[Plugin] Epub3 E-Reader Plugins for Sigil

[KevinH]

Good catch!

I will create a new release tomorrow with those changes. Please report this bug at Bibi's github site along with your test case and fix so that the main developer is alerted and so that others can find the bug and add your fix.



The link to the Bibi site is:
https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Good catch!

I will create a new release tomorrow with those changes. Please report this bug at Bibi's github site along with your test case and fix so that the main developer is alerted and so that others can find the bug and add your fix.

The link to the Bibi site is:
https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi

I did what you said; maybe the fix will be official in a future realease of Bibi

[KevinH]

I included your fix in a new release BibiReader_v0.3.0.zip

You can grab it from the releases link in the first post of this thread.

[RbnJrg]

Something curious is happening to me. When I open the following epub (is in public domain):

The Clue of the Twisted Candle.epub

in Bibi Reader under Windows all works fine, but when I open the same epub under Linux (Arch Linux) Bibi Reader (*not* with full window) generates a blank page at the end of each chapter. And I can't see what is producing such behavior. Can the plugin work in different manner in Linux? Because I repeat, under Windows the plugin works as is expected, no blank page is generated.

[KevinH]

Probably not platform related but instead graphics driver, monitor dpi, monitor scaling, or window size related. First try growing the width of the window slightly to see how it changes page layout. Perhaps playing with window height as well. Extra whitespace at the end could be an issue. Perhaps that epub's xhtml uses windows style carriage return/line feeds and that is generating an extra whitespace whose layout just happens to occur on a page boundary.

I will also give this epub a test on my macOS box, tonight to see how it responds.

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Something curious is happening to me. When I open the following epub (is in public domain):

Attachment 194050

in Bibi Reader under Windows all works fine, but when I open the same epub under Linux (Arch Linux) Bibi Reader (*not* with full window) generates a blank page at the end of each chapter. And I can't see what is producing such behavior. Can the plugin work in different manner in Linux? Because I repeat, under Windows the plugin works as is expected, no blank page is generated.

[KevinH]

Okay, just tried this with two builds of Sigil for macOS, one with Qt5, and one with Qt6.

Both worked properly. No added blank page after any chapter. I tested this in two page spreads and single pages.

I looked at the code in the epub, and there is nothing there that will generate an extra blank page in the xhtml nor in the css.

Have you tried looking at the Bibi Settings menu. Do you have the View Mode set to Spread/Page or are you using horizontal or vertical scrolling?

With Bibi in Spread/Page mode, I have no problems at all.

Another thing to check is if the font you are using under Linux has the proper font metrics data. Without knowing the font metrics, page layout can get a bit flakey.

Sorry but with macOS, I can not recreate what you are seeing under Linux at all.

[RbnJrg]

Hi Kevin;

In single pages spreads, with Spread/Page or Horizontal Scroll, no matter the size of the windows, it generates a blank page at the end of the chapter. I did the try with the same size (430 x 600) for both, Windows and Linux, and in Windows is ok (like the results on your macOS) but in Linux isn't. The font that Bibi is using is Times New Roman in both, Linux and Windows.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Okay, just tried this with two builds of Sigil for macOS, one with Qt5, and one with Qt6.

Both worked properly. No added blank page after any chapter. I tested this in two page spreads and single pages.

I looked at the code in the epub, and there is nothing there that will generate an extra blank page in the xhtml nor in the css.

Have you tried looking at the Bibi Settings menu. Do you have the View Mode set to Spread/Page or are you using horizontal or vertical scrolling?

With Bibi in Spread/Page mode, I have no problems at all.

Another thing to check is if the font you are using under Linux has the proper font metrics data. Without knowing the font metrics, page layout can get a bit flakey.

Sorry but with macOS, I can not recreate what you are seeing under Linux at all.

[KevinH]

Please try changing window size both up and down. Also please try a different font.
Unless DiapDealer or Doitsu beats me to it, I will try updating my Manjero box and build Sigil and test.

[DiapDealer]

Just remember that Times New Roman (and others) is typically an alias to something else on Linux. If you want to see what your aliases are pointing to, something like the following should do the trick:

for family in serif sans-serif monospace Arial Helvetica Verdana "Times New Roman" "Courier New"; do
  echo -n "$family: "
  fc-match "$family"
done

I'll try to check if I can recreate this on Linux myself. Might not be tonight, though.

[DiapDealer]

I can't reproduce it on my Arch machine (Qt5 or Qt6). No extra blank pages at the ends of chapters. I've tried changing font-sizes and resizing the BibiReader window in order to force a blank page to happen, but have been unsuccesful in doing so.

But I'm not seeing a way to change the font in BibiReader. How is it that Times New Roman was determined to be what BibiReader was using on both Windows and Linux? Perhaps I'm missing it but I've looked all over. There's just not that many BibiReader settings.

