Text justification issues

[Emilie]

Hello,

This is my first post on the forum. I am new to epub but I know my way very well around InDesign, HTML and CSS.

Here is my problem :
I'm laying out a book for .epub which I preview in ADE and everything seems fine. I then convert it to MOBI using Calibre. I also make sure to check the justified text option in the look and feel section. When I load my .mobi in a kindle, lines using longer words sometimes won't justify. I don't recall seeing this in other ebooks I've read so I must be doing something wrong.

My body text css is :

p.texte {
	line-height: 1.2em;
	font-size: 1em;
	margin-bottom: 0.9em;
	margin-top: 0.00em;
	text-indent: 0.00em;
	margin-right: 0.00em;
	margin-left: 0.00em;
	text-align: justify;
	font-weight: normal;
	font-style: normal;
	color: rgb(0,0,0);
	widows: 2;
	orphans: 2;
}

Any suggestions? Also, are there any other ways to preview a .mobi file without putting it on a Kindle? (for Mac OS X or PC, whichever) This way I could at least see if my Kindle is the issue or if the file is wrong.

Thank you for your time!
Émilie

[dwig]

When a line's last word won't fit it has to appear on the next line. The remaining words have to be spaced wider to justify the line. At some point any display system comes to grief trying to justify an overly short line. Sometimes the result is a less readable display with excessively widely spaced words and sometimes letters. At other times the line is left shorter than the rest.

In the Kindle there is no hyphenation to help break up words. Also, it only seems to justify using word spacing and not letter spacing. These place some limitations on its justification ability. Amazon has chosen to avoid the excessively wide word spacing that some systems resort to and just leave difficult lines short. This results in much better readability at the very minor expense to "pretty appearance".

[Emilie]

I see... it's the first time I run into this, are you aware of any override?

I'm surprised that the only time I encounter the situation is when I am doing the layout. Maybe because it's the only french book on my Kindle and the text happens to have few "small words".

I guess I'm going to left-align then. I doubt the client will accept to have some lines justified and some others not!

Thank you for your time!

[klu529]

To preview the file, you can install the Kindle reader for PC. I don't know if there is a Mac version. It will be a little different because your computer will have a different screen size so you may not see the justification issue. You can experiment and try to get the kindle window to match the actual kindle screen to compare the results.

[susan_cassidy]

It is always better to not specify the justification, so that the device and/or software can be set by the user.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by Emilie

I see... it's the first time I run into this, are you aware of any override?

I don't believe there's any way to override this behaviour Emilie. As dwig indicated, it results from the current lack of support for hyphenation on the Kindle - that results in a choice, sometimes, between having excessive space between words when trying to justify them (which many people find makes text less easy to read), or leaving that line unjustified but more easily readable. The Kindle developers opted for better readability. I would think, if this is explained, most authors would accept that it's a function of the e-reader device, not a fault in the ebook formatting.

Originally Posted by klu529

To preview the file, you can install the Kindle reader for PC. I don't know if there is a Mac version. It will be a little different because your computer will have a different screen size so you may not see the justification issue. You can experiment and try to get the kindle window to match the actual kindle screen to compare the results.

I'd recommend using the Kindle Previewer rather than the Kindle for PC application. The reader app can behave quite differently to the actual Kindle sometimes, and while the Previewer isn't 100% perfect, it gives a much closer simulation of what an ebook will look like on the actual Kindle device (it also provides options to simulate how the book will look using the "Kindle for..." applications for iPad and iPhone).