[Psymon]

Hi, Hitch, what a GREAT reply! You actually ask some very good (if not important) questions which I clearly should be addressing -- I just didn't know they needed to be addressed.

I'll answer each of them separately -- I'd be deeply appreciative if you (or someone) could follow up on this for me, in fact...

Originally Posted by Hitch

You seem to be setting various margins in px? May I ask why you're doing that?

Um, probably because I have no clue what I'm doing! At least, not when it comes to creating epubs (this is my very first one). My background is in web design (and graphic design), but even with that I started way back in the mid-1990s, before CSS even existed (in fact, HTML tables had only just barely arrived on the scene and were all the rage, and I can only confess that I've never quite gotten the grasp of CSS layout and stuff -- and creating ebooks are an entirely different medium, of course, which doesn't help. :/

In any case, you reference to my "setting various margins in px", I presume you're referring to my styling of paragraphs (etc.)? When I first started this epub, I just lifted the CSS file from my website on which this text is based, so I guess that's where that/those came from.

Again, I'm just admittedly a bit of a dummy here when it comes to CSS and epubs, and still have a great deal to learn -- but I do want to learn!

Originally Posted by Hitch

(And what are you doing with those spans, BTW? The "white-space: nowrap" spans? I hate to tell you, but that won't work in any ADE-based reader.)

Oh, all those -- and there's a LOT of them, yes -- came about because with this particular text, which is in late-Middle English and as a result has a LOT of special characters in the code (like ƒ, ¥, ¬, ¢, etc.), I noticed that some words were breaking and wrapping at the end of the line where those special characters were (as though the reader was treating those special characters like it would a space). And that's no good -- so I went through the entire text and any word that contained any unusual special characters I just wrapped it in those "nowrap" spans.

Obviously it adds quite a bit of "bulk" to the code, but in ibooks in the ipad, at least, it does seem to work! And I just don't know of any other solution for keeping those words from breaking at the end of lines -- if you know of an alternative that would work in all e-readers, I would naturally be deeply grateful.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Secondly, where is it that you perceive that you're setting margins for the page--which is what I infer your intent to be--that you want to increase "just a bit?" Is that the page 4pts setting, at the top of your stylesheet?

The background image question--if you're only trying to publish on iBooks, I suppose they won't care, and it will likely work. If you're trying to publish in other readers, you're likely to run into issues with the background image

Um, if what you're referring to re setting the page margins is what I think you're referring to, then yes -- but for what it's worth, I've since just changed everything to "0" all-around, and also scrapped the idea of doing that "old paper" background idea because as it is (was), it just looked like crap. I suppose it would/could be nice if I could get the background image to "bleed" right to the edges of the whole, entire page, but with it only appearing in that small(er) viewable window, well, it just wasn't very effective -- not to mention that if I was to increase the margins so that the text wasn't right up against the edges of that background image, then doing so invariably introduces other issues (re line length and justified text, etc.).

And it looks just fine in ibooks (at least), especially with the sepia viewing option which almost simulates an "old paper" look, too.

Originally Posted by Hitch

and you may run into problems with some of those TTF's.

Oh, no! Really? I thought TTF fonts were the prefered font? I read somewhere that one can use either TTF or OTF fonts, but that TTF were preferred -- did I get it backwards? I found a website where one can convert fonts from one format to the other.

ANY suggestions you have about font embedding with regard to this little project of mine are most welcome -- as you can see, without that particular font showing up correctly, my text here (in that late-Middle English) will just end up showing up as utter gobbledygook otherwise, so it's only naturally imperative that it work correctly.

Originally Posted by Hitch

On a bright note in an otherwise dreary day, I am, however, eternally grateful that I'm not the poor bugger stuck proofing this. No reflection on your book; my eyes are simply too old for that. ;-)

Ha ha! I understand, I know that old style of font (and English) is hard to read, but I've been doing it for decades now and THAT is the easy part for me! I rather enjoy reading text like that, actually -- and in this case it doesn't need to be "proofread" at all, it's already well beyond that stage. There's no issues at all with the text -- just the coding of it.

Thank you so much for your reply, Hitch!

Ron