I was trying to help a non-techie Kobo user with a problem yesterday when the following became apparent.
If you have your convert PageSetup left/right margins set to 'No margin' and you do an epub-epub conversion, my understanding was that the converted epub should end up with no
margin-left/margin-right settings in its css body class.
This is not what I'm seeing (in 0.9.42). If the input epub's css already contains left/right margin settings (in either body{...} or a body class), then they are still there after the conversion -- in whatever css class name calibre has assigned to <body>.
So my question - is this a bug? or am I requesting an enhancement feature?
The reason this is undesirable for a Kobo user is that the on-device ability to adjust left/right margins will only work if either:
- there aren't any left/right margins in body{...} or the body class
- there are left/right margins, but they are only in body{...} not a body class. In this case the Kobo can override the epub's body L/R margins.
This leaves epubs with L/R margins in a body class as non-adjustable on the Kobo. This problem crops up a lot and, in the absence of the 'No margins' setting working as I had expected, I can only think of two ways to advise users.
- Fix every epub manually using Sigil or Tweak ebook. Works perfectly (and it's what I would do myself) but unfortunately way outside the comfort zone of many users.
- Use the convert Filter Style Info option to remove all Margins. Rather draconian IMO as removing every margin setting in the css is likely to render it's appearance worse than doing nothing.
So back to my original question... Is the convert with PageSetup L/R margins set to 'No margins' supposed to remove existing body margins? If 'yes' then I can create a bug request. If 'no' then is it worth me creating an enhancement request?
... or better still, can you think of a different option which is both easy to explain to a non-techie user and which doesn't risk wrecking their epub library.