Miscellaneous display and editing matters

[foosion]

My default font and line height results in 15 lines of text on my Libra 2. However, if there's a footnote which would otherwise display at the top of the next page, I get 16 lines of text with the footnote on the bottom line. Is this some widow and orphan manifestation or is it something else?

I've come to dislike large first letters of a chapter, often bold and extending above or below the line, so they need a special margin (such as 0.7em) to display nicely. Accordingly, I've been changing these to regular text. Anyone else?

Why do almost all books not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, but then indent all subsequent paragraphs? I toy with indenting all paragraphs.

Somewhere in the 1.4em range seems best for indenting, although maybe 5%?

Is there some way to automate making sure all actual text (body, rather than headings or special sections) is normal size?

The current book I'm reading doesn't have the footnote preview feature (clicking on a footnote brings you to the footnote) and image viewer. How can I fix this?

All of this relates to kepub files on my Libra 2 (or Clara BW).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by foosion

My default font and line height results in 15 lines of text on my Libra 2. However, if there's a footnote which would otherwise display at the top of the next page, I get 16 lines of text with the footnote on the bottom line. Is this some widow and orphan manifestation or is it something else?

Kepubs don't really do widows and orphans, that's an epub feature. I guess that the footnote is probably smaller and that 16 lines with your usual font size would not fit. I rarely read anything with footnotes, so I have no particular insight to offer.

I've come to dislike large first letters of a chapter, often bold and extending above or below the line, so they need a special margin (such as 0.7em) to display nicely. Accordingly, I've been changing these to regular text. Anyone else?

Sometimes, but not always. As I use a smallish font size (I get 33 lines on my Libra 2), I don't lose that much space with large first letters. When they're noticeably off, then I too change them to regular size.

Why do almost all books not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, but then indent all subsequent paragraphs?

Because that's the way it has always been done.

Somewhere in the 1.4em range seems best for indenting, although maybe 5%?

I use 1em myself.

Is there some way to automate making sure all actual text (body, rather than headings or special sections) is normal size?

No, unless you want all text, including headings etc. to be the same size.

The current book I'm reading doesn't have the footnote preview feature (clicking on a footnote brings you to the footnote) and image viewer. How can I fix this?

Sorry, no idea there. I'd guess something in the formatting.

[Aleron Ives]

Another thing that can cause a variable number of lines per screen is paragraph spacing. If the CSS adds padding between paragraphs, then you end up with fewer lines per screen when there are multiple paragraphs per screen.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Another thing that can cause a variable number of lines per screen is paragraph spacing. If the CSS adds padding between paragraphs, then you end up with fewer lines per screen when there are multiple paragraphs per screen.

Yeah, I absolutely detest paragraph spaces and those get immediately deleted, before reading the book.

OTOH, there are folks here who add them to their books.

Section breaks and sections with a different font size (letters, diaries etc) can also change the number of lines.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

My default font and line height results in 15 lines of text on my Libra 2. However, if there's a footnote which would otherwise display at the top of the next page, I get 16 lines of text with the footnote on the bottom line. Is this some widow and orphan manifestation or is it something else?

Since you mentioning kepub, widows and orphans are not an issue. Minimal changes in spacing on the page can change the number of lines that are visible.

Originally Posted by foosion

I've come to dislike large first letters of a chapter, often bold and extending above or below the line, so they need a special margin (such as 0.7em) to display nicely. Accordingly, I've been changing these to regular text. Anyone else?

Dropcaps are a relic of the past and should remain there.

Originally Posted by foosion

Why do almost all books not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, but then indent all subsequent paragraphs? I toy with indenting all paragraphs.

Somewhere in the 1.4em range seems best for indenting, although maybe 5%?

First paragraph flush, subsequent paragraphs indented OR all paragraphs flush and a space between them are the old rules of thumb. Personally, I prefer first paragraphs in a chapter or after a scene break to be flush. All others get a 1.5em indent.

Originally Posted by foosion

Is there some way to automate making sure all actual text (body, rather than headings or special sections) is normal size?

No automated method. I remove font-sizes in the CSS that are not related to headings, copyright or other special sections. This allows an 1 em font size to apply unless overridden.

Originally Posted by foosion

The current book I'm reading doesn't have the footnote preview feature (clicking on a footnote brings you to the footnote) and image viewer. How can I fix this?

A correctly formatted footnote in a kepub will do the popup footnote. There are many ways of not correctly formatting a footnote. If you take a look through MobileRead, (a search from Google for 'kobo footnotes site:mobileread.com' will find quite a few examples. You can also check Footnotes/Endnotes Are Fully Supported Across Kobo Platforms on Kobolab's Kobo EPUB Guidelines Github page.

