Thread: Kobo Bug thread
View Single Post
Old 03-01-2017, 08:57 PM   #844
Rev. Bob
Wizard
Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Rev. Bob ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Rev. Bob's Avatar
 
Posts: 1,760
Karma: 9918418
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Here on the perimeter, there are no stars
Device: Kobo H2O, iPad mini 3, Kindle Touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
No embedded fonts The problem with most embedded fonts is that they don't display well on an eInk screen. They are too light. An example of a very poorly made eBook is The Martian A very good book but poorly made because of the embedded fonts. The fonts used are free serif, free sans-serif, and free monospace. All of those fonts are terrible on eInk because they are way too light. On a Carta screen, they looked very thin and light. I had to remove them because they did not work. That is an example of not needed.
"Badly chosen" ≠ "not needed." In a different forum, someone has brought up the case of a book that, when originally published, used three different fonts to switch between three different viewpoints. When it was translated to ebook, all the fonts got stripped out and key information was therefore lost.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
No paragraph spaces I've seen some programs that have the ability to set the spacing between paragraphs. Not all programs do. But, given that there is no standard for eBooks, might as well go with no paragraph spaces.
There IS a standard for ebooks. 1em top and bottom, 0 left and right. It comes from HTML.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
I know it's subjective, but I find an overly large space for chapter headings to look awful. I know what I prefer is not what everyone prefers. But there are ways to compromise. For chapter headers, I think a 2em top and a 2em bottom would be a good compromise.
Here again, the Hn elements already have default margins. Like paragraphs, that default is "skip a line above and below."

The whole rationale for building ebooks with web technologies is to use those technologies, not to redefine them. Sure, it's mildly inconvenient to put a "no margins for body paragraphs" rule into individual ebooks - but that's a much better option than redefining how HTML should be displayed and hoping individual manufacturers all switch over to that new set of definitions at the same time - and magically update every old device and piece of software along the way.

Establishing a basic stylesheet that could serve as the skeleton for new ebooks, that's one thing. Trying to redefine long-standing standards in one particular context is very, very different.
Rev. Bob is offline   Reply With Quote