Why Kobo add spaces between letters of first word?

[rashomon]

Thanks everyone for their suggestions. I'll try to answer some of the questions.

This is the second book I've read on KoboAuraOne, so I don't know if this problem will occur on every book. On this one is really visible and some time annoying.

1. First about "Set KePub hyphenation" patch.
If i disable that section in the patch, and recreate new KoboRoot.tgz, will this problem go away?
I'm not fond of hyphenation, and screen is big enough. I don't mind bigger spaces between words, but additional spaces between letters in the same word really look silly.

2. This book does not have footnote, but almost all other books have. So I would prefer text in a balloon, on the same page.

3. Now I see that in the styles.css there is something like:
body {
font-family: serif;
adobe-hyphenate: none;
-webkit-hyphens: none;
-moz-hyphens: none;
-ms-hyphens: none;
-epub-hyphens: none;
hyphens: none;
font-language-override: "SRB";
font-kerning: normal;
font-variant: common-ligatures lining-nums proportional-nums;
font-variant-ligatures: contextual;
}
Could this be the problem (bold lines)?


4.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you read KePub and want ligatures, kerning, and hyphenation, monospace and it goes wrong, the solution is ePub.

I'm not sure what ligatures is, and how to disable it.
I'm reading KePub because:
- I like footnote text to be displayed in a balloon on a same page (habit from Kindle).
- I need to set extra boldness/weight for font.
- I like that KePub file can display / calculate page number
If this can be set with book in ePub, I'll be glad to read book in ePub.

5. ps67 wrote that the problem could be optimizeLegibility / ligatures. How can I disable just that?
Do I need to disable whole section (KePub stylesheet additions) or just change:
# - FindReplaceString: {Find: "/******************************************/", Replace: "body{text-renderingptimizeLegibility }", MustMatchLength: yes}

into:
- FindReplaceString: {Find: "/******************************************/", Replace: "body{text-renderingptimizeLegibility }", MustMatchLength: no}


6.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

just want to say, I like your username. I love the film Roshomon.

Rashomon is one of the best movies I ever saw. I love everything from Kurosawa, but Kagemusha and Rashomon are something special.

7.

Originally Posted by najgori

Have you tried to set letter-spacing to normal or zero?
Without hyphenation you gotta have holes somewhere.
...
Koja ti je to knjiga?

Where do I set letter spacing?

p.s. Radi se o knjizi „Mark Lawrence - Rat Crvene kraljice - Lokijev ključ”. Ovo je drugu deo, topla preporuka za serijal.


Thanks for answer

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by rashomon

1. First about "Set KePub hyphenation" patch.
If i disable that section in the patch, and recreate new KoboRoot.tgz, will this problem go away?

I don't think so. The problem is Kobo is trying to lay out all the text in a nice justified block for you, but due to the length of words, breaking the sentence isn't easy. Especially if you are telling it never to break a word when it breaks the sentence. Not using hyphenation is making the problem worse, not better.

The reader is trying to display multiple lines of text all with different amount of characters and is trying to make them line up. So it has to insert different amounts of space between words and sometimes between characters.

Try this. Open a page where the word has spaces like you saw. In the font menu, change alignment from justify to ragged right. I bet the problem will go away.

[ps67]

Originally Posted by rashomon

Thanks everyone for their suggestions. I'll try to answer some of the questions.

This is the second book I've read on KoboAuraOne, so I don't know if this problem will occur on every book. On this one is really visible and some time annoying.

1. First about "Set KePub hyphenation" patch.
If i disable that section in the patch, and recreate new KoboRoot.tgz, will this problem go away?
I'm not fond of hyphenation, and screen is big enough. I don't mind bigger spaces between words, but additional spaces between letters in the same word really look silly.

2. This book does not have footnote, but almost all other books have. So I would prefer text in a balloon, on the same page.

3. Now I see that in the styles.css there is something like:
body {
font-family: serif;
adobe-hyphenate: none;
-webkit-hyphens: none;
-moz-hyphens: none;
-ms-hyphens: none;
-epub-hyphens: none;
hyphens: none;
font-language-override: "SRB";
font-kerning: normal;
font-variant: common-ligatures lining-nums proportional-nums;
font-variant-ligatures: contextual;
}
Could this be the problem (bold lines)?


4.

I'm not sure what ligatures is, and how to disable it.
I'm reading KePub because:
- I like footnote text to be displayed in a balloon on a same page (habit from Kindle).
- I need to set extra boldness/weight for font.
- I like that KePub file can display / calculate page number
If this can be set with book in ePub, I'll be glad to read book in ePub.

