global ebook font settings?

[jemkeith]

Is it possible to set the font size, line spacing, etc. on a global basis instead of book by book? This is on an iphone.

[jemkeith]

I found my answer.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=222404

[Faterson]

Yep... and the trouble is, every publisher may consider some other font size "normal". It's impossible for Marvin to predict any of that before it even opens the book.

Luckily, we have all those handy formatting buttons in Marvin, and once you set a book's font size (and other typesetting options) to what is comfortable for you, it will remain sticky forever for you in that particular book. That's one of Marvin's greatest features, and one that I haven't seen in any other e-reader so far! (Not even in Stanza, the original inspiration for Marvin; if you increased the font size in Stanza in one book, Stanza would at the same time increase it in all books, which frequently caused problems.)

Naturally, the best practice for publishers is not to set any specific font sizes in their e-books, other than relative sizes of the 2em variety. Are e-book publishers (especially amateurs, but not only them) this reasonable? Of course not...

[jemkeith]

I had set my preferences then opened another book and the font was a lot bigger. I thought I would have to set the preferences by book then. I didn't realize books could vary so widely.

[Faterson]

Unfortunately, they do.

But here is what would happen in practically every other e-reader except Marvin (definitely on a Kindle device or in the Kindle app): in that book with oversized fonts, you would decrease your font. But then, returning to the first book, the font would be too small there. Again, resize needed. Returning to the second book, yet another resize needed. It's an endless run-around, back and forth, back and forth. I loved using Stanza for many years, but this (among other things) used to drive me crazy about Stanza.

None of the above is ever an issue in Marvin. You set your preferred font size in each particular book once, and it sticks.

In fact, if you ask me, I find it preferable not to use the same font size in all of my books. Depending on the type of book (fiction? non-fiction? easy to read? difficult to read? lots of dialogue? long paragraphs? short paragraphs?), I may find various font sizes preferable for various books.

The beauty of Marvin is it allows you to customize the typesetting for every individual book you ever open in Marvin, whereas all other e-readers insist on treating all e-books in the same way -- without, however, achieving any sort of visually pleasing uniformity by proceeding in such a "despotic" manner.

Nope, the actual result of treating all e-books in the same way is, ironically, that they all look different then -- but unlike in Marvin, there is no easy way to remove that unavoidable initial disparity (and make it stick!), in those other e-readers.