This is the output of my above bash script, by the way. On my machine, Times New Roman points to the Liberation Serif font.

serif: NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
sans-serif: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
monospace: NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Mono" "Regular"
Arial: LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
Helvetica: NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
Verdana: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
Times New Roman: LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
Courier New: LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"

[RbnJrg]

Many thanks for your tests. It seems that only in my machine the issue is present since nor you nor Kevin was able to reproduce it. The output in my system with your bash script is the following:

serif: NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
sans-serif: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
monospace: NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Mono" "Regular"
Arial: Arial.TTF: "Arial" "Regular"
Helvetica: NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
Verdana: Verdana.TTF: "Verdana" "Regular"
Times New Roman: Times.TTF: "Times New Roman" "Regular"
Courier New: cour.ttf: "Courier New" "Regular"

Maybe the different fonts we are using is the cause of my issue but I don't know.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I can't reproduce it on my Arch machine (Qt5 or Qt6). No extra blank pages at the ends of chapters. I've tried changing font-sizes and resizing the BibiReader window in order to force a blank page to happen, but have been unsuccesful in doing so.

But I'm not seeing a way to change the font in BibiReader. How is it that Times New Roman was determined to be what BibiReader was using on both Windows and Linux? Perhaps I'm missing it but I've looked all over. There's just not that many BibiReader settings.

This is the output of my above bash script, by the way. On my machine, Times New Roman points to the Liberation Serif font.

serif: NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
sans-serif: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
monospace: NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Mono" "Regular"
Arial: LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
Helvetica: NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
Verdana: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
Times New Roman: LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
Courier New: LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"

[DiapDealer]

Seems you actually have the Times New Roman font file on your system. Did you install one of the AUR ttf-ms-fonts packages at some point? If so, the ttf-ms-fonts package is notorious for being incomplete and for missing modern hinting info. There are newer ttf-ms font packages in the AUR, but require access to Windows installation media to build. There are also a couple that will automatically retrieve the 90-day evaluation edition of Windows to extract the fonts from, but seems very out of the way to me. I've just learned to live without MS fonts on Linux, myself. But the ArchWiki has a useful page on them: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microsoft_fonts

I'm still not certain how you've determined Bibi is using Times New Roman, though. Is that being forced in the EPUB itself somehow?

[KevinH]

Okay, I finally got my Manjaro Linux box updated and working again. Built Sigil and installed it. Then ran your test case and had no "extra" pages at the end of any chapter.

So whatever is happening is specific to your Linux setup as both Arch and Manjaro seem to handle it all properly with the latest Bibi plugin. I also tried various screen and font sizes using Bibi preferences and it all just worked.

So perhaps the issue is missing or damaged fonts with bad font metrics. Not sure here.

And for the record here is what DiapDealers bash script says about my fonts:

serif: NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
sans-serif: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
monospace: NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Mono" "Regular"
Arial: LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
Helvetica: NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
Verdana: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
Times New Roman: LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
Courier New: LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"

which matches his I think.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Seems you actually have the Times New Roman font file on your system. Did you install one of the AUR ttf-ms-fonts packages at some point? If so, the ttf-ms-fonts package is notorious for being incomplete and for missing modern hinting info.

Yes, I have installed one of the AUR ttf-ms-fonts packages.

I'm still not certain how you've determined Bibi is using Times New Roman, though. Is that being forced in the EPUB itself somehow?

In the .css stylesheet, in the body selector, I wrote:

  font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;

If you change the style, for example to:

  font-family: serif;

then Bibi Reader won't use "Times New Roman" as font for the epub. To watch if the font is the cause of my issue, I changed the style, so Bibi can use the default system font for serif. But without luck the blank page is still there:



As you can see, Bibi is not using Times New Roman but the blank page is there. And I'm using the same configuration for Bibi in Windows and Linux (in fact, I copied and pasted the Windows BibiReader folder in /home/ruben/.local/share/sigil-ebook/sigil/plugins/). Can be something in the Sigil configuration?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

So perhaps the issue is missing or damaged fonts with bad font metrics. Not sure here.

If, like I suspect, he's using the legacy ttf-ms-fonts package from the Arch User Repository, that's very likely the culprit.

Originally Posted by KevinH

And for the record here is what DiapDealers bash script says about my fonts:

serif: NotoSerif-Regular.ttf: "Noto Serif" "Regular"
sans-serif: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
monospace: NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans Mono" "Regular"
Arial: LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
Helvetica: NimbusSans-Regular.otf: "Nimbus Sans" "Regular"
Verdana: NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
Times New Roman: LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Serif" "Regular"
Courier New: LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Mono" "Regular"

which matches his I think.

Yep. Looks like.

I diddled with system fonts and font-aliases and font-caches on an Arch machine once in my life. Then I wiped it all out and stuck with the defaults.