5. ps67 wrote that the problem could be optimizeLegibility / ligatures. How can I disable just that?
Do I need to disable whole section (KePub stylesheet additions) or just change:
# - FindReplaceString: {Find: "/******************************************/", Replace: "body{text-renderingptimizeLegibility }", MustMatchLength: yes}

into:
- FindReplaceString: {Find: "/******************************************/", Replace: "body{text-renderingptimizeLegibility }", MustMatchLength: no}


6.


Rashomon is one of the best movies I ever saw. I love everything from Kurosawa, but Kagemusha and Rashomon are something special.

7.


Where do I set letter spacing?

p.s. Radi se o knjizi „Mark Lawrence - Rat Crvene kraljice - Lokijev ključ”. Ovo je drugu deo, topla preporuka za serijal.


Thanks for answer

IMHO the problems are all ligatures tag in css: the effect of the patch that I posted is the same of enabling common ligatures in css.

There are common, discretionary, historical and contextual ligatures:

Ligatures are graphic effect that join a letter with the following, I don't know Cyrillic alphabet but for example in Latin alphabet the most common used ligatures are fi ffi fl ff ffl... depending on the fonts. These are generally common ligatures but for example in Times New Roman fi etc are discretionary ligatures.

Contextual ligatures are letter that can be joined, depending on the context but I don't know very well it; Some fonts have no ligatures at all.

Kepub badly handles ligatures and it causes the issue, this is the reason why they are disabled by default.

Try deleting:

1. font-variant: common-ligatures lining-nums proportional-nums;
2. font-variant-ligatures: contextual;

And see if the problem persist.

About all hyphenate or hyphens tag: they simply prevent hyphenation, if You want it substitute none with auto.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by rashomon

3. Now I see that in the styles.css there is something like:
body {
font-family: serif;
adobe-hyphenate: none;
-webkit-hyphens: none;
-moz-hyphens: none;
-ms-hyphens: none;
-epub-hyphens: none;
hyphens: none;
font-language-override: "SRB";
font-kerning: normal;
font-variant: common-ligatures lining-nums proportional-nums;
font-variant-ligatures: contextual;
}
Could this be the problem (bold lines)

How are you creating the kepub? Is the above in the original epub, or after the conversion to kepub? If the latter, try turning of the hyphenation options to see what happens.

We probably need a full example to experiment with. If the book is legally available somewhere, post the link for us to try. You could try the ScrambleBook plugin in calibre, but, that might not work because of the language. We would also need to know things like what you font settings are - fonts and the justification option selected on the device.

But the thing that I can see is that the word that has the spaces, is a single word in a sentence. Which means it is a single word sentence in the Kobo span. Are there other examples like this in the book? A test would be to merge the span for this sentence with the next one. If this fixes the issue for this spot, it would suggest it is an issue with how the spacing is done across these spans.

[najgori]

Originally Posted by rashomon

Where do I set letter spacing?

In p or body tag as in

body {
  letter-spacing: 0px;
}

In justified text esp. without hyphenation you gotta have some space between letters and between the words.
This space should be controlled with letter-spacing and word-spacing html properties or with combination of both as in good program Indesign.
How is this done in Kobo... who knows if this even works?
That is why I always set text-align to left in serbian language.

[rashomon]

The problem was one of the lines in css (probably ligatures or hyphens). When I deleted those lines (except font-family: serif and recreated ePub and then converted to KePub (in Calibre), the problem was gone. I'll experiment more later in the evening

Font was not the problem, because it appeared with every font, when i change size above 20%, and on almost every page.
And davidfor was probably right that it appeared on one word sentence.


Thanks everyone for suggestions

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I don't think so. The problem is Kobo is trying to lay out all the text in a nice justified block for you, but due to the length of words, breaking the sentence isn't easy. Especially if you are telling it never to break a word when it breaks the sentence. Not using hyphenation is making the problem worse, not better.

The reader is trying to display multiple lines of text all with different amount of characters and is trying to make them line up. So it has to insert different amounts of space between words and sometimes between characters.

Try this. Open a page where the word has spaces like you saw. In the font menu, change alignment from justify to ragged right. I bet the problem will go away.

Adding space between letters of a word is a bug. Spaces should only be added between words. Hyphenation should help so I too suggest turning on hyphenation like it or not. If you want full justify with no hyphenation, you'll have to use ePub because of the bug in rendering KePub.