KF8 on Fire HD6 - Justification & Font Issues

[DreamWriter]

4-13-15 UPDATE: The solution to the e-book problems described below is posted here.

I have been researching and experimenting for days, and I haven't been able to come up with solutions to several problems. I would be most grateful if anyone here can lead me in the right direction.

This is a previously published e-book, and I hadn't observed this behavior until I made changes and uploaded a new file to KDP a few days ago. I tweak the epub in Sigil before uploading a Kindlegen-created mobi to KDP.

From my experience with several revised e-books uploaded in recent days, it seems that KDP has made changes in file processing, which results in darker fonts (both chapter and body) and weird justification on the Fire HD6 only. (This may be happening on other Fires as well, but I don't have any others to test.) The e-book sample looks great on my 10" tablet using the latest version of the Android Kindle app (KF8); both fonts and justification are perfect on that device.

Please see the three examples below.

[image link broken]

Example #1: This is the way I want the e-book to look. I downloaded this file from KDP directly during the publishing process (after it was "converted" there) and viewed it on my Kindle Fire HD6. Notice the weight of all fonts compared to the two examples below, especially the chapter title, and the universally even justification with no auto-hyphenation (early- is intentional).

The CSS for Example #1 includes:

body
{-webkit-hyphens:none;
hyphens:none;}

and text-align:justify; is included for paragraphs.


[image link broken]

Example #2: This is Fire HD6's default behavior when no hyphenation rules or justification are specified in the CSS.

The words early- and panic- are intentional hyphens on my part. The other ugly, improper hyphenation comes from KDP's process and is that way only on my Fire HD6 (which is the only Fire I own). There are no soft hyphens in either the source MS Word file or epub that would trigger these hideous Fire HD6 hyphenation decisions. Notice the justification isn't completely even, as it is in Example #1, although it does try.


[image link broken]

Example #3: This is how the downloaded sample looks when CSS includes:

body
{-webkit-hyphens:none;
hyphens:none;}

and text-align:justify; is included for paragraphs. Note that this is the SAME code as in Example #1, but after publishing is complete.

(Again, the words early- and panic- are intentional hyphens on my part.) It tries to justify, but there are still a lot of ragged-right lines.

The fonts were FINE in earlier versions of this e-book, and no changes in those areas of code were made by me in this updated version. And note that the fonts are fine in Example #1, which was downloaded from KDP after the updated file was processed there.

KDP must change things on their end during the final publishing process specifically for the Fire HD6 (maybe other Fires, too?). ??? On my Android tablet's Kindle app, which also appears to use KF8, the e-book is absolutely fine in regard to fonts and justification when hyphen and justification aren't specified in the CSS; the right margin is perfectly justified with no auto-hyphenation on the Android tablet.

I have seen e-books on the Fire HD6 that have perfectly justified text. The One That Got Away, by Simon Wood (Thomas & Mercer, publisher) is an example. So, are these problems the fault of KDP or is there something I don't know about formatting the e-book?

Has anyone else observed this behavior on the Fire HD6 recently after publishing to KDP?

Is there any way to get my e-books to look like Example #1 on the Fire HD6? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated because I don't know what else to try at this point! And if it's not possible to get results like Example #1, which is the better option: #2 or #3?

Thanks!

[dgatwood]

#2 is better than #3 by far. Honestly, IMO, it's better than #1 except for the font weight problem. I'd rather have an auto-hyphenated word than large gaps. But that's just personal preference. But the failure to fill the line... try explicitly setting values for some related CSS properties:

word-spacing: normal;
letter-spacing: normal;
word-break: normal;
text-justify: inter-word;

on those paragraphs and see if any of them make a difference.

BTW, you probably want to set the hyphens value to "manual" rather than "none", so that if there are any soft hyphens somewhere, they won't get ignored.

As for the heading being bold, this might be a weird bug related to the tag used. I have this vague recollection that some readers (maybe some Kindle readers, maybe Nook, I forget) did weird things when you used a header tag (h1, h2, h3...) like always making the text bold no matter what you do in the stylesheet. If you're using one of those tags, try replacing it with a styled div tag at the appropriate em size and see if the problem goes away.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

(Again, the words early- and panic- are intentional hyphens on my part.) It tries to justify, but there are still a lot of ragged-right lines.

