New to H2O and need help with margin issues

[sparklemotion]

Hello all - I have been playing around with the H20 and trying to get the page to appear more balanced, as in not having the huge footer and not having any space at the top of the screen. Most of my library are epubs and I use calibre.

If someone can tell me the easiest way to keep the margins on all four sides balanced and still retain page numbers, I'd greatly appreciate it. Is the plug in to convert to kepubs the way to go?

I did use one of Geoff's suggestions of creating a file named 'kobo_extra.css' in the root directory of your device. However now it won't let me change the fonts and the font weight on the book it seems.

[jackie_w]

Hi sparklemotion,

There's no reason why fonts and font-weights should be related to page margins so I'm a little confused what's going on. There are many ways to code the internals of an epub which could interfere with the Kobo's customisation options. Do you have time to try some experiments with an epub which has none of these problems? If so I can post one of my public domain epubs and we can experiment on that.

Geoff mentioned some of the ways the Kobos can be customised to control page margins. For standard epubs the kobo_extra.css is the simplest, least technical way to increase the top margin and to reduce any over-large bottom margin when it's caused by widows/orphans settings (or lack thereof) inside the epub. However, many (including me) still find the bottom margin too big. The best way to reduce it is using the Kobo Patcher program which Geoff has added all sorts of goodies to. Have you had time to read about this yet?

[slantybard]

Hi Sparklemotion, I have a post here which has my latest patch settings for 3.11 and the resulting screenshot showing the tight margins.

[GeoffR]

The gap between the last line of text and the page number is made up of: a fixed built-in margin, plus any margin set by the publisher in the book, plus any blank lines due to the orphans/widows settings in the book. (Edit: The choice of font, font size, and line spacing can also affect the position of the last line of text, which can result in almost one extra blank line in the worst case.)

If you are considering converting to kepub to change the top/bottom margins, keep in mind that the built-in kepub bottom margin is exactly the same size as the built-in epub bottom margin. The kepub bottom margin only looks smaller because in comparison the kepub top margin is so much bigger, and because kepubs ignore orphan/widows settings.

So you should be able to get the same apparent bottom margin size for epubs as for kepubs just by changing the @page margins and orphans/widows settings in the book, which can be done automatically with Calibre.

However after all that, if you still want to actually reduce the size of the built-in bottom margin and still have the page number displayed the only option currently (for epubs or kepubs) is to patch the firmware.

[s4nder]

The full screen reading tweak along with setting margins and padding to zero in Calibre gets rid of all margins. You can literally have the screen full of text from edge to edge with no unofficial patches. No page number that way but it can easily be shown with a single tap.

However, there seems to be a bug with orphans and widows where even after disabling them (a value of 1) there are sometimes still blank lines at the end of the page. This seems to depend on the book though, one I read was nearly flawless, the other has every other page two lines short.

[sparklemotion]

Thank you all so much for the replies. I appreciate the help. I've been looking into using the patch, but I'm still a little unclear on how to apply it, so I'm reading other threads on it atm. I'm worried about messing it up, I guess. I'm already on the latest firmware, but I have not applied any patches yet. For what I want to do, it seems like that is my best option.

I do not want to get rid of all margins, I just don't want there to be no margin at the top of the screen and a huge one at the bottom basically. I'd also like to retain page number info at the bottom of the page. Basically, I would like the margins to simply be more even on the top and bottom, but still have some space so the words aren't right up against the kobo's screen edge.

[jackie_w]

The patches you need are in the patch file called libnickel.so.1.0.0.patch. It's just a text file and each patch has some helpful comments.

Reducing the footer is done by enabling the patch labelled

patch_name = `Custom reading footer style`

uncomment (remove hash # char) for the AuraHD/H2O lines and comment out the lines for the other Kobo devices.

If you would like the top (and bottom if required) page margins to stay balanced as you adjust the Kobo's left/right margin slider, you may like to enable the patch labelled

patch_name = `ePub adjustable top/bottom margin`

If, after reading the help notes you're still not sure what changes to make to the patch file just post your questions in the fw 3.11 patch thread and I'm sure someone can give you detailed help. Alternatively, I use the above 2 options myself so if you need a ready-made libnickel.so.1.0.0.patch file feel free to ask and I'll post it.

