Calibre, EPUB and DropCap size

[jackie_w]

I have been experimenting with adding DropCaps to my ebooks - courtesy of some of the advice in the EPUB forum - but am having problems controlling the size of the DropCap in Calibre's EPUB conversion.

My EPUB is displaying DropCaps OK but they are not as large as specified in my source CSS.

For example:

Source CSS:

.dropcap {
font-size: 4em;
font-weight: bold;
float: left;
line-height: 1em;
margin-top: -0.01em;
margin-right: 0.1em
}

CSS inside Calibre EPUB - conversion Base Font Size 10pt

.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 2.4em;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1em;
margin-right: 0.1em;
margin-top: -0.01em
}

CSS inside Calibre EPUB - conversion Base Font Size 12pt

.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 2em;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1em;
margin-right: 0.1em;
margin-top: -0.01em
}

CSS inside Calibre EPUB - conversion Base Font Size 8pt

.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 3.2em;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1em;
margin-right: 0.1em;
margin-top: -0.01em
}

As you can see the CSS values are retained pre/post conversion on all items except the font-size.

When converted at Base Font Size 10 or 12 the DropCap has a depth of just under 2 lines of body text.

When converted at Base Font Size 8 the DropCap has a depth of 2-3 lines of body text. The trouble with this setting is that I have to set the PRS-505 magnification to Large to read the body text which doesn't give enough flexibility for poor reading conditions.

My eventual aim is to set the source CSS font-size to a value where I get a DropCap depth of exactly 2 lines (or close enough) but until I can figure out what's happening during the conversion I suspect I'm not going to get there.

Please can anyone help?

[kovidgoyal]

That's because calibre rescales font sizes. There's a section on how rescaling works in the user manual. If you are sure you dont want font size rescaling, you can just turn it off in the conversion options.

[jackie_w]

That was quick! I'll give that a try.