That's standard. Where spacing would yield too wide a gap between words, the KDP conversion will use the occasional short line instead. In my experience, though, it's seldom as often as once a page. Perhaps the allowed gap has been shortened in the 6-inch tablet?

Certainly the wild hyphenating is new. I have seen the occasional conventionally published Kindle book with hyphenated words, but never one of my own. It wasn't too long ago that the KDP permitted hyphen (or em dash) breaks at all, but treated such words as a unit. I was delighted when that was changed, because I had earlier changed my formatting to get rid of most hyphens and to use British instead of American style with dashes (that is, a space followed by an en dash followed by another space). I like the current setup better -- but not if it means wild hyphenating! Perhaps this is a trial run on a new hyphenating software?

[DreamWriter]

Thank you both for your very helpful comments and suggestions!

I just uploaded another revised file to KDP for Last Mulligan, so I should know within a few hours (when the book sample is available) whether there's any improvement in the way hyphenation and justification are handled on the Fire HD6.

Originally Posted by dgatwood

#2 is better than #3 by far. Honestly, IMO, it's better than #1 except for the font weight problem. I'd rather have an auto-hyphenated word than large gaps. But that's just personal preference. But the failure to fill the line... try explicitly setting values for some related CSS properties:

word-spacing: normal;
letter-spacing: normal;
word-break: normal;
text-justify: inter-word;

on those paragraphs and see if any of them make a difference.
BTW, you probably want to set the hyphens value to "manual" rather than "none", so that if there are any soft hyphens somewhere, they won't get ignored.
As for the heading being bold, this might be a weird bug related to the tag used. I have this vague recollection that some readers (maybe some Kindle readers, maybe Nook, I forget) did weird things when you used a header tag (h1, h2, h3...) like always making the text bold no matter what you do in the stylesheet. If you're using one of those tags, try replacing it with a styled div tag at the appropriate em size and see if the problem goes away.

I don't like the large word gaps in Example #1 either. My objections to Example #2 are the extra-bold fonts and inappropriate auto-hyphenation decisions. The second page of that example chapter has quite a few words hyphenated after two letters, which I don't like at all. Hyphenating names (like Tan-ner on Example #2) is a no-no, too. We'll see if my latest upload fixes some of those problems.

Late last night, I tried some of the code you suggested. Substituting the h1 tags with div tags didn't help with the font weight problem, but it did fix another minor issue I'd been having, so that's good. Other changes I made seemed to have no effect, but I just uploaded another revised file, so I'll know later today whether those changes helped.

The odd thing about the Chapter font weight is that it's always been explicitly set to bold, and before this recent revision, the same font always looked fine on the Fire HD6. Now, it's like it's extra-bold! I changed no CSS that would've affected that, so I have idea why that changed. It seems to happen at KDP.

Originally Posted by Notjohn

That's standard. Where spacing would yield too wide a gap between words, the KDP conversion will use the occasional short line instead. In my experience, though, it's seldom as often as once a page. Perhaps the allowed gap has been shortened in the 6-inch tablet?
Certainly the wild hyphenating is new. I have seen the occasional conventionally published Kindle book with hyphenated words, but never one of my own. It wasn't too long ago that the KDP permitted hyphen (or em dash) breaks at all, but treated such words as a unit. I was delighted when that was changed, because I had earlier changed my formatting to get rid of most hyphens and to use British instead of American style with dashes (that is, a space followed by an en dash followed by another space). I like the current setup better -- but not if it means wild hyphenating! Perhaps this is a trial run on a new hyphenating software?

Yes, the hyphen/em dash line breaks were a welcome improvement!

I changed four e-book files within the last week, and all auto-hyphenated by default on the Fire HD6. No hyphens in the Android Kindle app. There was nothing in my CSS referring to hyphenation at all. These previously published books always justified by default, but never had auto-hyphenation. It's weird. Have any other self-published authors mentioned this lately, here or at other forums you frequent? Have you published/republished to KDP in recent days?

