Margins

[Billi]

In the ebook conversion/page setup dialog you can define margins in "points".

Kovid, would it be possible to add the possibility to define these margins in "em"s?
Why am I asking this? The Adobe Reader used in the new big Pocketbooks (902, 903) desperately needs margins. It is possible to set them in Calibre to something like 36 points, but than these files can't be read on 6"-devices. By setting the margins to 2em or 3em the books might be readable in both devices. Thank you in advance.

[kovidgoyal]

You can do this yourself, by simply wrapping everything in a div with a margin set in ems.

As for changing the option, I'd rather not do it as it would be a very disruptive change, all of people existing settings would have to be forgotten.

[elemenoP]

I have a similar question about margins. I want to set them in the Extra CSS, not Calibre's setting. Like this:

body {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-left: 1em;
margin-right: 1em;
}

But this is never taking effect because of the Calibre setting. How can I "turn off" the calibre setting and use my own CSS?

[kovidgoyal]

set them to zero and use a wrapper div, as I said in my previous post.

[elemenoP]

Use a wrapper div. So there is no way to do this without opening up the epub and editing it?

[kovidgoyal]

no .

[kovidgoyal]

I should add that I would recommend against setting margins in ems. They quickly become unusable if the user happens to increase the font size they are reading at.

[Billi]

Kovid, thank you and karma for thinking about it. I can see your points.

[clemon79]

Bumping this because I'm running into problems myself.

I'm using Sigil to edit and format an epub, and there are several passages that I want to increase the margins on, and so I am setting those passages to a style in the CSS within the epub, which seems to be working but not honoring the "margin-left" and "margin-right" arguments.

I have unchecked "Ignore margins" in Calibre, and it's still not honoring those settings.

Should it in fact honor them if "Ignore margins" is unchecked, or am I doing something wrong?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by clemon79

I'm using Sigil to edit and format an epub, and there are several passages that I want to increase the margins on, and so I am setting those passages to a style in the CSS within the epub, which seems to be working but not honoring the "margin-left" and "margin-right" arguments.

I have unchecked "Ignore margins" in Calibre, and it's still not honoring those settings.

If you set "margin-left" and "margin-right" properly in the css calibre honors these settings. Try a epub to epub conversion first and see how the converted epub looks.

[clemon79]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If you set "margin-left" and "margin-right" properly in the css calibre honors these settings. Try a epub to epub conversion first and see how the converted epub looks.

Hmmm, that's what I'm doing, though. The (non-converted) epub displays correctly, it's just that the resulting mobi isn't honoring them.

Won't an epub-to-epub overwrite the initial file? I'm guessing I'd want to back that up first?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by clemon79

Hmmm, that's what I'm doing, though. The (non-converted) epub displays correctly, it's just that the resulting mobi isn't honoring them.

I occurs to me that you have to make sure your new conversions have ignore margins unchecked. Once checked for a given conversion subsequent conversions will retain that setting for that book.

Originally Posted by clemon79

Won't an epub-to-epub overwrite the initial file? I'm guessing I'd want to back that up first?

True it would overwrite and you should back it up.

[clemon79]

Okay, so I backed it up, and ensured that "Ignore Margins" is still unchecked. (It was.)

An epub-to-epub was completely clean, it rendered just how I expected it to.

Epub-to-mobi, though: it's now respecting margin-left, but not margin-right or margin-top (the latter of which I've dropped to 0 because I want paragraphs during these passages butting right up against each other.)

So I'm still puzzled.

[user_none]

I know the Kindle doesn't support margin-right and margin-top. I'm not sure but I think it's a limitation of the MOBI format.

[kovidgoyal]

MOBI doesn't support margins. calibre fakes left margins in MOBI output by nesting <blockquotes>