As for the double tap to bring up the image viewer? Not seeing that suggests that you are reading an epub not a kepub.

[Aleron Ives]

KEPUB not using widows and orphans means that the WebKit renderer doesn't care if only one line of a paragraph ends up being at the bottom or top of a page, right?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

KEPUB not using widows and orphans means that the WebKit renderer doesn't care if only one line of a paragraph ends up being at the bottom or top of a page, right?

Correct. Unlike the RMSDK renderer which defaults to widows/orphans=2, the WebKit based renderer defaults to widows/orphans=1.

[Sirtel]

Personally, I can't stand the gaps widows/orphans management often leaves at the bottom of the page in epubs. So I always change widows/orphans to 1 in all my books, and also in the config file of my Kobos.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Personally, I can't stand the gaps widows/orphans management often leaves at the bottom of the page in epubs. So I always change widows/orphans to 1 in all my books, and also in the config file of my Kobos.

My stock body class has widows: 1; and orphans: 1;. I also use the RMSDK Disable orphans/widows avoidance patch. I do remember years back someone mentioned using readingWidows=0 and readingOrphans=0 (or was it =1??) in the Kobo eReader.conf file but in my testing at that time, I did not find those settings having any effect. I did find that settings widows and orphans to 0 in the CSS had two different effects. Some renderers treated 0 as equivalent to 1 and others disregarded it and went with their default of 2 or 3.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Kepubs don't really do widows and orphans, that's an epub feature. I guess that the footnote is probably smaller and that 16 lines with your usual font size would not fit. I rarely read anything with footnotes, so I have no particular insight to offer.

The last line is regular text with a footnote on that line, not just a footnote. So I end up with 16 lines of what seems to be my regular font size and spacing, although it's very close to the bottom of the screen (usually there's some blank space).

Sorry for being unclear.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Another thing that can cause a variable number of lines per screen is paragraph spacing. If the CSS adds padding between paragraphs, then you end up with fewer lines per screen when there are multiple paragraphs per screen.

Not the case here. I kill such padding; indenting the start of paragraphs distinguishes one paragraph from the next.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Dropcaps are a relic of the past and should remain there.

Yes!

Originally Posted by DNSB

A correctly formatted footnote in a kepub will do the popup footnote. There are many ways of not correctly formatting a footnote. If you take a look through MobileRead, (a search from Google for 'kobo footnotes site:mobileread.com' will find quite a few examples. You can also check Footnotes/Endnotes Are Fully Supported Across Kobo Platforms on Kobolab's Kobo EPUB Guidelines Github page.

I'll check those.

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for the double tap to bring up the image viewer? Not seeing that suggests that you are reading an epub not a kepub.

D'Oh! I wasn't doing a nice normal double tap.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foosion

Not the case here. I kill such padding; indenting the start of paragraphs distinguishes one paragraph from the next.

Are you certain that you are killing it everywhere? I have one epub where the original CSS specified a padding at the end of each block in the body style, in each paragraph style and in a div style that was applied to every <expletive deleted> paragraph. The lovely part was that the padding was not consistent.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Personally, I can't stand the gaps widows/orphans management often leaves at the bottom of the page in epubs. So I always change widows/orphans to 1 in all my books, and also in the config file of my Kobos.

Since I'm doing kepubs it seems there's no need for widows/orphans management.

[foosion]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are you certain that you are killing it everywhere? I have one epub where the original CSS specified a padding at the end of each block in the body style, in each paragraph style and in a div style that was applied to every <expletive deleted> paragraph. The lovely part was that the padding was not consistent.

Find isn't finding "padding". To have an extra line on the page, wouldn't I need negative padding or negative bottom margins? Or would this do it:

<a class="Footnote-Reference" epub:type="noteref" href="05_Chapter_One.xhtml#footnote-002" id="footnote-002-backlink" role="doc-noteref" title="footnote">[*1]</a>

.Footnote-Reference {
  vertical-align: 0.25em;
  line-height: 0;
  font-size: 0.8em;
}

EDIT: Regarding pop-up footnote previews: Here's what's at an actual footnote:

<div class="footnote" epub:type="footnote" id="footnote-003" role="doc-footnote">
					<p class="xFootnote"><a href="06_Chapter_Two.xhtml#footnote-003-backlink" role="doc-backlink" title="footnote reference">*2

Or is it because most files are about 50KB and that's too big for pop-up footnotes?