I guess I'm afraid readers may think that I made those dumb hyphenation choices. Selecting a smaller font size does help to minimize the frequency of auto-hyphenation—and readers can change that—but some readers will prefer a larger font. I know of an author who got a lot of press recently after he was scolded by KDP for "excessive hyphenation" in his e-book; this apparent problem with auto-hyphens on the HD6 may be the reason.

The hyphenation issues are probably magnified on the Fire HD6 because of the small screen size. It is odd that the e-books are auto-hyphenated on the Fire HD6 but not in the Android app. Justification is handled much better in the app, too.

I didn't mention in my original post, but in addition to auto-hyphenation default, KDP also changed the size of different chapter graphics (in all four books) on my Fire HD6. They're smaller than they were. Same graphics as before, and I changed no code that should've caused that. The graphics stayed the same size as before on my other devices. The default hyphenation, heavy font weight, and graphic size changes seen on the Fire HD6 are affecting all four e-book files I uploaded within the last week. After I fix this one, I'll optimize the others.

The most frustrating part is that none of these issues show up on KDP's previewer or in Kindlegen-created mobi test files on my devices. The extra-bold chapter font and auto-hyphenation appear only after publication on the Fire HD6. It's an agonizingly slow process to troubleshoot since I can't upload a new file to KDP until five to six hours after the last file was uploaded! <sigh>

Since there doesn't seem to be a way for KDP publishers to get the e-books to display on the Fire HD6 (which a lot of readers use now because of its low price, screen clarity, and size) like Example #1, I'll drop that idea and concentrate on refining Example #2 for now. I'd still be interested to know if the majority of readers would prefer #2 or #3, though. If #3 is strongly preferred, I can use hyphens:none; (or hyphens:manual; ???) in CSS to block auto-hyphenation.

Thanks again for taking the time to help. I'll post with results of the latest upload later today or early tomorrow.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

I know of an author who got a lot of press recently after he was scolded by KDP for "excessive hyphenation" in his e-book; this apparent problem with auto-hyphens on the HD6 may be the reason.

No, that author's problem was he used a "minus" symbol '−' instead of a hyphen '-':

"self−help" instead of "self-help"
"non−trivial" instead of "non-trivial"
[...]

The reason it was pulled was because it becomes quite apparent in Text-to-Speech software (and also messes with search functionality). If the Text-to-Speech was reading the book, it would have said "self minus help" and "non minus trivial".

I would recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Dashes, covering the hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and a few others. It covers some of the usages between different style guides as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

I'd still be interested to know if the majority of readers would prefer #2 or #3, though. If #3 is strongly preferred, I can use hyphens:none; (or hyphens:manual; ???) in CSS to block auto-hyphenation.

I would recommend against getting in the way of the hyphenation algorithms completely. I toss it in the same boat as inserting soft hyphens everywhere to try to "help" certain renderers justify a little bit better.

We had a long detailed chat about hyphenation in this topic:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=250906

The only case where using "hyphens: none" should occur is very sparingly (Chapter/Subchapter headings maybe). Hyphenation should be a setting left to the user's preferences, and the user's device.

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

body
{-webkit-hyphens:none;
hyphens:none;}

Does anything differently occur if you apply the hyphenation CSS to p instead of body? (Although again, I don't recommend this using this hyphenation CSS at all).

Perhaps KindleGen looks for particularly egregious CSS applied to <body>. If you take a look at section 3.1 of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines, you can see some of the horrors that typically occurs there (forced black font, forced font size, forced background color, ...). Perhaps "hyphenation" is secretly in there as well, but not publicly documented yet.

[Notjohn]

"Have any other self-published authors mentioned this lately, here or at other forums you frequent? Have you published/republished to KDP in recent days?"

Nothing on the KDP forums. And no, I haven't published anything recently.

[Notjohn]

OMG, it has gone wild! I bought a book this morning and sat down to read it on my Fire HD (7-inch tablet) after lunch (I'm not lazy; I work a long morning, 5 to 12). In a very early chapter (3 percent into the book) I found this break:

Speechw-
riter

The book is from Sentinel, a Penguin imprint. It's copyright 2011, and I've never before seen this effect on my Fire HD, so I'm guessing it's a software or firmware update.

