Font-Size Every Couple of Words

[enuddleyarbl]

Well, this is a new one. Started editing the CSS of another book that I'm reading, and every couple of words, they reset the font-size to the same value. I even went back to my original, archived azw3 from Amazon and confirmed it: everything's in one file, everything's run together into one blob, and "<span style=" font-size:0.96rem">" every handful of words:

class="BasicParagraph" style="font-size:0.96rem; line-height:120%; text-align:justify"><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">He was pleased. So much so that he decided then and there to press his luck a little and ask for more. “</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">Run the master defense emergency plans, p</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">lease, at speed, in order,”</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem"> he told the machine casually.</span></p><p class="BasicParagraph" style="font-size:0.96rem; line-height:120%; text-align:justify"><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">The machine obeyed. Because of the volume of material it took almost four minutes.</span></p>

Granted, it's an older book (copyright 1981). But, I downloaded it from Amazon a year ago. I just wish I could get some inkling of an idea of why these things get "styled" this way.

[JSWolf]

What book is this?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

Well, this is a new one. Started editing the CSS of another book that I'm reading, and every couple of words, they reset the font-size to the same value. I even went back to my original, archived azw3 from Amazon and confirmed it: everything's in one file, everything's run together into one blob, and "<span style=" font-size:0.96rem">" every handful of words:

class="BasicParagraph" style="font-size:0.96rem; line-height:120%; text-align:justify"><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">He was pleased. So much so that he decided then and there to press his luck a little and ask for more. “</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">Run the master defense emergency plans, p</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">lease, at speed, in order,”</span><span style=" font-size:0.96rem"> he told the machine casually.</span></p><p class="BasicParagraph" style="font-size:0.96rem; line-height:120%; text-align:justify"><span style=" font-size:0.96rem">The machine obeyed. Because of the volume of material it took almost four minutes.</span></p>

Granted, it's an older book (copyright 1981). But, I downloaded it from Amazon a year ago. I just wish I could get some inkling of an idea of why these things get "styled" this way.

Then using Diap's Editing Toolbag, delete empty spans.

Search and replace
[code] style="font-size:0.96rem; line-height:120%; text-align:justify"[/code
Search

<span style=" font-size:0.96rem">

Replace with

<span>

Using Disp's Editing Toolbag, delete

[enuddleyarbl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What book is this?

Jack L. Chalker's "A Snake in the Grass" (ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0057U12SM) Book one of his "The Four Lords of the Diamond" series:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...oreType=ebooks

And thank goodness for Diap's Editing Toolbag. I can't imagine having to re-format that without it. That allowed me to pull out a lot of those spans, convert others and get rid of the left over empty spans and divs.

This is the first book I've seen with everything dumped into a single file (~500kb). I'm actually surprised it would load decently on an old Kindle. My computer was spinning furiously when I tried messing with the original.

I'm guessing that this came over from a pdf, converted it to text, and stuck those spans on the beginning and end of every line. Although it does have this at the top:

<meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.7.0.0"/>

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

Jack L. Chalker's "A Snake in the Grass" (ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0057U12SM) Book one of his "The Four Lords of the Diamond" series:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...oreType=ebooks

<meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.7.0.0"/>

Another worthless program for generating a sloppy ePub eBook.

At least fixing the mess in the HTML files is fairly easy.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I just wish I could get some inkling of an idea of why these things get "styled" this way.

It's crappy when they use style= in the html. You should be able to use calibre's Convert Books and convert it to the same format, e.g. AZW3 to AZW3 and calibre will get rid of that style= crud.

In the long run I find it quicker and easier to be very heavy handed and delete all of their CSS and replace it with my simplified CSS:

body {
  font-size: 100%;
  border: 0;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  width: auto;
}

body * {
  line-height: inherit;
}

p {
  font-size: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  border: 0;
  text-indent: 2em;
}

a {
  color: inherit;
  text-decoration: none;
}

h1,h2,h3,h4 {
  text-align: center;
}

.bold {
  font-weight: 900;
}

.italic {
  font-style: italic;
}

.bold_italic {
  font-weight: 900;
  font-style: italic;
}

That makes it ragged right, which I prefer. You could add a text-align:justify; to the body CSS if you like a straight right margin. For novels there's rarely any necessary formatting that this wrecks, aside from stuff that's in italics. So before I nuke the original CSS I look for all classes that specify italic and add them to my .italic class so that it says something like .italic,.calibre3 { where calibre3 was one of the book's classes for italic. Likewise for bold and bold italic. Everything is the same font size which is fine with me; I'm not after a work of art, I just want the story.


