Moon+ - how to display the book "as is"

[HarryT]

Is there any way to tell Moon+ to just display a book as its author intended? ie obey the CSS in the book, and not mess with it? I appreciate that Moon+ has a plethora of formatting capabilities, and that's very useful when you have a badly-formatted book. When, however, the book is properly formatted, I don't want Moon+ to change anything, and I can't find a way to do that.

My specific problem is that I can't get Moon+ to obey the first line indents that are specified in the book. If I don't have the "Indent first line" option checked, I get no indents on any paragraph. If I do have it checked, I get indents on every paragraph. What I want is to obey what the book actually has, which is no indents on initial paragraphs, and indents on subsequent ones.

Any help would be appreciated.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is there any way to tell Moon+ to just display a book as its author intended? ie obey the CSS in the book, and not mess with it? I appreciate that Moon+ has a plethora of formatting capabilities, and that's very useful when you have a badly-formatted book. When, however, the book is properly formatted, I don't want Moon+ to change anything, and I can't find a way to do that.

My specific problem is that I can't get Moon+ to obey the first line indents that are specified in the book. If I don't have the "Indent first line" option checked, I get no indents on any paragraph. If I do have it checked, I get indents on every paragraph. What I want is to obey what the book actually has, which is no indents on initial paragraphs, and indents on subsequent ones.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Harry;

There is a way for Moon+ to observe the styles built-in in one ebook but is well hidden. You have to do the following:

1. Load the ebook.
2. Tap in the center of your tablet screen in order that the menu appears in the bottom.
3. Tap in the Options icon (the last one on the right side).
4. Select "Miscellaneous".
5. ENABLE "Show 'Preview with publisher formatting' Button on top bar".
6. UNCHECK "Disable CSS styles".

Steps 5 and 6 are the keys in order to get what you want, but still you must do something more (and very important).

7. Go to your ebook, tap in the center of your tablet in order that Moon+ shows the top bar and TAP IN THE ICON ON THE RIGHT (is similar to a monochrome gear icon).

Of that way you are enabling the "Preview with publisher formatting". Now you'll see the book as you want BUT (and is an important BUT) you only will be able to use vertical scroll and can't use your own fonts and other settings.

IMHO, I think Moon+ is not a good app reader; if you want to see a good ebook layout, dropcaps, etc., etc. then you need to enable "Preview with publisher formatting" but of that way you can't use a personal font, you can't change margins, only have vertical scroll, etc., etc. I think PocketBook Reader is much better since you can retain a perfect ebook layout while you can modify fonts, margins, you can manage "widows" and "orphans", etc., etc.

Regards
Rubén

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

5. ENABLE "Show 'Preview with publisher formatting' Button on top bar".
6. UNCHECK "Disable CSS styles".

This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't force the whole book to be displayed as sans-serif (an odd choice for default, I'd say), which I find hard to live with for novels after a few pages.

I agree that PocketBook is pretty good at honouring internal css and is definitely 'one to watch'. However, IMO, I think Mantano is currently best for a combination of honouring css whilst still having plenty of useful customisation, although still not perfect. To name but 2 things ... font size increments are too big and the implementation of using sideloaded fonts has errors.

Still, I do like the fact that Android has so many choices for an epub reader.

[HarryT]

Thanks - I appreciate the help.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't force the whole book to be displayed as sans-serif (an odd choice for default, I'd say), which I find hard to live with for novels after a few pages.

Hi Jackie;

If you want a serif font with Moon+ and "Preview with publisher formatting" enabled, you should edit the epub css stylesheet with Sigil (or any other editor) and change there the default font by adding the style "font-family: serif;" in the body selector.

Regarding Mantano, well, it's fast, you can change the screen bright and fonts size by sliding a finger on the left and right side of the screen but I never couldn't find how to change margins and fonts and still doesn't support rounded box and pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements (although to be fair, very few ereader apps support them). And you only can read .epub and .pdf. With PocketBook Reader you can read practically all formats (.epub, .pdf, .djvu, .fb2, .txt, .html, .chm, .cbr, .cbz, .cbt). Maybe the paid version of Mantano is better but so far, to me PocketBook is a bit better than Mantano Lite (of course, I respect your opinion to the contrary).

Regards
Rubén

[HarryT]

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll take a look at Pocketbook Reader.

I really like Moon+, I should add; the paragraph indent thing is a minor irritation.

[JSWolf]

I suggest giving Bluefire Reader a try on the T68. I'd be interested how it works. It's based on ADE RMSDK 10 (or 9.x if it's not updated yet like the iOS version). So it should work pretty well I would think.

[HarryT]

I'll give it a go, Jon - thanks for the suggestion. I should add that it's not just for the T68; these days I have my entire eBook library on both my T68 and my Nexus 7, managed in each case by Calibre Companion, and read about equally on the two devices.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'll give it a go, Jon - thanks for the suggestion. I should add that it's not just for the T68; these days I have my entire eBook library on both my T68 and my Nexus 7, managed in each case by Calibre Companion, and read about equally on the two devices.

I am hoping that Bluefire will be good. Looking forward to your review. Thanks.

