Changing paragraph spacing in DRMed epub?

[salty-horse]

Having discovered Shortcovers new ePub support, I tried checking one of the free Suvudu novels, to see how it looks.

So I checked Elric: The Stealer of Souls. The same novel is available in the LRX format at the Sony eBook store.

The first thing I noticed when opening the ePub is that paragraphs have spacing between them. This may be a matter of opinion, but I don't like it. It makes less room for text on a page, and "Real" "paper" books use indentation instead of vertical spacing to differentiate paragraphs.

The default style-sheet in the ADE renderer probably has the standard margin rule of "p { margin: 1em 0; }". Changing that to "0em" should do the trick.

The problem is, the file is DRMed. The CSS file and all of the html files that refer to it are encrypted.

Is there any way, without circumventing the DRM, to change that formatting?

I checked the free Perdido Street Station and it suffers from the same problem (BTW, The epub of the UK edition has the "correct" paragraph style).

Is this how most ePubs are formatted? I know Feedbooks ePubs are.
I have a feeling all of the LRFs on the Sony Store that will soon be available as ePub are going to suffer from this problem.

[pdurrant]

To change the formatting you'd need to decrypt the book.

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The problem is, the file is DRMed. The CSS file and all of the html files that refer to it are encrypted.

Is there any way, without circumventing the DRM, to change that formatting?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

To change the formatting you'd need to decrypt the book.

... or wait for ADE to allow user style-sheets overriding book formatting

[Who are you?]

ADE doesn't, but the Sony software does, for sure with the Library software and possibly with the reader. Unfortunately the reader would require flashing if it does work.

For the Sony application go to C:\Program Files\Sony\Reader\Data\bin and create the path adobe\pxf\ there and put a file named userStyle.css in there to override default epub styles.

On the reader you'd probably put that path and file in the FSK partition image at /sony/ebook/application (best to create a symlink to user accessible memory and put your real stylesheet there so you can change it without further flashing).

The official ADE application also contains a reference to res://adobe/pxf/userStyle.css like the sony software but I haven't managed to make it use it.

[salty-horse]

Thanks for the info, Who are you?!

wallcraft has started another thread on user stylesheets.

I'll start another thread in the Sony forum. I never fiddled with the device's firmware and partitions, and would prefer if someone more experienced has experimented with it. Sounds promising!