Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroDrie
Unfortunately, no one knows which E-reader supports which CSS commands. That makes it all very difficult to make EPUB that can do something more than bold, italic and underlined text.
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Not really true.
Below tested in LO Writer using and EXTRA save As in docx, but edit as ODT.
Paragraph Styles in Wordprocessor Docx (From Word or LO Writer) created as css by Calibre that work on nearly anything, even mostly KF7/Mobi:
Paragraph top margin
Paragraph bottom margin
Left indent
Right indent
First line indent. You can copy the regular paragraph style and have 2nd style with this as zero for after anything centred.
Left, centred, right or fully justified: Centred is good for headings, right for marginalia and Left for poems / lyrics
Font size, normal, bold, italic and bold+ italic.
A box and text spaced in it (one paragraph, but Newline via Shift Enter works). Line width works. Surprised me
Underline works. But only have it automatically for links
Colours / shades work, but madness.
Use Level1, Level2 for headings in TOC/NCX. Use text level for all other headings as more than two levels may not work. Becomes H1, H2 in CSS/HTML.
Use Page Break before in any paragraph style that needs to start on a new page. Might only work with H1 and H2 in mobi.
Images can be centred, left or right. Best as a separate paragraph and embedded as a character. Relative width is possible. Avoid big.
Line height works, but is a bad idea, especially for the main content / body
Things that are problems:
Choosing your own fonts works on KF8 and epub2 on ereaders that support "Publisher font". You need to embed and subset in Calibre Conversion and you may need to select Embed Fonts in wordprocessor properties, especially if a different computer is used for Calibre. Mobi-KF7 will support monospace (Courier), sans-serif and serif on a good day depending on your WP choices. But if you upload epub2 to Amazon, the resultant download in mobi-KF7 for ancient eink should be doing monospace (Courier), sans-serif and serif if the epub2 CSS makes sense. But there is NO assurance that the user will select Publisher font. Test on a Kindle (KF8) and Kobo epub2 (Not kepub) that NOT using the publisher font is still readable.
Footnote support is erratic and they are evil to edit in WP as a note can vanish if you delete the reference.
Simulate footnotes with link to anchor of the note and an anchor at source and link back. Put them either in an intermediate chapter at the end of a chapter or all at the end in an appendix chapter.
Flowing text around and image only works on some ereaders and formats. A small image in a line won't resize when people change the font size so should be avoided.
Small caps might not work.
Drop caps can be images with flowed text or "real" drop caps. The images and the font versions are quite likely to sit up on the base line on many formats and models and apps. Avoid. It's a publisher ego thing that slows people reading. Users won't miss them.
Animated images, video, sound or interactive works on hardly anything. Only a handful of epub3 apps. Better to write an app.
You can't fill in forms on most things.
Right to Left and Vertical languages may not work.