Left border for text within paragraph

[democrite]

Hi,

I'm making a ePub of a book that's been revised by the author several times. Later additions (from the original) are marked with a left rule next to the text. Something like this:



If it's a matter of an entire paragraph, I can add a left border. But if I want one that only covers a few sentences, is that possible? I can only think of a div but that adds like breaks.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by democrite

Hi,

I'm making a ePub of a book that's been revised by the author several times. Later additions (from the original) are marked with a left rule next to the text. Something like this:

If it's a matter of an entire paragraph, I can add a left border. But if I want one that only covers a few sentences, is that possible? I can only think of a div but that adds like breaks.

I know that this isn't answering your question, but...seriously? Tell him/her to keep their Proof sheet and look it up by either ADE page number (or whatever) or by searching for the replace text. Man, you gotta be kidding me. I certainly wouldn't do this for our clients. They are perfectly capable of finding their edits, trust me on this. We're 2,000+ books into this, and if you try to do this, you'll drive yourself to insanity.

The vast majority of our clients copyedit anywhere from 2-3-5 times...so you'll have to go back and remove these, too? When the next revision cycle comes out? Nyet, no, nein, nicht, don't do it. P.S.: I hope you're charging for edits.

Just my $.02.

Hitch

[democrite]

The book is for myself. It's not a current book for a client but one that was published about a hundred years ago and went through about 8 or so editions. I'm trying to match the style of the printed version that indicates additions made after the first edition.

[GrannyGrump]

You might try inserting a graphic image of a vertical bar as a floated image. You can insert the image tag right at the beginning of the sentence that you want to mark.

/*in the CSS*/
.barleft {float: left; 
margin: 0 3px 0 -.5em;
width: 3px;
height: 5em;
max-width: 10px;
}

/*in the HTML*/
<p>blah blah blah blah <img alt="" class="barleft" src="../Images/bar.png"/>NEW BLAH NEW BLAH NEW BLAH. old blah blah blah.</p>

The negative left margin would make it display out in the margin, rather than flush with the text.

Of course, for different lengths of sentence you would have to style for different image heights, and it might not be all that accurate (although using ems for height might help).
If it is only for personal reference, you might not be concerned about height of the bar. Or, maybe instead you could simply have a small image similar to a bullet to indicate that "here be changes."

Maybe different font-faces for the different edits might be a way to go if you need it to display on a monochrome reader and can't use colored text.

[mrmikel]

If this is for yourself, then why not save yourself the trouble and make a pdf out of it. PDF does this unusual sort of stuff without any trouble. If you can display it on your screen, you can print it to a pdf and it is a lot less work.

[democrite]

thanks grannyGrumpy for the suggestions. Since I was considering if it was possible with css, I hadn't thought of an image. Still am looking for a more accurate solution though it seems that it is just not possible at the moment.

mrmikel. ah but I have a PDF in the form of a scan. I could make a cleaner one but the want of an ePub is like any other, it's much easier to carry around and I'd have it with me always, like on my phone.

[DaleDe]

You might try a sidebar. see https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Example_ePub in our wiki.

Dale

[democrite]

Thanks Dale.

The sidebar helps for another epub I'm working on. For this one, all the additions of later editions either appear as additional (inline) paragraphs, or are additions within a paragraph.

Since most of the changes are entire paragraphs, the border is ok. But for the still several sentences, I'll resort to something like putting them in parenthesis. A more elegant solution would be nice but just doesn't seem possible.