Miscellaneous display and editing matters

[foosion]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

You could just as easily put the left-align in the body text of the individual books and leave justifcation off on your Kobo. But whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Based on my experience, setting the Kobo to left justify results in fewer edits to end up where I want. In particular, very few books have centering issues I care about.

I have noticed that there is a tremendous variety in the number of CSS entries (and corresponding complexity) in ebooks and more complex tends to mean more things I don't like.

YMMV.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by foosion

Based on my experience, setting the Kobo to left justify results in fewer edits to end up where I want. In particular, very few books have centering issues I care about.

I have noticed that there is a tremendous variety in the number of CSS entries (and corresponding complexity) in ebooks and more complex tends to mean more things I don't like.

YMMV.

Do you remove unused CSS before you go about editing the CSS? This can remove hundreds of of unused classes in some cases.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you remove unused CSS before you go about editing the CSS? This can remove hundreds of of unused classes in some cases.

Yes, although in many books that still leaves a large number of classes.

I'm amazed at how many unused classes there are in some books. I suppose some publishers, or some software, has a standard large number of classes for all CSS, then just uses whatever may be desirable.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

I'm amazed at how many unused classes there are in some books. I suppose some publishers, or some software, has a standard large number of classes for all CSS, then just uses whatever may be desirable.

Most publishers have a stock stylesheet or three which are used in every book. Since most publishers do not remove unused stylesheet entries before ending the editing process, those entries will be there for our amusement.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

Based on my experience, setting the Kobo to left justify results in fewer edits to end up where I want. In particular, very few books have centering issues I care about.

Personally, I remove all the text-align: justify; entries from the stylesheet and use a single text-align: left; in the body style.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally, I remove all the text-align: justify; entries from the stylesheet and use a single text-align: left; in the body style.

For books without a body style, would you just add

body {
  text-align: left;
}

to the CSS

perhaps including in body:

  font-size: normal;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0;

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

For books without a body style, would you just add

body {
  text-align: left;
}

to the CSS

perhaps including in body:

  font-size: normal;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0;

My preferred copy/paste body style is:

body {
  display: block;
  font-size: 1em;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0 0 0 0;
  text-align: left;
  text-indent: 0;
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
}

[foosion]

For whatever it's worth, it seems easiest for me to have my Kobo set to left justification. If there are issues with centering that I notice, then it's easier to turn off justification and, if necessary, edit as you suggest.

I find it odd that <center> works, while things such as <p class="center-style"> do not in kepub files, but rendering oddities are no longer a surprise.

[foosion]

"a href" defaults to blue underline. The following removes the underline in an epub using the Calibre viewer, but not for a kepub on my Kobo. How do I remove the underline?

a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active { 
  text-decoration: none; 
}

There are no other text-decorations and no explicit underlines.

[Sirtel]

I think there's a patch for it, but I don't use that patch myself, so no idea how well it works.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I think there's a patch for it, but I don't use that patch myself, so no idea how well it works.

Ah, yet another Kobo oddity. Thanks!

EDIT: Un-force link decoration in KePubs: in libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml fixes the problem.

EDIT 2: The patch does not just unforce the link decoration, it sets the default to black with no underline. If you want an underline or color you have to set that explicitly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by foosion

Ah, yet another Kobo oddity. Thanks!

EDIT: Un-force link decoration in KePubs: in libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml fixes the problem.

EDIT 2: The patch does not just unforce the link decoration, it sets the default to black with no underline. If you want an underline or color you have to set that explicitly.

Undo the patch and try the following code. I've tested it in calibre and ADE and it works to remove the underline from links. It does leave the color as blue.

a {
  text-decoration: none;
}

With the code you'd posted, the program has to keep track of the state of the link and that doesn't work.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Undo the patch and try the following code. I've tested it in calibre and ADE and it works to remove the underline from links. It does leave the color as blue.

a {
  text-decoration: none;
}

With the code you'd posted, the program has to keep track of the state of the link and that doesn't work.

That works on Calibre, but not on my Kobos with kepub books.

EDIT: you can change the color, for example, color: red or color: inherit.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by foosion

That works on Calibre, but not on my Kobos with kepub books.

EDIT: you can change the color, for example, color: red or color: inherit.

I guess it's a quirk of the KePub software.

[foosion]

Another oddity: Occasionally when my Kobos go to sleep book covers will display as text (title and kobo epub) with a surrounding box rather than the expected graphic. This will be after displaying normally for days and without any changes to the device. I use kobo utilities to restore the cover.

Anyone else? Any idea how to prevent this?