Line in CSS prevents text wrapping on PRS-T2

[SomeSteve]

Here's a puzzle perhaps someone can comment on.

I downloaded the compatible epub of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James at Standard Ebooks and converted it in Calibre to make it epub2 instead of epub3. The epub3 works as is on my Sony PRS-T2; however, I also have a PRS-350, and my experience has been that the covers and/or cover thumbnails of books from Standard Ebooks often don't display on that device, so I've been routinely converting the books, after which the covers do show up, and putting the converted books on both readers. (I don't know enough about ebook construction, HTML, and CSS to say why the covers don't show up, otherwise I could just change the the relevant lines instead of performing a conversion.)

The puzzle: If the first word of a paragraph in this converted epub is an abbreviation, the text of that paragraph doesn't wrap on the PRS-T2, but goes off the edge of the screen and is unreadable. It does wrap on the PRS-350. This doesn't happen if the abbreviation isn't the first word in the paragraph. And it only happens in the book converted by Calibre (epub2), not in the original compatible epub from Standard Ebooks (epub3).

For example, this paragraph near the end of Chapter 2 doesn't wrap in the converted book on the PRS-T2:

Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some things—yes.”

Typically, depending on font size, the word "conscientious" would be the last visible part of the paragraph. The rest is off the screen. The following paragraph begins (and wraps) normally.

The XHTML for the affected paragraph:

<p class="calibre10"><abbr class="calibre12">Mrs.</abbr> Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some things—yes.”</p>

There is a non-breaking space immediately following </abbr>, but the code for it disappears when I paste it here.

The CSS:

.calibre10 {
  display: block;
  text-indent: 1em;
  margin: 0;
}

and

.calibre12 {
  white-space: nowrap;
  border: currentColor none medium;
}

I discovered that changing the line "white-space: no wrap;" to "white-space: normal;" solves the problem. Okay. By why are only the paragraphs in which the first word is an abbreviation affected, and not those in which the abbreviation occurs at another position, such as this one?:

<p class="calibre10">I don’t know what there was in this brevity of <abbr class="calibre12">Mrs.</abbr> Grose’s that struck me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” <abbr class="calibre12">Mrs.</abbr> Grose looked straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?”</p>

Again, there is a non-breaking space after the </abbr> tags, but the code for it disappears here .

Is this failure to wrap a bug in the reader software? Is the reader software simply too old to execute the CSS correctly? Or is there some other cause? I would appreciate any insights.

One more thing. What is the point of the abbr tag?

Here's the link to the original compatible epub:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/he...the-screw.epub

[theducks]

nowrap says exactly what it does.
The question is Why was it coded (the use) that way?

I find that many (self)publications do not consider the VAST variations upon the work will be read (like your PRS-T2).
IMHO EPUB3 is not 'better' just because it has a '3'.
Why use '3' when 2 serves for a particular work? KISS

[Quoth]

I remove line-height and white-space by default on all conversions. They are in my default Calibre conversion style properties

The "nowrap" might make sense in a web browser window (as it has a horizontal scroll bar). It's never going to make sense in an ebook.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I remove line-height and white-space by default on all conversions. They are in my default Calibre conversion style properties

The "nowrap" might make sense in a web browser window (as it has a horizontal scroll bar). It's never going to make sense in an ebook.

<pre> is another useless option for eBooks.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

<pre> is another useless option for eBooks.

Yes. Though I've not yet encountered it in an ebook. CSS makes it obsolete anyway.