Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
Note that only one of these, the MOBI for MN 1 The Root of All Evil, has the latest css.
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I don't see anything in these books that would require anything out of the ordinary.
Just plain, simple HTML+CSS is all that's needed. The simpler and cleaner you do things, it's much less likely to break across devices/formats.
Remember: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).
Instead of having this:
this is ~ the typical poetry code I use:
Code:
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<p class="line">He takes Radiant Beings as Radiant Beings.</p>
<p class="line">Taking Radiant Beings for Radiant Beings, he conceptualizes Radiant Beings.</p>
<p class="line">[...]</p>
</div>
</div>
There are 3 key parts:
- Each poem gets wrapped in a <div class="poem">
- Each stanza gets wrapped in a <div class="stanza">
- Each line gets wrapped in a <p class="line">
- Note: Some people like to use <div> here instead of <p>... since a line of poetry is arguably NOT a paragraph.
Helpful Note: And it's all human-readable names—like "poem" and "stanza"... not "f4" + "ctr c".
* * *
And this is the CSS:
Code:
div.poem {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-left: 2em;
}
div.stanza {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
p.line {
text-align: left;
text-indent: -2em;
margin-left: 2em;
}
(Optional) You may even want to toss in a "page-break-inside: avoid;" in your stanza.
What this CSS says:
- For each poem:
- Give a little top/bottom margin to separate the poems from each other.
- Also an extra left margin. (In nearly all poetry I do, it's offset like a blockquote.)
- For each stanza:
- Give a little top/bottom margin to separate the stanzas from each other.
- Note: I took a quick look through, and I think there's only 1 poem in there where you have 2 stanzas separated with '§'. The rest all seem standalone.
- (Optional) The page-break code says: "Hey, device! When you're splitting pages, please keep these stanzas in one chunk. Try to shove your page breaks between stanzas and NOT between the lines." Most devices ignore this.
- For each line:
- Make left-aligned.
- Nearly all poetry is left-aligned, not justified.
- IF the line becomes too long to fit within the page, create a "negative indent".
* * *
Why is negative indent important?
Compare (Original vs. Adjusted):
1. Something that
looks like a single line in print (on a huge 8"x11" page)... can easily become 2+ lines at large font sizes or on a skinny device like a cellphone.
2. A 2-liner in your non-indented version is very hard to tell. Is that one large line that went over? Or is that an actual separate line of poetry?
Quote:
Originally Posted by olbeggaols
Here is a link to my "What's New?" page where I have announced the availability of several e-books, mostly PDFs but several that also have e-pub; mobi; and azw3 formats. As stated earlier, these are free to download and are in the Public Domain.
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Side Note: I love the Public Domain as much as anyone, but sadly, the way copyright is currently set up is "very sticky"—copyright is now assigned automatically, for 100+ years, and doesn't allow you to release things into the public domain
at all.
The closest you can get is releasing your works as Creative Commons 0 (CC0) or CC-BY 4.0:
https://creativecommons.org/share-yo...ic-domain/cc0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
(Although CC0 is arguably unenforceable.)
If the original translation is pre-1925 though, you're good to go. (Years after that get a bit more complicated.)
Note: I skimmed through your site + see you have CC3.0 on your pages. Perhaps consider updating to 4.0. Creative Commons has since made some changes to apply much more internationally:
https://creativecommons.org/version4/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn
It's not just phones. I was sent a PDF advance copy of a book to be published in June. Usually I can handle this on my 8-inch Fire tablet, but this one is a large-format book, and though I'm fascinated by the subject [...], I finally quit reading. It's just too aggravating.
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Yep, exactly.
And on most ereaders, reading PDFs are just sluggish and painful. Every page turn is a chore, every pan/scan lags, trying to highlight text and leave notes is horrendous.
Not to mention: Most people who design PDFs do not design with proper Accessibility in mind, so things like headers/footers are still "a part of the text" + figures/captions/tables are all botched and read out of order.
I always like to link to one of my favorite talks from
ebookcraft 2019: "The User's Perspective: Accessibility Features in Action", which was given by a blind person and explained many of the pitfalls of poorly converted ebooks.