04-03-2013, 07:16 PM | #1 |
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Indents, "Look and Feel," Extra CSS
Gonna try this one again. Yes, I'm using Sigil and it's a nice program. But on a simple Calibre conversion, as I understand it, I should be able to include extra CSS language on the "Look and Feel" page. Just beneath the "Extra CSS" tab at Look and Feel, I type in
p { text-indent: 5mm; } exactly as Kovid's manual specifies. Doesn't change anything on any files. I've also tried it with 1.5em, which Calibre used to use as the default indent and for some reason has changed. Nothing works. What am I getting wrong about putting in CSS? Again, i can use Sigil, but for a simple indent it seems too much to convert into epub and then open it in Sigil. I may just install an older version of Calibre, from before it began going with the too-small indent for whatever reason. It seems odd to me that if you "remove spacing between paragraphs" you have control over the indent. But if you elect to respect the original paragraphing, you forfeit the ability to make the indent you find comfortable. Keep waiting for this to be a "bug fix" but it hasn't come up. |
04-03-2013, 08:20 PM | #2 |
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What's the source?
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04-03-2013, 10:04 PM | #3 | |
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This Calibre forum is a user community help forum... one of the best such forums on the 'net. The Calibre developers do there best to follow things here... however, formal bug reporting and tracking should be done via launchpad... i.e. a post there is guaranteed to grab the attention of those that can "fix the bug" BR Last edited by BetterRed; 04-03-2013 at 10:07 PM. |
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04-04-2013, 12:11 AM | #4 |
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Just because you have put something into extra css does not mean you will actually get rendered indents in the output. For that to happen your input document has to be actually using p tags for paragraphs and not have defined its own indent css with higher priority than what you've put into extra css.
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04-04-2013, 05:51 PM | #5 |
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Kovid, I believe that's the case here (that my documents have used p tags). I've looked enough to see that there are many different options in CSS, which is why Sigil is a good tool (or debug in Calibre). But since I've seen this consistently happen with many documents, I would suggest trying it and seeing if I'm onto something--yes, I realize I need to fill out a bug report. When I tried, I saw I had to create another kind of account and just didn't want to take the time. I'm still curious why Calibre has changed to the smaller indents when it converts a document. I've used Calibre a long time, and this was never the case until very recently. 1.5em, I believe, was standard (just as it is now when we check the box to take out all lines between paragraphs).
EDIT: I've run a couple of more experiments with differing results. I think I'm showing my ignorance in all this; I can work with CSS to some extent, but I know I'm not fluent. I can see that a real issue is that the CSS differs so widely in style that there's really little way for Calibre to anticipate what that style is. So those who advocate working in a program like Sigil are probably right here. But it's odd to me that in many hundreds of conversions up to recently, I almost never had an indent issue. Never had a reason to look into debug or Sigil. But now I'm having to pay close attention. I don't know why that is, but the bottom line is that this is something I can fix myself, just have to stay on top of the style sheets. Thanks for listening. Last edited by saxondawg; 04-04-2013 at 06:11 PM. |
04-04-2013, 06:26 PM | #6 |
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You are just probably expanding on your sources of reading material
Some publishing houses use a standard (bloated) stylesheet. Others have little consistency between books. I ran into one Anthology (3 stories) with 3 stylesheets... with Nothing in common (except they were in the same book ) |
04-04-2013, 08:39 PM | #7 |
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Wow, ducks, I don't even see how that would work! Talk about mixed singles. Yeah, I've noticed there is certainly no standard stylesheet, not even for a single publishing house. This whole method of publishing is so new. I would imagine a few years from now, there will be standards moving across the board, just as writers like me use stylebooks (Chicago Manual of Style, for example) to maintain sanity. I can remember when people were just figuring out how whether World Wide Web was worldwide web, whether to capitalize Internet or the Net, and how to cite web pages professionally. There are pretty common standards now, but you still see some variation. Style SHEETS, on the other hand, are invisible to readers and there's going to be less pressure for consistency. It takes a finicky writer like me to even care about the size of the indents, or to be outraged when there are skipped lines between paragraphs. It's wonderful there are programs like Calibre for those who care to control their reading experience.
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04-04-2013, 10:05 PM | #8 |
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The stylesheet just contained all the selectors (none overlapped)
It would have been far better to use 3 style sheets, with just what was required for the current page. Even better... Start out using the same styles for all books. This book even had a Codepage error &'s showing up where something else belonged (I could not figure out what from context). The publisher never sent me a replacement (corrected) after I brought this to their attention |
04-05-2013, 03:09 PM | #9 |
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What happens sometimes when a collection is made from separate eBooks is that the publisher just takes the needed XML files as is including the stylesheets. They don't merge the stylesheets or even make the formatting consistent among the different stories.
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04-13-2013, 06:35 PM | #10 | |
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By the way--I'm hooked on Sigil now. TheDucks, was it you who introduced me to this? I actually enjoy fine-tuning a book file in Sigil as much as I enjoy the Calibre library and conversion process. |
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04-13-2013, 07:39 PM | #11 | |
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Not Me Boss! I didn't do nuttn' . Not my fault Musta' been some ud'er dude |
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04-13-2013, 09:18 PM | #12 | |
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