CSS/HTML question

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by cybmole

ADE / sony ignore empty lines i.e. those with just <br />

well that's pretty spectacularly annoying.... thanks for that. Anyone have an answer on why &nbsp; DID work?

[susan_cassidy]

Because &nbsp; is not an empty line? It contains a non-breaking space.

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Because &nbsp; is not an empty line? It contains a non-breaking space.

yes, I understand that. I'm not talking anymore about why &nbsp; worked while <br> did not. I'm wondering why the "div clear both" didn't work. is it again, simply a matter of ADE completely ignoring lines that are empty, even if they're styled?

[mmat1]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

The instructions say it need "div clear both". without it, it creates a drop cap effect around the left and right margins of the first paragraph.

.....

I've seen others found the solution. Empty element are ignored by most ereaders, i.e. <p></p> will not insert an empty line. This might be a difference to html-transisitional..

Originally Posted by ElMiko

(not sure what the smiley-face graphics mean....)

Rockstar (drummer)

[cybmole]

IMHO it would be less annoying if sigil & calibre viewer behaved like ADE / various e-reader firmwares & ignored empty elements - as it ain't ever gonna happen the other way around.

sigil/calibre book views may be academically correct but I'd rather they mimicked the behavior of most e-readers or at least had a preference setting to do so.

[theducks]

Most Readers (devices)?
The Kindle , I-whatever

I don't think ADE is the big Kahua any more

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by theducks

Most Readers (devices)?
The Kindle , I-whatever

I don't think ADE is the big Kahua any more

Yeah, this is why it took me so long to realize anything was amiss; everything's been looking peachy keen on my Kindle! Between the small caps issue, this empty line rendering issue, and their product pricing schemes, I've come to the categorical conclusion that the folks at adobe are fascists, whose sole joy in in life is causing me aggravation.

More seriously, I'm still not clear on why the original code was failing. why wasn't the bottom margin on the heading3 style working? Also, while the new code fixes the problem of the overlaping text, it's really not a precise solution, since it's adding 1 more line height to the bottom margin. It's easy enough to reduce the heading3 margin in the css stylesheet to compensate, but in principle the new div isn't doing what i wanted (which is simply to function as a clearing element for the preceding floats).

EDIT: for the record, I really fundamentally disagree with the view that people should be coding in workarounds to to accommodate the rendering flaws of ADE. That's like saying that Webster's should add "peice" to the dictionary to accommodate all the people don't know the "i before e" rule. If epub is going to be html based, then it should accept standardized html code, not require users to unstandardized their coding. It's annoying that it took me so long to figure this out, but that's not Sigil's fault or Calibre's fault... it's ADE's fault. Just like being confused by the word "piece" when you've always spelled it "peice" isn't Webster's fault for not including an "alternate spelling", it's your fault for not knowing how to spell.

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

[...] in ADE (which, as I've been told, is the same result rendered on Sony readers).

@ElMiko: This used to be more or less the case, but with ADE 2.0 you can get different results. I had a negative the other day; turns out that ADE 2.0 tries to display ligatures whether the font contains them or not, and Indesign will subset out ligatures whether they are specified in the style or not. Stylistic ligatures like ff, fi,ffi and so on just get stripped out in ADE 2.0, while they display fine on the non-ligature-aware Sony readers.

On a side note it's a wonder that Adobe is still afloat, what with the divisions working actively against each other, and that the feature designers obviously never actually use the software...

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

@ElMiko: This used to be more or less the case, but with ADE 2.0 you can get different results. I had a negative the other day; turns out that ADE 2.0 tries to display ligatures whether the font contains them or not, and Indesign will subset out ligatures whether they are specified in the style or not. Stylistic ligatures like ff, fi,ffi and so on just get stripped out in ADE 2.0, while they display fine on the non-ligature-aware Sony readers.

On a side note it's a wonder that Adobe is still afloat, what with the divisions working actively against each other, and that the feature designers obviously never actually use the software...

AH HA! an educational opportunity for me! I've been meaning to ask but never had the right opening, and you've haplessly walked into my trap, so you're obliged to give me an answer!! Here it is: What the heck are ligatures??

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

... so you're obliged to give me an answer!! Here it is: What the heck are ligatures??

