I'm glad to see you finally found what your ultimate issue was:
Clicking crazy line-spacing settings on your actual ereader.
Great that you fixed it.
... And I already typed out this entire post this morning, pre-solution, so I'm going to post it anyway. You can probably skip this first chunk, unless you want more help cleaning up your code:
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
First go around I had problems with certain pages where I want the content to appear all on one page on the screen; pages appeared properly in Calibre, were broken in Kobo Forma and Kindle.
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I skimmed through this topic, and still don't see the exact code.
Can you please post:
- Your HTML for all 3 files
- Title Page + Dedication + Copyright
- Your latest CSS.
Or maybe easier: Create an EPUB with just those 4 files inside and attach it so we could see.
I'm going to take a complete stab in the dark. I believe you have 3 separate HTML files:
- titlepage.xhtml
- dedication.xhtml
- copyright.xhtml
Ereaders start each HTML file on a completely new page... so your "page breaks between" are a complete non-issue.
And your crazy line-spacing, there has to be an issue in your CSS, because it's not normal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
The question then becomes what about exotic diacriticals? There are only a few fonts that I am aware of that have the full set that I will need.
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What rare characters are you using?
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
Images first: I don't think that the pages made into images, placed in html files are going to disturb readers in this case as they are only the front-matter pages (copyright, dedication, title page) and disturb more broken.
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As others have explained, this is an
extremely poor idea.
Ebooks are not like physical books. They are read using all different:
- size devices
- Large computer monitors -> tiny cellphones.
- fonts
- Specialized fonts for Dyslexia.
- Fonts that work in Print may not work well on e-ink.
- font sizes
- Small font to HUGE FONT
- Think person with poor eyesight.
- colors
- methods
- Text-to-Speech
- Computer reads out loud to you.
- Search/Highlight/Dictionary-Lookup
- Copying/Pasting
- Auto-Translated Text
Shoving text-within-images completely breaks all of this.
You'll also be causing yourself a ton of pain in the future when higher resolution devices come out, because you'll have to redo all your low resolution images.
Remember when 600x800 used to be the cover size? How do you think those look now at 4K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
I empathize with the eyesight problems [...] and that is going to be a huge market for things like larger e-screens, buttons that accommodate fat unsteady fingers, and a million other things elder-helpful).
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Exactly. Which is why properly designed, Accessible ebooks are fantastic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
Here again PDFs seem to be ahead of the game. [...]
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LOL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
[...] The problem is reading them on these small screens.
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That's the hugest of huge problems.
PDFs are designed as a print-replica format. On anything smaller than the originally designed page size, they're a complete disaster.
Trying to shove a 6"×9" (or A4/7"×10"/8.5"×11") page onto a cellphone is a joke:
- The text is too small, so you zoom in.
- Then you can't even read a single line/paragraph on your screen, so you start panning/scanning.
- You run across a figure, so you zoom out so you can read the chart.
- Then zoom back in super close because the caption is in teeny tiny font.
- Then zoom out slightly to continue reading.
- [...].
(All the same problems with FXL [Fixed Layout] EPUBs too, except those are even worse.)
With ebooks, you can read it on your cellphone + computer + ereader, in all different fonts and colors, and everything just fills your screen and reflows... exactly like a website.
For example, I read ebooks on my:
- computer in their original form.
- cellphone reading Text-to-Speech as I do things around the house.
- Plus Night Mode so my eyes don't hurt from the blinding white background.
- ereader while laying in bed.
Font sizes: I like smaller/denser on my cellphone, slightly larger on my e-ink.
Copying/Pasting is very important to easily share/cite information. (Yes, even the copyright page! Just this week we discussed a
busted up Churchill ebook, and the version number + metadata was important.)
And having text translated was absolutely integral for me, especially this past year. I was reading a ton of information about THE VIRUS, which was only available in German—and I don't read a word of German.
So I was able to get that information tossed through Google Translate (or better: DeepL).
If this stuff was locked away in physical books, images-of-text, or the dreaded PDF, that wouldn't have been possible.
(Note: Actually, I was surprised that Google Translate worked on purely digital PDFs... but it definitely wasn't a nice experience. Nowhere near as good as HTML/EPUB. And there's no way it would work on scanned PDFs.)