[DreamWriter]

Thanks for the additional responses!

I've been busy uploading files and viewing the samples once they're available. It's very time-consuming since I have to wait at least 5 hours between uploads. I haven't made any progress on the auto-hyphenation problem yet (see examples below), but I did upload another file just a bit ago, so we'll see if anything looks different once that sample's available...

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

No, that author's problem was he used a "minus" symbol '−' instead of a hyphen '-':

"self−help" instead of "self-help"
"non−trivial" instead of "non-trivial"
[...]

The reason it was pulled was because it becomes quite apparent in Text-to-Speech software (and also messes with search functionality). If the Text-to-Speech was reading the book, it would have said "self minus help" and "non minus trivial".

I would recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Dashes, covering the hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and a few others. It covers some of the usages between different style guides as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash



I would recommend against getting in the way of the hyphenation algorithms completely. I toss it in the same boat as inserting soft hyphens everywhere to try to "help" certain renderers justify a little bit better.

We had a long detailed chat about hyphenation in this topic:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=250906

The only case where using "hyphens: none" should occur is very sparingly (Chapter/Subchapter headings maybe). Hyphenation should be a setting left to the user's preferences, and the user's device.



Does anything differently occur if you apply the hyphenation CSS to p instead of body? (Although again, I don't recommend this using this hyphenation CSS at all).

Perhaps KindleGen looks for particularly egregious CSS applied to <body>. If you take a look at section 3.1 of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines, you can see some of the horrors that typically occurs there (forced black font, forced font size, forced background color, ...). Perhaps "hyphenation" is secretly in there as well, but not publicly documented yet.

Thanks for your suggestions. In my ideal world, there won't be any auto-hyphenation once I figure out WHY Amazon KDP is unexpectedly defaulting to that in my e-books. And I hope to accomplish that without any hyphen-suppression CSS at all. It seems like it should be possible since I'm not seeing this in any other recently published e-books at Amazon.

I followed that author's story in threads both here and at KBoards (where the author himself chimed in). So I am aware that the problem was thought to be his use of the minus symbol (or perhaps the hyphen-minus, which is different) instead of hyphens. On page 4 of this thread, Atunah (who is also a MR member) reported that even after the initial problem was fixed, she saw odd hyphenation in his e-book on her Fire HD6 similar to what I see in my e-books now. That was in December. This is the example she gave:

the white gleam of bone through her blood-soa-
ked fur.

That problem must've been fixed subsequently because the sample of his book (High Moor 2: Moonstruck) looks perfect now on my Fire HD6 (full justification with no ragged-right lines and zero auto-hypenation!). [edit: If you enlarge the font on the Fire HD6, there is actually some bizarre auto-hyphenation.]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

"Have any other self-published authors mentioned this lately, here or at other forums you frequent? Have you published/republished to KDP in recent days?"

Nothing on the KDP forums. And no, I haven't published anything recently.

Thanks for letting me know. I had checked the KDP forum before starting this thread and didn't see anything. If these are widespread problems, I would think we'd be seeing other self-published authors reporting it.

Originally Posted by Notjohn

OMG, it has gone wild! I bought a book this morning and sat down to read it on my Fire HD (7-inch tablet) after lunch (I'm not lazy; I work a long morning, 5 to 12). In a very early chapter (3 percent into the book) I found this break:

Speechw-
riter

The book is from Sentinel, a Penguin imprint. It's copyright 2011, and I've never before seen this effect on my Fire HD, so I'm guessing it's a software or firmware update.

What's the title of that book? I'd like to take a look at the sample on my HD6. I've been downloading samples and can't find any that have this problem. If anyone sees one, please let me know!

I initially thought it was a Fire software update, too, but why aren't we seeing the auto-hyphenation in other books then?

[image links broken]

Examples #4 and #5 show my most recent results. I circled the auto-hyphenation that irks me the most. These dumb hyphenation choices are minimized substantially when I decrease the font size on my device, but that may be too small for some readers' preference. I'd really like to eliminate the occasional ragged-right lines, too, because I'm not seeing that in other e-books on my Fire HD6!