OK. The most common meaning is that of a stylistic ligature. This is a font effect where some character combinations like "fi", "ffi" and so on are replaced with a single glyph that's more 'æsthetically pleasing' (personally I'm not a fan). This of course requires that your font actually contains that glyph. Some examples can be seen here:



Another meaning is linguistic 'letters' that are composed of two other letters, the Norwegian 'æ' was originally a ligature of 'a' and 'e'. It is now a distinct letter, however. Œdipus and Cæsar, for instance, can legitimately be spelled with ligatures if you are extremely pretentious. Did you see what I did above?

When people speak of ligatures they are very likely referring to the typographic ones displayed in the image, and those relate to fonts and typography. I'm sure others can elaborate.

Edit: I might add that typographic ligatures originated in the old-school days of typography before computers, when all letters where actually metal types where each character had a fixed width regardless of the neighbouring characters. This made some character combinations stand out, as they had too much space between them, and typographers rectified this by creating distinct types for these character combinations.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

OK. The most common meaning is that of a stylistic ligature. This is a font effect where some character combinations like "fi", "ffi" and so on are replaced with a single glyph that's more 'æsthetically pleasing' (personally I'm not a fan). This of course requires that your font actually contains that glyph. Some examples can be seen here:



Another meaning is linguistic 'letters' that are composed of two other letters, the Norwegian 'æ' was originally a ligature of 'a' and 'e'. It is now a distinct letter, however. Œdipus and Cæsar, for instance, can legitimately be spelled with ligatures if you are extremely pretentious. Did you see what I did above?

When people speak of ligatures they are very likely referring to the typographic ones displayed in the image, and those relate to fonts and typography. I'm sure others can elaborate.

Edit: I might add that typographic ligatures originated in the old-school days of typography before computers, when all letters where actually metal types where each character had a fixed width regardless of the neighbouring characters. This made some character combinations stand out, as they had too much space between them, and typographers rectified this by creating distinct types for these character combinations.

You must be really old
All the metal type I set in High School was variable (OK about 4 distinct) widths. Ligatures as shown above, tuck adjacent characters in under the previous. (saving space ?)

[ElMiko]

@ManEatingDuck—I feel edified. Thank you! Now that you explain it, the term "ligature" makes perfect sense, and feel a little silly for not having figured it out myself... but only a little. So from what you've seen, is ADE also stripping out letter ligatures or just stylistic ones. And when you say they are "stripped out" does that mean that "æsthetically" will render in ADE 2.0 as "aesthetically" or will it render as "sthetically"? I recently created a book that had a lot of Nordic names and dialogue, and consequently used the letter ligatures frequently. Am I going to need to go back and mess around with that?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by mmat1

I've seen others found the solution. Empty element are ignored by most ereaders, i.e. <p></p> will not insert an empty line. This might be a difference to html-transisitional..

It may be useful to try this test to check whether empty elements are rendered by a particular reader. For the record, the Orizon (using Adobe) renders empty elements.

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

I had a negative the other day; turns out that ADE 2.0 tries to display ligatures whether the font contains them or not, and Indesign will subset out ligatures whether they are specified in the style or not. Stylistic ligatures like ff, fi,ffi and so on just get stripped out in ADE 2.0, while they display fine on the non-ligature-aware Sony readers.

I don't understand this... do you mean you are entering the "ff" ligatures explictly (using the Unicode code points for them)? That's strongly not recommended, you should write "ff" as two separate letters, and let the renderer/font use the ligature if possible and available.

Originally Posted by ElMiko

And when you say they are "stripped out" does that mean that "æsthetically" will render in ADE 2.0 as "aesthetically" or will it render as "sthetically"?

There shouldn't be any problem with those letters (originally ligatures, but now full-blown letters); æ, œ, ß, &... should be typed explicitly (what I said above referred to stylistic ligatures only).

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

And when you say they are "stripped out" does that mean that "æsthetically" will render in ADE 2.0 as "aesthetically" or will it render as "sthetically"?

@ElMiko:As Jellby said, only the typographic ligatures are likely to cause issues.

Here are a couple of screenshots displaying the problem, my workaround is to replace the Indesign-embedded fonts with healthy ones and disable obfuscations, I've actually made a tiny cmd script to do that. The working version with a healthy font is on the right, you can also see that ligatures are rendered correctly in that one.

[ElMiko]

@Jellby—wow... that is fantastically useful. Thanks.

And thanks to both you and MED for your clarifications on ligatures.