[GeoffR]

This is what my Glo looks like when I read epubs. Although it is patched, the patches are not needed to get the margins like this. If you wanted the bottom margin much smaller than this then you would need to patch, but if you just want to increase the top margin to make it balanced then you can do that without a patch.

There will always be some individual books that give problems. If you want perfect consistency from book to book (I do!) then there is really no choice but to edit those problem books to remove the publisher's many and varied inconsistencies.

Edit: The top page margin used here is 36px on the Glo (= 45px on the H2O), or about 12pt. Most publishers seem to use a page margin of 5pt all around or none at all.

Edit2: Although these margins can be set without a patch, the exact line spacing and font sizes I have selected are not available in the stock firmware.

[sparklemotion]

Thank you for your post, Jackiew!

Originally Posted by GeoffR

This is what my Glo looks like when I read epubs. Although it is patched, the patches are not needed to get the margins like this. If you wanted the bottom margin much smaller than this then you would need to patch, but if you just want to increase the top margin to make it balanced then you can do that without a patch.

There will always be some individual books that give problems. If you want perfect consistency from book to book (I do!) then there is really no choice but to edit those problem books to remove the publisher's many and varied inconsistencies.

That looks *perfect*! Exactly what I'm looking to do. I don't want the bottom margin smaller than that.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

This is what my Glo looks like when I read epubs. Although it is patched, the patches are not needed to get the margins like this. If you wanted the bottom margin much smaller than this then you would need to patch, but if you just want to increase the top margin to make it balanced then you can do that without a patch...

That looks very nice. I find that similar to what I'm used to on a Kindle. I was a bit hesitant to get the H20 (for sideloaded books) prior to you posting this.

[cybmole]

multiple solutions then,

you can fix top/bottom margins with a simple text file, as described above and as I just wrote about in the other H2O thread. that was explained to me here when I go my aura HD. At that time I don't think the more comprehensive patch had been developed.

OR you can quit using epubs and convert everything to kepub via the extended driver ( that solution will not work for borrowed DRMd library books though )

OR you can explore the wonders of the newish full screen reading mode - which also was not there when I bought mine.

there's no need to get into all of them. Start with whatever looks easiest & if that does the trick then you are done. Otherwise move on to explore the next one....

in my case, I began with the epub extra cs, but now I just use the convert to kepub option instead. I am happy with that so I never explored using the other patches
YMMV

IF anyone does prepare a comprehensive & yet for-dummies reference document, it would be helpful for that to indicate which solutions work for DRM protected books & which don't.

if it is for dummies, it also need to patiently explain you do this for epub, you do that for kepub, you do something else? for PDF....

I confess to having forgotten how nicely kobo plays with adobe DRM & activate your device ( or not)

[sparklemotion]

Thank you so much for your post, cybmole!

I installed the kepub plugin (it seemed the easiest and safest option for me, lol.) in calibre and converted my books and it's made a huge difference. Margins look as I want them now. I might try Geoff's patch down the road as well just to get some added customization, but for now this has worked out perfectly.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply and also to those who so kindly private messaged me to help even further. I really appreciate it.

[anacreon]

I've just had problems with a poor epub (converted to kepub when transferred to the reader), where I lost a line of text at the bottom (saw just the extreme top of a few letters). I noticed that it had no page_style, so copied one from a good epub and set it to 5 pt top and bottom.
I've tried adding it to my added CSS for conversions, so

body { orphans: 1; widows: 1; } div, p , blockquote {line-height: 1.0}, page { margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt }

but don't know whether it is the right syntax. The beginning was copied from some advice somewhere, and I have no knowledge of the language (Python is it?).

I'd welcome advice.

[cybmole]

the language is css.
end each bit with ; each definition goes in {}
usually each section is a new line, but your code may work as-is

I would use 3 lines like so

body { orphans: 1; widows: 1; }
div, p , blockquote {line-height: 1.0}
page { margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt }

actually I'd leave out that line height stuff, it will either do nothing & make lines look squashed, I reckon.
and if you set line height within the book, you cannot then use the reader's slider control to override.

my own kobo extra css file looks like this:
@page {margin-top: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0:}
body { orphans: 1; widows: 1; }
body {adobe-hyphenate: none;}

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I'm perfectly happy just to use the full screen reading mode. I'd hate to go through all that hassle just to see the page numbers at the bottom!