Thread: Shine 5: Is there a way to adjust letter spacing?
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Old 01-12-2025, 07:58 AM   #3
JSWolf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Falkor View Post
Does anyone know a way to adjust the letter-spacing on the Shine 5? The CSS letter spacing property seems to be ignored, even when set with '!important'.

I get really narrow spacing with the default renderer, which makes the text difficult to read. I've checked in Photoshop and it will render the text similarly with the letter spacing set to -25, which is way lower than I'm comfortable with.

I've activated the RMSDK renderer in the config file and it renders the font much better (pretty much equal to letter spacing set to 0 in Photoshop). As a bonus, many features that are broken in the default renderer work fine in RMSDK, e.g. embedded fonts, page breaks, font weight adjustment…
Unfortunately I can't use RMSDK for everything, because it can't open files with LCP DRM.

I have attached two screenshots with the same text, comparing the renderers. The font used is EB Garamond. The issues with chapter title in RMSDK are caused by some compatibility issues with standardebooks.org's 'compatible' ePubs, but that's an easy fix.
What you are getting is kerning. That's why the letters look close together. Obviously letter spacing does not work in RMSDK.

As for StandardEbooks, their code is garbage and that's why it's not working as is. There is no reason for them to use such convoluted complicated code on eBooks that do not have any sort of complicated formatting. Their eBooks should be compatible with both ePub2 and ePub3. But they do it oh so very wrong.
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