Quote:
Originally Posted by nabsltd
Is there any way to create a centered initial cap that is 100% portable?
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Depending on how much you want, or don't want, to drag this out: no. Not if you are talking about a book headed for commercial or even free, but wide, distribution. I mean, you said it yourself:
"...knowing my reader width, reading font and size I read at..."
...which you shan't know for ANYONE else. Right?
Quote:
What I did to create the attached sample is based on knowing my reader width, reading font and size I read at, and picking a text-indent that works for most letters.
<snippage>
But, if somebody reads with larger/smaller window, a different base font, or changes the base font size up or down more than just a little, that throws of the "centering". Likewise, if I tweak the indent for perfect centering for individual letters, it still has the same issues.
I ran into the same sort of problems setting the initial cap in a separate paragraph and then using a negative margin-top on the next paragraph:
<more snippage>
Now, it's the indent of the next paragraph that needs to be changed to make the spacing between the initial cap and the rest of the sentence correct. In this case, I could tweak for each different letter, but that still breaks if the text size changes.
Is there anything like a float that can be centered, allowing the rest of the opening sentence to end up where it belongs?
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For what it's worth, just as an FYI, what you're doing isn't a drop cap. It's actually called a Raised Initial. That midline layout, though--not going to lie, I don't think I've seen that used in this century, and not for most of the last half of the last century. I see that the book you're doing talks about a 727, but...I'd guess that's what, 50 years old, or so?
Unlike Jon, I'm not opposed to Drops, RIs or even BFLs, but what you're trying to do is sort of pushing a chain up a hill.
I'm unclear about why your 47% isn't working--it should be. I mean...where is it NOT working, that you know of?
The date and the E
aren't on the same line--not at all. That's simply an optical illusion, created by the vertical height of the E. That's part of the problem you're having. If you are
really thinking, instead of just
saying, that those are on the same line, that explains why you're fighting with it. Of course, the date will "move" if you move the E to the left--you're not shrinking a distance, between two elements, horizontally; you're messing with it vertically, as well, due to the line-height needed for the Raised Initial.
And while our friend Jon is a bit strident (ahem, Jon!), he's not wrong about the fact that nobody, but nobody, reads at the designated default font size. Younger people read at a smaller size, older at a much larger size. You're really pushing a chain up a hill.
Why not just leave the date where it is, put the Raised initial at the left-margin, and call it a win? Or hell, make different incipits, like a line of bold, or smallcaps, something that will play nicely, with an eBook reader? Just because the original book was that way doesn't mean that the new one has to be. I'm not saying that they all have to be vanilla--that's not how we roll, at my shop--but there's no law that says you have to reinvent text styling that is, well, outmoded. If you were doing a manuscript from the 1700s, I wouldn't expect you to put it in handwriting calligraphy, either, y'know?
Hitch