first-line and text-transform

[1v4n0]

Hello everyone.

Some printed books have the first line of the chapter in small caps. In ebooks, I tried using the first-line pseudo element, and in fact it does work, only not with the text-transform command. That is, I can make the first line for example bold, or bigger, but not uppercase. Is there a way to fix this? Is it worth it?

Thanks

[Notjohn]

I do this, but I manually capitalize the chosen words. Here's my small-cap style:

span.smallcap {
font-size: 90%;
font-weight: bold;
}

Of course it takes a bit of work, but I only use it at the start of a chapter. I think it's a good substitute for drop-caps. The oldest Kindles ignore the 90% instruction, but they also ignore the bold, so that works out all right.

[1v4n0]

Yes, writer2epub does this by default. My problem is how to make text-transform work with first-line

[Toxaris]

Most readers do not support text-transform (or first-line for that matter). You would be better off using either psuedo smallcaps or add a smallcaps font.

[1v4n0]

Ha, a specific font sounds like a good idea. Though of course if I want the small-caps effect it has to be a specific small caps font, i.e. one where capitalized letters are bigger than the others.

First-line works on two models of kindle (paperwhite and an old one). Don't know about the rest.

[Turtle91]

Hi 1v4n0,

I use the following for my books. It has a large drop cap for the first letter and all smallcaps for the first line. But Toxaris is correct, the pseudo-elements aren't supported in all readers. I choose not to use readers that don't support it!! lol

/* First Para in lieu of Drop Caps */
p.first              {text-indent:0; font-size:1em; line-height:1em; clear:both}
p.first:first-letter {font-family:serif; font-size:2em; font-weight:bold; float:left; margin:-.1em .1em -.1em .1em; line-height:1}
p.first:first-line   {font-variant:small-caps; font-size:1.15em}


with:
<p class="first"> (on my first paragraph in the chapter)

[1v4n0]

Ha! Didn't know about this font-variant stuff. I had just found this font, but I guess you solution works best.

[sherman]

The big elephant in the room of course is Adobe RMSDK, and its support of such features (or lack thereof).

If you want to use features such as font-variant, text-transform, :first-line etc, then you're outa luck as far as RMSDK is concerned. And there are a lot of epub readers and software using RMSDK.

Such missing features are a crying shame IMHO, as RMSDK probably has the best text rendering engine of all epub readers.

[1v4n0]

Well this might be a case of "graceful degradation": if your device supports this CSS, good, but if it doesn't it's not terrible either.

Anyway first-line does work on the kindle, as well as text-transform, but they do not seem to work together. Font-variant does though, and I'm gonna use it from now on.

[Jellby]

So... your problem is in the Kindle?

The Kindle does not support ePub, why is this in the ePub forum?

[1v4n0]

I work on ePub and then convert it to AZW3 sith calibre.

[Jellby]

But I don't think it belongs to the ePub forum. It's either a Kindle-only question (this particular combination of CSS properties does not work on Kindle) or a general ebook/CSS question (what's the best way to achieve this kind of formatting). Moved to the Workshop.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by 1v4n0

I work on ePub and then convert it to AZW3 sith calibre.

I am with Jellby.
If your only TARGET is Kindle, this belongs in that forum. The intermediate tools are of no consequence.

You have expressed no interest in making an EPUB device compatible book.