[HarryT]

I'll let you know how it goes .

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

If you want a serif font with Moon+ and "Preview with publisher formatting" enabled, you should edit the epub css stylesheet with Sigil (or any other editor) and change there the default font by adding the style "font-family: serif;" in the body selector.

Thanks for that suggestion, Rubén. Unfortunately if I do that, it will upset the same epubs also stored on my Kobos. You would think that 'font-family:serif' would be a fairly benign bit of css, but unfortunately on a Kobo it may stop me being able to change fonts at will. Nevertheless I have a glimmer of a cunning plan I swear that trying to store a single epub in calibre which works optimally on all devices and in multiple reading apps is a real intellectual challenge

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Regarding Mantano, well, it's fast, you can change the screen bright and fonts size by sliding a finger on the left and right side of the screen but I never couldn't find how to change margins and fonts and still doesn't support rounded box and pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements (although to be fair, very few ereader apps support them). And you only can read .epub and .pdf. With PocketBook Reader you can read practically all formats (.epub, .pdf, .djvu, .fb2, .txt, .html, .chm, .cbr, .cbz, .cbt). Maybe the paid version of Mantano is better but so far, to me PocketBook is a bit better than Mantano Lite (of course, I respect your opinion to the contrary).

Ah, yes, I guess if you only want to use one app for many formats then Mantano would be limited. My suggestion was only really aimed at epub. I just let Calibre Companion suggest which of my (many) loaded reading apps will read the various formats. FWIW, when it comes to creating css, I tend to limit it to the kind of simple flat css calibre creates during conversion, i.e. no pseudo-thingies, no combos (p+p, h1>p etc).

Just FYI, in Mantano margins and fonts are handled by the Themes option. I only used Mantano Lite for a very short time so I can no longer remember which features are only in the Pro version. Mantano expects to find sideloaded fonts in the directory <device main mem>:/Mantano/fonts/

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really like Moon+, I should add; the paragraph indent thing is a minor irritation.

I also came across this very recently. It was with one particular epub but others were OK. When I had a quick look inside the badly-behaved epub I noticed that it was using <div> rather than <p> tags for the main body paragraphs. I'm wondering whether this is the cause of Moon+'s problem? A sample of one isn't proof, obviously, and I haven't taken the time to investigate further

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I also came across this very recently. It was with one particular epub but others were OK. When I had a quick look inside the badly-behaved epub I noticed that it was using <div> rather than <p> tags for the main body paragraphs. I'm wondering whether this is the cause of Moon+'s problem? A sample of one isn't proof, obviously, and I haven't taken the time to investigate further

Off topic, but where you have <div> and <p> it doesn't show them using Tapatalk on my T68. I looked on my phone using tapatalk an it does show there though.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Thanks for that suggestion, Rubén. Unfortunately if I do that, it will upset the same epubs also stored on my Kobos. You would think that 'font-family:serif' would be a fairly benign bit of css, but unfortunately on a Kobo it may stop me being able to change fonts at will.

Hmmm, I'm not sure but I think Kobo allows you to use fonts you like, even when the font in the epub css stylesheet is defined (at least, Kobo for Android allows that).

Ah, yes, I guess if you only want to use one app for many formats then Mantano would be limited. My suggestion was only really aimed at epub. I just let Calibre Companion suggest which of my (many) loaded reading apps will read the various formats. FWIW, when it comes to creating css, I tend to limit it to the kind of simple flat css calibre creates during conversion, i.e. no pseudo-thingies, no combos (p+p, h1>p etc).

I understand you. Pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements is important to me because those properties allow me to add drop-caps, fleurons, etc. with very little effort. For example, suppose that an epub doesn't have drop-caps (at the begining of chapters) and you want add them. Then by writing the following code in the css stylesheet of such epub

h1 + p:first-letter { /* or any other <h> tag */
     float: left;
     font-size: 3em;
     font-weight: bold;
     margin: 0 5px 0 0; /* here values can change a bit */
}

we'll have our drop-caps Regrettably, very few apps support those kind of properties (Kindle for Android and Kobo for Android have support).

Just FYI, in Mantano margins and fonts are handled by the Themes option. I only used Mantano Lite for a very short time so I can no longer remember which features are only in the Pro version. Mantano expects to find sideloaded fonts in the directory <device main mem>:/Mantano/fonts/

Many thanks for the info, Jackie. I will investigate what you said me.

Regards
Rubén

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Hmmm, I'm not sure but I think Kobo allows you to use fonts you like, even when the font in the epub css stylesheet is defined (at least, Kobo for Android allows that).

Really? My Kobo for Android only offers 'Droid Sans Serif', 'Droid Serif' or 'Publisher Default' (which I'm assuming means embedded fonts). IMO life is too short to be embedding fonts so I only have a choice of 2. Have I missed something?

On the eink Kobos, my experience has been that if you code css as body {font-family: serif} then the Kobo is able to override with the user-selectable font-of-choice stored on the device. However, if instead the font-family is in a css class (e.g. .calibren {font-family: serif; ...} after a calibre conversion) then the eink Kobo can't override and uses its default serif font (Georgia) instead of the user-selected one.