Help with side loaded books on the Kobo Aura

[And365]

So I recently bought the Kobo Aura ereader and so far love it.
I do seem to have a problem with random sideloaded epubs however.
Some do not allow me to change the spacing between the lines while others do. How do I correct this?

[theducks]

Moderator Notice
Moving to Kobo

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by And365

Some do not allow me to change the spacing between the lines

Those are the ones that have a line spacing specified in the file, which in theory means it's important to the relevant text's layout and isn't something the reader should be changing.

In practice it's often ignorance on the file creator's part, especially when it's been applied to the whole book. The best way to deal with it is to contact the creator of the file so they can fix it for everyone, but you can edit the file yourself and remove it as well. If you're using Calibre to sideload the books then that contains editing tools.

[And365]

How do I change that in calibre? After I open calibre and select the device it shows all the books listed, what do I do then?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

Those are the ones that have a line spacing specified in the file, which in theory means it's important to the relevant text's layout and isn't something the reader should be changing.

I completely reject the argument that it "isn't something the reader should be changing"
If something is keeping me from reading the story, either I'm going to change that thing, or I'm not going to read it. In my opinion, if an author feels that their vision of how the text should look is more important than the message of the text, then they don't deserve to have their story read.

Shari

[Athropos]

Originally Posted by shalym

I completely reject the argument that it "isn't something the reader should be changing"
If something is keeping me from reading the story, either I'm going to change that thing, or I'm not going to read it. In my opinion, if an author feels that their vision of how the text should look is more important than the message of the text, then they don't deserve to have their story read.

Sometimes a small part of the text has to be formatted in a certain way because it's something different from the rest (e.g., a quote, a thought, a note, a dream). That's why these parts are using a different layout and it "isn't something the reader should be changing".

It's something wrong when the whole book is forcing a layout because the creator of the book did not understand that not everyone is using the same font/font size/line spacing...

[hoichi]

A key concept of EPUB is that content presentation should adapt to the User rather than the User having to adapt to a particular presentation of content.

(Taken from http://www.idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-overview.html )

I don't know if all the readers fully support it but it's quite possible for ePub authors to specify line height in percent, just like (almost) everything else. Not that it automatically solves all the potential scaling problems etc., but when you really really need to mess with line height, that should be the way to go.

[rashkae]

To answer the question with a quick how to:

Without going into details about how to write css for a book, you can 'fix' small things like this in Calibre by Converting the book... It's ok to do Epub to Epub conversion.. you should make sure you have a original copy of your book saved somewhere outside of calibre, in case you are not happy with the changes made here.

When you press the convert button on an book, in the left hand column, is a "Look and Feel" catagory.

I would suggest first putting a check mark in "Disable Font Scalling." Font scalling is a powerful and very useful tool, but it can make unnexpected changes to your book, and should probably not be used unless needed/wanted.

Here you have two choices. If you think your book spaces the lines too closely together, you can ajust the "Minumum Line Height Percentage".. default is 120%, If you find that too crowded for your taste, try increasing it. This will not restore your ability to adjust on the fly in calibre settings.

If you would rather remove all line height coded in the book, change that minimum line height to 0. Also, you have to to click on the "Filter Style Information" tab. In the text for for Other CSS, enter "line-height" (without the quotes.). That should remove any hard coded line height in the book, and allow the user specified prefernece to work without interference.