How widely supported are smallcaps?

[Land_Outcast]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I would recommend using emoticons so people know you are making a sarcastic joke... unless you don't know that half the world uses a , to denote a decimal place and that I'm pretty sure epubcheck catches those kind of errors??

Indeed! I almost fell for it and was about to explain in length the particular uses of commas in ortotypography of natural languages () as opposed to the ortotypography of html… and then I realized it was a joke.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I would recommend using emoticons so people know you are making a sarcastic joke... unless you don't know that half the world uses a , to denote a decimal place and that I'm pretty sure epubcheck catches those kind of errors??

I just tested epubcheck with 0,8em and it was not found. The Calibre error checker found them.

I suppose we could turn this post into one discussing the benefits of American English/imperial units vs. the inferior British and, the horror, metrics!!

Thing is, if you are going to give information related to CSS, use the correct value regardless of what your country uses. It's 0.7em and not 0,7em.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Since one of my top 5 favourite characters in fiction is properly rendered as speaking in smallcaps, I was following this thread with interest, but it seems like the DEATH knell for my hopes.

Death should be speaking in capital letters and not smallcaps.

The following quote if from The Science of Discworld.

The most dramatic, of course, is Death, many people's favourite Discworld character, who SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Death should be speaking in capitol letters and not smallcaps.

What are capitol letters?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

What are capitol letters?

WASHINGTON D.C.

[roger64]

Hi

since its April 2020 release, Koreader supports "font-variant:small-caps" and generally the whole font-variant property.

Koreader works with Kindle, Kobo, Pocketbook, Android, etc.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

What are capitol letters?

Originally Posted by jhowell

WASHINGTON D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C. is a capital city, so maybe
WHITE HOUSE are capitol letters.

[JSWolf]

For Death, the simple way to fix his speech from smallcaps to capitals is to remove the spans that creates the smallcaps. Then you have the correct capitals and it looks good.

I use Diaps Editing Toolbag plugin for Calibre to remove these spans in Calibre's editor. I do check for other smallcaps first and then edit the span so I don't lose those. And the all that's left is Death and fixing things from there is very easy.

[Brett Merkey]

Paperwhite seems to be supporting creditable small-caps for some time. However, any attempt to use it is spoiled when a publisher uses hacks to approximate the small-cap effect: like typing in ALL CAPS then inserting <small> or <span class="sc"> across a handful of words or across each separate word. Sort of takes the fun out of the device support for both that font property and the pseudo-elements.

To undo all that hacking without the effort of clearing that hack code, while (supposedly) leaving the hack for non-conforming devices, I use this CSS prophylactic: undo what the <small> or <span> do and then transform the result.

Example:
h2 ~ p:first-of-type small {
/* negate common hack */
text-transform: lowercase;
font-size: 1em;
}
h2 ~ p:first-of-type::first-line {
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 1em;
}

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Brett Merkey

Paperwhite seems to be supporting creditable small-caps for some time. However, any attempt to use it is spoiled when a publisher uses hacks to approximate the small-cap effect: like typing in ALL CAPS then inserting <small> or <span class="sc"> across a handful of words or across each separate word. Sort of takes the fun out of the device support for both that font property and the pseudo-elements.

To undo all that hacking without the effort of clearing that hack code, while (supposedly) leaving the hack for non-conforming devices, I use this CSS prophylactic: undo what the <small> or <span> do and then transform the result.

Example:
h2 ~ p:first-of-type small {
/* negate common hack */
text-transform: lowercase;
font-size: 1em;
}
h2 ~ p:first-of-type::first-line {
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 1em;
}

Text-transform?????

And presumably, if you think that "typing in all caps" isn't needed, to cover all bases, you must work with only a single type of device.

On a Paperwhite?


Hitch

[Brett Merkey]

Hello Hitch. Reviewed your site last weekend. You have wonderful stuff there.

Yes, I have the luxury of coding for an audience of one, for two devices. I used to bulldoze all that hacking away but eventually added the above code to my everyday stylesheet to eliminate its effect while avoiding the janitorial work. The cascade is our friend...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Brett Merkey

Hello Hitch. Reviewed your site last weekend. You have wonderful stuff there.

Yes, I have the luxury of coding for an audience of one, for two devices. I used to bulldoze all that hacking away but eventually added the above code to my everyday stylesheet to eliminate its effect while avoiding the janitorial work. The cascade is our friend...

LOL..

LOVE your tagline here, I say that about myself daily ("still on this side of the dirt.")

Thanks for the compliment, but obviously, a lot of my stuff is getting old. (Why not? So's its writer!) The biz is busy and I struggle to find time to add newer, fresher content.

Being able to code for an audience of one or two...(sigh), such luxury! :-)

Hitch

[Brett Merkey]

The biz is busy and I struggle to find time to add newer, fresher content.

Good that your biz is busy. This makes the quantity and the quality of the aid you give to others **for free** more impressive.

Being able to code for an audience of one or two...(sigh), such luxury!

Not voluntarily. It bothered me that the e-books I gathered for my mother were so completely ugly and so unlike a good reading experience for her. I decided to make her Kindle books pleasant to the eye. I have learned a lot.

I edit in ePub, then let Calibre do what it does (sausage making) to convert it into Azw3, then I delete the Azw3 after side-loading, retaining the nice, clean ePub format in the library.

[JSWolf]

Itoo find a lot of eBooks to be not well formatted and take it upon myself to fix this. Sometimes it's very easy and sometimes not so easy. But it can be done. I just wish it was done before these eBooks are released. I am surprised the authors don't complain about how bad their eBooks look.

[Brett Merkey]

I am surprised the authors don't complain about how bad their eBooks look.

As some of the articles on Hitch's site indicate, authors are quite quick to complain — only their gripes are ill-directed. The pressure should be on Amazon and Adobe and others to properly support international standards which have been written in stone, almost for decades.