When you do this all of your books will have the same font size, line spacing, margins, etc. because it's using the ereader's built in CSS for everything that's not specified here. All of the classes in the HTML are ignored since there's nothing for them in this simplified CSS.

[Section8]

The publisher of that book is Phoenix Pick - which explains the horrific code.

[enuddleyarbl]

Way back at the beginning of time, I had Calibre convert that azw3 over to epub. It tried its best to clean it up. For instance, those "style=" spans all got converted to class="calibre\d" spans. It also added the spacing back in and managed to split the chapters into their own files. But, the "front matter" pages didn't have any heading markers, so they got dumped into one file.

I was just amazed at the original azw3 when I went back to see what was originally there.

And, yep, I do have my own set of css classes that I bring into each book so I can re-format it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by hobnail

It's crappy when they use style= in the html. You should be able to use calibre's Convert Books and convert it to the same format, e.g. AZW3 to AZW3 and calibre will get rid of that style= crud.

In the long run I find it quicker and easier to be very heavy handed and delete all of their CSS and replace it with my simplified CSS:

body {
  font-size: 100%;
  border: 0;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  width: auto;
}

body * {
  line-height: inherit;
}

p {
  font-size: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  border: 0;
  text-indent: 2em;
}

a {
  color: inherit;
  text-decoration: none;
}

h1,h2,h3,h4 {
  text-align: center;
}

.bold {
  font-weight: 900;
}

.italic {
  font-style: italic;
}

.bold_italic {
  font-weight: 900;
  font-style: italic;
}

That makes it ragged right, which I prefer. You could add a text-align:justify; to the body CSS if you like a straight right margin. For novels there's rarely any necessary formatting that this wrecks, aside from stuff that's in italics. So before I nuke the original CSS I look for all classes that specify italic and add them to my .italic class so that it says something like .italic,.calibre3 { where calibre3 was one of the book's classes for italic. Likewise for bold and bold italic. Everything is the same font size which is fine with me; I'm not after a work of art, I just want the story.


When you do this all of your books will have the same font size, line spacing, margins, etc. because it's using the ereader's built in CSS for everything that's not specified here. All of the classes in the HTML are ignored since there's nothing for them in this simplified CSS.

When you do this, you can end up with a mess because your styles are not what's needed in the eBook. You can actually make it more difficult to clean up.

For example, in most eBooks, there is no indent for <p> and by putting one in, you then sometimes have to add a text-indent: 0; for the classes that have a center and for any classes that expect there not to be an indent.

As for your simplified CSS, I've simplified it even more.

body {
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-right: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-left: 0;
  text-align: justify;
}
p {
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  text-indent: 1.2em;
}
h1,h2,h3,h4 {
  text-align: center;
}
.bold {
  font-weight: bold;
}
.italic {
  font-style: italic;
}
.bold_italic {
  font-weight: bold;
  font-style: italic;
}

[enuddleyarbl]

Originally Posted by Section8

The publisher of that book is Phoenix Pick - which explains the horrific code.

I'd seen that, too. I don't know anything about them, but I went off to their website to make sure I hadn't bought a counterfeit 8 years ago on Amazon. But, Phoenix Picks site points to that same Amazon page where it says I bought it all those years ago.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Section8

The publisher of that book is Phoenix Pick - which explains the horrific code.

That says it it all. I've downloaded some of their free monthly eBooks and yes, the code is no good (as you already know).

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I was just amazed at the original azw3 when I went back to see what was originally there.

I've had books that use div tags instead of p tags. And ones that have a space entity wrapped by p tags, between every paragraph, to make a blank line between paragraphs. There's no end to the crazy stuff.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I've had books that use div tags instead of p tags. And ones that have a space entity wrapped by p tags, between every paragraph, to make a blank line between paragraphs. There's no end to the crazy stuff.

The Kindle Create app did a ton of that "use divs instead of ps" stuff. Nightmares.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

The Kindle Create app did a ton of that "use divs instead of ps" stuff. Nightmares.

Hitch

Does Kindle Create still do stupid stuff like <div instead of <p?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does Kindle Create still do stupid stuff like <div instead of <p?

I have not tested it recently. When there was a need, I dug into it, around getting people updated Word files (h/t to jhowell!!!).

I have NOT tested it since they announced that KC would now, in beta, be able to export ePUB files. Honestly...kinda afraid to look, to see what on earth they're doing in there. I was so gobsmacked by the divs and /brs all over the place, inside KC that...well, possibly may be scarred for life.

I may have Post-eProduction Stress Syndrome. May take me decades to get over it. :-)

H