Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
3. Unfortunately, it makes too many ebook conversions to "exactly" match the print version and have two kinds of scene breaks: with spacing and with asterism. It looks like they have different meanings, but they have not!
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Yes, I remember reading an ebook that did this. Maybe 75% scenes were margins+noindent only, and 25% used asterisks.
I was using Moon+ Reader (which overwrites nearly all book CSS), and I was completely confused. Most of the book was skipping completely "randomly", very jarring... until I reached much further and saw a * * *.
Then I looked at the book in Sigil... Every single spot I was confused, there was actually a gap+noindent...
That's where an ebook formatter should've normalized them all to asterisks.
For more reasoning on why, read links in my Post #8 + the fantastic
2018 EPUBSecrets article, "User Experience: What Works, and How?".
Not good to rely 100% on CSS for something as important as a scenebreak.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
some print books use spacing as "scene break", but if the scene break happens to fall at a page boundary, it is marked with an asterism of some sort. This makes the reader aware that there is a scene break, something that would be easily missed if it was only marked with spacing/indent.
1. Has this been successfully done in ePub books?
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No. But I swear there was a topic where it was brought up a few years ago though, where someone wanted to use EPUB3 + Javascript... but I couldn't find it.
Anyone else remember this? Or was it my imagination?
* * *
In LaTeX, there's a handful of discussions about "automating" this:
And in one of the more popular packages, memoir, there's a
\pfbreak (Plain Fancy Break) macro for what they call "anonymous divisions":
Quote:
6.7 Fancy Anonymous Breaks
Often, in novels, there is a need to break up the text to indicate that there is a major break in the story, but not enough to warrant starting a new chapter. I have called these anonymous divisions as there is neither number nor title associated with them.
[...]
If a plain break comes at the top or bottom of a page then it is very difficult for a reader to discern that there is a break at all. If there is text on the page and enough space left to put some text after a break the \plainfancybreak command will use a \plainbreak with <num> lines, otherwise (the break would come at the top or bottom of the page) it will use a \fancybreak with <text>.
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But a lot of this stuff is only possible because you get full access to the rendering innards.
... not really possible in EPUB. (Maybe Javascript can override text depending on % vertical location on screen?)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
2. Since I believe it cannot be reliably done, I prefer to always use asterisms. Sure, extra spacing can be enforced, but it's easy to miss at the top/bottom of a page.
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Agreed and agreed.
The simple gap+noindent also causes issues when the new scene starts at the very top of a page. You'll assume it's a continued/split paragraph from the previous screen.
I
think the one I read all those years ago was Andy Weir's
The Martian. I just checked, and they mix Chapters > Daily Logs > gap+noindent / 3 centered bullets •••:
Image 1 is the previous page.
Image 2, you can see the gap+noindent landing on the very top of the screen. No reasonable person would notice this. You would continue reading, then wonder why there was just a drastic change in scene/tone, become confused, MAYBE click back... and/or just continue reading.
Image 3 shows centered bullets in a later chapter.
Overall, not the best ebook decisions, and probably just replicated the Print formatting...
Nobody is reading the book at Image 1 and thinking: "Oh, that final word ends before hitting the right margin... the paragraph on next screen might start with no indent!"
Side Note: Also, another potential reason against gap+noindent is users may read with (*shudders just thinking about it*) left aligned or "block paragraphs".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
SO, gang, as much as my inner bookmaker likes the space-only scenebreak...you simply can't only do that if the file is going to be ePUB-ified or MOBI-fied. Remember our jobs--as bookmakers--to not get between the story and the reader, right? To make the content readable and enjoyable or at least, understandable, yes? So...like it or not, asterisms, or fleurons or a signal flare, something, is needed on digital devices.
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