How widely supported are smallcaps?

[DiapDealer]

.888em is just is just Jon's preference. He always tries to present his typographic preferences as some sort of standard that should always be adhered to by everyone. Use what looks best to you. Especially if it's just for your own personal reading pleasure.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

There are definitely smallcap fonts. I can't speak to that .888em figure there but you generally want small caps to be a smidge taller than your font's x-height, and that does sound like it'd likely land close for many fonts.

I found the value of 0.8333em in an eBook. It's the best size I've seen so far in simulated smallcaps. I did find that when .7em or smaller was used, it was too small. I have seen small used which is .9em and that was slightly too large.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

.888em is just is just Jon's preference. He always tries to present his typographic preferences as some sort of standard that should always be adhered to by everyone. Use what looks best to you. Especially if it's just for your own personal reading pleasure.

.888em is wrong. It's 0.8333em.
But I know .7em is too small for the proper size of small caps. I'm not saying mine is correct, but it's pretty close if not. But if anyone has a better value, please post it.

[DiapDealer]

I don't care, Jon. It's still just your personal preference at .8333. The "correct" value is what looks best to those reading it, not what looks best to Jon.

[Jellby]

It's not just personal preference, it depends on the font. Fonts with a larger x-height will want a larger scale and fonts with a smaller x-height a smaller scale. I doubt 0.8333 or 0.85 or 0.8 will make much of a difference as a default for a generic unknown font. If you want it to work best for your particular font choice, experiment and find the best value to the 8th decimal figure if you like.

Besides, text-transform:uppercase is not equivalent to small-caps. If you want to fake small-caps, you better do something like:

T<small>HIS<small> <small>TEXT</small> <small>IS</small> <small>IN</small> F<small>RENCH</small>!

where you assign your preference scale to <small>. Note that only "small" letters are scaled, not capital letters, spaces, or punctuation.

But my advice would be:

1. If small-caps are just a style choice, think of something else, maybe bold, italic or underline would be valid for whatever emphasis or highlight is intended.

2. If it's important that it's actually small-caps, use an embedded true small-caps font.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Jellby

It's not just personal preference, it depends on the font. Fonts with a larger x-height will want a larger scale and fonts with a smaller x-height a smaller scale. I doubt 0.8333 or 0.85 or 0.8 will make much of a difference as a default for a generic unknown font. If you want it to work best for your particular font choice, experiment and find the best value to the 8th decimal figure if you like.

Besides, text-transform:uppercase is not equivalent to small-caps. If you want to fake small-caps, you better do something like:

T<small>HIS<small> <small>TEXT</small> <small>IS</small> <small>IN</small> F<small>RENCH</small>!

where you assign your preference scale to <small>. Note that only "small" letters are scaled, not capital letters, spaces, or punctuation.

But my advice would be:

1. If small-caps are just a style choice, think of something else, maybe bold, italic or underline would be valid for whatever emphasis or highlight is intended.

2. If it's important that it's actually small-caps, use an embedded true small-caps font.

I actually made my guys go through an exercise to make a one-size-fits all dropcap--and they work--but omg, it took us forever.

Hitch

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

.888em is wrong. It's 0.8333em.
But I know .7em is too small for the proper size of small caps. I'm not saying mine is correct, but it's pretty close if not. But if anyone has a better value, please post it.

Ok. I was just curious where it came from.

I did play with all sizes between .9 - .5 and found .7 was just right for me. I tried .9 and .8 and found them too big and the smallcaps look somewhat diminished.

I tried to size the smallcaps the same size as the lowercase letters, and .7 came the closest without going into 2 or 3 decimal places as shown in the image.

Originally Posted by Jellby

Besides, text-transform:uppercase is not equivalent to small-caps. If you want to fake small-caps, you better do something like:

T<small>HIS<small> <small>TEXT</small> <small>IS</small> <small>IN</small> F<small>RENCH</small>!

where you assign your preference scale to <small>. Note that only "small" letters are scaled, not capital letters, spaces, or punctuation.

But my advice would be:

1. If small-caps are just a style choice, think of something else, maybe bold, italic or underline would be valid for whatever emphasis or highlight is intended.

2. If it's important that it's actually small-caps, use an embedded true small-caps font.

That is interesting. I did not consider using the <small> method. But seems a bit of extra work.

I used my particular method of .7 and text transform, so if there was a fix for the smallcaps issue in Kobo, I could quickly change the css code.

[jmurphy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

.888em is wrong. It's 0.8333em.

But in message 43 of this very thread, you definitively, authoritatively stated:
"And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.888em."

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jmurphy

But in message 43 of this very thread, you definitively, authoritatively stated:
"And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.888em."

And obviously some in this thread cannot read. I never posted 0.888em.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And obviously some in this thread cannot read. I never posted 0.888em.

I'm really hoping you meant this to be funny??

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.888em.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

.888em is wrong. It's 0.8333em.

Than why did you write: "the font size should be 0.888em"?

Originally Posted by JSWolf

.
I'm not saying mine is correct, but it's pretty close if not.

You always start out that you have the only correct answer, yet your answer is frequently objectively quite wrong.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And as for your CSS, the font size should be 0.888em. And I'm not sure that the text-transform to uppercase works or not with ePub and if that is the case, you'll need to drop it and make sure the text is uppercase.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And obviously some in this thread cannot read. I never posted 0.888em.

Perhaps you should talk to the other JSWolf who posted the first message quoted above? As for the comment about not being able to read? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

[phillipgessert]

What’s nuts is I could swear I’ve seen that specific measure before. I want to say it’s either an InDesign default or a popular answer to a StackOverflow question about faked smallcaps. In any case, it’d drive me nuts to have something that specific in a stylesheet. It’d bug me as something that just felt arbitrary.

Lot of comedy here but apparently I gotta spread karma around more before I can acknowledge it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And obviously some in this thread cannot read. I never posted 0.888em.

Wolfie:

Sweetie, you really, really did.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Does anyone have a better value then 0.8333em that works in more cases then not?