Dingbats in formats that Calibre supports

[starrigger]

This isn't really a Calibre question so much as a cross-format question, but you guys are smart so I thought I'd ask here:

Someone is preparing one of my books right now, and I have special dialogue marks to indicate quotations spoken by implants. In the print version, which I liked, small square boxes were used as dingbats in place of regular quote marks. Is it possible to replicate that, without a ridiculous amount of special handling, in ebook format? (Meaning, something that could, without too much work, flow into all the major formats--perhaps starting from an html file.)

I know Word dingbats are problematic. How about a small gif or other image? Or is that just asking for trouble?

Suggestions?

Thanks.

[kovidgoyal]

"the right way" to do this would be to use one of the named entites from http://www.elizabethcastro.com/html/.../entities.html

However, the fonts used to display the book on the device may not have support for all of them, so the safest way would be to use a small image.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

"the right way" to do this would be to use one of the named entites from http://www.elizabethcastro.com/html/.../entities.html

However, the fonts used to display the book on the device may not have support for all of them, so the safest way would be to use a small image.

Images seem to offer pitfalls. Marshall did a markup of my Neptune Crossing in EPUB, taking great care to duplicate the look of the print book. It looks fabulous on the Sony and in ADE. But (I just discovered) it is essentially unviewable in the Calibre Viewer. On my wife's iTouch with Stanza, it's perfectly readable, but the images are way out of proportion to the text. I take this as a warning.

I'll probably use an entity and hope.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by starrigger

But (I just discovered) it is essentially unviewable in the Calibre Viewer.

That would be because of the lack of proper SVG support in Qt Webkit, the library calibre uses to render the book. Hopefully as the library evolves, that will change.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Images seem to offer pitfalls. Marshall did a markup of my Neptune Crossing in EPUB, taking great care to duplicate the look of the print book. It looks fabulous on the Sony and in ADE. But (I just discovered) it is essentially unviewable in the Calibre Viewer. On my wife's iTouch with Stanza, it's perfectly readable, but the images are way out of proportion to the text. I take this as a warning.

I'll probably use an entity and hope.

Part of the problem with this ePub file is that there are things that fall off the right side of the screen if I make the font size medium or large. So whatever is being done doesn't work for other then small. Go to page 32 and then make it large, you'll see what I mean.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Part of the problem with this ePub file is that there are things that fall off the right side of the screen if I make the font size medium or large. So whatever is being done doesn't work for other then small. Go to page 32 and then make it large, you'll see what I mean.

Ah. Yes, I see. Where I got fancy with the typography.

Fortunately, in this case no meaningful information was lost to the reader. But in another case, if might be.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That would be because of the lack of proper SVG support in Qt Webkit, the library calibre uses to render the book. Hopefully as the library evolves, that will change.

I'll just take your word for it on that.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Ah. Yes, I see. Where I got fancy with the typography.

Fortunately, in this case no meaningful information was lost to the reader. But in another case, if might be.

Can it be fixed so instead of text vanishing to the right, that it wraps?

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can it be fixed so instead of text vanishing to the right, that it wraps?

In this case, it was an uninterrupted string of characters, essentially a word too long for the line. I guess the software guys will have to answer the question of why epub didn't break the "word" at the right margin.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by starrigger

In this case, it was an uninterrupted string of characters, essentially a word too long for the line. I guess the software guys will have to answer the question of why epub didn't break the "word" at the right margin.

In Windows DE 1.7, it also just vanishes off the right side.

My guess is that DE takes it as a single word since it has no spaces.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by starrigger

In this case, it was an uninterrupted string of characters, essentially a word too long for the line. I guess the software guys will have to answer the question of why epub didn't break the "word" at the right margin.

My fault. I cheated on the formatting and used CSS 'white-space: pre' (e.g., a <pre/> element). Better would be to have each line be a wrappable block-level element with a proper left margin.