The Chapter font weight is acceptable now, so that was some progress made.

Note that there is NO CSS in the epub file for Examples #4 and #5 that mentions anything about hyphens/hyphenation at all. The e-book previews fine on my Fire HD6 when I view the Kindlegen-created file—right justification is even with no short lines at all and no auto-hyphenation. That is what I'd like to see in the published book, if possible. As I mentioned, other self-published books look that way on the Fire HD6.

I've been making e-books for four years now. I've never had this problem before with the same titles. My tools haven't changed (Sigil and Kindlegen). I'm stumped, but I'll keep trying to figure out what's causing these issues.

I have been trying most suggestions offered here, so I do appreciate the time everyone's spent trying to help. I'll update when/if I make more progress in narrowing down the issues.

[Notjohn]

As mentioned above, I see this behavior (not so many, to be sure) in a 2011 Kindle book bought this week, on my Fire HD 7 inch tablet. I neglected to mention that the book is formatted ragged right, which I suppose would cut down on the quantity of broken words.

The book is Secret Knowledge by David Mamet. Speechw-riter occurs very early, but I suppose it would depend on your Kindle or Fire device.

It is a horrific development. I reported the book to Amazon, using the option on the product page to complain about formatting.

I will delete a couple of my books from the tablet and then download a fresh copy, to see if they have similarly been afflicted.

[DreamWriter]

I should point out that the first two pages of Last Mulligan (the last screenshots above) are the worst examples of auto-hyphenation in that book sample. Other pages have far fewer auto-hyphens. And I don't think it's as problematic on larger Fires or at a smaller font size on the Fire HD6. My other e-books, also with KDP-forced auto-hyphenation, aren't that extreme. As far as I can tell, these same books do not have auto-hyphenation when viewed in the Android Kindle app.

I still don't know why KDP is defaulting to auto-hyphenation in my recent uploads. If anyone with a Fire tablet is seeing the same in other e-books, please list the title(s) so I can check it out.

Originally Posted by Notjohn

As mentioned above, I see this behavior (not so many, to be sure) in a 2011 Kindle book bought this week, on my Fire HD 7 inch tablet. I neglected to mention that the book is formatted ragged right, which I suppose would cut down on the quantity of broken words.

The book is Secret Knowledge by David Mamet. Speechw-riter occurs very early, but I suppose it would depend on your Kindle or Fire device.

It is a horrific development. I reported the book to Amazon, using the option on the product page to complain about formatting.

I will delete a couple of my books from the tablet and then download a fresh copy, to see if they have similarly been afflicted.

Notjohn, do you see auto-hyphenation in the Last Mulligan sample on your Fire HD 7?

I just downloaded the sample of the book you mentioned and took a look. I see exactly the same hyphenation: Speechw-riter. Yuck! I know that some people do prefer left alignment, but I find it difficult to read, especially on a small device. Almost all Kindle books are right-justified since it's the default, so that's what I'm used to.

If anyone knows how to set hyphenation rules for paragraphs in CSS to minimum characters before and after, please let me know. After researching on the web, I tried hyphenate-before:3; / hyphenate-after:2; and hyphenate-limit-before:3; / hyphenate-limit-after:2; but neither worked. The CSS doesn't validate. If anyone has used the same code with good results, I'm willing to try again in case I did something wrong the first time. I read that hyphenate-limit-chars:6 3 2; may be valid in the near future. It would help a lot if I could eliminate the two-letter auto-hyphenation decisions!

Thanks!

[Hitch]

Dreamwriter:

What other settings, might you have, in your CSS, that could be affecting this? For example, what fonts have you embedded? What characteristics (metrics) do the fonts themselves have, if any? Any kerning, leading, etc.?

I've seen a lot of hinky caused through upstream settings, unrelated to direct hyphenation settings. This isn't to say it's something you're doing--likely it is some whacko update created by Amazon--but it's worth asking.

Hitch

[DreamWriter]

I just sent the question below to Amazon KDP. I'll let you know if I get a non-canned response.

Have there been any recent changes in either the KDP publishing process or device software that enables automatic hyphenation in Kindle e-books by default, particularly on Fire tablets?

