[charleski]

Originally Posted by Jellby

While I agree it can be annoying, it's not a bug, it's allowed by the CSS spec:

When an unforced page break occurs here, the used values of the relevant 'margin-top' and 'margin-bottom' properties are set to '0'. When a forced page break occurs here, the used value of the relevant 'margin-bottom' property is set to '0'; the relevant 'margin-top' used value may either be set to '0' or retained.

Aha, I didn't know that, thanks. So you're saying the css2 spec is even more b0rked with regard to paged media than I thought. I'll have to check this out as I've got a side-project on working out how to get epubs to work properly on a baseline grid (much harder than I'd thought) and post-break margin-top values have been a mystery.

Originally Posted by AlexBell

- 'I see you defined a class for a flush paragraph but didn't use it.' The CSS was designed to a standard to be used in other ePub books. Some of them will need to have flush paragraphs.
- 'Personally I really think that setting the first paragraph of a section flush looks a lot better.' I suggest we agree to disagree here; it's a matter of taste, I think.

Well, I'm not aware of any convention of style that recommends not setting the first paragraph of a section to be flush. To be frank, seeing a first paragraph that's indented screams 'amateur' - indented paragraphs indicate that they flow on from the previous text whereas setting it flush provides the visual clue needed to indicate a new strand of thought. It's not really an issue of taste, it's an issue of properly communicating the thoughts of the author.

'Although most well-behaved readers will respect the css pagebreaks you insert, some don't (they don't show up in the calibre reader for example). The only sure-fire way to make sure the reader puts in a pagebreak is to break the text into separate flows (separate xhtml files).' Could I suggest that this is a problem for the Calibre reader?

You could, of course, say exactly the same thing about FBReader's archaic inability to handle SVG. The calibre reader does at least have some excuse in that its basic design is scrolling rather than paged.

The ebook meets W3C and ePubCheck standards. I don't think, at first glance, that it's any improvement to break a short book into separate pages.

Ask kovid what he thinks of validation checks. At the end of the day, what matters is what people see on the screen. Breaking the text into separate flows is a trivial task in Sigil.

- At small values like 2% the difference isn't that great, though the text will be on the verge of colliding with the border for those reading on a small phone. A fixed size allows you to avoid wall-to-wall text while preventing the gutter becoming too obvious.' I must confess that in this first ePub ebook I hadn't even thought of small phones or larger screens. I'll need to think more about this.

This, I think, is a matter of taste. Having spent several years reading mobipocket books on my Palm T3 I'm sick of implementations that try to cram as much text on the screen as possible - text really does need some breathing room. mtravellerh's comments are valid, though, and a lot of commercial books use % for the margins.

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I missed this first time through. Could you point me to a reference please where I can read on this? If I can make SVG work on my ECO reader I'll be more motivated to use SVG as a standard in future ebooks.

Here's an example. I don't know if this will work on FBReader, but it should.