Thread: how to automatize routine modifications to epubs?
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Old 03-31-2017, 04:31 PM   #65
Rev. Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gbm View Post
No that is what is called over thinking and applying a Rube Goldberg solution to a non problem. Doing stuff like that is what makes ebooks look crappie and turns people off from them.

What works on paper does not necessary work on screen, especially small screens.

The KISS principle works best
"Small screens" has nothing to do with any of this; it's all about relationships between relative unit sizes.

As for "Rube Goldberg solutions," if basic math qualifies as "overthinking" now, call me guilty. There are perfectly valid reasons to do what I described, and they usually fall under the header of making a book look better.

Another example, although one I personally find a little too picky, is when a designer sets a rule for the "row of stars" used to separate scenes inside a chapter and makes the top margin a little bigger than the bottom margin. Why? Because the * character he's using isn't vertically centered; it already has some space at the bottom, and he's compensating for that. (I'd just use • if I was concerned with that, because the dot IS vertically centered.)

In my experience, there are four stages to HTML/CSS layout enlightenment:

1. Relies on HTML default rendering for almost everything.
2. Starts tinkering with CSS to develop a basic visual style.
3. Goes completely into the weeds, realizing that he can theoretically control everything and determined to do exactly that.
4. Realizes that reality isn't theory and pulls back to a more minimalist style that's more flexible and robust while being able to deploy advanced techniques when called for.

Stages two and four can look pretty similar, but too many of the ebooks I see are on stage three. They're determined to lock everything down, and in doing so, they suffer from what I call "overspecification." Quite frequently, those books will look and work a lot better if the excess rules are stripped out to give the reader more control.

Knowing to apply a reciprocal to margins or to shave some bottom-margin from a row of asterisks is stage four. Defining line-height with absolute values that deny flexibility to readers is stage three. There's a pretty big difference there.
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