Opus Text doesn't fill screen (library ebpub books)

[mlewis78]

Would someone fill me in as to why my library EPub books on my Cybook Opus leave a lot of empty space on the screen?

The books that were pre-loaded to it before purchase do fill the screen. Is this something that updating to 2.0 would solve? I haven't done this yet because I still need to buy a microSD card.

I've read in the instructions for the Cybook Opus that there is a layout option in the menu. I haven't been able to access this in the menu options.

I use my Cybook Opus mainly for reading library ebooks. For most free and purchased books I read on Kindle, so I'm about to read only my 2nd library book.

Thanks in advance for your comments about this.

[blak4dr]

I have noticed that, compared to the mobipocket reader, the mobile ADE leaves a bit of space at the end of a page when you read a book, but I haven't experienced what you describe with the library.

I have 650+ books on my opus (epub only, no pdf or txt or whatever) and every page that is supposed to be full is.

Maybe you could post a pictures to show us what you mean ?

[Jellby]

They probably have some margins defined in the css or in the page template.

[mlewis78]

http://picasaweb.google.com/marti.lewis/CybookOpus#

I just took two pics (one with Opus held horizontally and one vertically) and posted link -- hope you can see this -- the screen is 3" wide and the margins on the sides are each 1". Bottom margin is 1" (screen is 4" long) but top is closer to edge.

This is only with the two library EPub books I've borrowed. My purchased books from Smashwords and the classics that were pre-installed by Bookeen are fine and fill the screen.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by mlewis78

This is only with the two library EPub books I've borrowed.

I have seen this with a few commercial ePubs, and the problem, as Jellby suggests, was large margins specified in the ebook's CSS. It one case I looked at it appeared that the problem might be a mobile Adobe Digital Editions bug (0.5em treated as 5em), but commercial ebooks tend to have horrendously complicated CSS logic so I was never certain of that. If the margins are specified in "em" (letter widths) then they get larger as the font is made larger.

The easiest way to check that this isn't Opus specific is to try displaying the same ebook with Sony eBook Library, because eBL also uses mobile ADE to display ePubs.

The extra space at the bottom of the screen is due to "widows and orphans", specifying the number of lines in a paragraph that should be left at the top (widows) or bottom (orphans) of a page. By default mobile ADE sets these to 2, which is a terrible choice for a large font on a small screen. This can be over-ridden by extra-css in Calibre (for DRM-free ePubs), but it is in my opinion a bug for Bookeen to let you use this large a font without changing widows and orphans to zero.

[mlewis78]

When I take the font size to 5th largest, the margins are still 1", but when I made it the 3rd smallest (microscopic for my eyes even with reading glasses), the side margins are about a 1/2-inch.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'd welcome any more that anyone may have.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by blak4dr

I have noticed that, compared to the mobipocket reader, the mobile ADE leaves a bit of space at the end of a page when you read a book, but I haven't experienced what you describe with the library.

Space at the bottom of the page is generally due to the "widow/orphan" control that ADE has. It won't start a new paragraph if only a line or two will fit onto the bottom of the page.

That's a different issue to space at the left/right which, as has been said, is simply due to the margin settings of the page.

[blak4dr]

Ok, I understand where I made a mistake. I assumed library ebooks were the ebooks in the library. Duhhh !!!!

You know what they say about assume...

Sorry. But the pics helped

[Graham]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

By default mobile ADE sets these to 2, which is a terrible choice for a large font on a small screen. This can be over-ridden by extra-css in Calibre (for DRM-free ePubs), but it is in my opinion a bug for Bookeen to let you use this large a font without changing widows and orphans to zero.

Thanks for this. I have the same problem, and although only a minor annoyance it would still be good to solve it!

I'm not up to speed on CSS. I can see the box for the extra CSS in the Convert options in Calibre, but what would you actually type into there?

EDIT: I tried this but it didn't seem to make a difference on the Cybook:

body {widows: 0;}

Graham

[mlewis78]

I just now did the upgrade to 2.0 for epub format. Now I see the layout option, which includes justifying the text or not and the choice between bolding the text or not. I like the Verdana text much better than the default. It's darker. I don't even need to bold it, but I'll keep that option in mind. Haven't tried the Georgia text option yet, but I prefer sans serif fonts for my reading.

I still get the big margins in my public library ebook, but I'm getting used to it and realize that I may not be able to control this.

I'm not familiar at all with CSS yet and wouldn't be able to help Graham.

[Graham]

I've tried various bits of CSS now, looking at the threads here and a CSS reference online, but at the moment my changes don't seem to make any difference. I'm missing something obvious, clearly. If I crack it, I'll let you know!

My Gen3 seems to have a higher default than 2 lines for widows/orphans. It will only show whole paragraphs, resulting in a lot of blank space at the bottom of some pages.

Graham

[Graham]

Well this works to a point, but the Bookeen still seems to split some longer paragraphs in the middle leaving space at the bottom of the page. It doesn't work quite the way I'd expect:

p {orphans:1 !important;widows:1 !important;}

Setting those values to zero doesn't seem to make any difference.

Graham

[EowynCarter]

but the Bookeen

Cybook

And yes, margin are weird. That why you're having that problem with the bottom. The opus sometimes acts when there is not enough space for a ligne, when there is.
If my memory is right, I use
top : 5px
left / right / bottom : 0px (because the opus adds it own margin there)
That's defined in the page-template.xml.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Cybook

Whoops. Yes. Cybook Gen3 in my case.

I'll dig into the page template.

Graham

[Graham]

Excellent. Setting the bottom margin to 0px did the trick along with orphan:0.

Thanks, Eowyn.

I think the other thing that was making it confusing was that my book has blank lines between paragraphs, and the widow/orphan control was taking these into account as well.

Graham