Cannot adjust margins on some kepubs

[Larla]

I have downloaded a book from Gutenberg as an epub with images. I loaded it onto my Glo HD with automatic conversion to kepub and discovered that with full justification the book takes up the entire screen, left and right. Everything is visible but the words go all the way to the screen edge.

Changing the margin settings has no effect. Going to left justification creates a ragged right but there is no visible margin on either side.

Could this be because of the included images?

I will download one without images and test it.

[Larla]

A little more info: If I move to chapter 3 then from then on the margins behave normally but everything before chapter 3 is flush to the screen edge. I see the exact same behavior in two separate books I have downloaded from Gutenberg.

[GeoffR]

The KePub reader assumes that the first HTML file of the book is a cover page and automatically displays it in a special full-screen mode that is only suitable for images. If the publisher has included other material in the first HTML file after the cover, then that gets displayed full-screen too.

If you know how to do it then editing the book and splitting it into seperate files so that the first HTML file contains nothing but the cover image should fix the problem, or if the book doesn't have a proper cover page then using Calibre to add one is usually faily easy. Otherwise siideload the book as an ePub instead, as the ePub reader doesn't have this problem.

(Although if the publisher has combined the cover with other material into one file, then chances are they will have done the same thing in other parts of the book such as including multiple chapters in one file, and that can cause other problems with things like TOC and reading stats.)

[Larla]

Thanks GeoffR -- I had noticed that all of the Gutenberg books have an explanation text page just before the cover image. I guess that is somehow related to the issue that you are describing.

I will sideload one of these books as an epub to verify that it corrects the problem.

[superjoefly]

I've had a similar issue with kepubs in experimental full screen mode. There are margins, but I cannot adjust them. I use full screen mode to get rid of the header and footer, but then I cannot adjust the side margins. So, I have to adjust the margins before activating full screen mode. Is this normal?

EDIT: Nevermind...it wasn't working last night, but it's working now :-)

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by superjoefly

I've had a similar issue with kepubs in experimental full screen mode. There are margins, but I cannot adjust them. I use full screen mode to get rid of the header and footer, but then I cannot adjust the side margins. So, I have to adjust the margins before activating full screen mode. Is this normal?

EDIT: Nevermind...it wasn't working last night, but it's working now :-)

This is a different issue that just started happening with the current current 3.19.xxxx firmwares, it only affects KePubs in full-screen mode: The margin adjuster stops working after you read past a chapter boundary*, and to make it work again you need to close the book and re-open it. (i.e. return to home/library and open the book again.)

(* Actually it happens after you read past the end of an internal HTML file in the KePub, which is usually the end of chapter as most books have one chapter per internal file.)