleted, before reading the book.

OTOH, there are folks here who add them to their books.

Section breaks and sections with a different font size (letters, diaries etc) can also change the number of lines.

I too cannot stand paragraph spaces. I see no point. We already have indents to denote the start of a new paragraph.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Correct. Unlike the RMSDK renderer which defaults to widows/orphans=2, the WebKit based renderer defaults to widows/orphans=1.

I have seen a number of eBooks that do have widows/orphans set to 2 in CSS. So unless the CSS is examined before reading the book, you won't know if it has widows/orphans set to 2 or not until you are reading the book. This does not happen in most book, but it does in some.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I get 46 lines of text on the screen of my Libra 2. You must be using some large font size and some rather large line height. 30 lines would be more normal.

I'm currently at FontSize 54 and LineHeight 1.35. I could probably go a bit smaller, but I'm used to this.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Anyway, if you install Diaps Editing Toolbag then in the editor you'll easily be able to remove the spans that give you the large first letter that you don't like.

It's easy enough to click on a first letter, see the code then find it in the CSS file. I guess I'll try that plugin to see if it's easier. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=2980740

Originally Posted by JSWolf

As to the first paragraph not being indented, that's normal. Not just in eBooks, but in pBooks as well. It shows you that you are at the beginning of the paragraph or section. To me, it looks cheap and tacky when those paragraphs are indented. My preferred indent is 1.2em.

I characterized it as "almost all" in the OP.

De gustibus ...

Indent range in this thread is 1 to 1.5em

Originally Posted by JSWolf

As for Widows/orphans, you can override them in multiple ways.

Kepub doesn't do widows/orphans, so no action required. Besides, that was a guess as to why I get 16 lines/page when there's a footnote reference in the text on the bottom line. It continues to be a mystery.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Footnotes don't popup with ePub, only KePub. Footnotes should be in a separate HTML file with page breaks in between each footnote.

As noted, I'm using kepub. The book at issue has footnotes in the same files as text and those files are about 50KB each. It was published by parts of Penguin this year. You'd think they knew better.