small caps problem in Sigil

[goroke]

I've been fighting with this for a couple of weeks, now... I had given up for a while and done the usual work-around, but tonight I got annoyed and started trouble-shooting -- and I found what is tripping the problem.

I have this huge CSS that I use for almost everything, and I keep adding things in as I run into new styles I want to use. When I added the code for small caps, most of the page went small caps; it didn't stop with the </span> tag. And it was random, changing as I zoomed in and out. And it wasn't just the display on Sigil -- when I opened the saved file in Calibre's e-book reader, the same problem carried over. The code for this is standard:

span.smcap
{
font-variant: small-caps; }

So I built a new style sheet, definition by definition, and with a bare minimum everything looked fine with the small caps. When I added in my basic paragraph definition, the problem was there again. It's not a complex definition. Here's the code:

p
{
margin: 0em;
margin-top: 0em;
margin-bottom: 0em;
text-indent: 1.5em;
text-align: justify; }

First I removed the margin and indent lines all at once, but the problem was still there. So I put them back and took out the justification line -- and the problem disappeared.

So now that I know the what of the problem, can anyone explain the how? And is there any way to fix this?

[ghostyjack]

I also get this if I use small caps.

They display fine when I read the book in my readers, I believe this is just a display issue in Sigil due to (I think) it's use of Qt.

It's nothing to worry about as your book will be fine. Just wish it could be fixed though as it makes checking the book quickly a bit difficult.

[Jellby]

Change the smallcaps to, say, red colour. If everything looks fine, there's nothing wrong with the coding and it's just a display issue in Sigil/Calibre.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by goroke

when I opened the saved file in Calibre's e-book reader, the same problem carried over.

Sigil and calibre use the same HTML renderer. If there is a display problem in one it will also be in the other.

[goroke]

Ah, okay... is there any chance this will be corrected in future versions?

And let me say right here how much I love working with Sigil!

[JSWolf]

span.smcap {
   font-variant: small-caps
}

Does not work in ADE. So if your ePub is going to eventually be used with ADE, you'll have to do it another way which is to change the font size to 75% and use caps in the text unless you are embedding fonts and you can then use a smallcap font.

[user_none]

If I remember correctly small caps is not part of the EPUB spec. So support for it I'd hit or miss depending on the viewing application.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by user_none

If I remember correctly small caps is not part of the EPUB spec. So support for it I'd hit or miss depending on the viewing application.

I thought it was just a bug in ADE. Maybe not.

[theducks]

I joust looked at OPS 2.0.1 spec and it says Font-Variant small-caps support is required

[goroke]

Well, I did some poking around, and the one reader that handles all the formatting correctly is the EPUB plugin for Firefox. Several others simply ignore the small caps, which is okay... it's the weird display in both Sigil and the Calibre reader that had me freaked out.

Since I am mostly self-teaching on epub coding, the project I am working on (two volumes of H. G. Wells) are for my own on-screen reading enjoyment -- though after scanning and copy-editing two versions of The Time Machine, I may never actually want to read the thing again.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

span.smcap {
   font-variant: small-caps
}

Does not work in ADE. So if your ePub is going to eventually be used with ADE, you'll have to do it another way which is to change the font size to 75% and use caps in the text unless you are embedding fonts and you can then use a smallcap font.

That becomes a code mess if you haved MIXED CASE SMALL-CAPS.

Unless the small-caps are critical, I prefer leaving the font-variant and hoping it will be supported at some point in the future. ADE supports hyphenation and ligatures now, so maybe it's not a lost cause.

Originally Posted by user_none

If I remember correctly small caps is not part of the EPUB spec. So support for it I'd hit or miss depending on the viewing application.

It is a required part of the spec. text-transform is not, though.

[JSWolf]

I'll have to give small-caps a go in ADE 1.8 preview an see if it actually works.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll have to give small-caps a go in ADE 1.8 preview an see if it actually works.

It doesn't

[Toxaris]

I am not surprised it still doesn't work. It isn't flashy enough to fix...

[goroke]

Well, after reading all the suggestions, and thinking about it, I came up with a kludge that may be inelegant, but is the best solution I can think of...

I rewrote my CSS code to:
.smcap
{
text-transform: uppercase;
font-size: 75%; }
.smcap-for_real
{
font-variant: small-caps; }

Then I went back into the pages and changed all my <span class="smcap"> tags so they only wrapped around the letters to be affected. Right now, it appears as though more reading programs support the "text-transform" code than the correct "font-variant:small-caps" code. Then, if the readers should, in the future, not freak out over small-caps, then I can just change one line of code in the CSS and it will do things the proper way. Of course, those devices that don't support the "text-transform" code will see things in normal mixed case (with some font-size reduction on the "small caps"), but I guess you can't have everything...