If you aren't sure if there's been a recent change, I'd appreciate if you would forward this question to your technical teams for both KDP and Kindle/Fire devices.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

I'll return shortly with the relevant CSS, Hitch. I need to retrieve that from another computer.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Dreamwriter:

What other settings, might you have, in your CSS, that could be affecting this? For example, what fonts have you embedded? What characteristics (metrics) do the fonts themselves have, if any? Any kerning, leading, etc.?

I've seen a lot of hinky caused through upstream settings, unrelated to direct hyphenation settings. This isn't to say it's something you're doing--likely it is some whacko update created by Amazon--but it's worth asking.

Hitch

It could very well be something I'm doing since I'm not seeing this in other KDP-published e-book samples I've downloaded to my Fire HD6. This wasn't happening in earlier uploads of the same books, but maybe I made recent changes in the HTML/CSS that is causing the auto-hyphenation. Or, like you said, perhaps it's a new Amazon Fire/KDP "feature."

Here's the current KF8 CSS that would be relevant:

@font-face {
font-family:"xxxxxx.ttf";
src: url("../Fonts/xxxxxx.ttf");
}

div.chapter
{margin-top:1em;
margin-bottom:0;
margin-left:0;
margin-right:0;
padding-bottom:.3em;
text-align:center;
text-indent:0;
font-size:240%;
font-weight:500;
font-family:"xxxxxx.ttf", sans-serif;}

p
{margin:0;
text-indent:5%;
text-align:justify;
font-weight:normal;}

There is currently no body code in CSS at all. I used to have the Chapter font "bold," but in these new uploads it was making it too bold. So I settled on "500," which seems fine, as "700" is the same as bold. The Chapter font has always been specified this way in CSS, and I didn't have any problems with it in earlier versions of this (and other) e-books. There is no specific font for paragraphs because I want the reader to have that choice.

Having text-align:justify; is new but shouldn't be causing auto-hyphenation. I didn't do that in the past, but it makes the online Look Inside look so much better. I am debating whether to remove that so the reader can choose if justification becomes a user-selectable option on future Kindle/Fire devices.

Here is the first part of the HTML for Chapter 1:

<body>
<p><a id="start"></a></p>

<div class="chapter">
Chapter 1
</div>

I know that this does not conform to KDP's recommended formatting of <a id="start" /><div class="chapter">Chapter 1</div>, but when I do it that way, my (older) version of Sigil auto-corrects the HTML when I close/reopen the file (HTML Tidy is off, so not sure why!), which then causes backwards chapter-navigation problems on my Kindle Keyboard, which I've purposely not updated so I can test mobi e-books.

In the past, I've tried <div class="chapter" id="start">Chapter 1</div> and <h1 class="chapter" id="start">Chapter 1</h1>, but those also cause KK chapter navigation problems; when using the 5-way controller to navigate chapters backwards, code will occasionally be visible at the top.

The chapter HTML I currently have seems to work fine on both Kindle Keyboard and Fire, but if you see a problem with it, I can try something else. (Sigil may auto-correct, however.) I do know how to edit HTML/CSS/OPF/NCX outside of Sigil, although I would prefer not to.

Nothing has changed in the HTML for first and subsequent paragraphs when compared to previous editions of these e-books, so I don't see anything there that would be causing auto-hyphenation, unless the CSS is somehow faulty.

I'm using an older version of Sigil (0.5.3) because I have a Windows XP SP2 desktop computer (not connected to the Internet) for writing, graphics, and e-book creation. I use a Chromebook for most other things these days, and a new Windows computer isn't in the budget right now.

Thanks for your interest! If I can provide any further info, just let me know.

[DreamWriter]

In the Fire OS 4.5.3 Update thread it was announced that a new update (4.5.3) for Fire devices, including the Fire HD6, is being sent. Amazon only specifies "general improvements and performance enhancements." Not very helpful.

My HD6 is still at 4.5.2. It'll be interesting to see if anything changes in my e-books once I receive the device update!

[dgatwood]

If it is any consolation, I'm about to file a bug report with Apple against Safari/WebKit, pointing out that the word "eyes" cannot be hyphenated....

Edit: Appears to be fixed in 10.10.